Vigilantes Are Smashing Flock License-Plate Cameras in a DIY War on Surveillance

A loosely organized protest movement is physically disabling Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers (ALPRs) across the US. These solar-powered, pole-mounted cameras photograph passing vehicles and match plates against large databases, and privacy critics argue they enable warrantless mass tracking of people who aren’t suspected of any crime. Flock — a Georgia company valued at $8.4bn that says its cameras scan plates billions of times monthly across roughly 6,000 communities — denies the devices are surveillance tools, and police departments defend them as essential to investigations. The Guardian documented at least 33 acts of deliberate anti-surveillance sabotage across 23 states, ranging from cutting power wires and taping over lenses to paint-bombing devices and 3D-printing lens-blockers.

The piece profiles “NoMark,” a masked Minneapolis vigilante with over 700,000 social followers who says he has taken down more than a dozen cameras and fields dozens of daily messages from would-be imitators. Others have been less lucky: individuals in Virginia and New Mexico face destruction-of-property charges, with some framing their actions as constitutional resistance and raising legal-defense money online. An anti-Flock ecosystem now trades tactics on Reddit and social media, alongside fake Flock cease-and-desist letters that exploit the company’s poor public image.

The backlash extends beyond property damage. More than 80 cities have dropped, declined to renew, or deactivated Flock contracts, including Austin and Denver. Meanwhile, law enforcement is treating the movement as a security concern: state fusion centers have circulated memos urging officers to monitor anti-Flock activism and report ALPR vandalism, framing surveillance of the protesters themselves as national-security work — a dynamic that sharpens the movement’s core complaint about how these systems get used.