News 13 Morning Minute for Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026
The short version: WLOS News 13 flags that Asheville may be reconsidering its Flock Safety contract, a small but telling sign that local pushback on ALPR surveillance is gaining traction.
Our Take
Credit to WLOS News 13 for even raising the question in their Thursday morning briefing: could Flock cameras be on their way out of Asheville? It's a 15-second teaser buried between weather updates, but it points to something bigger — city councils and residents starting to ask whether these camera networks were ever worth the tradeoff in privacy.
We don't know yet what's driving this in Asheville specifically — cost, effectiveness, public records requests, or community pushback — and we won't speculate past what WLOS has reported. But the pattern is familiar. Once a city installs Flock readers, someone eventually asks who's watching the watchers, how long the data sits around, and who else gets access to it. Those are the right questions, and they're worth asking in every city running this hardware, not just Asheville.
If you want to see whether your own neighborhood has these cameras logging plates right now, check our map, and if you'd rather not wait for a local news teaser to prompt your city council, our take-action page has steps for pushing back before the contract gets renewed.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WLOS News 13, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.