You probably felt a rush of righteous schadenfreude when you heard the news. The CEO of Flock Safety—America’s biggest automated license plate reader (ALPR) network—had his personal data exposed online. The guy who built a business out of tracking millions of innocent people’s movements finally got a taste of his own medicine. It felt like poetic justice.
But let’s pause for a second and look at the device you’re reading this on. You are voluntarily carrying an always-connected phone with a fused battery, loaded with apps you don’t control. It has significantly more surveillance capabilities than a Flock camera, and you likely pay a premium for the privilege.
We don’t hate the panopticon. We just resent not being the ones holding the keys.
The outrage over this CEO’s exposure is a masterclass in modern hypocrisy. We are scandalized when a surveillance baron’s home address is leaked, yet we blindly accept that our own daily movements are harvested, packaged, and sold every single day. The only time surveillance becomes objectionable in our society is when it targets the powerful.
Flock Safety’s entire business model relies on the normalization of public surveillance. They deploy thousands of cameras across cities like San Francisco, logging your license plate, your location, and the time you drove past. They justify it under the guise of public safety, but the infrastructure is fundamentally a mass tracking system. And it is perfectly legal.
Yet, when the EU briefly established a similar registry to expose the data of business owners and rule-makers, it was shut down almost immediately. Why? Because the system was never designed to protect everyone. It was designed to decide who gets to watch whom.
The outrage isn’t that we’re being watched. The outrage is that the watchers forgot to exempt themselves.
Think about the staggering legal asymmetry here. When Flock Safety logs your car outside a medical clinic or a protest, it’s called “innovation.” When an EU registry logs a CEO’s home address, it’s called a “privacy violation” or a “security threat.” The rules of the game are clear: mass data collection is a feature for the public, but a bug for the elite.
When the SFPD uses ALPR cameras, the policy says tracking individuals for non-criminal purposes is an abuse. But who enforces that? You? With what tools? The data is already collected. The database already exists. You don’t control it, and you never will.
Privacy in America isn’t a right. It’s a luxury good, priced out for the public but subsidized for the powerful.
The next time a tech CEO gets doxxed, enjoy the brief hit of schadenfreude. But let it serve as a chilling reminder of your own reality. Your movements are already being collected by license plate readers, phones, and apps. The Flock Safety CEO didn’t get a taste of his own medicine. He got a taste of yours. And the fact that his exposure was a scandal, while your daily tracking is just Tuesday, is the only story that matters.
FAQ
Q: Isn't Flock Safety just helping police catch dangerous criminals?
A: That's the marketing pitch, but the reality is mass data collection. ALPRs log the movements of millions of innocent people to build historical databases. Mass surveillance isn't targeted policing; it's a dragnet that treats everyone as a potential suspect.
Q: What does this mean for my everyday privacy?
A: It means your location data is already being harvested by private companies and law enforcement with almost zero oversight. You don't control the cameras, you don't control the database, and you have no say in how long they keep your data.
Q: So we should just accept that privacy is dead?
A: No. We should demand the same legal protections the EU registry gave its elites. If real-time public tracking is too invasive for a CEO, it's too invasive for the rest of us. Stop accepting two tiers of privacy.