Is banning Flock the right call?

Our Take

Illinois Independents raises a question we think more candidates should be asked: do you actually understand what Flock Safety's camera network does, and are you willing to say so before an election? Whatever you think of Darren Bailey's broader politics, the fact that banning ALPRs has become a wedge issue at all is a sign that ordinary people are catching on to how normalized license-plate surveillance has become in towns that never held a real public debate about it.

That's the part worth sitting with. These systems got installed block by block, HOA by HOA, police department by police department, usually with a sales pitch about stolen cars and Amber Alerts and almost no public accounting for who else gets tracked, how long the data sits in a database, or which agencies outside your town can query it. When a statewide candidate starts talking about ripping it out, that's downstream of a lot of local frustration that never had anywhere else to go.

We're less interested in which politician gets credit and more interested in whether residents actually know a camera is on their street in the first place. Check our camera map to see what's already logging plates near you, and if you want to push back locally, our take-action page has the tools to start that fight at the city council level, not just at the ballot box.