The common enemy bringing Americans of the left and right together:Flockcameras documenting everybody all the time

In our intensely divided moment, there’s one thing that the right and left seem to agree on: they hate Flock cameras.The cameras are installed in most urban areas across the country and record the license plate number of every car that drives past them, storing information about people’s movement in a database, for use by local governments and police departments.According to the company, Flock has 120,000 active cameras across the United States.

Many police departments and investigators claim they make solving crimes and locating individuals easier than ever.But critics are stacking up, citing alleged police misuse, privacy rights violations and mass surveillance. “It reminds me of these sci-fi AI, like, the government’s-watching-you kind of movies,” anti-Flock organizer Brian McKellar told The Post.Over the past several months, Flock cameras have been the cause of constant protests and the formation of grassroots groups against them, like DeFlock.

Vigilante vandals have even taken to obstructing and destroying the cameras themselves.Perhaps the most interesting feature is the protests aren’t along party lines.Progressive social media like Bluesky is flooded with people accusing the cameras of being tools of a fascist government, while conservatives with a libertarian streak tend to see it as an issue of big government overreach into our private lives.McKellar, of Idaho Falls, is a self-identified conservative who believes in law and order, but he thinks the cameras go too far.“I don’t live in Idaho because I want to be surveilled all the time.

I like the country.I like the West.

I like being in the Wild, Wild West,” he told The Post.McKellar, 40, only became aware that his local police department had taken to using Flock cameras for surveillance last year, when another resident made a complaint about them during a town hall meeting.The revelation disturbed him so much he helped launch DeFlock Idaho this summer.It’s a grassroots organizatio...