City leaders in Berkeley voting on Flock camera contract

Our Take

Berkeley has long branded itself a privacy-conscious city, so it's worth paying close attention when its council starts weighing a Flock Safety contract. KRON4's Amanda Hari is on this one, and we appreciate the local TV coverage because these votes tend to happen fast, with little public understanding of what a network of automated plate readers actually means once it's installed.

Here's the pattern we've seen play out in city after city: a vendor pitch focused on solving a handful of high-profile crimes, a council vote under time pressure, and then a permanent surveillance layer that logs the movements of every driver, regardless of suspicion. Once that data exists, it gets shared, subpoenaed, and sometimes misused in ways no one on the council anticipated. Berkeley residents deserve hard answers before a vote, not after cameras are already bolted to poles — questions about data retention, who gets access, audit trails, and what happens when ICE or out-of-state agencies come asking.

If you're in Berkeley or anywhere nearby, check our camera map to see what's already been deployed around you, and visit our take-action page for tools to push back before contracts like this get rubber-stamped.