Pushback against Flock surveillance cameras continues

Our Take

Cybernews caught a small but telling act of resistance: a JARS Cannabis location in Michigan didn't file a lawsuit or launch a petition — it just put up a sign and blocked the camera's line of sight. That's the kind of grassroots pushback we've been tracking for a while now, and it matters because dispensaries are exactly the sort of legal, licensed businesses that ALPR networks weren't supposed to be treating as suspect. Every plate in that lot gets logged, timestamped, and potentially shared across a web of law enforcement agencies, regardless of whether anyone did anything wrong.

The bigger issue here isn't one storefront in Michigan — it's the pattern. Flock cameras keep showing up outside places where people have a legitimate reason to expect they're not being tracked: cannabis shops, medical clinics, places of worship, political events. The company's pitch is always the same — stolen cars, wanted suspects — but the dragnet doesn't discriminate between a criminal and a customer buying something perfectly legal under state law. When a business owner has to physically obstruct a camera to protect their customers' privacy, that's a sign the system is working exactly as designed, and that design is the problem.

If you want to know what's watching your own street, check our camera map to see documented Flock locations near you, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has the tools to start.