Against surveillance… until it’s the kind you support? 🙃 #FlockSafety #appalachia

Our Take

Radical Jezebel's video pokes at a contradiction we see constantly: people who'll rant about Big Tech spying or government overreach, then turn around and welcome a Flock Safety camera on their own road because it's marketed as "protecting the community." Surveillance doesn't stop being surveillance just because the company selling it uses friendlier branding or because your neighbor's HOA voted for it.

This is exactly the trap Flock Safety is built to exploit. It doesn't roll into town as a state surveillance program — it shows up as a local safety tool, funded by a homeowners association or a small police department, marketed as neighborly rather than authoritarian. But the data doesn't care who bought the camera. Every plate scan feeds into a searchable, shareable network that outlives whatever polite justification got it installed in the first place.

Appalachian communities, like anywhere else, deserve a real conversation about what happens to that data, who can access it, and whether "it's for our own good" actually holds up once the cameras are running 24/7. Credit to Radical Jezebel for pushing back on the comfortable inconsistency. If you want to see how far this network already reaches, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back where you live, head to take action.