Apex discusses the future of Flock cameras in town
The short version: CBS 17 covers Apex weighing whether to expand or rein in its Flock Safety camera network, putting another small town at a surveillance crossroads.
Our Take
Credit to CBS 17 for getting cameras into a council chamber conversation instead of leaving them humming quietly on street corners. Apex is doing what every town eventually has to do: decide whether a 'temporary pilot' of license plate readers becomes permanent infrastructure. That decision rarely gets undone once it's made, because budgets, vendor contracts, and inertia all push toward more cameras, not fewer.
What's missing from most of these local segments is the bigger picture — Apex's cameras don't just watch Apex. Flock's network shares plate reads across agencies and states, so a vote in one town hall can quietly expand a surveillance web that stretches far beyond city limits. Residents deserve to know not just how many cameras are going up, but who gets access to the data, how long it's stored, and what happens when it's inevitably misused or breached.
If you want to see how Apex fits into the national footprint, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for the next council meeting to have a say, our take-action page has steps for pushing back before the cameras become permanent.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CBS 17, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.