Flock cameras that read license plates continue national debate
The short version: A St. Pete man's weekly three-hour vigil blocking a Flock camera shows how everyday citizens are pushing back on ALPR surveillance one intersection at a time.
Our Take
10 Tampa Bay News profiles Carl Gunn, a St. Petersburg resident who's taken to physically standing in front of a Flock Safety camera every Saturday to block it from scanning plates. Whatever you think of the tactic, it's a pretty vivid illustration of how little recourse residents actually have when a private company's cameras get bolted onto public roads without a public vote. Gunn isn't a lawmaker or a lawyer — he's just a guy who got tired of asking questions about where his data goes and getting no real answers.
That's the core problem with Flock's rollout in cities like St. Pete: the cameras go up fast, the data-sharing agreements are dense and rarely explained in plain language, and residents are left to either trust the process or take matters into their own hands. One man with a lawn chair isn't a scalable solution, but it does put pressure on local officials to actually justify these systems instead of rubber-stamping vendor contracts.
If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your own commute, check out our camera map, and if you'd rather push back through your city council than a Saturday sit-in, our take-action page has the tools to get started.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 10 Tampa Bay News, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.