Roseburg resident voice their concerns about Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to KVAL News for actually showing up to a city council meeting and pointing a camera at the people who have to live with Flock's cameras. This is how local accountability is supposed to work: residents show up, ask hard questions, and force elected officials to go on record instead of quietly signing a vendor contract in the dark. The fact that no vote was taken yet is a small win in itself — it means the public comment period actually did something, which is rarer than it should be in these deals.

Roseburg is a small town, but the script here is identical to what we've watched play out in hundreds of cities: a company pitches license plate readers as a crime-fighting tool, officials get excited about the sales demo, and almost nobody asks who else gets access to that data, how long it's stored, or what happens when it's wrong. Flock's own audit logs have shown officers running plates for personal reasons that have nothing to do with an active investigation. Once that network of cameras goes up, it's tracking everyone who drives through town, guilty of nothing more than existing.

If you're in Roseburg or anywhere else watching a council consider this tech, don't wait for the vote to be scheduled before you speak up. Check our map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action page for talking points and public records request templates before the next meeting happens.