Useful Is Not The Same As Harmless
The short version: Discarded Takes makes the case that a tool's usefulness doesn't erase its risks, a point that applies directly to Flock's ALPR network.
Our Take
Discarded Takes nails something we harp on constantly: 'it works' is not an argument for 'it's fine.' Flock Safety and local PD press releases love to lead with the recovered stolen car or the Amber Alert hit, as if solving one case retroactively justifies photographing every single driver who passes a camera, guilty or not. Usefulness is cheap to prove. Harmlessness is the hard part, and it's the part vendors and police departments consistently skip.
The uncomfortable truth is that almost any surveillance system can point to a win. Mass data collection is useful almost by definition — more data, more hits, more stories to put in a quarterly report. That's exactly why 'it helped solve a crime' can't be the end of the conversation. The real questions are who has access to the data, how long it's kept, whether it's shared across jurisdictions or with federal agencies, and what happens when the system is misused, hacked, or simply normalized until nobody questions it anymore.
We built our camera map so people can see how far this infrastructure actually reaches in their own communities, because the scale is the part local reporting rarely captures. If this video got you thinking, don't stop at thinking — check our take-action page for ways to push back at city council meetings and beyond.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Discarded Takes, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.