Senate Candidate SHOOTS Flock Camera In New Ad As Outrage Explodes

Our Take

When a Senate candidate decides the best way to court voters is by putting a bullet through a license plate reader on camera, you know the surveillance-state conversation has broken out of privacy forums and into prime-time politics. As The Damage Report covers, Seth Bodnar's ad isn't subtle, but subtlety isn't really the point. It's a signal that "my opponent is fine with networks of cameras tracking your car" is now seen as a liability worth attacking, not a neutral public-safety talking point nobody will question.

We'd note that actually shooting a camera is illegal, expensive, and not something we'd ever recommend — vandalism just gets the unit replaced and the surveillance network restored, often with better tamper-detection bolted on. The real leverage is political and legal: public records requests, city council votes, state legislation, and candidates who'll go on record opposing these contracts before they're signed, not after cameras blanket Main Street. That an ad like this tests well enough to air at all tells you organizers pushing back on Flock in their own towns aren't the fringe outliers Flock's sales pitch assumes they are.

Whatever you think of the theatrics, the underlying fight is real and it's local: county commissions and city councils are approving these contracts quietly, often with little public input and vague retention and sharing policies. Check our map to see what's already deployed near you, and if you'd rather skip the gunfire and go straight to showing up at a meeting, our take-action page has the templates and talking points to do it right.