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Nearby Town Says They Cancelled Their Flock Contract; Did They? #Flock #esp32 #wifi #bluetooth

deamonmist · 2 months ago

The short version: A YouTuber named deamonmist digs into whether a town that claimed to cancel its Flock contract actually pulled its cameras, using DIY wireless scanning tools to check.

Our Take

Local officials love a good press release, especially one that says "we listened to you" and killed the Flock contract. But as creator deamonmist points out, a city council announcement isn't the same as cameras actually coming down. This is exactly the kind of grassroots verification work that keeps agencies honest — because once the news cycle moves on, nobody's checking the poles.

Using ESP32-based wifi and Bluetooth scanning to sniff out whether Flock hardware is still broadcasting is a clever, low-cost way to ground-truth official claims. It's the same spirit behind our own crowdsourced camera map: don't trust the press release, verify the pole. Surveillance infrastructure has a way of lingering — contracts lapse on paper while units stay bolted up, quietly feeding plate data into a network long after the public thinks it's gone.

Credit to deamonmist for doing the legwork instead of taking a city's word for it. If your town claims it dropped Flock, don't just believe it — go look, document it, and report back. Check our take-action page for how to push your council for real transparency, not just a feel-good headline.

This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of deamonmist, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.