2026 08 17 29 Public Comment
The short version: A New Hanover County resident took the mic to challenge the county's Flock ALPR network, and local watchdog DeFlockILM caught it on tape.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: DeFlockILM is doing exactly the kind of grassroots accountability work this fight needs — showing up to a county commissioners meeting, recording the public comment, and putting it online with receipts at DeFlockILM.org. This is how local surveillance expansion actually gets checked, not through press releases from Flock Safety or the sheriff's office, but through ordinary residents standing at a podium and asking hard questions in front of the people who voted for the contract.
New Hanover County is just one node in a nationwide rollout of automated license plate readers that quietly log every car that passes, building a searchable history of where you drive, when, and how often — all without a warrant, and often without the public ever getting a real vote on it. Public comment periods like this one are one of the only remaining levers residents have before these systems become permanent fixtures, shared across agencies and sometimes with federal immigration and data-broker networks far beyond what any county commissioner approved.
If you want to see whether cameras like these are already watching your own commute, check our map, and if you're ready to push back locally the way this commenter did, our take-action page has the tools to get started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DeFlockILM, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.