Educating the Public Was Always the Point

DeFlockILM exists to educate the public about mass government surveillance and to advocate for change. Our goal is to put the facts about Flock’s camera network in front of the people living under it, in language they can use. The contracts, the policies, and the search logs are the government’s own records. We request them, publish them in full, and explain what they mean.

Education spreads in two ways, and over the past several months we have watched both take hold. One is media coverage — newsrooms reporting on what the records show. The other is public awareness — residents finding the material on their own, reading it, and acting on it. They are not the same thing, and the difference is worth understanding, because the mission needs both.

Media coverage: the spark

Media coverage is the part you can see from a distance. Independent link data shows roughly 130 news organizations across 38 states citing our work, from local television stations to national outlets. Here at home that includes WECT, WBTV, the Wilmington StarNews, Port City Daily, WHQR, the Cape Fear Beacon, and WITN.

That reach came from the records, not from our opinions. One finding carried the furthest — that out-of-state agencies search North Carolina’s cameras at enormous scale, anchored by the fact that Houston police searched one North Carolina university’s camera network more than 183,000 times in three months. A newsroom in any state can verify a number like that and report it. We will also be plain about how this works: much of the national reach came through a single investigation carried across a group of affiliated stations. We count that as a strength. The data was clear enough to be worth running in dozens of markets at once.

What media coverage does well is reach and credibility. A reporter vouches for the facts, and an audience hears them who would never have searched for us. What it does not do is last. A broadcast airs, the news cycle turns, and the attention fades.

Public awareness: the lasting part

Awareness is quieter and more durable. It is the resident who, after seeing a story, comes to the site to understand what the cameras actually do — and stays to read. We can see it in which pages people reach and share on their own. The material cited by the widest range of independent sites is practical, not political:

• How the cameras work — the plain-language explainer of what Flock can and cannot do.
• What homeowners can do — HOA and homeowner-rights guidance, including where an opt-out is real and where it is not.
• Why it crosses the spectrum — the privacy case as gun owners and hunters see it, and the constitutional argument from the Fourth Amendment and the Chatrie litigation.
• How to act — how to request records, email local leaders, and speak at a county commission meeting.

This is education doing its job. A person does not just hear that the cameras exist; they learn what the cameras do, what the law allows, and what they can do about it. That knowledge stays with them after the news story is forgotten, and it is the same knowledge that shows up later as a petition signature, a public comment, or a records request of their own.

How the two work together

The point is not to choose between them. Media coverage is the spark; awareness is what it lights. A single investigation can send thousands of people toward an explainer that keeps teaching long after the segment airs. Our job is to make sure that when the attention comes, the records and the explanations are there, clear and complete, ready to turn a viewer into an informed resident.

That is the mission, measured honestly. Not how loud a single week was, but how many more people understand a surveillance system their government built without asking them — and feel equipped to question it.

Education is not only online

The reach is not limited to what you can read here. Behind the site is steady, hands-on work:

• More than 90 public-records requests filed and published — the contracts, policies, and search audits this entire project is built on, available for anyone to read.
• More than 200 articles and explainers written in plain language, turning government records and statutes into something a resident can actually use.
• In-person talks to community organizations across the political spectrum — among them the NAACP and the Cape Fear Libertarian Party, with more to come. We are available to speak to any group that wants to understand this technology, and the invitation is open.
• Free public seminars on Flock and mass government surveillance, open to anyone — no cost, no membership required.

Privacy is not a partisan issue, and our audiences prove it. The same questions bring together groups that agree on little else — because the right to move through your own community without being logged and tracked belongs to everyone.

Where the surveillance is heading — and where we are going next

Fixed license-plate readers were the first wave. The next one is already here, and it is larger. Across Southeastern North Carolina, agencies are moving toward integrated, real-time surveillance — and we are following the records into it:

• Axon “Fusus” real-time crime centers. These platforms pull plate readers, public and private cameras, and other sensors into a single live dashboard. Wilmington is standing one up — it calls it the STING Center — and the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office and the City of Durham are moving the same direction. We have the first records in hand and more requests pending.
• PTZ cameras. Unlike a fixed plate reader, a pan-tilt-zoom camera can be aimed, zoomed, and followed by an operator in real time — closer to live watching than passive logging. As these feed into the crime centers, the question shifts from “what was recorded” to “who is watching, right now, and why.”
• Drone operations. “Drone-as-First-Responder” programs — Skydio and others — put cameras in the air on routine calls. Durham has approved a multi-year Axon package that includes them; Wilmington and New Hanover have been in vendor discussions. We have asked the FAA for the flight authorizations across the Cape Fear, and we will publish what comes back.

The pattern is the one we started with: powerful tools adopted quietly, without a public vote and without rules the public helped write. Our work does not change as the technology does. We request the records, publish them in full, explain what they mean — and give residents the chance to weigh in before the system is built, not after.

What comes next

Every county we examine produces new records, and often a new story in markets far from here. We will keep requesting those records, keep publishing them in full, and keep explaining what they mean. If you have learned something here, the most useful thing you can do is pass it on: read the records, share them, and ask your own town or county for theirs. That is how education becomes accountability — one informed neighbor at a time.