Police Told to Step Up Flock Camera Patrols Before Week of Action

Our Take

Verified Privacy VPN did something useful here: they put the leaked intelligence bulletin next to the actual public toolkit for the National Week of Action Against ALPRs and let readers see the gap for themselves. One document warns officers to increase patrols and review vandalism reports. The other is a stack of resources for hosting Plate Reader 101 sessions and showing up to city council meetings. That mismatch is the whole story.

This is a familiar move. When a grassroots campaign gets organized enough to threaten the growth of a surveillance network, the response isn't to debate the merits of blanketing towns in always-on cameras that log every driver's movements. It's to quietly reframe civic organizing as a security threat and circulate that framing through law enforcement channels, where it shapes how officers see ordinary residents attending a town hall or mapping cameras in their own neighborhood. The bulletin doesn't have to accuse anyone of a crime to do damage; it just has to plant the idea that showing up to a council meeting about Flock cameras puts you in the same bucket as someone with a screwdriver.

None of that changes what the Week of Action actually is: public education, transparency requests, and pressure on elected officials who approved these systems, often with little public input. If you want to see what's already been installed near you, check our camera map, and if you want to push back through the legitimate channels the toolkit describes, our take-action page has the tools to do it.