A City's War on Surveillance Cameras
The short version: The Free Press's look at Troy, NY shows ordinary residents pushing back on Flock Safety's camera network, proof that local organizing can rattle a surveillance giant.
Our Take
The Free Press trains its lens on Troy, New York, where a grassroots revolt against Flock Safety's license plate readers has turned into exactly the kind of fight we like to see: neighbors asking hard questions about who's watching them drive to work, to church, to the pharmacy, and why a private company gets to hold that data. Credit to the Free Press team for getting boots on the ground instead of just rehashing a press release.
What's happening in Troy isn't isolated — it's a preview. Flock's pitch is always the same: these cameras just fight crime, nothing to see here. But once a network of 100,000+ ALPRs is logging every vehicle's movements nationwide, you've built a mass surveillance system first and a crime-fighting tool a distant second, with almost no guardrails on who can query it, for how long, or why. Local pushback like Troy's is often the only check that exists, since state and federal rules haven't caught up.
If you want to see how saturated your own town already is, check our camera map, and if you're ready to do something about it, our take-action page has the playbook Troy residents are already running.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Free Press, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.