'I Sort Of Like Them': Trump Defends Flock Surveillance Cameras
The short version: Trump's casual endorsement of Flock cameras shows how bipartisan comfort with mass surveillance has become — nobody in power is racing to rein it in.
Our Take
When the President of the United States says he "sort of" likes a nationwide network of AI-powered license plate cameras, that's not a throwaway line — it's a signal. As WXOW News 19 reports, Trump's offhand comments about Flock Safety cameras reveal just how normalized this surveillance infrastructure has become at the highest levels of government. Whether you lean left or right, the message from Washington is the same: cameras tracking your car's every move are fine, actually.
That bipartisan shrug is exactly the problem. Flock's ALPR network isn't just a tool for catching stolen cars — it's a de facto national tracking system, built by a private company, sold to local police departments with almost no public debate, and increasingly linked into federal data-sharing pipelines. When politicians casually praise the tech without grappling with who has access to that data, how long it's retained, or how it can be abused, they're greenlighting a surveillance state by default rather than by design.
This is why local pushback matters more than ever. City councils and county boards are still the places where these contracts get approved or rejected, and that's where residents actually have leverage — federal officials clearly aren't going to provide it. Check our map to see if Flock cameras are already watching your neighborhood, and visit our take-action page for tools to push back before "sort of liking" surveillance becomes the permanent bipartisan consensus.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WXOW News 19, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.