Payton Alexander, Wilmington Indivisible

Our Take

Credit to DeFlockILM for posting this public comment, where Payton Alexander stood up at a New Hanover County Commissioners meeting and put elected officials on notice: an organization of over 8,000 members opposes the county's Flock camera network. That's not a fringe objection — it's a sizable chunk of the local electorate telling their commissioners that blanket license plate tracking isn't something they consented to, and isn't something they want paid for with public money.

This is exactly the kind of local accountability moment that matters more than national headlines. Flock's pitch to county commissions is always the same — a few cameras, a vendor demo, a promise about solving crime — and it rarely comes with a public debate about data retention, who gets access to the logs, or what happens when a neighboring agency or federal task force comes asking. Once the cameras go up, they tend to stay up, and the network quietly expands. Public comment like this is one of the only points in the process where residents can force transparency before the system becomes permanent furniture.

If you're in New Hanover County or anywhere else wondering whether your daily commute is being logged, check our camera map to see what's already been documented nearby, and visit our take-action page for tools to raise the same questions at your own county meeting.