Flock cameras torn down at Eastgate Shopping Center

Our Take

Vigilante hardware removal isn't a strategy we endorse, but it's hard to ignore what it signals: people are fed up with being tracked every time they drive to the grocery store, and they're not waiting around for city councils to catch up. Action News 5's reporting on the sawn-in-half cameras at Eastgate Shopping Center is worth a watch — credit to their crew for getting boots on the ground and asking who put these cameras up and why nobody in the neighborhood was consulted.

This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide: a private company and a landlord or local PD quietly bolt a license plate reader to a pole, and the first most residents hear about it is when something goes wrong — a camera gets destroyed, a data breach makes headlines, or someone's plate gets flagged by mistake. Shopping centers are especially sneaky deployment spots because they're private property with public foot traffic, which means there's often even less oversight than on a public street.

If you want to know whether Flock has already wired up your own neighborhood, check our camera map before you find out the hard way. And if you'd rather push back through your city council instead of a hacksaw, our take-action page has the tools to make your voice heard the legal way.