Flocking to dystopia, Part 2: Bill to regulate tech fails in Colorado Capitol
The short version: The Mountain-Ear reports a Colorado bill to rein in Flock-style ALPR surveillance died at the Capitol, leaving residents without new guardrails.
Our Take
The Mountain-Ear's follow-up on Colorado's statehouse fight is a reminder of how this usually goes: a modest bill to put guardrails on license plate reader networks gets introduced, gets some attention, and then quietly dies in committee or on the floor while the cameras keep multiplying. Credit to their team for staying on this story past the first news cycle — that kind of follow-through is rare and exactly what accountability reporting on surveillance tech requires.
What makes this pattern dangerous isn't just one failed bill. It's that Flock and similar vendors keep scaling faster than the laws meant to govern them. Every session that ends without data retention limits, audit requirements, or restrictions on who can query these databases is another year departments and private HOAs can expand coverage with zero accountability, while the surveillance net around ordinary drivers gets denser and more permanent.
If you're in Colorado or anywhere else watching this happen, don't wait for the legislature to catch up. Check our camera map to see what's already tracking your neighborhood, and use our take-action page to push your local council or state reps before the next bill quietly dies too.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of The Mountain-Ear, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.