Are Flock Cameras Public Safety or Public Surveillance? | Shop Talk #88
The short version: Dave's Attic asks the right question about Flock cameras — and the answer is that 'public safety' is doing a lot of heavy lifting to excuse mass surveillance.
Our Take
Credit to Dave and Glen over at Dave's Attic for framing this the right way in Shop Talk #88: is it public safety, or is it public surveillance? That's the exact question every city council should be asking before they sign a Flock Safety contract, and most of them never do. They just hear "solve crime" and reach for the checkbook.
Here's the thing the sales pitch leaves out: a license plate reader doesn't just catch the one guy who ran from a robbery. It logs every single car that drives past, innocent or not, and stacks that data up into a searchable history of where you go and when. That's not a tool aimed at suspects — it's a dragnet aimed at everybody, and it gets stored, shared, and queried in ways most drivers never agreed to and most local governments barely audit.
Conversations like this one matter because the Flock pitch depends on nobody looking too closely. The more ordinary people start asking "wait, public safety or public surveillance?" out loud, the harder it gets for cities to wave through these contracts without a fight. If you want to see how far this has already spread, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back where you live, our take-action page is the place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Dave's Attic, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.