Darth Vader defends Flock cameras at city council hearing
The short version: A Sith-suited satirist told San Diego's council it serves police, not the public — and the joke landed because it's not far off.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: NowThis Impact caught a moment of pure public-comment theater in San Diego, where a man in a full Darth Vader costume delivered mock praise to the city council for embracing Flock cameras. The bit — thanking officials for serving "the police, not the public" — is funny because it's uncomfortably accurate. Most residents never got a real vote on whether their movements should be logged block by block; these systems get approved in budget lines and quiet council votes, not public referendums.
Costumes and sarcasm are a time-honored way to get a council's attention when normal public comment gets ignored, and it clearly worked well enough to get filmed and clipped nationally. But the underlying issue isn't a joke: San Diego is one of hundreds of cities that have let a private company's camera network become de facto infrastructure for local police, often with minimal oversight on data sharing, retention, or who else gets access to those plate scans.
If you want to know whether this is already happening in your town, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for someone in a cape to say what needs saying, our take-action page has real steps for pushing back at your own council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NowThis Impact, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.