Salinas protesters say Monterey County’s Flock camera expansion is an “invasion of privacy”
The short version: Salinas residents are pushing back on Monterey County's Flock camera expansion, calling it an invasion of privacy — and they're right to be alarmed.
Our Take
Credit to KSBW Action News 8 for putting cameras on the people who are pushing back against cameras. When residents show up to call a county surveillance expansion an "invasion of privacy," that's not paranoia — that's a reasonable response to a technology that logs every car that passes a given point, time-stamped and searchable, with zero probable cause required. Monterey County joins a long list of jurisdictions where Flock Safety's pitch to officials (solve crime faster) outran any real public conversation about what it means to have your daily movements captured by default.
The pattern here is familiar: a city council or sheriff's office approves a Flock deal quietly, cameras go up, and only after residents notice the hardware on their streets does the debate actually start. By then, the system is already live and the data is already flowing — often shared with other agencies, sometimes out of state, through Flock's networked platform. Protesters calling this out in Salinas are doing what should've happened before a single pole was installed.
If you're in Monterey County or anywhere else wondering whether these cameras have already landed near you, check our camera map to see what's been documented in your area. And if you want to push back the way Salinas residents are, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising this with your local officials before the next contract gets signed.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of KSBW Action News 8, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.