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When residents of Madison County, North Carolina, sought to speak about the county’s AI surveillance cameras at a recent Madison County Commissioners meeting, commissioner Michael Garrison’s response was simple: “You will not speak on Flock tonight.”

A clip capturing Garrison’s move to prevent public comment soon went viral, resonating with others waging similar battles in their communities. This sort of democratic abuse is not unusual when it comes to the fight against Flock Safety, automated license plate readers more broadly, and other forms of surveillance.

To thousands of people across the country demanding an end to the use of automated license plate readers, it has become abundantly clear that the struggle is deeper than surveillance. At its core, organizing to end the use of automated license plate readers is a fight to imagine and build meaningful practices of democracy.

While companies like Flock Safety, Axon, and Motorola Solutions (among others) sell cameras to cities and police departments across the country under the auspices of improving public safety, these AI surveillance cameras are much more powerful than the companies pushing them suggest, and it is increasingly clear that they actually make us all less safe. These misnamed cameras are always on, collecting data on passing cars at all hours, and do more than just document license plates of driving cars: They can make essentially all information captured in a photo — including the make of a car, color, manufacturer, if the car has dents, bumper stickers, etc. — searchable by police and corporate customers.

This past year has exposed just how dangerous automated license plate readers are as Flock Safety’s products have reportedly been used in immigration enforcement, abortion monitoring, repeated incidents of stalking, and experienced major cybersecurity breaches. But Flock is not alone. Motorola Solutions has long partnered with federal immigration enforcement, while Axon has deep ties to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and a history of major ethics violations. Flock has rightfully earned the public’s ire, but these problems are constitutive of the police surveillance industry more broadly.

SCOTUS Ruling Could Be Bad News for Flock — But Won’t Stop Mass Surveillance

After learning about the use of these AI cameras in their communities, thousands of people across the country have demanded that automated license plate reader cameras be removed. Thus far, more than 80 communities have either canceled, rejected, or deactivated their cameras in the........

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