# Getting The Flock Out: How Cities Are Fighting Back Against Flock Safety Cameras
# Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HflH86t_G70

In Dayton Ohio, city workers spent this
week putting black trash bags over the
city's own surveillance cameras because
officials weren't sure they were even
allowed to take them down. Dayton runs
72 fixed site Flock license plate
readers, and last October the city
discovered [music] its camera data had
been shared with ICE and Homeland
Security, which it says happened by
accident through a misconfigured
setting.
A Dayton Daily News investigation then
found local plate data was being
searched thousands of times a day
nationwide with hundreds of searches in
January tagged to immigration. The city
suspended [music] the program and
commissioned a $30,000 audit. But police
couldn't confirm the cameras were
actually off, and the contract wasn't
clear on removal. So, public works put
bags over them as a stopgap.
In Boulder, Colorado, two residents are
suing to pull the plug on the city's
entire license plate camera network.
Their class action lawsuit filed this
week in district court argues Boulder's
31 Flock cameras track people driving
and biking through the city without a
warrant in violation of Colorado's
Constitution. One of the plaintiffs is
Will Freeman, [music] who runs De-Flock,
a site that maps these cameras across
the country. Their attorney argues that
nearly all people the cameras record
have nothing to do with any crime,
calling it dragnet surveillance the
state constitution does not allow. The
suit asks a judge to declare the cameras
unconstitutional and block the city from
using them. Flock says similar
challenges have repeatedly failed and
the courts [music] have upheld the
technology.
In Bandera, Texas, a town of about 900
people, the city council voted three to
two this month to terminate [music] its
Flock contract after months of public
opposition. The eight cameras have been
installed with a state grant, and
residents [music] were told canceling
would cost nothing.
Then they learned the city had already
paid Flock a $17,000 invoice in March,
weeks after a packed town hall made
clear the public did not want the
system.
After the vote, one councilman who
wanted to keep the cameras released what
he called the Bandera Declaration of
Digital Independence,
[music]
proposing the town ban cell phones, GPS
devices, cameras, and the internet, and
just go back to 1880. He framed it as a
satirical jab at residents who objected
to the surveillance. In Edmonds,
Washington, the mayor announced this
week that the city has canceled its
contract with Flock. Edmonds approved 19
cameras in October of 2024, fully funded
by a state auto theft grant, but it
already paused the network last
December. What drove the decision was an
October University of Washington report
finding that federal agencies, including
Customs and Border Protection, had
access Flock networks across the state,
often through a nationwide lookup tool
that let any participating agency search
another city's cameras. The mayor also
cited recent reporting that the FBI is
seeking [music] access to a nationwide
plate reader network. Edmonds is the
third city in Snohomish County to drop
Flock after Mountlake Terrace and
Lynnwood. If you want to know whether
your town runs these cameras, look it up
on deflock.org and bring it to your next
city council meeting. Stay tuned for
more updates on Flock safety and
surveillance technology.