2026 08 17 13 Katherine Wilkinson Public Comment RETRIM
The short version: A New Hanover County resident tells commissioners exactly what local Flock ALPR cameras cost taxpayers and civil liberties, and DeFlockILM caught it on tape.
Our Take
Public comment periods are where surveillance policy actually gets tested, not in press releases from Flock Safety or county PR shops. Katherine Wilkinson stepping up to the mic at the New Hanover County Commissioners' meeting is exactly the kind of grassroots accountability this fight depends on, and credit goes to DeFlockILM for showing up with a camera to document it. These small-town meetings rarely get coverage, but they're where ALPR contracts get renewed, budgets get padded, and nobody asks hard questions unless a resident forces the issue.
We don't know every detail of what Wilkinson said, but the fact that someone is standing up in front of elected officials to challenge a blanket license-plate dragnet matters more than the specific talking points. These systems log every car that passes a fixed point, build a retrievable history of where you've been, and hand that data to a patchwork of agencies with little public oversight. Once a county says yes to Flock, reversing course requires exactly this kind of sustained, public pressure.
If you're in New Hanover County or anywhere else wondering whether Flock cameras are already watching your commute, check our camera map to see what's been documented near you, and if you want to push back the way Wilkinson did, our take-action page has the tools to help you show up at your own county meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DeFlockILM, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.