Posted on 07/24/2026 6:30:27 AM PDT by MtnClimber
There is probably a camera on a pole at the entrance to your neighborhood. You’ve probably stopped noticing it. It is small, solar-powered, unremarkable, and it photographs every car that passes: yours, your neighbor’s, your teenager’s. And it reads the license plate, logs the time, and files the record in a national database. The company that owns it is called Flock Safety. Founded in 2017, valued at $7.5 billion, it now operates in more than 5,000 communities across 49 states, and its network scans roughly 20 billion vehicles a month.
Twenty billion. Each month. For perspective, there are about 290 million registered vehicles in the United States, which means the average American car is photographed, catalogued, and made searchable hundreds of times every year. Not because of a federal, state, or local warrant, not by court order, but by a subscription service your city council approved in the middle of tedious meeting never covered by any news organization and attended by a few bored citizens.
And the license plates were just the beginning.
Flock Safety now sells cameras that automatically zoom in on faces, audio sensors that listen for gunshots and, per an October company announcement, human screams, drones, and a “public safety data platform” called Nova that merges plate reads with data-breach records and public files into a single searchable profile.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s verdict on Nova: a “dystopian panopticon.” In September 2024, Oracle’s Larry Ellison stood before financial analysts and described where all this is headed with admirable candor: “Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”
And he meant it as a selling point.
It is worth recalling how we got here, because the road, while sadly well-worn, is instructive. In April 2004,
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
“I personally want the government to be watching and recording things to deter crime and make punishment easier.”
we are seeing why that is a problem when looking at the UK.
Only certain groups are targeted, and they the native citizens who are trying to defend themselves.
Don’t think it will be any different here.
Gossip and people are a norm, not part of a wider scale operation to record and keep data on persons and vehicles.
Tools can be abused by all, the government has done a poor job with our data and protections.
The purpose of data collection is not to watch your every move.
It is to save your every move so that if you ever become an “enemy of the state” they can frame you as a criminal with tons of “evidence”.
“You are innocent, you say. That person you spoke to at the supermarket is a known terrorist—and you told them it was a nice day. That is code indicating you were a participant in their terrorist plot.”
As the saying goes:
“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
Exactly. And let’s not forget mistakes. It is already happening. Assumed Guilty ALL THE TIME. You are Criminal until YOU can 100 percent PROVE innocence. And even then, it is subjective on numerous factors.
Exactly. And let’s not forget mistakes. It is already happening. Assumed Guilty ALL THE TIME. You are Criminal until YOU can 100 percent PROVE innocence. And even then, it is subjective on numerous factors.
Yes, because the government has a stellar historic track record of just being there to protect, serve, and have the best interests of the citizens at heart, no matter which party or group is in power.
It’s just a camera.
It’s just a curfew.
It’s just a checkpoint.
It’s just a temporary law.
It’s just a train ride.
It’s just a camp.
They want to control us and if they can't control us, they want to kill us.
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