In January 2026, a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia ruled that the city's Flock camera network did not yet rise to a constitutional violation, while explicitly warning that ALPR surveillance could become too intrusive and run afoul of constitutional privacy standards at some…

— William Ray Brown (@WilliamRayX) August 8, 2026

The Free Press run by Bari Weiss and owned by Larry Ellison is promoting the surveillance state? I'm shocked! Why would they do that? https://t.co/o1pNJo8Bdl

— Owen Shroyer (@OwenShroyer1776) August 7, 2026

🚨 Think Flock cams are invasive?

Meet Flock Alpha.

-Thermal vision
-Self launches
-Self-recharges
-Flies up to 60 mph
-Live streams to police
-Reads license plates from 2k ft away
-Integrated with Flock's ALPR network

Not just a drone.
Surveillance infrastructure that flies. pic.twitter.com/1cM2oLM8HK

— Jason Bassler (@JasonBassler1) July 25, 2026

Have other GOP come out publicly against Flock? I've seen Massie and Burchett oppose it,

I’ll soon be introducing a bill to withhold all federal funding for cameras used to track American citizens. pic.twitter.com/NcOVllu63b

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 7, 2026

The mass removal of flock cameras is the closest Americans have gotten to the Boston Tea Party since 1773.

— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) August 7, 2026

El Oso said:

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Im confused. A lot of posters tell me if people would just do what the cops tell them to do, the cops wouldn't have killed them. Now, those same posters are telling me I should be afraid of driving my car even if I haven't done anything wrong. If I'm a good person, what do I have to be afraid of when a camera takes a picture of my car?

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Do police sell that information?

If yes, there's your line.

Do police store surveillance information that aggregates and allows them to figure out what you are doing inside your home?

If yes, that's a 4th Amendment violation if they do not first get a warrant.

Let's start there.

El Oso said:

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Im confused. A lot of posters tell me if people would just do what the cops tell them to do, the cops wouldn't have killed them. Now, those same posters are telling me I should be afraid of driving my car even if I haven't done anything wrong. If I'm a good person, what do I have to be afraid of when a camera takes a picture of my car?

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Thank you Governor Walz.

El Oso said:

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Im confused. A lot of posters tell me if people would just do what the cops tell them to do, the cops wouldn't have killed them. Now, those same posters are telling me I should be afraid of driving my car even if I haven't done anything wrong. If I'm a good person, what do I have to be afraid of when a camera takes a picture of my car?

---

Police officer accesses fleeing CJ camera database for personal use


https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0dggaAptLqCPZKTK1MR7mTS16iB3qmp8vxCyMbgBp7cX9MfzSTbo9ApY7G7KSXt6nl&id=100064805465330

Harrison Bergeron said:

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This is a Democrat wet dream.Tin Walz is erect just knowing this is possible.

---

NM

Instead of responding to each individual post. I will address them all here.

If the police sell your information...
What does that matter? If I was doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear. That's what people tell me about the police all the time. I don't have to worry about them killing me if I just put my hands up and keep my mouth shut.

Do inside your home...
This seems to be a straw man. Flock cameras observe me out in public where there is no wide ranging right to privacy like there is in my home. I'm not inside my home, so this is a straw man.

Weaponized...
These agencies you list are already weaponized. In fact, the police use those weapons to kill people all the time. But again, I'm told that only happens because these people resisted. So, if I don't resist the flock camera, the question still stands, what do I have to fear from the police if I am doing nothing wrong? Any weaponized law enforcement puts me in zero danger if I am following the law.

Police access for personal use...
If I have done nothing wrong, there wouldn't be anything the officer could actually use would there? And even if he/she did it, it couldn't possibly harm me because what I was doing was legal.

The main issue is the 4th amendment. No government entity has the right to spy on Americans or gather information without their consent. Neither does any private organization on behalf of a govt. The Bill of Rights exists for a reason and cannot be ignored simply because someone finds them inconvenient.

OK, by each statement:

If the police sell your information...
El Oso: What does that matter? If I was doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear. That's what people tell me about the police all the time. I don't have to worry about them killing me if I just put my hands up and keep my mouth shut.

Me: It's simply wrong. My information belongs to me, and it's just plain wrong for someone else to use my information without my consent unless I have broken the law, and even then there are still limits on what they can do with my information.


Do inside your home...
El Oso: This seems to be a straw man. Flock cameras observe me out in public where there is no wide ranging right to privacy like there is in my home. I'm not inside my home, so this is a straw man.

Me: Flock cameras are a 4th Amendment violation just waiting for the courts to catch up. Your front door is a big bright red line; efforts to find out what's behind your door must require a warrant, no excuses.


Weaponized...
El Oso: These agencies you list are already weaponized. In fact, the police use those weapons to kill people all the time. But again, I'm told that only happens because these people resisted. So, if I don't resist the flock camera, the question still stands, what do I have to fear from the police if I am doing nothing wrong? Any weaponized law enforcement puts me in zero danger if I am following the law.

Me:I have many friends who worked Law Enforcement, and your characterization is complete bull***** You really need to get a better sense of what it's like for LEO to be in an officer-involved shooting.

Now with that said, the problem of police surveillance is that there is a long history of abuse, and subsequent restrictions on how such information may be collected or used. You don't ignore those restrictions, period.


Police access for personal use...
El Oso: If I have done nothing wrong, there wouldn't be anything the officer could actually use would there? And even if he/she did it, it couldn't possibly harm me because what I was doing was legal.

Me: Your answer is right out of the Stasi Public Relations booklet. You have it 180 degrees wrong. It's not that officials can do whatever they want unless they are worried about getting sued, it's that citizens have rights which may not trimmed, let alone ignored.

Oldbear83 said:

---

OK, by each statement:

If the police sell your information...
El Oso: What does that matter? If I was doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear. That's what people tell me about the police all the time. I don't have to worry about them killing me if I just put my hands up and keep my mouth shut.

Me: It's simply wrong. My information belongs to me, and it's just plain wrong for someone else to use my information without my consent unless I have broken the law, and even then there are still limits on what they can do with my information.


Do inside your home...
El Oso: This seems to be a straw man. Flock cameras observe me out in public where there is no wide ranging right to privacy like there is in my home. I'm not inside my home, so this is a straw man.

Me: Flock cameras are a 4th Amendment violation just waiting for the courts to catch up. Your front door is a big bright red line; efforts to find out what's behind your door must require a warrant, no excuses.


Weaponized...
El Oso: These agencies you list are already weaponized. In fact, the police use those weapons to kill people all the time. But again, I'm told that only happens because these people resisted. So, if I don't resist the flock camera, the question still stands, what do I have to fear from the police if I am doing nothing wrong? Any weaponized law enforcement puts me in zero danger if I am following the law.

Me:I have many friends who worked Law Enforcement, and your characterization is complete bull***** You really need to get a better sense of what it's like for LEO to be in an officer-involved shooting.

Now with that said, the problem of police surveillance is that there is a long history of abuse, and subsequent restrictions on how such information may be collected or used. You don't ignore those restrictions, period.


Police access for personal use...
El Oso: If I have done nothing wrong, there wouldn't be anything the officer could actually use would there? And even if he/she did it, it couldn't possibly harm me because what I was doing was legal.

Me: Your answer is right out of the Stasi Public Relations booklet. You have it 180 degrees wrong. It's not that officials can do whatever they want unless they are worried about getting sued, it's that citizens have rights which may not trimmed, let alone ignored.

---

Police access for personal use

because no law officer has ever gone through a contentious divorce, had a conflict with a neighbor, disagreed with their kids coach or, just been a vindictive sob.

Oldbear83 said:

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OK, by each statement:

If the police sell your information...
El Oso: What does that matter? If I was doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear. That's what people tell me about the police all the time. I don't have to worry about them killing me if I just put my hands up and keep my mouth shut.

Me: It's simply wrong. My information belongs to me, and it's just plain wrong for someone else to use my information without my consent unless I have broken the law, and even then there are still limits on what they can do with my information.


Do inside your home...
El Oso: This seems to be a straw man. Flock cameras observe me out in public where there is no wide ranging right to privacy like there is in my home. I'm not inside my home, so this is a straw man.

Me: Flock cameras are a 4th Amendment violation just waiting for the courts to catch up. Your front door is a big bright red line; efforts to find out what's behind your door must require a warrant, no excuses.


Weaponized...
El Oso: These agencies you list are already weaponized. In fact, the police use those weapons to kill people all the time. But again, I'm told that only happens because these people resisted. So, if I don't resist the flock camera, the question still stands, what do I have to fear from the police if I am doing nothing wrong? Any weaponized law enforcement puts me in zero danger if I am following the law.

Me:I have many friends who worked Law Enforcement, and your characterization is complete bull***** You really need to get a better sense of what it's like for LEO to be in an officer-involved shooting.

Now with that said, the problem of police surveillance is that there is a long history of abuse, and subsequent restrictions on how such information may be collected or used. You don't ignore those restrictions, period.


Police access for personal use...
El Oso: If I have done nothing wrong, there wouldn't be anything the officer could actually use would there? And even if he/she did it, it couldn't possibly harm me because what I was doing was legal.

Me: Your answer is right out of the Stasi Public Relations booklet. You have it 180 degrees wrong. It's not that officials can do whatever they want unless they are worried about getting sued, it's that citizens have rights which may not trimmed, let alone ignored.

---

We all have friends in law enforcement. Not all LEOs are bad people. I never said that. I simply said LEOs have been known to kill civilians, and when that happens, the posters on this board say it is because the citizen wasn't cooperating. There's even a thread on this board right now stating that Derek Chavin did nothing wrong. It definitely isn't reading like satire.

The courts have consistently held your interpretation of the fourth amendment is wrong. The camera observes the car not the person. In fact, the thing the camera is recording is a government ID issued to you and your car by the federal government. By law, at least in Texas, you must give LEOs your ID if they ask for it, so the camera isn't doing anything a LEO couldn't get from you. The cameras aren't tracking you either. They observe your car at a specific point in time, and because of this, the courts are saying your fourth amendment rights are not being violated. What happens after that may not be kosher because of rogue LEOs, but again, LEOs, generally speaking, are good people. Get rid of the rogue officers. I think we would all be on board with that.

And we aren't talking about liberal justices being the problem here either. Both the ninth and eleventh circuit court of appeals are the ones affirming these findings. The 11th circuit might just be the most conservative appeals court in the country and they affirmed ALPRs. Trump has appointed 11 of the 28 justices on the ninth circuit, and while it still leans liberal by number, these 11 justices support judicial philosophies that favor law enforcement's use of ALPRs.

It's also ironic that the ACLU is the biggest agency trying to undo the decisions. Technically, the ACLU is nonpartisan, but the majority of posters on this board would tell you they align with liberal and progressive ideologies. Now you are getting in bed with the enemy.

El Oso said:

---

Oldbear83 said:

---

OK, by each statement:

If the police sell your information...
El Oso: What does that matter? If I was doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to fear. That's what people tell me about the police all the time. I don't have to worry about them killing me if I just put my hands up and keep my mouth shut.

Me: It's simply wrong. My information belongs to me, and it's just plain wrong for someone else to use my information without my consent unless I have broken the law, and even then there are still limits on what they can do with my information.


Do inside your home...
El Oso: This seems to be a straw man. Flock cameras observe me out in public where there is no wide ranging right to privacy like there is in my home. I'm not inside my home, so this is a straw man.

Me: Flock cameras are a 4th Amendment violation just waiting for the courts to catch up. Your front door is a big bright red line; efforts to find out what's behind your door must require a warrant, no excuses.


Weaponized...
El Oso: These agencies you list are already weaponized. In fact, the police use those weapons to kill people all the time. But again, I'm told that only happens because these people resisted. So, if I don't resist the flock camera, the question still stands, what do I have to fear from the police if I am doing nothing wrong? Any weaponized law enforcement puts me in zero danger if I am following the law.

Me:I have many friends who worked Law Enforcement, and your characterization is complete bull***** You really need to get a better sense of what it's like for LEO to be in an officer-involved shooting.

Now with that said, the problem of police surveillance is that there is a long history of abuse, and subsequent restrictions on how such information may be collected or used. You don't ignore those restrictions, period.


Police access for personal use...
El Oso: If I have done nothing wrong, there wouldn't be anything the officer could actually use would there? And even if he/she did it, it couldn't possibly harm me because what I was doing was legal.

Me: Your answer is right out of the Stasi Public Relations booklet. You have it 180 degrees wrong. It's not that officials can do whatever they want unless they are worried about getting sued, it's that citizens have rights which may not trimmed, let alone ignored.

---

We all have friends in law enforcement. Not all LEOs are bad people. I never said that. I simply said LEOs have been known to kill civilians, and when that happens, the posters on this board say it is because the citizen wasn't cooperating. There's even a thread on this board right now stating that Derek Chavin did nothing wrong. It definitely isn't reading like satire.

The courts have consistently held your interpretation of the fourth amendment is wrong. The camera observes the car not the person. In fact, the thing the camera is recording is a government ID issued to you and your car by the federal government. By law, at least in Texas, you must give LEOs your ID if they ask for it, so the camera isn't doing anything a LEO couldn't get from you. The cameras aren't tracking you either. They observe your car at a specific point in time, and because of this, the courts are saying your fourth amendment rights are not being violated. What happens after that may not be kosher because of rogue LEOs, but again, LEOs, generally speaking, are good people. Get rid of the rogue officers. I think we would all be on board with that.

And we aren't talking about liberal justices being the problem here either. Both the ninth and eleventh circuit court of appeals are the ones affirming these findings. The 11th circuit might just be the most conservative appeals court in the country and they affirmed ALPRs. Trump has appointed 11 of the 28 justices on the ninth circuit, and while it still leans liberal by number, these 11 justices support judicial philosophies that favor law enforcement's use of ALPRs.

It's also ironic that the ACLU is the biggest agency trying to undo the decisions. Technically, the ACLU is nonpartisan, but the majority of posters on this board would tell you they align with liberal and progressive ideologies. Now you are getting in bed with the enemy.

---

The reasons you're so confused is that there are many people that are not rabidly tribal and have principles. I realize that is a foreign concept to TDSers, but that is why you're flummoxed.

You're weird Burn Loot Murder straw man is stupid. Daniel Shaver and Tony Timpa probably were the only really unjustified police shootings, but they don't fit your nutjob narrative. Go pray Saint George Floyd will give you a brain.

Agreed

" I simply said LEOs have been known to kill civilians, and when that happens, the posters on this board say it is because the citizen wasn't cooperating"

You are certainly intelligent enough to understand your statement is completely unreasonable, since it applies a broad brush of insinuation against both law enforcement and the common response on this board to specific and overtly politicized incidents.

Porteroso said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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El Oso said:

---

Im confused. A lot of posters tell me if people would just do what the cops tell them to do, the cops wouldn't have killed them. Now, those same posters are telling me I should be afraid of driving my car even if I haven't done anything wrong. If I'm a good person, what do I have to be afraid of when a camera takes a picture of my car?

---

Do police sell that information?

If yes, there's your line.

Do police store surveillance information that aggregates and allows them to figure out what you are doing inside your home?

If yes, that's a 4th Amendment violation if they do not first get a warrant.

Let's start there.

---

We are going to need better privacy laws. Otherwise the nanny state will be just like the UK. How far are we from a bill that puts cameras in the home of felons, something called Patriot 3.1? Then common criminals, then anyone's car who speeds or runs a red, then.. why not everyone? How many crimes could be prevented if we knew what everyone said in private?

---

You brought up a good comparison with your reference to the PATRIOT Act, Porteroso. That nasty bit of overreach got its genesis from panic about 'terrorism' without much thought about whether it could lead to abuse of power.

Oso: " Technically, the ACLU is nonpartisan, but the majority of posters on this board would tell you they align with liberal and progressive ideologies. Now you are getting in bed with the enemy."

That's a dishonest statement. First, over the past 40 years the ACLU has shown itself a left-leaning group by the cases. The 'nonpartisan' claim is about as objective as Elon Musk's opinion on the virtues of AI.

But second, many of us have open minds, and will praise protections of our rights and oppose destruction of them, regardless of who is doing to attacks/protections.

Oldbear83 said:

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Oso: " Technically, the ACLU is nonpartisan, but the majority of posters on this board would tell you they align with liberal and progressive ideologies. Now you are getting in bed with the enemy."

That's a dishonest statement. First, over the past 40 years the ACLU has shown itself a left-leaning group by the cases. The 'nonpartisan' claim is about as objective as Elon Musk's opinion on the virtues of AI.

But second, many of us have open minds, and will praise protections of our rights and oppose destruction of them, regardless of who is doing to attacks/protections.

---

This is the ACLU mission statement. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with the mission to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States, while expanding those protections to people historically denied them.

That's non partisan. And just as I said, posters on here (you specifically) would say it was left.

Mark Twain nailed it: There's lies, damned, lies, and there's Statistics.

But message received: You hate cops, regardless of what else you say.

So you go by the mission statement, not what they actually do.

By your logic, Enron's execs did nothing wrong, because, you know, they had a Code of Ethics.

They just didn't follow them.

Same with the ACLU.

El Oso said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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Oso: " Technically, the ACLU is nonpartisan, but the majority of posters on this board would tell you they align with liberal and progressive ideologies. Now you are getting in bed with the enemy."

That's a dishonest statement. First, over the past 40 years the ACLU has shown itself a left-leaning group by the cases. The 'nonpartisan' claim is about as objective as Elon Musk's opinion on the virtues of AI.

But second, many of us have open minds, and will praise protections of our rights and oppose destruction of them, regardless of who is doing to attacks/protections.

---

This is the ACLU mission statement. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with the mission to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States, while expanding those protections to people historically denied them.

That's non partisan. And just as I said, posters on here (you specifically) would say it was left.

---

Who wants to tell him the Southern Poverty & Law Center had to resort to funding T'RACISM to keep the grift going?

Flock license plate cameras are surging in Texas. So is an anti-surveillance backlash. https://t.co/nsb5O5Psqx

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) August 10, 2026

Did Flock cameras collapse the crime rate?

There are now about 120,000 Flock cameras across the US.

In the last few years, we have reached record low violent crime rates, and automobile theft is down 50%.

This probably isn't a coincidence. Surveys of police departments…

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 10, 2026

Did Flock cameras collapse the crime rate?

There are now about 120,000 Flock cameras across the US.

In the last few years, we have reached record low violent crime rates, and automobile theft is down 50%.

This probably isn't a coincidence. Surveys of police departments indicate that Flock is helping to solve hundreds of thousands of crimes a year.

Some crimes, like automobile theft and kidnapping, should get to approximately zero if Flock cameras and other kinds of crime-fighting technology continue to proliferate. But every type of crime will get harder to pull off. Think about how much more difficult murder becomes without being able to use a getaway vehicle.

The abuses that have been found are regrettable but rare. We're talking dozens of cases. Even if it's a large underestimate, there is no reason to suspect that safeguards against abuse aren't working extremely well.

The public safety benefits of Flock are massive, and the costs are manageable.

This is one of the easiest public policy questions you're going to find.

Don't believe the numbers on crimes solved? Fine, assume that they're off by an order of magnitude. Also, go ahead and assume that the abuses are also off by an order of magnitude. To be pro-Flock cameras is still an easy decision. pic.twitter.com/WhINBpajGb

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) August 10, 2026

1-2 million or more illegals deported one way or another probably account for a major portion of the lower crime rates

More importantly, the 4th amendment issues are not about statistics. It does not matter how often people complain about their rights being violated. Every time it happens it's a problem, whether the victim complains or not. And it's not just about the rogue police staffer abusing the cameras for personal reasons (we see plenty of such headlines). It's the routine official use of cameras everywhere to spy on people, recording personal information on everyone and tracking our movements. We don't know what information what Biden & the fascists were collecting: who went to church and where, who went to a political meeting, who went to a store of restaurant some politician or bureaucrat did not approve of, etc. We don't know what they would have done with all that unconstitutionally gained information had Kamala won. Thank God. But we have no reason to ignore the threat as merely benign. The excesses that we know about are bad enough (and no doubt there were plenty we still don't know about).

The constitution is not optional. It limits government power for a reason and applies all of the time.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Ben Franklin

El Oso said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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" I simply said LEOs have been known to kill civilians, and when that happens, the posters on this board say it is because the citizen wasn't cooperating"

You are certainly intelligent enough to understand your statement is completely unreasonable, since it applies a broad brush of insinuation against both law enforcement and the common response on this board to specific and overtly politicized incidents.

---

I'm not insinuating anything. I'm flat out saying law enforcement kills civilians on a fairly regular basis (1,314 in 2025 alone; that's 3.6 people per day). And damn near every time it happens, posters on this board say the cops did nothing wrong. They had no choice. I even referenced a specific post on this board that was started two or three days ago.

If there's a broad brush here, it is because LEOs are killing 3.6 people per day.

---

Yeah but if you can stomach the idea that maybe some shoots are justified, you have to figure out how much of those 3.6 is justified. A counter argument could be that LEOs don't shoot enough people, and if they shot more criminals they would prevent more crime. I think in rare instances this is the case. Some departments have policies to not chase suspects on foot. They get away and commit more crime.