They Searched 83,000 Cameras for One Woman #AbortionRights #FlockSafety #MassSurveillance
The short version: Momocracy's video spotlights how a nationwide Flock Safety ALPR network can be queried at massive scale to track a single person, with abortion access as the chilling use case.
Our Take
Credit to Momocracy for putting a number on something we talk about constantly: these aren't a few hundred cameras watching a few intersections, they're a sprawling, interconnected network that can be searched like a database. When a title says 83,000 cameras got pulled into a hunt for one woman, that's not sci-fi — that's the basic design of Flock Safety's system, which lets agencies share plate-read data across jurisdictional lines with a few clicks.
The abortion rights angle matters because it makes the abstract concrete. 'Mass surveillance' sounds like a policy debate until you realize it means a rental car crossing a state line to reach a clinic can leave a trail that any participating agency, anywhere in that network, can later search. No warrant required to look, often no public record of who looked or why. That's the core danger: infrastructure built for one justification — stolen cars, Amber Alerts — gets repurposed the moment someone decides a different kind of 'wanted' person exists.
This is exactly why we built our map — so you can see how far this network actually reaches near you, not just take our word for it. Check the map, and if you want to push back on a camera going up in your town, our take-action guide walks you through it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Momocracy, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.