Man dressed as Darth Vader advocates for use of Flock cameras to “surveil the rebel scum” #shorts

Our Take

Credit where it's due: CBS Mornings found a cute hook to get a wider audience thinking about automated license plate readers, even if the costume is played for laughs. But the joke only lands because it's true — Flock's network really is built to track every car that passes a camera, log it, and hand that data to whoever has access, no warrant required. Dressing that up as Vader hunting 'rebel scum' isn't far from how these systems actually get marketed to police departments: as a tool for finding bad guys, with little public discussion of who else ends up in the net.

That's the part a 15-second bit can't capture. Flock cameras don't just watch suspects, they watch everyone — commuters, protesters, people visiting a clinic or a church or an ex's neighborhood. The 'Empire' framing is funny until you remember there's no Rebellion here keeping tabs on the cameras; it's just regular people driving around a growing surveillance grid they never voted on and mostly don't know exists.

If the bit got you curious about whether your own street has one of these cameras, check our map to see what's nearby, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back on your local council or police department before the joke stops being funny.