Your car got its picture taken recently. Not by an H-1B or a Muslim doing Sharia law, but by a camera that sits on a stupid pole. The pole, the camera, and the tiny solar panel all work for an Atlanta company called Flock Safety. Flock runs the largest vehicle-tracking surveillance network in America. Police anywhere can search it like Ask Jeeves, and the very trustworthy people at Flock swear that every city controls its own data.
Sam Aly is a Pflugerville man and our hero in today’s story. He asked his city for the logs of its 28 spy cameras. Six months of records came back, and Sam did the unthinkable. He read them!
Pflugerville police searched their own system 5,078 times, but outside agencies searched it 1,597,918 times! Many people are saying that’s a lot of searches.
City leaders believed sharing was limited to about 80 approved partners. The city later admitted more than 400 agencies got in and only 83 had permission. Flock will tell you a “search” doesn’t prove anyone actually pulled a Pflugerville plate. But does anyone care at this point? Who still supports building this enslavement surveillance grid in 2026? Apparently, not too many people after they look at data instead of the marketing.
Council Member Jonathan Coffman checked Aly’s math against the data and posted it on a Monday night.
By Tuesday afternoon the mayor had staff do a “bag and tag” of all 28 cameras. Literal plastic bags over those stupid lenses. Then, the police chief said this about the mass surveillance tool:
“We’ve lost confidence in the current system and the vendor’s ability to meet our data and privacy standards.”
The council killed the $175,000 renewal unanimously.
Fun fact: the contract had already expired on July 31. The cameras kept running through the “negotiations,” because of course they did.
The school district then pulled Flock’s spy cameras off its campuses. And on Friday, Governor Abbott ordered state agencies to stop funding Flock, right as the Texas Tribune revealed that a fee on every Texas auto insurance policy bought $30 million of these spy sticks!!!
But here’s the thing, this guy Sam has got an Open Records Request that’s going to fix everything.
“OUR SETTINGS SAID ONE THING. THE SYSTEM APPEARS TO BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE.”
- Councilman Coffman on what Pflugerville’s opt-out settings turned out to be worth.
Flock’s response, in its own words: statewide sharing had been switched on for Pflugerville since 2024, two out-of-state agencies were “mistakenly categorized as Texas agencies,” and:
“We take responsibility for that error, which was corrected months ago.”
Ok so, guilty. Noted.
This is happening everywhere people bother to look into these surveillance devices. In Wisconsin, A Flock rep told the city council heat maps of your movements were “not available.” The next morning the police chief checked and said,
“My staff advised me that the system does create heat maps. I visually confirmed this this morning.”
The council voted to cancel Flock 7-0 within 24 hours. Flock then blamed “activists.” LOL!
By the way, this is the company 734 Texas governments are sleeping with.
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THE CHEAT CODE
Aly sent Current Revolt his request, word for word. It’s printed in full below, and it never names Pflugerville, so it works in your city exactly as written.
Please provide the following records related to the City’s use of Flock Safety (Flock Group Inc., including Aerodome) license plate reader cameras and related products:
1. All contracts, agreements, quotes, renewals, amendments, purchase orders, and invoices with Flock Safety from January 1, 2020 to present.
2. Exports of the Flock system’s Organization Audit, Network Audit, and Event Log for the most recent six complete months, in CSV format if available.
3. Any City or Police Department policy or procedure governing use of the Flock/ALPR system, including data retention settings.
4. Any data-sharing agreements or records showing which outside agencies (local, state, or federal) can access the City’s Flock data, and whether the City participates in Flock’s statewide or national lookup network.
5. Any requests from outside agencies or 3rd parties to access the city’s flock data and whether it was provided.
6. Emails between City officials or employees and anyone with an @flocksafety.com email address, from January 1, 2022 to present.
7. Records of any free trials, pilot programs, or demo equipment provided by Flock to the City.
8. The number and locations of Flock cameras deployed by the City (locations may be redacted if needed).
9. Any council agenda items, staff reports, or presentations about approving or renewing a Flock contract.
Your city gets ten business days to respond. They cannot ask why you want it. They cannot force you to identify yourself (although some might make you pay in person, but you can send someone else in to pay.) If the greedy government wants more than $40 in fees, they must give you an itemized estimate first.
We built a list of all 734 Texas government entities with a documented Flock relationship, and the records-request link for nearly every agency.
Find your town. File your request.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s-sCkj4gT2hr3pLLrF7Ufs2-tzTwmIY8QrWg4ggLEcE/edit?usp=sharing
Current Revolt has already started filing. We asked Pflugerville for the raw logs and the full 459-agency list. We asked DPS for its complete statewide sharing roster and the state’s audit logs. Don’t think anyone has published those. Answers are due by mid-September. File in your city and send us what comes back. Tips@CurrentRevolt.com
Round Rock and Cedar Park residents say they’ve already filed. Glenn Heights voted Flock down 1-6 before even installing the bastards. Seventeen Texas governments have yeeted Flock’s spy cameras, eleven in August, four of them in one night!
Last November, Sam Aly ran for Pflugerville City Council as a write-in and lost to Jonathan Coffman. Ten months later, the man who beat him at the ballot box carried his spreadsheet to the dais and finished the job.
Amazin’.
Flock watches every car in Texas. Pick your nose at a red light and somewhere a server is processing that data. They see everything in Texas. And they never saw Sam Aly coming.
Finish the job, Texan.