5/18 Dozens of Flock cameras now have Mainers under surveillance
The short version: Maine Newsroom reports dozens of Flock cameras now blanket the state, logging Mainers' movements regardless of guilt or innocence.
Our Take
Maine Newsroom's reporting lays out what we've seen play out state after state: a handful of Flock Safety cameras quietly becomes dozens, and suddenly a whole state's driving public is getting logged into a searchable database with zero individualized suspicion required. That's the core problem with ALPR networks — they don't wait for probable cause, they just vacuum up plates, timestamps, and locations on everyone who drives past, then let that data sit around for police departments, and sometimes outside agencies, to query later.
Maine isn't some outlier here — it's just the latest state getting the quiet rollout treatment, usually sold to city councils as a tool for solving specific crimes, but deployed in a way that puts every driver under watch by default. Once that infrastructure exists, the mission always creeps: more cameras, more data sharing, more agencies with access, and less public visibility into who's looking at what. Credit to Maine Newsroom for tracking the expansion while it's still happening instead of after the network's already locked in.
If you want to know whether these cameras have shown up near you, check our map, and if you're ready to push back on a deployment in your own town, our take-action page has concrete steps for organizing against it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Maine Newsroom, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.