Protesters gather outside San Diego federal building demanding end to Flock camera contract
The short version: San Diego residents rallied outside the federal building to demand the city dump its Flock ALPR contract, and ABC 10 News caught it on camera.
Our Take
Credit to ABC 10 News for putting a camera on this one, because street-level pushback against Flock Safety rarely gets local TV coverage. When people show up outside a federal building to protest a license plate reader contract, it's a sign that the conversation about mass surveillance is leaving city council chambers and moving into public view, which is exactly where it belongs.
San Diego isn't an outlier. City after city signed these contracts with little debate, trusting vendor promises about "public safety" while ignoring the basic fact that every plate scanned is logged, timestamped, and stored, building a map of where you go and who you see regardless of whether you've done anything wrong. Protesters calling for an end to the contract are pushing back against that default, demanding elected officials actually weigh the tradeoff instead of rubber-stamping renewal.
If you want to see how saturated your own neighborhood is with this kind of tracking, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push your city council the way San Diego residents are pushing theirs, 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 ABC 10 News, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.