The Surveillance State Comes to Your Neighborhood: Flock Safety and ALPRs w/ Ed of DeFlock

Our Take

Good on J.G. Michael for handing over the mic during the National Week of Action Against ALPRs. When our own Ed sits down for an hour to walk through how these cameras actually work — the always-on scanning, the searchable location databases, the vehicle-fingerprinting that goes way beyond just reading plates — it reaches people who'd otherwise never think twice about that black-and-white box on a pole at the end of their street.

The core argument is one we keep making because it keeps proving true: you can't regulate your way out of a system built to hoover up everyone's movements by default. Policy audits, retention limits, 'authorized use only' language — none of it survives contact with a national network where thousands of agencies can query each other's cameras with essentially no oversight. The documented abuse cases aren't edge cases, they're the predictable output of handing this much tracking power to whoever happens to have login credentials.

If this conversation lit a fire, don't let it burn out with the episode. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your commute, and hit up take action for concrete steps to push back at your next city council meeting.