Defend Deschutes - Stop ALPR!

Our Take

Credit to Central Oregon DSA for catching this one before it slips through on autopilot. Bend residents already fought this fight once and won: the city's ALPR cameras went dark. Now the county is stepping in to do what the city wouldn't, and from the sound of it, without the kind of policy guardrails — retention limits, audit trails, use restrictions — that even Flock's own boosters claim to support. That's not a coincidence. It's how surveillance creep works: lose at the city level, try the county, hope nobody's paying attention the second time around.

This matters because "no rules" isn't a gap that fixes itself later. Once a network of cameras is logging every car that passes, the data exists whether or not anyone's written down who can access it, how long it's kept, or whether it gets shared with ICE, bounty hunters, or whoever else comes asking. Deschutes County residents are being asked to accept the infrastructure first and argue about accountability after the fact — that's backwards, and it's exactly the pattern we track across the country.

If you're in Central Oregon, now's the moment to show up to commissioner meetings and ask hard questions before contracts get signed, not after. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and hit take action for tools to push back locally.