Community action group launches effort to ban AI cameras in Huntington
The short version: Huntington residents push back after a 6-4 council vote approves Flock ALPRs, proving opposition to mass surveillance crosses party lines.
Our Take
A 3 a.m. vote is a red flag in itself — when a council has to grind through hours of public comment before ramming through a surveillance contract, that's not consensus, that's exhaustion winning out over good sense. Credit to WCHS-TV for capturing the moment Huntington, West Virginia residents decided they weren't done fighting just because the gavel dropped.
What's notable here isn't just the opposition, it's who's showing up to oppose it. Katie Norman and the Huntington Community Action group are right to point out there's no clean partisan line on this issue. Nobody actually wants a network of cameras logging every car that passes through town, feeding a database that can be queried, shared, and misused long after the 'solving crimes' justification has faded into the background. That instinct cuts across left and right because it's about something more basic: whether your movements should be tracked by default, with a private company holding the keys.
Huntington now joins a growing list of towns where officials approved Flock first and asked questions later. If you're in a similar fight — or want to see whether your city already has these cameras installed — check our camera map and find out how to push back at take action.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WCHS-TV, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.