Twin Cities suburb set to get rid of Flock cameras over privacy concerns

Our Take

WCCO - CBS Minnesota reports that a Twin Cities suburb is getting ready to walk away from its Flock Safety contract after residents and officials raised privacy concerns. This is exactly the pattern we've been tracking across the country: a city council signs up for "public safety" cameras without much scrutiny, people start asking who actually has access to the data and for how long, and suddenly the cost-benefit math looks a lot shakier.

What makes these local fights matter is scale. Flock's pitch works because each individual city council vote feels small and reversible, but thousands of these cameras networked together create a de facto national tracking system for anyone who drives a car. When a suburb says no, it's not just local politics — it's one less node feeding a surveillance grid that was built with almost no public debate in the first place. Check our camera map to see how dense that grid has already gotten near you.

Credit to WCCO for putting a local story in front of a wider audience, because this is how these contracts actually get undone — not through federal legislation, but through city council meetings where enough residents show up and ask hard questions. If you want to push your own council toward the same outcome, our take-action page has the tools to get started.