5 Myths Flock Wants You to Believe

Our Take

Josh Thifault's breakdown lands because he goes after the script, not just the hardware. Every ALPR vendor leans on the same five talking points, and 'if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear' might be the laziest one in the deck. As Thifault points out, that line isn't an argument, it's a request that you stop asking questions. The real issue was never a single plate on a public road. It's what happens when thousands of cameras stitch those plates into a searchable timeline of everywhere you've driven, parked, or stopped for the last 30 days.

The ownership question he raises deserves more attention than it gets. Cities and HOAs are routinely told the data belongs to them, right up until a lawsuit or records request reveals it's been pooled into a shared national network that other agencies can query without a warrant. That's not a hypothetical, it's the exact fact pattern coming out of cases like the one in San Francisco he cites. Local officials keep approving these contracts without understanding, or disclosing, how far the data actually travels once it leaves their jurisdiction.

This is why we keep pushing people to check our camera map and see what's already watching their own street, then use our take-action resources to push back at the city council level before the next contract renewal sails through on autopilot. Credit to Josh Thifault for putting the vendor talking points under a microscope instead of just reacting to the cameras themselves.