Flock: Their cameras. Your data.
The short version: Spectrum News California digs into Flock's ALPR network, and the title says it all: their cameras, your data, their rules.
Our Take
Spectrum News California's piece on Flock Safety cuts right to the heart of the problem with that headline: Their cameras. Your data. That's the whole racket in four words. A private company bolts cameras onto poles in your town, vacuums up everywhere you drive, and then controls how that data gets stored, shared, and used — often with little input from the people being watched. Credit to the Spectrum News team for putting a mainstream news lens on a story that's still flying under the radar for most Americans.
What makes Flock different from old-school traffic cameras is scale and networking. These aren't isolated devices — they're nodes in a growing, searchable surveillance web that can reconstruct your movements across cities and even states, often shared between agencies with minimal oversight. Once that kind of infrastructure exists, it rarely stays limited to its original stated purpose. Mission creep is the rule, not the exception, with this technology.
If you want to know whether Flock has already set up shop near you, check our camera map — it's the fastest way to see how close this surveillance net has gotten to your own neighborhood. And if you're ready to push back, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising this with local officials before the next contract renewal sails through unnoticed.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Spectrum News California, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.