Roommate Installs Flock Cameras...
The short version: Chris Barnes' comedy sketch about a roommate wiring up Flock cameras is a joke, but the discomfort it taps into — surveillance without consent — is dead serious.
Our Take
Credit to Chris Barnes for turning a real anxiety into a laugh. His sketch imagines a roommate going full Flock Safety inside a shared apartment, and the premise lands because it's not that far-fetched. Swap 'roommate' for 'city council' or 'HOA' and you've basically described how these camera networks actually get installed in neighborhoods across the country — quietly, with little debate, and with the people being watched finding out after the fact.
The humor works because it exposes the real discomfort of being monitored by someone who didn't ask and doesn't have to answer for it. That's the exact dynamic playing out at scale with ALPR deployments: police departments and private HOAs blanketing streets with license plate readers, often without meaningful public input, then defending the data collection as just 'public safety.' A sketch can end with the roommate ripping the cameras off the wall. In real life, it's a lot harder to opt out once the poles are in the ground.
If this video made you chuckle and then made you a little uneasy, that uneasy feeling is worth holding onto. Check our map to see what's actually been installed near you, and if you want to push back, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising this with your local officials before it becomes the norm instead of the punchline.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Chris Barnes, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.