San Mateo Flock Out
@sanmateoflockout.bsky.social
I am a long-time resident of San Mateo, CA hoping to draw attention to the city's use of ALPRs and change city and police policies to better protect residents from government surveillance. View my petition here: https://c.org/xNpMbhMbfb
“ In a letter to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said that it’s “possible to search for humans in images taken by Flock cameras.” Which contradicts everything on Flock’s website. Huh. www.techbrew.com/stories/floc...
How do you solve a problem like Flock?
In a statement to Tech Brew, Flock says that “it’s possible to search for the presence of people” but “not a biometric template.”
techbrew.com
Our right to conversational privacy must include freedom from others using tech to document what we are saying without our clear opt-in consent. "Otherwise, people will self-censor, and conversation will lose its spontaneity and intimacy," EFF’s @adamdschwartz.bsky.social told @yahoofinance.com.
Welcome to the age of listening devices
Devices that can listen and record us are becoming more popular, raising privacy concerns.
finance.yahoo.com
Gov. Newsom hates trans people so much he vetoed AB2164, which would have banned extradition of providers of abortion care (essentially codifying his 2022 EO), because it also included gender-affirming provisions. He claims it was to protect executive authority, but we know better. Shame on him.
A California bill sought to shore up Newsom’s abortion access plan. He vetoed it
Abortion-rights advocacy groups, one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s most reliable allies, are issuing a rebuke after he vetoed a bill that would have extended California’s abortion shield laws.
sfchronicle.com
As someone descended from an old radical who def had an fbi file it is UNREAL to me that they’re like “yeah it’s a bug you carry around with you that is always recording and pretends to be your friend and think for you ! This is a product you should want”
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 22h ago“People with knowledge of the device, who declined to be named discussing the product, describe it as a ‘holdable’ rather than a wearable. That means it’s a small, dedicated device that people can pick up and talk to throughout the day.” 🙄
so with the news of discord doing the stupidest thing with the age check in the world i suggest contacting your reps and senators to prevent more online bills from passing as dooming and despair does nothing to help you and others as right now we gotta stop kosa and other online bills!
It's always this way. It's fine for regular people to be surveilled by the government, but when people with any amount of power discover they too are being targeted - well, no, we can't have that!
DeFlock Redmond@deflock-redmond.bsky.social · 21h ago#Methuen City Councilor Patricia Valley wants the city to remove the #Flock cameras she voted for, after she discovered through haveibeenflocked.com that her own plate had been searched 359 times over two years by the Lawrence Police Department! #deflock #surveillance #alpr
Another casualty of skyrocketing diesel prices, even as ridership increases due to...skyrocketing gas prices.
Bay Area News@bayarea.bsky.social · 22h agoSF Bay Ferry cutting mid-day trip to save fuel
San Jose Mayor Mahan thinks it's okay for the gov to amass data on law-abiding citizens because "public safety": "I really think our job is to... strike the right balance between the public safety value of the tools we give officers and the public risk, whether that risk is privacy or otherwise."
archive.is
Citizens of Springfield, Missouri showed up to a city council meeting to discuss the city’s Flock contract. The mayor shut them down and arrested two people for ‘disruption of meetings of city council.’
Woman Arrested After City Council Denies Residents Right to Speak on Flock Cameras
Citizens of Springfield, Missouri showed up to a city council meeting to discuss the city’s Flock contract. The mayor shut them down and arrested two people for ‘disruption of meetings of city council.’
404media.co
This is the link to the Senate ALPR hearing today at 2:30 p.m. ET. Everyone needs to tune in! Witness list in the link. www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-ac... #Flock #DeFlock #Axon #Surveillance #AxonAxoff #fyp #trending #ALPR #AI
Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Meeting for Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism on September 23, 2026 at 10:30 AM
judiciary.senate.gov
Flock's marketing materials claims it has a 99% accuracy rate reading license plates, but #Flock lobbyist Kevin Kane said this is based on "surveys and things like that with customers" & not actual performance data. He only offered to share more details "in private." 🤔 #deflock #surveillance #alpr
Flock Safety faces scrutiny from lawmakers over dodged questions about its surveillance technology
Lawmakers asked Flock for details on digital security, accuracy and data sharing. So far, the company has sidestepped most of those concerns.
mountainstatespotlight.org
I don't ever want to touch my fridge like this. Also, AI slop. www.androidauthority.com/samsung-acci...
Samsung accidentally freezes its smart fridges with a software update
Some Samsung smart fridge owners in Korea have reported that their fridges stopped working after a SmartThings update.
androidauthority.com
"Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fusion centers have started monitoring anti-surveillance activists, according to records obtained by Reason." 🤦♂️ reason.com/2026/09/23/h... #Flock #DeFlock #Axon #Surveillance #AxonAxoff #fyp #trending #ALPR #AI
Homeland Security is monitoring activists building anti-flock tech
SparrowMap uses volunteer cameras to track the police in the same way police track the public. The government considers it a potential threat.
reason.com
In the video they also show how sometimes LE will put in variations of the same plate because they don’t know the exact plate number, thus implicating people who just happen to have a similar plate.
A fun little exercise is to go to your city's Flock "transparency" portal to see how many false hits this amounts to in a 30-day time frame.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 2d agoA Flock rep *claimed* that the cameras are 93% accurate, but as the NBC report points out, if Flock scans 20 billion plates a month, that’s a whole bunch of false positives.
This is a pattern among abusive mindsets: frame a tool as necessary to the salvation or protection of a vulnerable group while using it to actively harm that group.
ACLU of Northern California@aclu-norcal.bsky.social · 2d agoDozens of officers have been charged or accused of abusing tech like Flock for stalking and spying on exes, partners, exes' new partners, and other unauthorized targets. Mass surveillance is ripe for abuse, and too often it's weaponized against the very people it's purported to protect. #DropFlock
Doing active harm when there was an opportunity for good
Assigned Media@assignedmedia.org · 2d ago@rikiwilchins.bsky.social 2026 Sep Governor Gavin Newsom vetoes bill passed which would protect CA providers of gender-affirming care from being extradited to face charges for doing so by another state. www.ebar.com/story/170505...
The man ICE shot in Austin today is named Wilber Rafael Garces Perez. Per his lawyer, she and Perez’s family were run off of hospital property where he’s being treated and won’t even confirm he’s there because he’s “in ICE custody.” Actual criminals.
Federal immigration agent shoots and injures man in Austin, Texas
The person shot is in serious but stable condition, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said in a press conference.
npr.org
Distressing update from Wilber’s lawyer via IG a short while ago:
The nationwide backlash against automatic license plate readers is “uniting Trump country and progressive strongholds alike,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
It’s not just Flock that has people upset. When @4ac.nacdl.org litigated Chatrie v. United States to challenge geofence warrants, groups from across the political spectrum joined in support of privacy rights for cell phone location data.
🚨 "If #Flock appears before the subcommittee, the senators who might be grilling Flock on its practices are the same ones who are putting support behind a bill that would expand, entrench, and federalize the worst of those practices." 📄 footnote4a.org/blog/corca-h... #deflock #surveillance #corca
CORCA — The Federal Bill to Expand Flock
Six of the eleven senators set to grill Flock's CEO on September 23 are cosponsoring a bill that would fund more surveillance and put a new ICE-led intelligence center in charge of sharing it.
footnote4a.org
San Mateo! My petition to the city regarding Flock/ALPRs has *431* signatures! Thank you all so much for your support! If you haven't already and want to make additional impact, please take a moment to email your council person: www.cityofsanmateo.org/166/Meet-You... #deflock #alpr #sanmateo
Meet Your Council | San Mateo, CA - Official Website
cityofsanmateo.org
"By contrast, if "the data are instead averaged across all agencies (or weighted by population), the study finds no statistically significant change" in the number of thefts." reason.com/2026/09/18/t... #Flock #DeFlock #Axon #ALPR #AI #AxonAxoff #Surveillance #fyp #trending
The shaky evidence that Flock cameras reduce crime rates
Flock has been promoting a recent study of its cameras' impacts on car theft. But the paper didn't demonstrate a causal effect.
reason.com
They desperately want people talking about the danger of their dogshit extruder gaining sentience, and not the fact that it is currently actually factually poisoning Black people in the poor regions where they build data centers. Or convincing people to kill themselves, etc.
Research Shows ICE Raids Are Killing Local Economies Contrary to the "worst of the worst" posturing presented by the Trump administration, it's long been known that immigrants (both legal or otherwise)... https://www.techdirt.com/2026/09/18/research-shows-ice-raids-are-killing-local-economies/
Research Shows ICE Raids Are Killing Local Economies
Contrary to the "worst of the worst" posturing presented by the Trump administration, it's long been known that immigrants (both legal or otherwise) commit fewer crimes than natural-born US citizens: Our consistent finding is that legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rates, followed by illegal immigrants, and that native-born Americans have the highest. Illegal immigrants...
techdirt.com
