He Offered to Surveil the Whole City Council. On Purpose.
A resident in Casa Grande, Arizona walked to the public-comment podium and, with a straight face, announced a company to track every city official and their family around the clock. Then he revealed the point: it is precisely what Flock’s cameras already do to everyone else.
On July 20, 2026, the City Council in Casa Grande, Arizona held its regular meeting. The city had recently signed a ten-year, roughly $10 million contract with Flock Safety — more than 220 devices, including plate readers, pan-tilt-zoom cameras, drones, and gunshot detection. During the call to the public, a resident stepped to the podium, started his three-minute clock, and delivered one of the sharpest arguments against that system we have seen. He simply offered to do the same thing to the council.
What he said, in full
“Good evening. I hope you guys have been having a great summer — I know I have. I’ve spent the last several months talking to people all over Casa Grande, and one thing keeps coming up: safety.
So today I’m excited to announce a new company, called Shepherd Safety. Our mission is simple: keep government officials and their families safe.
We’re launching satellites to watch over Casa Grande day and night. Our AI will monitor where government officials go, where they stop, who they meet with, and when they return home.
We’ve already started collecting and building profiles on your vehicles, your spouses’ vehicles, your children’s vehicles, and other visual characteristics. We’ll combine that information with publicly available data — Bluetooth signals, advertising IDs, vehicle information, commercial data sources — so our authorized users can replay the movements of every government official and their immediate family. There’s no difference from the current Flock capture systems.
Everything will be stored securely, and only authorized users will have access. Local businesses will be invited to join our network, so government officials can continue being protected while shopping, eating, or traveling throughout the city.
Some of you might think this is invasive. You may worry about abuse. You may worry about unauthorized access, about tracking innocent people. We understand those concerns. After all, those are the exact same concerns of all the citizens.
But we’ve been told not to worry — because if you’re doing nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide. You have no expectation of privacy in public. So if we track all your movements and put them up online, it’s okay. Only authorized users will have access — we made that clear. And we’re only going to store the data for 30 days. So it’s no different from Flock.
Privacy doesn’t stop being important because someone says the word ‘safety.’ We shouldn’t accept this level of surveillance for our elected officials and their families — and we shouldn’t accept it for ourselves.
Now — this is satire. I would never do this to you. Could I? Probably. But I wouldn’t, because it’s wrong. Just like what you guys are doing to us is wrong. I’m innocent. I don’t do anything wrong. You’re tracking and uploading my information, my movements, every day, without my permission — and I don’t appreciate it, and I’d like you to stop. I’d like you to do something about it. I’d like you to put it behind a warrant, just like my phone records. That’s what I’m asking you guys to do. Thanks.”
Transcribed from the meeting’s on-screen captions and lightly cleaned for readability. His name and home street, which he gave at the very start, are omitted here.
Why it lands
Every argument for the cameras gets turned around and handed back: you’re in public, so there’s no privacy; only authorized users have access; the data is kept just 30 days; if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide. Said back to the officials about their own families, the logic falls apart on contact. It is the same device as our Modest Proposal — the fastest way to make a decision-maker feel a surveillance system is to point it at them for ninety seconds.
Take it to the podium on August 17
New Hanover County’s commissioners take up the Flock contract on August 17. If you plan to speak, here is the same bit, tuned for our county — the numbers are ours. Deliver it deadpan.
“A Modest Public-Safety Proposal” — New Hanover County Commissioners (about 3 minutes)
Good evening. I’m here to announce a new public-safety initiative, and to ask the Board’s support.
I’m proposing we install automated cameras to track the movements of all five County Commissioners, the County Manager, and the Sheriff. Every time your vehicle passes a camera, we’ll log it — the location, the time, the direction you’re headed — and store it in a searchable database. We’ll build a history of everywhere you drive: to work, to church, to the doctor, to dinner.
I anticipate some objections, so let me answer them in advance. You might say it invades your privacy — but you’re on public roads, and there’s no expectation of privacy in public. You might say it could be misused — but we’ll have a policy, and only authorized users will search it. You might say you never consented — but no one is going to ask you. And if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.
To be efficient, we’ll share your travel data with about 5,000 other agencies across the country — Texas, the FBI, anyone with a login — so they can search where you’ve been too. No warrant required. Just a reason typed into a box that nobody checks.
Everything I’ve described is already happening — to 230,000 people in this county. Your Flock system logged the local network 2.98 million times in six months. The names of who ran those searches? Redacted. The cost to the taxpayers you answer to? $219,000.
I don’t actually want to track any of you. I want you to feel, for ninety seconds, what it’s like to be the one on the map instead of the one reading it. So here’s my proposal in full: the day you vote to end the Flock contract, I’ll withdraw mine. Until then — welcome to the network. Thank you.
Deliver it straight-faced — keep the first two-thirds sounding like a real proposal so the turn lands. Don’t single out any commissioner by name; the satire targets the logic, which keeps it civil and hard to gavel down. Confirm the meeting’s public-comment sign-up and time limit first (usually three minutes).
The Board funds this system, and only the Board can end it. They meet August 17. The sign-up to speak is on this site.
Source. The video is public comment from the City of Casa Grande (AZ) City Council regular meeting of July 20, 2026, trimmed from the city’s own recording, a public record (full meeting). Casa Grande approved a ten-year, roughly $10 million Flock contract in 2025. The New Hanover figures — about $219,000 and roughly 2.98 million searches of the local network in six months — come from the county’s own records, archived in our records repository. This post is commentary and general information, not legal advice.
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name, then tell your county commissioners to cancel the Flock contract.