Did you know the police were using facial recognition to do their policing?
The short version: The Lab Tech Show spotlights police use of facial recognition, a reminder that ALPR networks like Flock are one piece of a much larger automated surveillance dragnet.
Our Take
Credit to The Lab Tech Show for putting a spotlight on something most Americans still don't clock: facial recognition has quietly become a standard policing tool, often without a public vote, a warrant requirement, or even basic disclosure to the people being scanned. That's the same pattern we track every day with license plate readers — technology gets deployed first, oversight gets debated later, if at all.
Facial recognition and ALPR systems aren't separate problems; they're two heads of the same surveillance machine. Flock Safety cameras log your plate, your location, your travel patterns, and increasingly can be cross-referenced with other biometric and identification systems police already have access to. When you stack facial recognition on top of a nationwide plate-reading network, you get something close to a real-time tracking grid on ordinary people who've never been charged with a crime.
If this video makes you uneasy, that unease is correct. Check our camera map to see how much of this infrastructure is already in your neighborhood, and head to take-action for concrete steps to push back at the local level before these systems become permanent and unquestioned.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Lab Tech Show, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.