Remove Flock from Humboldt
Humboldt County Residents: Do You Know You’re Being Tracked?
Help Us Remove Flock Safety Cameras from Our Roads.
If you’ve driven around Humboldt County recently, there’s a good chance your license plate has been scanned, logged, and stored — without your knowledge or consent.
Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that photograph every passing vehicle, record your plate, time, location, and direction of travel, and retain that data for up to 30 days (or longer). These cameras have been quietly installed across our county with little to no public debate, community input, or transparency about how that data is used, who can access it, or how long it’s really kept.
This is mass surveillance of law-abiding people. And Humboldt County deserves better.
Here’s what concerns us:
• No meaningful consent. Residents were never asked whether they wanted a surveillance network built around their daily movements.
• Data sharing risks. Flock Safety shares data with law enforcement agencies across the country. Your commute through Eureka could end up in a federal database.
• Chilling effects on our community. Humboldt has a long tradition of valuing personal freedom and privacy. Blanket vehicle tracking is fundamentally at odds with that.
• Lack of oversight. There’s been no public accountability structure established for how this data is managed locally.
What you can do:
- Sign the petition to call on the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to remove Flock Safety cameras from county roads and halt any new installations pending full public review.
https://www.change.org/p/remove-flock-cameras-from-our-county-and-communities
Show up. Board of Supervisors meetings are open to the public. Public comment matters — especially when it’s consistent and shows up in numbers.
Share this post. The more Humboldt residents know about this, the harder it is to ignore.
Our roads shouldn’t be a data collection network. Let’s keep Humboldt the kind of place where you can drive to the farmers market without being tracked. (I’ve also been told by a local alarm/security company that the Arcata Plaza will be installing facial recognition cameras very soon.)
Here’s an interesting video about Flock.
https://youtu.be/vU1-uiUlHTo?si=4zkAkpvNTS-tsMv9
I’d love to hear about any other movements/petitions/etc about anything relating to the removal of flock cameras from Humboldt.