See 'Star Wars' villain crash council meeting to praise 'Flock' cameras
The short version: A Darth Vader cosplayer publicly praised Flock ALPRs at a San Diego meeting, turning a serious surveillance debate into a viral punchline.
Our Take
USA Today's clip of a Sith lord striding up to a San Diego public safety meeting to sing the praises of Flock Safety cameras is funny for about five seconds. Then it's a little unsettling. A costume is a great way to grab headlines and TikTok shares, and it worked, but it also does something more insidious: it turns a real conversation about blanket license-plate tracking into a meme, and memes are easy to shrug off.
That's the pattern we keep seeing around Flock's expansion. City council chambers are where the actual guardrails get decided — data retention windows, who can query the system, whether ICE or out-of-state agencies get access — and those fights are boring compared to a guy in a cape. Boring is exactly what surveillance vendors and their boosters want the public to feel about this stuff, because bored people don't show up to the next meeting and don't ask where their plate data has traveled.
Costume aside, the underlying claim being sold to that council is the same one being sold nationwide: these cameras just fight crime, no downside. We've tracked thousands of them going up with little public input and even less oversight. Check our map to see what's already watching your street, and if you want to push back before your council gets its own celebrity cameo, our take-action guide is a good place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of USA TODAY, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.