I drove 300 miles in rural Virginia, then asked police to send me their public surveillance footage of my car. Here’s what I learned.

It’s not the opening line of a joke; it’s what I saw as I was working on an early draft of this story in March at the Staunton Dunkin’, about a quarter mile from where my vehicle was captured on a Flock camera in January and February coming back from my trips to Cardinal’s Roanoke office.

Their eyes may have strayed to the racks of Boston creme, lemon-filled and coconut-covered doughnuts as they strode to the counter with purpose, but they were here for something else.

The research for State of Surveillance showed that you can’t drive anywhere without going through a town, city or county that’s using public surveillance of some kind, mostly license plate reading cameras. I wondered how often I might be captured on camera just driving around to meet my reporters. Would the data over time display patterns that would make my behavior predictable to anyone looking at it?

So I took a daylong drive across Cardinal Country and asked 15 law enforcement agencies, using Freedom of Information Act requests, to provide me with the Flock LPR footage of my vehicle. My journey took me over 300 miles through slices of the communities those agencies serve, including the nearly 50 cameras they employ. And this journey may take me to one more place: an April Fool’s Day hearing in a courtroom in Roanoke. There, a judge will be asked to rule on a motion to declare the footage of the public to be beyond the reach of the public.

But while Roanoke and Botetourt and two other police agencies denied my request for that footage, nine agencies complied and searched their data for signs of me passing through.

February 13, 2025, I left Staunton around 7:30 in the morning to head toward Roanoke. Richmond Avenue, on the outskirts of the city, is probably the way most people make their way out of town to interstates 64 and 81. It’s a significant crossroad of the region’s major east-west and north-south highways.

Staunton maintains at least one of its six Flock cameras on a local intersection just shy of the cluster of on- and off-ramps. It makes surveillance-sense to position cameras to see who’s coming in and who’s leaving your town at such a singular crossroad.

As part of its services, Flock advises police on where to place its tech. The top priority appears to be places of entry and exit around the community, notably near the main highways. It’s possible that Staunton doesn’t have a camera taking pictures of who is leaving town; it’s also possible my vehicle’s plate was blocked by heavy morning traffic and so no photo could be taken.

It was a cold morning, but truckers and car drivers were behaving on the morning commute. Staying on I-81, I passed through Augusta, Rockbridge and Botetourt counties, which between them have at least eight Flock cameras. I didn’t think any would be pointed at the main highway because currently Flock can’t place its cameras on state property.

Ninety uneventful minutes later, I pulled into Roanoke to go to the Cardinal office and visit my Roanoke members of our own Cardinal team — which, in an unintentional irony in this story, we refer to as The Flock.

I got into town just after 9:15 a.m. I know that because a Roanoke Police Department Flock camera captured my car traveling southbound down Williamson Road near the Salem Avenue intersection at 9:16:09 a.m. (That photo, as well as another, were provided by the Staunton police, as part of their arrangement to access other agencies’ data in their Flock searches.)

You can see from the image below exactly what Flock technology captures: a decent shot of the back of any vehicle that passes, a readable image of the license plate.

Part of Flock’s proprietary tech determines the make and model of the vehicle and also notes if there are bumper stickers, bike racks, any other unique markings that would help identify that vehicle. That generates a “vehicle fingerprint” for every car or truck, which none of the agencies I FOIA’d would provide me. That fingerprint could prove helpful in the case where a witness or other camera captured some non-license-plate information about a vehicle, like specific bumper stickers or a roof rack.

I parked my car on Church Avenue, walked to the office and logged in to our morning news meeting. Some of our reporters were there in person; others began popping up on the screen from their beats in Danville, Martinsville and Bristol. We talked about our day’s work. Afterward, I drove around town just to see if I’d be picked up in a residential area. I started in Gainsboro. Snow covered the ground around the homes on Gilmer Avenue. I did not notice any cameras.

I crossed town to Marshall Avenue and a neighborhood within a few blocks of the YMCA, and then on to another neighborhood sitting next to Interstate 581, which reaches across the town like a tight belt of loud traffic. Looking between homes, I saw the Roanoke Star, perched over trees frosted with ice not yet melted.

Each of these neighborhoods had different backstories and histories you could see in the architecture of their homes, in the cars that parked on their streets. One thing they had in common on that cold morning: They were all very quiet. And I did not see any surveillance cameras.

Later, I received no images of my car in those places. Flock can be used to monitor public space in suspected high-crime areas, which has earned it the wrath of rights organizations including the ACLU. Because Roanoke has only five cameras, according to contracts we received from the city, it’s my guess they are not yet focusing on specific populations or neighborhoods.

After those brief stops, I left town mid-morning. I can’t tell you exactly when, and I’ll tell you why that’s relevant.

When I eventually received data from the Staunton Police about my trip, I noticed that Flock cameras had photographed my vehicle in similar locations within both Staunton and Roanoke at similar times on another day, January 29. If you asked me today if I knew whether I had made a trip to the Roanoke office on Jan. 29, I would hesitate before I could answer. I would have to check my calendar and emails to be able to say that I was there, with certainty.

But the police would have known, if they wanted to, without asking for any kind of warrant or court order.

Franklin County does have four Flock cameras, but my vehicle’s image was not captured by any of them. Until I came into town, I was staying on routes 220 and 57.

U.S. 220 was a misty spectacle on Feb. 13. Ice made trees sag. Thick limbs and branches crashed under the weight, closing the right lane of the highway in some places. Snow covered shaded places around buildings, but the roads were mostly clear, and traffic moved along. Nearing noon, milder temps had caused fog to rise up from the hollers. As I drove south past Boones Mill and Trump Town USA, I knew I would not trigger that town’s lone operational Flock camera. It’s set up to catch northbound traffic.

I entered Martinsville via Fayette Street. Martinsville has dozens of Flock cameras, 48 according to the contracts Cardinal News gathered, so I expected to be picked up multiple times. However, my vehicle was detected only once.

Even the police chief, Rob Fincher, was surprised. He was open to running the test again, but I wasn’t trying for statistical accuracy; I wanted this to be a record of a single day. There are lots of things that can get in the way of taking a clear picture, including glare and shadow and other things (cars in this case) getting between your camera and your subject. Some of those things may have been at play on that particular day.

A Martinsville Flock camera did spot my vehicle at 12:11 p.m. eastbound on the way into town from its perch near the corner of West Church Street and South Memorial Boulevard.

Twenty-two minutes later I was spreading cream cheese on a bagel and coffee at the Ground Floor. (I know the time because I took my own photo, not because of a surveillance camera timestamp.)

The place was bustling. On most tables stood a little rubbery Jesus toy. On one wall hangs a long roll of brown paper where people casually write their prayers. I was reminded that some people believe you’re being watched 24/7 by a higher power, though I’d argue there’s likely a pretty high trust factor about how that surveillance might be utilized. I touched base with our Martinsville reporter Dean-Paul Stephens, and then headed for Danville.

Speaking of trust and ethics: two weeks later, Lt. Greg Jones called me at the Roanoke office. The Amherst County Sheriff’s Office had a question about my request for data about my vehicle.

“You weren’t trying to spy on a cheating wife or something like that, were you?” he asked.

I assured him that I wasn’t. As Cardinal Executive Director Luanne Rife points out in her column on Sunshine Week, public agencies don’t have to agree with why you’re asking for their public information. The idea is that it belongs to you already. They are under legal obligation to provide it to you.

Not to say this question didn’t cause some thought and conversation in the newsroom. Public surveillance data like this could indeed be used to stalk an ex; it could also be used by a person suspicious their ex is stalking them to see if their ex’s vehicle actually could be found on the same roads as theirs and at the same times, which could then be used to secure a protective order or even open a criminal investigation. It could be used by private investigators to find bail jumpers and missing persons. Now imagine all those requests coming in to the local police agency…

The only reason it hadn’t happened yet was because people really didn’t know they could do that. Suddenly the cops could be in the position to find themselves spending hours looking up public surveillance for citizens with all sorts of reasons to utilize the data.

So was this a fool’s errand I was on? I didn’t think so. The police in over 80 of our local communities had chosen to start photographing citizens in their vehicles in public and sharing this with other agencies in our region and beyond, even out of state. I wasn’t the one running over 500 searches a month on its citizens, as the Roanoke police were doing. And who knows who they were running those searches on, and why?

By the time I reached Danville, the weather was almost warm. The sun was out and glancing through the empty trees along Craghead Street and in through the plate glass windows of Links Coffee House.

I found out after requesting data from Danville that while they did have a contract with Flock, they had not yet installed the Flock cameras, according to Matt Bell, the city’s PR specialist.

The coffee was good. The casual conversation surveillance was rich with interesting dialogues. But I had miles to go. It was just before 2 p.m. Time to get moving again.

Traffic in Lynchburg was heavy around 3:30 p.m. as I drove north along U.S. 29 Business. I figured there might be at least some of Lynchburg’s Flock cameras along the very busy Business 29, also known in that area as Wards Road.

Just south of Liberty University, a Flock camera picked up my car near Wards Ferry Road. Lynchburg has at least a dozen Flock cameras, according to contracts we got from them during our reporting for our first State of Surveillance story. I figured one might be on this stretch of road.

By this point in the afternoon, the novelty of the day was wearing off. I got back on main route 29 and headed north.

Along the rest of the way, I passed through Amherst County, which has four Flock cameras; Nelson County, which has none; and Augusta County, with two cameras. Since I stuck to the main roads, U. S. 29 and then I-64, the chances of running into a camera were low. If I’d pulled off onto a main county road, things might have been different.

In March, Amherst would conduct a search and be unable to find my vehicle. Same with Augusta County.

At 4:59 p.m., I exited the highway onto Richmond Avenue in Staunton. This time a Flock camera spotted my vehicle and got a clear picture. I went home and ordered pizza.

As I mentioned, the two police officers were not interested in doughnuts, or even coffee. They asked to speak to the manager. The counter person explained that the manager was at the other store across town. They asked if they could speak to that person on the phone.

It was then I noticed that a person who had come in with them was part of this conversation.

From what I could gather, because I didn’t pull out my press badge and start asking questions, the young woman with them had been in some kind of incident; and that the police had determined that maybe some of the video footage that Dunkin takes of its drive-through may have caught the other car as it passed on the road beyond; or maybe the offending vehicle had come through the drive-through.

In a few minutes, the officers and the woman were guided behind the counter to review footage.

This scene somehow made me feel optimistic about how we’re already using such technology. It still operates under the notion that not all data belongs to the police. They have to ask, or convince a judge to give them a court order.

Yet just glancing at the footage I have included in this story, it’s also a little creepy to see how as few as four to six pictures, properly time- and date-stamped, can establish patterns that could enable someone to know with some likelihood how they could intercept me on my way to work one morning.

There are two differences between police use of other visual data (like a store’s security video) and Flock’s gathering of public footage (such as my car). In that first case, there’s a crime involved. And the privately captured video is granted to police voluntarily and for a good reason. It’s not theirs to take and examine at their leisure.

Public-facing LRP cameras like Flock’s, on the other hand, capture vast amounts of data unrelated to any criminal activity. And there’s zero oversight outside of the law enforcement community. This goes back to the idea that footage taken of me in public, non-investigative in nature, can be considered investigative and not subject to a public information request, and concerns me.

The idea that a law enforcement agency will claim the images that we see in this story are “investigative” in nature — and need to be protected from me — tells me that they are worried about something else. What is it?

It’s a paradigm shift where we go from having an expectation of privacy even in public spaces to its inverse. Not only do we not have a right to privacy in public; we don’t even have a right to see ourselves as the government and police might see us — a set of still moments in place and time from which they, not us, can decide what our story is.

Get a pickup truck.
Open the tailgate.
Buy a couple of 10 foot 2X4’s and put them in the bed.
Tie a red rag on the 2X4’s.
Problem solved.
You’re welcome.

(State of Surveillance)

Daniel 7:23 says the Fourth Kingdom WILL crush the entire world 🌎🌍 under its feet 🐾

THIS will be the kingdom of SATAN'S Antichrist IMHO

And yet there people who don't think it's coming

Your convenient cellphone 📱 (and mine) is already tracking you all day long 24/7/365 - if you have a Faraday bag, you can hide a little bit... until you make contact with a cellular tower

Satan is certainly preparing the world 🌎🌍 for the debut of his Antichrist - the spirit of antichrist is empowering the godless reprobates 🐐🐐🐐

The sheep 🐑🐑🐑 and the goats 🐐🐐🐐
are being divided like never before

Speaking of trust and ethics: two weeks later, Lt. Greg Jones called me at the Roanoke office. The Amherst County Sheriff’s Office had a question about my request for data about my vehicle.
“You weren’t trying to spy on a cheating wife or something like that, were you?” he asked.
I assured him that I wasn’t. As Cardinal Executive Director Luanne Rife points out in her column on Sunshine Week, public agencies don’t have to agree with why you’re asking for their public information. The idea is that it belongs to you already. They are under legal obligation to provide it to you.

It's a common problem when asking government employees for information that their response too frequently is "Why do you want to know that?" It's really none of their business. It's also typical for cops to assume you want something for an improper purpose.

“Get a pickup truck.
Open the tailgate.
Buy a couple of 10 foot 2X4’s and put them in the bed.
Tie a red rag on the 2X4’s.
Problem solved.
You’re welcome.”

I like the way you think.

I’m sure if I left my phone at home and somehow faked out my license plate number, I would still be tracked 100% by my vehicle’s GPS and my satellite radio.

This will be everywhere

You must use your Global One-World Digital Currency to shop at only "officially-approved" stores using your hand or cellphone 📱📱📱 to authorize payment.

(Scan Your Hand to Pay for Your Food}

Meanwhile, at Boston University, Westminster, UNC Chapel Hill, Florida State, Vanderbilt (and elsewhere, "convenience" and "security" rolls on, conditioning the masses

Oh, they left ONE lane open...to make it look like you have a choice....for now...

Your car is being tracked from the inside anyways if it has any kind of internet connection in it. Don’t worry its a private company so its okay that they are spying on you.

“ Long article. I have no idea what he’s pitching about”

We are all under surveillance from police cameras .
Many people aren’t aware .
Good of him to bring awareness to this.
Do we want this going on?

Your FOIA request from a multiple number of jurisdictions now has you flagged.

The only choice you now have is change your “vehicle fingerprint” every day; Add stickers, remove stickers, add/remove bike racks, a mattress tied to the roof, a troll doll in front/back glass and the always good rubber hand hanging out the trunk.

Modify your “fingerprint” every day.

This works MUCH BETTER if LURKERS
COPY, TEXT/EMAIL these pictures and
Scriptures and SHARE with others.

(lurkers please click on my screen name to see my FR homepage for more information)

My Catholic Study Bible says that Daniel's fourth kingdom refers to the Roman Empire.

So that prophecy is already fulfilled.

Well friend I disagree. But I thank you for your friendly tone.

Let us see how things continue to play out.

I’m expecting this type of thing will be EVERYWHERE.

God bless ✝️🙏🛐

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