The Surveillance State Has Arrived - Masked Heroes Are Fighting Back

Article author: 
Mary Rooke
Article publisher: 
Daily Caller
Article date: 
26 June 2026
Article category: 
National News
Medium
Article Body: 

... Flock Safety cameras, the most prominent brand in this AI surveillance space, are automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that capture high-resolution images of every passing vehicle. Flock and similar systems now operate in thousands of communities, with over 110,000 cameras mapped nationwide, according to DeFlock, an open-source project mapping license plate readers.

Thanks to recent tech upgrades like Leonardo’s SignalTrace, these cameras... also track the electronic signatures of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, and other wireless signals from devices inside or near your vehicle...

Using AI and optical character recognition, these systems extract as much private data as possible, including timestamps and geolocation, before uploading it to a cloud platform accessible to all participating law enforcement agencies. And they can do this to law-abiding U.S. citizens without warrants...

Newer Condor cameras use pan-tilt-zoom capabilities and AI to detect and follow pedestrians in real time as they walk through the frame...

Police have used Flock data to issue wrongful accusations...

DeFlock.org, the crowdsourcing site, helps users plan routes that avoid cameras. Local efforts have led to contract cancellations in dozens of cities, including Eugene, Oregon, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Evanston, Illinois... the company had given the data to federal authorities...

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure and requires warrants based on probable cause...

Related

While the Political Circus Distracts Us, Flock Builds the Digital Police State, by John & Nisha Whitehead, 13 July 2026.

Mass Surveillance: Flock Planned to Use 350,000 Uber, Lyft and Delivery Drivers as Mobile License Plate Cameras, Breitbart, 7 August 2026.

The Right To Be Left Alone, by Andrew P. Napolitano, Lew Rockwell, 13 August 2026:

... The Constitution requires articulable suspicion connecting the person being surveilled to a legitimate law-enforcement objective to justify public surveillance. A vague assertion that the technology might someday help solve a crime or enhance public safety does not meet that standard...

When 7,000 American police departments have these systems with no legislative approvals, we have the police making policy judgments. They are deciding that the government should possess a new capacity to observe innocent people, what information should be collected, how long it should be retained, who should have access to it and what purposes may justify searches; all this irrespective of the Constitution...

Those are not merely administrative questions. They are questions about personal liberty...

The answer is what the Fourth Amendment requires: No government surveillance without search warrants...

Florida Bars Flock Cameras from State Highways to ‘Preserve Sovereignty’, Breitbart, 1 September 2026.

Don't spy on me