Darth Vader Crashes San Diego City Council Meeting Praising Flock Cameras
The short version: A Darth Vader cosplayer's pro-Flock speech at a San Diego council meeting went viral, but the comedy shouldn't distract from the real surveillance debate underneath.
Our Take
Credit to the New York Post for capturing this one: a man in a full Darth Vader costume, heavy breathing and all, took the mic at a San Diego City Council meeting to defend the city's Flock Safety camera network. It's the kind of clip that's built for virality, and it's easy to laugh at. But the theater shouldn't let anyone lose sight of what's actually being debated in that room — whether a private company's network of license plate readers should keep scanning every car that passes through a major American city, with data that can be shared across agencies and states with little public oversight.
Stunts like this tend to happen when a public comment period turns into spectacle because the underlying policy fight has dragged on long enough that residents feel like they need a gimmick to get attention. San Diego has been one of the more contested battlegrounds over Flock's expansion, and costume aside, the fact that someone felt compelled to show up in character says something about how contentious and unresolved this issue remains for the people who actually live under these cameras.
If you want to know whether Flock or similar ALPR systems are already watching your street, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push back through your own city council than don a cape, our take-action page has the tools to do it without the special effects.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of New York Post, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.