'Darth Vader' supports Flock cameras in humorous act at city council meeting
The short version: A Darth Vader costume stole the show at a San Diego council meeting, but the joke lands on a serious point about surveillance overreach.
Our Take
Credit to ABC 7 Chicago for capturing a moment that says more about public sentiment than any council staff report could. When someone dons a Darth Vader costume to sarcastically praise a mass surveillance system, it's not just comic relief — it's a citizen using satire to point out exactly how Orwellian these camera networks have become. Sith Lords running the Empire's surveillance state and Flock Safety scanning every plate on your street aren't as different as city officials would like to pretend.
The humor works because it's true: an unelected corporation is helping local police build a searchable database of everyone's movements, and it's happening in council chambers across the country with barely a fraction of the public even aware. San Diego residents showing up to push back — costume or not — is exactly the kind of civic engagement that puts pressure on these deployments before they become permanent infrastructure nobody remembers approving.
If you want to know whether your own city has already installed these cameras, check our map. And if San Diego's meeting has you fired up, our take-action page has tools for showing up to your own council and asking harder questions than 'may the Force be with you.'
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of ABC 7 Chicago, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.