3 Flock cameras stolen in Northern California
The short version: KCRA 3 reports three Flock ALPR cameras were stolen in Auburn, CA, near Highway 49 and Nevada Street, and authorities are investigating.
Our Take
KCRA 3's report out of Auburn is a small story with a big punchline: someone walked off with three of Flock Safety's license plate cameras, and now the same surveillance company that markets itself as an all-seeing crime-fighting tool can't explain how its own hardware vanished off a pole. If Flock's gear can be lifted without anyone noticing, that says something about how much blind faith communities are being asked to place in these systems.
These cameras get installed with promises of accountability and public safety, yet the public rarely gets a real say in where they go, who can access the data, or what happens when the equipment itself becomes the target. An incident like this should be a prompt for Auburn residents to ask harder questions: who's auditing these devices, what data did they hold, and why is a private company's hardware sitting on public infrastructure with so little oversight?
Curious whether Flock has cameras logging your plate on your daily commute? Check our camera map to see what's been deployed near you, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back on unchecked ALPR expansion in your town.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KCRA 3, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.