Congressional candidate arrested after shooting at multiple license plate readers in Blount County
The short version: A Blount County congressional candidate allegedly shot up four Flock ALPR cameras, a dramatic sign of how deep anti-surveillance frustration runs.
Our Take
Credit to WBIR Channel 10 for the reporting: a congressional candidate in Blount County is now facing charges after investigators say he admitted to shooting four automated license plate readers with a gun. Whatever you think of the method, the underlying frustration is real and widespread. People are tired of discovering that their every drive through town is being logged, stored, and shared by a private company and local police without ever being asked.
We don't endorse vandalism or gunfire as a response to surveillance infrastructure — it's illegal, it's dangerous, and it hands departments a convenient excuse to frame ALPR critics as criminals rather than citizens with legitimate privacy concerns. But stories like this one are a symptom of a bigger problem: communities are being blanketed with Flock cameras with little public debate, weak oversight, and almost no meaningful way for residents to push back through normal channels before the hardware is already bolted to a pole.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood has been wired up this way, check our camera map, and if you'd rather fight this with city council meetings and public records requests than a rifle, our take-action guide is the place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WBIR Channel 10, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.