Poison the data

Our Take

The channel behind "Poison the Data" has spent 400-plus videos chronicling the slow creep of digital ID, central bank digital currencies, and camera networks across the UK and US. We can't vouch for every claim in their catalog, and we're not reproducing the video's script here, but the core premise — that ordinary people might deliberately muddy the data pools that power automated surveillance — is worth taking seriously on its own terms.

Flock Safety's ALPR network runs on the assumption that your plate, your car, and your movements are clean, trustworthy inputs for a growing national database shared across thousands of police agencies with almost no judicial oversight. Anything that complicates that assumption — public records requests exposing bad matches, community pushback, documented error rates — chips away at the illusion that this system is infallible or even accurate. That's a conversation worth having, separate from whatever specific tactics any one creator proposes.

We'd rather people start with the basics: find out if Flock or similar ALPR cameras are already watching your street using our camera map, then push back through the legal and political channels that actually move the needle — city council meetings, public records requests, procurement votes. Check our take-action page for the tools to do exactly that.