Tell City Council: Get the FLOCK out of SD!
The short version: San Diego Privacy spotlights a case where a Flock ALPR hit allegedly helped tie an innocent man to a violent crime, and is pushing the City Council to drop the system.
Our Take
San Diego Privacy is doing exactly what local watchdogs should: turning a single, human-scale case into a public accountability fight. According to their video, a San Diego man was connected to a violent crime he didn't commit after a Flock license plate reader flagged his vehicle — and he reportedly paid for that error with his freedom before it got sorted out. That's not an abstract privacy hypothetical anymore. That's a person's life getting tangled up in a surveillance dragnet that was supposed to just "help solve crimes faster."
This is the core problem with ALPR networks like Flock: they generate leads, not proof, but they get treated like certainty by officers under pressure to close a case. A camera reads a plate, an algorithm throws a match, and suddenly someone's name is in a file connected to a crime scene they never saw. When that chain breaks down, there's rarely a public reckoning — just a quiet correction and a family that spent days or weeks living a nightmare. San Diego Privacy deserves credit for pulling this into the open and pushing it to the City Council instead of letting it disappear into a police report.
If you're in San Diego, this is the moment to show up, because these systems expand quietly until a case like this forces a conversation. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your neighborhood, and head to our take-action page for tools to push your own council on Flock contracts before the next wrongful ID happens to someone you know.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of San Diego Privacy, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.