They BANNED Flock. The Surveillance Stayed.
The short version: Big Truth Channel flags a crucial loophole: cities that 'ban' Flock Safety can still keep ALPR surveillance running under a different name or vendor.
Our Take
Big Truth Channel's reporting on Durango, Colorado gets at something we've been saying for a while: a city council vote to 'drop Flock' is a press release, not a privacy policy. Flock didn't invent license plate readers, it just made them easy to deploy at scale and easy to network. If the cameras, the data pipelines, or the vendor contracts simply get rebranded, the actual surveillance apparatus pointed at your daily commute hasn't gone anywhere.
This matters because the political win — 'we banned Flock' — can become cover for doing nothing. Elected officials get to claim victory while law enforcement quietly signs with a competitor offering the same plate-scanning, location-tracking, data-retention playbook. The public, understandably, assumes the fight is over and stops watching. That's exactly when policy should get tighter, not looser.
If you want to know whether this is happening near you, don't take a council's word for it — check our camera map to see what's actually installed in your area, and use our take-action guide to push for real bans: no cameras, no data-sharing agreements, no replacement vendor doing the same job under a different logo.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Big Truth Channel, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.