DeFlockILM: The Group Opposing Flock Surveillance Cameras in the Cape Fear
The citizen-led group working to get Flock’s automated license plate readers — and the surveillance that rides with them — out of the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.
DeFlockILM is a nonpartisan, citizen-led coalition of New Hanover County residents working to remove Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance cameras from Wilmington and New Hanover County, North Carolina. Its members are lawyers, parents, gun owners, LGBTQ neighbors, veterans, people active in local politics, and longtime activists — many of whom prefer to work behind the scenes. The group publishes the public records behind the county’s Flock program, tracks the statewide fight against ALPR surveillance across North Carolina, and gives residents a direct, doable way to press their elected officials to cancel the county’s Flock contract.
Records in the open, and one clear next step
DeFlockILM does three things. We publish the public records — the county’s ~$219,000 Flock contract (No. 25-0364) and the 2,980,082-search audit the Sheriff’s Office produced with every searching agency and officer redacted. We track the fight — locally and across the state, naming the North Carolina communities that have canceled Flock and the ones still deciding. And we give residents a way to act — a plain-language FAQ, a running public-records hub, and a one-click way to email the officials who fund the cameras.
New Hanover County residents, from every corner
DeFlockILM is a coalition of New Hanover County residents — lawyers, parents, gun owners, LGBTQ neighbors, veterans, people active in local politics on both sides, and longtime activists — united by one nonpartisan conviction: a free country does not track innocent people without a warrant. Many of our members work behind the scenes. Some are understandably cautious about attaching their names to a public campaign that questions local law enforcement, and that caution is part of why this matters. The movement is larger than the names you see.
The effort was started by a New Hanover County attorney, Mark Spencer Williams, who serves as its public point of contact — but DeFlockILM is a group, not a person, and most of the work happens out of the spotlight.
The concern reaches across every political line. Residents active in a wide range of organizations — among them Indivisible Wilmington, ILMAction, the Libertarian Party, the NAACP, the ACLU, and both Democrats and Republicans — have engaged with us on the issue of warrantless mass surveillance. We mention them for one reason only: to show how little this breaks down along partisan lines. None of these organizations has endorsed DeFlockILM, and DeFlockILM is not affiliated with, funded by, or speaking for any of them. We simply keep finding the same worry in very different rooms.
Together we have filed public-records requests to New Hanover County, the surrounding Cape Fear counties, the New Hanover beach towns, and all sixteen UNC System universities, and served demand letters pressing agencies to produce their ALPR records. This is pro-Constitution, not anti-police: public safety should not require the suspicionless tracking of innocent people.
Wilmington and New Hanover County, North Carolina
New Hanover County holds the contract with Flock Safety (#25-0364), which the Sheriff’s Office operates. Public records show the county’s network was searched roughly 2.98 million times in about 16 months, and the crowdsourced DeFlock map shows at least 62 ALPR cameras in the Wilmington area. The elected County Commissioners who fund the contract — and Sheriff Ed McMahon who operates it — can also end it. That is the lever, and that is where DeFlockILM points residents. (Every figure, sourced, in one place.)
The county isn’t the whole map. Three New Hanover beach towns run their own Flock cameras, each wired into the same nationwide network: Carolina Beach (five), Kure Beach (four), and Wrightsville Beach (four; produced Aug 14 after a 45-day holdout, audit logs still outstanding). And the City of Wilmington, while it operates no Flock cameras of its own, runs a police drone program and a Fusus “STING” real-time crime center that stitches surveillance feeds together. We work the whole county — not just the Sheriff’s Flock contract.
Add your name. Tell your commissioners.
Anyone in the Wilmington area can help. Sign the petition, use the talking points, read the FAQ, and email the New Hanover County Commissioners and Sheriff Ed McMahon. Questions? Contact us at Mark@DeFlockILM.org.
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name — then tell the officials who represent you to take the cameras down.