Flock camera ad hoc committee meeting - Tuesday Oct 8, 2024
The short version: Carmel-by-the-Sea's ad hoc committee sought public input on Flock ALPR camera placement, but process meetings like this rarely question whether the cameras belong at all.
Our Take
Credit to the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea for at least holding a public meeting before blanketing their village with license plate readers. Ad Hoc Committee member Bobby Richards and Chief Tomasi framed this as a conversation about "number and location" — which tells you the decision to deploy Flock cameras was already baked in before the public got a mic. That's the pattern in town after town: the real debate (should we have mass surveillance infrastructure at all?) gets skipped, and residents are only invited to haggle over camera counts and street corners.
This matters because once the poles go up, they rarely come down. Flock's ALPR network doesn't just watch for stolen cars — it builds a searchable log of every plate that passes, quietly available to whichever agencies get access, including out-of-state and federal requests that Carmel voters never approved. A tiny coastal city of a few thousand people debating camera placement is a small story, but it's the same script playing out in thousands of jurisdictions: incremental, procedural, and easy to miss until the network is already national.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood already has these cameras, check our camera map, and if Carmel or your town is heading toward a City Council vote, see our take-action page for how to actually show up and push back before the recommendation becomes policy.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of City of Carmel-by-the-Sea, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.