Flock and the new world order

In response to Durango Police Chief Brice Current’s Dec. 18, 2025, Telegraph piece, “Why Flock Matters,” I offer counterpoints hoping to clarify resident concerns.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has abducted many law-abiding local persons of color – our friends and co-workers – destroying their lives and damaging our community. Paraphrasing German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem about the Nazis’ rise to power, “first they came for BIPOC neighbors” but many white people haven’t spoken up, generally feeling secure in their homes. 

But white folks, take note – now we are targets, too. The Rule of Law itself is being twisted to follow Project 2025, a Christian Nationalist blueprint for America. Free-thinking Americans are “domestic terrorists” according to Trump’s memorandum NSPM-7, and last fall he ordered the DOJ and FBI to investigate and prosecute us, using tools like Flock. 

Even if DPD did not distribute data to ICE, as Current states, by contract, Flock owns and can share our data covertly. Therefore, DPD’s audit logs cannot reflect Flock actions. In August 2025, News 9 Denver revealed that Flock shared data with Customs and Border Protection without informing affected communities. 

That means any statement assuring us that ICE has not used our data (or won’t) is disinformation – we cannot definitively know. And since federal agencies are using sophisticated tools like facial recognition, why wouldn’t they track us “targets” with ALPRs (Automated License Plate Readers, like Durango’s) to determine our patterns? We know they’ve lain in wait to abduct Durango commuters. Flock data, including ours, is clearly for sale.

Are Durango folks at risk? Yes. Recently a Durango resident whistle-blower had their picture and personal data brandished at them – by ICE.

Do you get the overt threat behind this? Because it has vast tools and facial recognition, ICE has all our information at its fingertips. We’re all potential “domestic terrorists” and therefore “targets.” Rümeysa Öztürk was the Tufts grad student whose sin was truthful writing. Her arrest telegraphed that we’re all defenseless prey if we dare speak up.

Even in this dangerous context, city leaders speak about “balancing” our Constitutional right – freedom from warrantless search and seizure – with the benefits of tools like Flock. Rights cannot be traded away, period.

Current says Flock technology only reads “license plates and the exterior of vehicles.” That may describe DPD’s contract limits, but video and still images from all Flock cameras can be used to conduct facial recognition, providing immense data that Flock stores, owns indefinitely and can share. While Flock-allied agencies – Current’s “individuals who harm others” – wreak havoc on our communities, our personal lifestyle details continue to upload to Flock servers.

Nor is it true that Flock allows “search only after suspicion of a crime exists,” though DPD may operate to that standard. Flock’s system has been used for ex-wife-stalking and abortion-tracking across state lines, no case number or valid reason required. Flock’s loose security allowed illicit data-handling in Loveland and Mesa County; DPD cannot control partnered agencies.

It’s immaterial whether judges have ruled surveillance cameras “legal.” Durango is not litigating cameras, we’re determining whether we accept constant spying and data-collection on our personal lives by a private company that shares data with agencies like ICE. 

Clearly a New World Order is being built around us, and it depends on high-tech surveillance and intensive data collection. Grand spying schemes by power-obsessed people depend on Flock data. DOGE, META, Flock and Palantir are thrones for these dangerous new lords.

None of the hundreds of Durango residents I’ve spoken to knew Durango had Flock cameras, partly because we never got to vote whether to waive our 4th Amendment rights. But we residents do have ballot power. We can end warrantless searches and remove Flock from Durango. Join deFlockdgo@proton.me at our next Virtual Flock Town Hall (info available at “deflockdurango” on Instagram). Please share this!

– Kirby MacLaurin, Durango