Darth Vader Gave a Speech About Surveillance Cameras at City Hall

Our Take

Credit where it's due: Stranger Than News found the most memorably weird two minutes of public comment we've seen from a city council meeting, and — per the sourcing — every word is verbatim from San Diego's own official transcript. Someone in a Darth Vader costume stood up during a Public Safety and Livable Neighborhoods Committee meeting and, according to UPI's writeup, defended Flock's license-plate readers. You can laugh at the costume. The cameras themselves are not a joke.

This is what happens when ALPR expansion gets rubber-stamped without real public scrutiny: the actual debate gets drowned out by spectacle, while the substantive questions — who has access to the plate-read data, how long it's retained, whether it's shared with ICE or out-of-state agencies, whether there's any independent audit — go unanswered in the room. San Diego isn't unique. City councils across the country are voting on Flock contracts in meetings most residents never watch, comedic public comment or not.

If you want to know whether there's a Flock camera near you, or near your kid's school, check our camera map. And if San Diego's Flock deployment (or your own city's) hasn't gotten the scrutiny it deserves, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up to the meetings that matter — costume optional.