Are We Becoming Like China?🤔 Part 2

Our Take

R.C Entertainment keeps digging into San Diego's Flock Safety rollout, and this time the framing is blunt: are we becoming like China? It's a provocative hook, and we'd caution against a one-to-one comparison — the U.S. doesn't (yet) have a centralized state surveillance apparatus on that scale. But the instinct behind the question is sound. When hundreds of camera nodes log every plate that passes, timestamp it, and pipe that data into a searchable network that other agencies can query, you've built the infrastructure for mass tracking even if no single actor intended it.

That's the real story here, and it's one we've hammered on repeatedly: the danger isn't necessarily a single rogue cop misusing the system, it's the system itself. Once a network exists that can reconstruct anyone's movements over weeks or months, it will get used for things far beyond the 'stolen vehicle' pitch it was sold on — bulk queries, data-sharing agreements with outside agencies, and mission creep that residents never voted on. San Diego is a useful case study precisely because it shows how fast these deployments scale once a city says yes.

Credit to R.C Entertainment for keeping local eyes on this instead of letting it fade into background noise. If you want to see how dense the camera coverage is near you, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on your city council or police department, our take-action page has concrete steps.