Asheville City Council to vote on ending Flock camera contract
The short version: Asheville's city council is poised to pull the plug on its 11 Flock cameras, a rare test of whether cities can actually walk back ALPR surveillance once it's installed.
Our Take
Credit to WLOS News 13 for tracking a story that doesn't get enough attention: cities actually reconsidering Flock contracts instead of just rubber-stamping renewals. Asheville only has 11 cameras, a small footprint compared to some metros, but the vote matters because it tests whether local governments can reverse course once a surveillance vendor is already wired into their police department's workflow.
The Fraternal Order of Police framing — "car and the tag, that's all it does" — is the same minimization line we hear everywhere Flock operates, and it's misleading. The value of ALPR isn't the single snapshot, it's the pattern: where your car was, when, how often, cross-referenced against a national network of other agencies' cameras and searches. That's not "basic" information, it's a movement history, and Flock's own audit logs have shown how loosely that history gets queried by officers for reasons that have nothing to do with an active crime.
Whatever Asheville's council decides, the fact that this debate is even happening is a sign that public pressure works. Check our camera map to see what's deployed near you, and if your own city council hasn't had this conversation yet, our take-action page has the tools to start it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WLOS News 13, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.