'Dr Doom' Thanks Seattle For Flock Cameras

Our Take

NowThis Impact's sketch leans into absurdity to make a real point: when a cartoon villain can thank your city council for installing a license-plate-reading network, the joke isn't really on the comic character — it's on the policymakers who approved it with minimal public debate. Satire works because it's not far from the truth. Seattle, like hundreds of other American cities, has quietly let Flock Safety's ALPR cameras multiply on its streets, and most residents have no idea how many there are or who can access the data.

That's the real punchline. A villain "thanking" a city for surveillance infrastructure lands because it flips the script we're used to — usually it's officials selling these systems as crime-fighting tools, not admitting they're a gift to anyone who wants to track where you go. Flock's pitch is public safety, but the infrastructure doesn't care who's logging in. Local police, federal agencies, or anyone with the right access can follow your car's movements across a city, and that capability doesn't disappear once the cameras are up.

Credit to NowThis Impact for using comedy to get people thinking about something most would scroll past. If you want to see how far this has spread beyond punchlines, check our camera map to find Flock devices near you, and hit take action if you want to push back before your own city becomes the next setup line.