Politico reports:

Communities across the U.S. are cutting ties with Flock Safety, one of the country’s leading producers of license plate readers and other surveillance systems, over concerns around mass surveillance and data privacy — and fears over how data could be used in immigration crackdowns.

Residents have swarmed city council meetings in states where Flock cameras have cropped up to urge elected officials to cancel contracts or deactivate Flock cameras — arguing that the technology could be used to track people traveling to places of worship, medical care centers, political protests and other sensitive locations.

“It was a bipartisan issue within our community. We had work boots and Subarus in our parking lot and they were united in their position against the Flock cameras,” Josh Young, a Republican commissioner of Macon County, North Carolina, said in an interview.

Over 20 local jurisdictions either stopped using Flock cameras or began the process of doing so in July, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, an activist group that has been mapping the company. It’s the highest amount in a single month since they began tracking in 2021.

The pushback against the surveillance technology — which caught fire in some liberal towns last year amid fears of data collection related to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown — runs parallel to sprawling fights over the future of technology in American life, including the rise of increasingly advanced artificial intelligence tools and the construction of massive data centers needed to power them. [Continue reading…]