Flock cameras have been shot, spray-painted and cut down as how-to videos spread online. “People are fed up,” one suspect said.
By Catholics for Catholics
Every day citizens who say they are fed up with street surveillance license-plate readers are taking matters into their own hands and are destroying, incapacitating or covering up the cameras. They believe the gadgets are just a way of intruding into their personal lives, according to a story by the Washington Post.
The Post’s story details that more than 130,000 of the automatic license-plate readers now pervade the nation, according to the crowdsourced tracker DeFlock.org. The Big Brother, Orwellian style of artificial intelligence-assisted devices have been adopted by law enforcement as powerful probing tools but widely deplored by the public over privacy concerns.
For Adam Heimerman, 37, from East Tennessee, who is running as an independent candidate for Congress, the cameras are one more sign that the United States is turning into a police state, he said in an interview. In July, the Blount County Sheriff’s Office contends Heimerman shot four of the cameras — including one near a church where worshipers sat inside.
“When people act out in a manner that we’re witnessing, things have gotten bad and they no longer feel like they’re being heard,” Heimerman said. “People are tired of being told to sit down and be quiet and write a letter.”
WOW 🚨 There is now a ‘Flock Safe City designations”
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 13, 2026
This happens when a city uses the integrated system of Flock license plate readers, drones, gunshot detectors and live cameras monitoring the city that track people that blanket the city and monitor at all times
“Harvey,… pic.twitter.com/XmUYMp7bKx
The backlash cuts “across partisan lines,” said Eleni Manis, the research director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit that fights government surveillance.
“As Americans we drive where we want and when we want,” Manis said. “Tracking ruins that for all of us. And that’s partly why this has gotten under everyone’s skin.”
“How-to” videos are online that show how to disable the cameras from collecting footage using wire cutters and heavy gloves. People from an array of backgrounds — college students, computer engineers, a U.S. Air Force engineer — have been accused of vandalizing the devices.
Cameras were recently damaged in communities around Detroit. In Winona, Minnesota, all eight of the city’s readers were cut down and stolen.
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