Get the Flock Out of the RGV

Our Take

Credit to the Texas Civil Rights Project for doing the unglamorous but essential work of organizing a face-to-face community conversation instead of just posting another explainer thread. The RGV is a region where border-adjacent surveillance infrastructure tends to get waved through with minimal public debate, so a room full of neighbors asking McAllen officials pointed questions about ALPR contracts, data retention, and who gets access to that data is exactly the kind of friction this technology needs more of.

Flock Safety's pitch is always the same — stolen cars, Amber Alerts, peace of mind — but the actual footprint is a growing net of cameras logging every vehicle that passes, whether or not anyone's suspected of anything. In a border region already saturated with federal, state, and local surveillance programs, adding commercially-run ALPR networks compounds the risk: more data, more vendors, more chances for that information to end up shared with agencies residents never agreed to share it with.

If you're in the Valley or anywhere else in Texas, showing up to meetings like this one is how these systems actually get scrutinized before they're normalized. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and hit our take-action page for tools to push your own city council on transparency and oversight.