Oshkosh residents ignored: The fight against mass surveillance begins now.
The short version: Oshkosh's council approved a Flock Safety ALPR contract despite hours of public pushback, showing how little local testimony weighs against a surveillance vendor's sales pitch.
Our Take
Winnebago Watch lays out a story we've seen play out in city halls across the country: residents show up, cite cybersecurity experts, raise real questions about data retention and who profits from scanning every plate that rolls through town, and the council votes for Flock anyway. Credit to the channel for documenting the meeting and giving Oshkosh's skeptics a record of what was actually said before the rubber stamp came down.
What's happening in Oshkosh isn't really about potholes or parking enforcement — it's about whether a private company's AI-driven plate-reading network gets to become permanent infrastructure in a city without a serious reckoning over who can query that data, how long it's stored, and what happens when it's inevitably shared beyond local police. 'Trust us, it's for public safety' doesn't hold up when the business model depends on scaling the number of cameras and the amount of data collected, not reducing it.
If you're in Oshkosh or anywhere else watching your council consider a Flock contract, don't wait for the vote to be over before you speak up. Check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action guide to push back before the contract is signed, not after.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Winnebago Watch, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.