Have I Been Flocced is no longer just a slogan. Nomark, a self-styled vigilante, says he has disabled about 30 Flock cameras near his home in the Minneapolis area as a grassroots backlash turns from online mapping to physical sabotage.
The scale is the point. Flock has installed more than 100,000 license plate reader cameras across the United States in only a few years, and opponents say that network gives police and other subscribers a broad record of vehicle movements.
Nomark and 30 devices
Nomark said he was "super nervous" the first time he decided to trash one of the cameras. He said, "I'm not really as scared anymore."
That shift matters because the tactic is spreading from a lone act into a pattern that other like-minded people have copied over the past few weeks.
DeFlock America online
The Facebook group DeFlock America now has more than 600,000 members, and the online side of the movement has spent months building crowdsourced maps and sharing ways to block lenses.
That gives the campaign a practical edge. People do not need to wait for a formal organization to tell them where a camera sits, because the map can point them to the device and the target can change fast.
Richmond police and Flock
Flock cameras are installed by police departments, homeowners' associations and businesses, and the devices take still images of vehicles rather than record video footage.
The cameras capture the make, model, color, license plate data and other distinguishing features such as bumper stickers, and the data is stored for up to a month and can be shared, sometimes across state lines.
Jon Bridges said that in Richmond, Virginia, police will at least query the database for practically any crime that has a connection with a vehicle or a vehicle involved.
Police in Richmond have used the technology since 2023, and in May they used it during the investigation of a domestic-related double homicide and quickly identified a suspect who fled in a pick-up truck.
That is the divide now. Opponents call the system a threat to privacy and civil liberties, while police treat it as a fast way to find a vehicle in a serious case.
For readers trying to size up their own exposure, the immediate question is not whether the cameras exist. It is how many sit near the routes they drive every day, and whether the anti-Flock campaign keeps moving from the Minneapolis area into more neighborhoods beyond the past few weeks.
