2026 08 17 31 Public Comment
The short version: A New Hanover County resident's public comment pushes back on Flock ALPR cameras, showing local pressure campaigns are the front line against ALPR sprawl.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: the folks behind DeFlockILM are doing the unglamorous work that actually moves the needle — showing up to a county commissioners meeting, putting a public comment on the record, and archiving it at DeFlockILM.org for anyone who wants the receipts. That's how this fight gets won or lost, not in viral threads but in five-minute windows at local government meetings where elected officials are forced to answer for surveillance contracts they'd rather nobody noticed.
New Hanover County is just one more line item in a nationwide rollout of Flock's license plate readers, cameras that quietly log every vehicle that passes, build location histories on residents who've done nothing wrong, and hand that data to a network of agencies with little transparency about who's looking at it or why. A single public comment won't dismantle that system, but it forces the question into a public meeting record, which is exactly the kind of friction local organizers need to build on.
If you're in New Hanover County or anywhere else wondering whether Flock cameras are already watching your commute, check our map to see what's been documented near you, and if you want to push back the way this commenter did, our take-action page has the tools to help you show up at your own county meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DeFlockILM, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.