DeFlock Stars 2: Six Activists on How to Fight Flock in Your Town | Hide & Speak

Our Take

This is the kind of content the anti-surveillance movement needs more of: not think-pieces, but field notes from people who've actually stood at a podium during public comment and watched a council vote flip. Hide & Speak pulling together organizers from Troy, Tulsa, Dahlonega, Connecticut, and El Cerrito matters because Flock's playbook depends on every town thinking it's isolated, facing a novel problem, with no roadmap. It isn't, and there is one.

The detail worth sitting with is the point about verifying a police department's claim that federal data sharing has been "switched off." Departments say this constantly after backlash, and almost nobody checks. That single practice — demanding logs, audit trails, and documented proof rather than a press release — is the difference between a symbolic win and an actual policy change. Same goes for the reminder that canceling Flock doesn't end the problem if the city just signs with a different ALPR vendor; the fight is about the surveillance infrastructure, not the brand name on the pole.

If you're wondering whether your own city is already wired up, check the map before you show up to a meeting empty-handed. And if this panel leaves you wanting a starting point instead of just inspiration, our take-action page has the concrete first moves — because as these six organizers prove, it really can start with one person and a Monday afternoon.