America's surveillance state arrives - and it is state and local governments responsible | Eastern NC Now

Many dystophan movies feature ever-present cameras recording everything citizens do.  Unfortunately that nightmare has arrived here in America and gotten a firm foothold.  This time, it was not the Biden regime responsible for our loss of freedom and privacy but lots of state and local governments, including North Carolina.

The issue is license plate readers stationed along highways and streets, which are now AI equipped and accumulate massive amounts of data on citizens who drive by them, or with more recent variations even walk by them.  Some of the newer versions even record electronic signals coming from communications devices in passing vehicles.  All of this material is recorded and a database maintained.  This is a massive amount of surveillance and a search without a warrant of random Americans.

There are thousands of these license plate readers already on the roads around our country.  A leader manufacturer and installer is a company named Flock Safety, and a citizen opposition organization called DeFlock has been organized and has a website where citizens can find out where these license plate readers are located.  They also urge cities to reject the license plate readers and have succeeded in that so far in 79 cities.

https://deflock.org/

In some places activists are taking freedom and privacy into their own hands by disabling the license plate readers, but doing so can lead to arrest.

https://dailycaller.com/2026/07/06/rooke-surveillance-state-flock-safety-ai-fourth-amendment/

In North Carolina, establishment Republican legislators kept trying to slip license plate readers into various bills at the last minute.  Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-Beaufort) one of the few legislators who read every bill, kept catching these sneaky last minute moves and blocking them on the NC House floor.  Finally, those behind this scheme used a scheduled excused medical absence by Kidwell to slip it past conservatives and get it approved for North Carolina in a sneaky last minute change to a bill.