"I Am Pleased": Darth Vader crashes city council meeting to protest surveillance cameras
The short version: A San Diego man dressed as Darth Vader to skewer city council over Flock ALPR cameras, and the stunt is going viral for good reason.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: Arizona's Family (KPHO/CBS 5) caught a moment that says more about the Flock surveillance debate than a dozen policy memos could. A guy walks into a city council meeting in full Darth Vader regalia and, deadpan, tells the room "I am pleased" with the spread of automated license plate readers. It's absurdist theater, but the joke lands because it's not that far from the truth — a growing network of cameras logging your movements, run with minimal oversight, is exactly the kind of quiet, creeping control that makes for good sci-fi villainy and bad real-world policy.
Council meetings are usually where this stuff gets rubber-stamped without much public pushback, buried in agenda language about "public safety technology." It takes something as jarring as the Empire's own enforcer showing up to make people actually stop and ask what they're signing off on. Humor gets attention that a spreadsheet of data-retention concerns never will, and that attention is exactly what these contracts are counting on you not to pay.
If you want to skip the costume and go straight to the facts, check our camera map to see what's already been installed near you, and hit up our take-action page if you'd rather speak up at your own council meeting than wait for someone in a cape to do it for you.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Arizona’s Family (3TV / CBS 5), published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.