Flock Cameras Are Facing Backlash

Our Take

Michael Perna's video is a useful temperature check: when a surveillance technology starts drawing fire from both sides of the aisle, it's usually because the problem is bigger than partisan talking points. Flock Safety has spent years marketing its ALPR network as a neutral public-safety tool, but "neutral" doesn't hold up when the cameras are logging every car's movements, the data is shared across thousands of agencies, and oversight is thin to nonexistent. Conservatives worried about government overreach and progressives worried about policing and privacy are, for once, looking at the same database and seeing the same red flags.

That convergence matters. It's easy for local officials to wave off criticism as coming from one predictable corner, but it's a lot harder to ignore when city council meetings start filling up with residents from across the political spectrum asking the same basic question: who's watching the watchers? We've said it before — the issue was never whether license plate readers can catch a stolen car once in a while, it's that they've quietly built a nationwide tracking grid with almost no public input and minimal guardrails on how long data is kept or who gets to query it.

If this video has you wondering whether your own neighborhood is wired up, check our camera map to see what's already been documented near you, and if you want to push back locally, our take-action guide walks through how to raise this at your next council meeting. Credit to Michael Perna for putting a spotlight on the bipartisan pushback — the more people across the political spectrum compare notes, the harder these systems get to expand unchecked.