What Flock Cameras and Pokémon Go Have in Common
The short version: The Mormon Felon draws a sharp parallel between Pokémon Go's data-harvesting design and Flock's ALPR network, showing how both normalize mass location tracking under a friendly facade.
Our Take
It's a comparison that sounds like a joke until you sit with it: Pokémon Go quietly turned millions of phones into location-reporting devices while everyone was busy catching cartoon monsters. The Mormon Felon's video makes the case that Flock Safety's camera network works on a similar principle — infrastructure that looks harmless or even beneficial on the surface, but which is fundamentally built to harvest movement data at scale, then hand it off to whoever's paying or asking.
That's the pattern worth paying attention to. Surveillance rarely announces itself as surveillance. It shows up as a "public safety tool," a game, an app update — something you opt into without registering what's actually being collected or who eventually gets access to it. Flock cameras don't need your consent or your curiosity to log your plate, your location, and your timestamp every time you drive past one. Multiply that by thousands of cameras in thousands of towns and you've got a national tracking system built with zero public referendum.
Credit to The Mormon Felon for framing it in a way that's easy to share with people who'd otherwise tune out another "surveillance state" headline. If this video has you wondering what's watching your own commute, check our camera map to see what's nearby, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back on it locally.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Mormon Felon, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.