Santa Monica Camera Network Includes Flock
The short version: Santa Monica Daily Press reveals SMPD's sprawling surveillance stack — nearly 1,000 cameras, 79 Flock ALPRs, hundreds of body cams and drones — normalized as routine infrastructure.
Our Take
Credit to Santa Monica Daily Press for pulling back the curtain on just how much surveillance hardware one mid-sized California city has quietly accumulated. Ninety-six Flock license plate readers folded into a network of nearly a thousand cameras, plus body cams and drones, isn't a "pilot program" anymore — it's a permanent tracking grid, and the fact that it took a local paper's reporting to make residents aware of the full scope says everything about how little transparency accompanies these rollouts.
What makes Flock uniquely dangerous in a stack like this isn't any single camera — it's the fusion. Fixed cameras watch intersections, drones watch from above, body cams watch officers, and Flock watches every plate that passes, stitching together a searchable record of who goes where and when. Once that data exists, it doesn't stay local; Flock's network sharing means Santa Monica's 79 readers can feed into searches run by agencies the city never voted to cooperate with, and residents have no way to audit who's actually looking.
Santa Monica isn't unique — it's just better documented right now. Check our map to see what's logged near you, and if your city council hasn't had a public vote on this kind of buildout, use our take-action guide to make them have one.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Santa Monica Daily Press (SMDP), published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.