2026 08 17 34 Public Comment
The short version: A Wilmington-area resident's public comment to New Hanover County Commissioners shows how local pushback on Flock ALPR cameras is spreading county by county.
Our Take
Credit to DeFlockILM for documenting this moment on the record: a resident standing up at a New Hanover County Commissioners meeting to question why the county is running a network of Flock Safety cameras that log every plate that passes by, whether or not anyone is suspected of anything. Public comment like this matters more than people think — it forces elected officials to answer for contracts they often approve with little debate, and it creates a paper trail that outlets like DeFlockILM, and we, can point back to later.
This is exactly the kind of grassroots accountability that keeps ALPR sprawl in check. Flock's pitch to county commissions is always the same: it's just for solving crimes. But once the cameras are up, the data flows into regional and national sharing networks, retention policies quietly get extended, and 'just for serious crimes' becomes 'searchable by any agency with a login.' New Hanover County residents asking hard questions in a commissioners meeting is how you slow that drift before it becomes permanent infrastructure.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood has been wired up the same way, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at your own county meeting, our take-action page has the tools to help you do it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DeFlockILM, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.