That Black Box on Your Street Pole Isn't Counting Traffic #shorts
The short version: A short from The.Insider strips away the 'traffic counter' myth and calls out what that black box on your pole really does: track vehicles.
Our Take
Credit to The.Insider for cutting through the PR language in under a minute. Flock Safety loves to frame its cameras as neutral traffic infrastructure, but as this short points out, the hardware is doing a lot more than counting cars passing by. Machine vision systems built to read plates, flag vehicle makes and colors, and log timestamps aren't traffic studies — they're surveillance infrastructure wearing a traffic-study costume.
That framing matters because it's exactly how these networks get installed with so little pushback. City councils approve them as a 'safety tool,' residents assume it's just like a speed sensor, and before anyone asks real questions about data retention or who gets access, the box is bolted to the pole and feeding a nationwide database. The gap between what Flock says the box does and what it actually captures is the whole ballgame.
If you want to see how many of these boxes are already watching your own streets, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on a camera near you, our take action page has the tools to get started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The.Insider, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.