Are we ready to deflock surveillance cameras? #privacy

Our Take

Sick of this Show puts its finger on something we've been tracking for a while: the gap between how Flock Safety markets itself to city councils and what the system actually does once it's bolted to a pole. The pitch is always the same — stolen cars, Amber Alerts, "it's just for serious crime." The reality, as the video points out, is a surveillance network that logs every car's movements regardless of suspicion, shared across agencies with little oversight and a documented history of misuse that rarely results in real consequences for the departments involved.

What makes this moment different is the word in the title: "ready." For years ALPR expansion happened quietly, buried in consent-agenda votes nobody showed up to object to. That's changing. More residents are showing up to council meetings, filing public records requests, and asking the basic question local governments hate: who else gets this data, and what stops it from being abused? That shift in public awareness is the whole ballgame, because Flock's business model depends on nobody asking.

We'd add one thing the video doesn't have room for — you can go look at the cameras yourself. Our camera map tracks known Flock and ALPR deployments nationwide, and if you want to do something with that information beyond being alarmed by it, our take-action page has the tools to push back at the local level, where these fights are actually won or lost. Credit to Sick of this Show for putting the question plainly: it's not whether these cameras can be misused, it's whether we're finally willing to do something about it.