Nationwide vandalism and contract cancellations mount against Flock Safety cameras

Communities across the United States are turning against Flock Safety, the surveillance startup whose automated license plate readers have become a flashpoint in a national debate over privacy, policing and immigration enforcement.

According to a Guardian investigation, at least 33 documented instances of people damaging, vandalizing or destroying Flock cameras have been recorded across 23 states, acts their perpetrators frame explicitly as protests against mass surveillance. A National Week of Action organized by opponents of the technology was set to begin Aug. 16.

The destruction has taken varied forms. Surveillance cameras owned by Flock have been cut down with electric saws in New York state, vandalized with paint in Oakland, California, and rammed with a truck in Idaho and Minnesota, among other states. In Oregon, six license plate-scanning cameras on poles were cut down, with a note left at the scene reading “Hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling f*cks,” according to reporting from Blood in the Machine journalist Brian Merchant. Arlington County, Virginia police confirmed two cameras were spray-painted in May.

Not everyone accused of camera destruction has avoided consequences. In Suffolk, Virginia, Jeffrey Sovern faces a destruction of property charge tied to more than a dozen damaged cameras; he has not admitted to the act but told police he considers the cameras unconstitutional, writing on a fundraising page that he hopes the episode becomes “a catalyst in a bigger movement to roll back intrusive surveillance.” In New Mexico, Jevon Martinez was arrested after allegedly destroying 13 devices.

One of the movement’s most visible figures here at home in Minneapolis is a masked vigilante who goes by Nomark, previously profiled by the Daily Planet as a costumed civic watchman who patrols public spaces, believing that “we all have eyes, and they matter.” Coincidentally, Nomark appears in a video with Johan Vargas dismantling a Flock camera in Minneapolis.

The Lime scooter “takeover” that was planned by Vargas in Downtown Minneapolis this past weekend saw thousands, well, flock, to Minneapolis. Vargas said he is planning to host a similar scooter group cruise this Friday at 9 PM at U.S. Bank Stadium, but in protest against Flock Cameras.

Recently, Nomark has shifted his online activity toward disabling cameras directly, telling AFP he has taken out roughly 30 Flock devices and posting instructional videos to his roughly 500,000 Instagram followers. “I’m not really as scared anymore,” he said. The Facebook group DeFlock America, which crowdsources maps of camera locations and tactics for disabling them, has grown to more than 600,000 members.

The backlash extends well beyond individual vandalism. Roughly 23 city councils nationwide have voted since the start of 2026 to cancel, reject or not renew Flock contracts, with critics questioning how long data is retained, who can access it, and whether information collected locally could ultimately reach federal immigration authorities. In Mountain View, California, city officials discovered Flock had enabled out-of-state agencies to access local camera data without the city’s knowledge, prompting the police chief to call the arrangement “frankly unacceptable” and suspend the system entirely. In El Cerrito, California, the City Council voted in May not to renew its Flock contract, switching off the city’s cameras in June.

Flock, an Atlanta-based company valued at $7.5 billion, maintains that municipalities own the data their cameras collect, that police departments can set their own retention schedules, and that departments choose whether to share data with other agencies, including the federal government. The company says its network of more than 100,000 to 120,000 cameras nationwide has helped recover stolen vehicles, locate missing children and assist in thousands of criminal investigations. CEO Garrett Langley has compared DeFlock, the activist group that maps camera locations, to Antifa, though DeFlock itself has not been implicated in any vandalism.

Opposition intensified this year alongside stepped-up federal immigration enforcement. A 404 Media investigation found Flock’s lookup tool aided at least 4,000 immigration-related searches between the start of the Trump administration and May 2025, and critics say ICE has used the network’s reach even in jurisdictions whose local police say they don’t share data directly.

Law enforcement has taken notice of the organizing as well as the vandalism. Dozens of state fusion centers, the federal-local intelligence-sharing hubs created after Sept. 11, have circulated memos this summer directing officers to monitor anti-Flock advocacy, according to documents obtained by journalist Dan Boguslaw and reported in his Deeper States newsletter in July. As of August, 23 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands have enacted statutes or rules governing use of automated license plate readers.