Mark Spencer Williams, DeFlockILM

Our Take

It's one thing to gripe about license plate readers online — it's another to show up at a county board meeting and put your name and law license behind it. That's what Mark Spencer Williams did, and DeFlockILM deserves credit for turning local frustration into an actual public record. Public comment periods are slow and unglamorous, but they're one of the few remaining levers ordinary residents have over decisions that otherwise get made in a vendor sales pitch and rubber-stamped in five minutes.

We don't know exactly what New Hanover County has approved or is considering, and we're not going to pretend we do. But the pattern nationwide is depressingly consistent: a sheriff's office signs a Flock Safety contract, cameras go up on public roads with little debate, and only afterward do commissioners and residents learn how the data gets shared, stored, and searched — often well beyond the original county line. Having a local attorney willing to ask hard questions on the record, before the ink dries, is exactly the kind of pushback this fight needs more of.

If you're in New Hanover County or anywhere else watching your local government quietly wire up ALPR networks, check our camera map to see what's already been deployed near you, and use our take-action guide to figure out how to raise these same questions at your own board meeting.