The Surveillance System America Never Voted For

Our Take

Momocracy's breakdown of a Texas Flock Safety case lands on the same uncomfortable truth we've been reporting for years: this entire ALPR network expanded city by city, contract by contract, with almost zero public debate. No ballot measure built this. No single piece of federal legislation authorized it. It just... happened, one quiet city council vote at a time, until cameras logging every car's movement became normal infrastructure in thousands of towns.

That's exactly why cases like the one highlighted in this video matter so much. When local police quietly share Flock data across jurisdictions — sometimes crossing state lines into places with very different laws — the lack of a real democratic mandate stops being an abstract complaint and starts being a legal and civil liberties problem. Credit to Momocracy for putting a face on how this plays out in practice, rather than leaving it as a policy abstraction.

If you want to see how far this has already spread near you, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at the local level, our take-action resources walk through how to raise this with your city council before the next contract renewal sails through unnoticed.