Darth Vader speaks out on Flock cameras at City Council meeting

Our Take

Leave it to a guy in a Darth Vader costume to say what most public comment speakers only imply: that a city-wide network of license plate cameras feeding a searchable database feels less like community safety and more like the surveillance state from the movies. CBS 8 San Diego caught the moment, and credit to them for airing it alongside the more sober warning from the ACLU, which is urging the city to walk away from its Flock contracts entirely rather than tinker with 'oversight' policies that vendors love to promise and rarely enforce.

The costume is funny. The underlying argument is not. Flock's pitch to city councils is always the same: this is just for solving crimes, the data is safe, nothing to worry about. But every jurisdiction that adopts these systems is quietly building a permanent, retroactive record of where every driver has been — searchable by police departments across state lines, with audit logs that history has shown get ignored or abused. San Diego isn't the first city to have this fight, and it won't be the last, but public comment sections turning into open mockery of the tech is a sign that patience with Flock's PR machine is running out.

If you want to see whether cameras like these are already watching your commute, check our map, and if San Diego's debate is happening in your city too, our take-action page has the tools to show up before the contract gets renewed.