Auburn residents question privacy, data sharing tied to Flock cameras
The short version: Auburn residents are pushing back on Flock cameras, echoing a pattern seen nationwide: approve first, ask about privacy and data-sharing later.
Our Take
Credit to Kayla Moeller and CBS News Sacramento for giving Auburn residents a platform to ask the questions that too often get skipped before city councils sign Flock Safety contracts: who sees this data, how long is it kept, and who else gets access down the line. These aren't fringe concerns — they're the basic due diligence that should happen before a network of plate-reading cameras goes up on public streets.
What makes ALPR systems like Flock different from a single traffic camera is the scale and the sharing. One city's cameras can feed into a searchable, cross-jurisdictional database that outlives any single council's intentions, and residents in Auburn are right to want clarity on contracts and retention before, not after, the hardware is bolted to a pole. Once a surveillance network is built, it rarely shrinks on its own.
If you want to see what's already watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a local news crew to ask the hard questions in your town, our take-action page has tools to help you raise them first.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS News Sacramento, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.