Get the Flock Out of Texas

Our Take

Good on the Texas Civil Rights Project for turning this into an organizing fight rather than just a press release. Flock's pitch to cities is always the same — a few cameras to catch stolen cars — but the reality is a statewide (and increasingly nationwide) web of plate-reader data that tracks ordinary people's movements with zero input from the communities footing the bill. TCRP calling this out and pushing Texans to show up to local meetings is exactly the kind of grassroots pressure that actually slows this stuff down, because city councils rarely hear pushback until someone organizes it.

Texas has become one of the most Flock-saturated states in the country, which makes this campaign especially timely. Once a network like this is installed, it rarely gets smaller — more cameras, more data-sharing agreements, more agencies with access. The time to ask hard questions is before the contract is signed, not after a leak or misuse story breaks.

If you want to see how saturated your own area already is, check our camera map, and if you're in Texas and want to plug into efforts like TCRP's, our take-action page has steps for pushing back at the local level.