Contrary to popular myth, the 19th-century English Luddites did not oppose technology per se. They did, however, oppose with their lives technology used by elites to exploit the masses.
Late last month, automotive journalist Joel Feder of The Drive learned firsthand what happens when police act on faulty information provided by Flock license-plate-reader cameras.
“We now live in a surveillance state where cameras mounted on stoplights are tracking our cars, our devices, our pets, and even us,” Feder wrote.
Indeed, one can scarcely reach any other conclusion.
Feder, who test-drives vehicles and then produces online content, took a $155,000 Range Rover out to run errands with his wife on a late-June Sunday afternoon in suburban Minnesota.
Suddenly, in a Kohl’s parking lot, four police cars surrounded Feder’s vehicle. Hands on their guns, the officers began shouting for Feder and his wife to get out of the vehicle.
Fortunately, the couple complied with police instructions.
Do you support the use of Flock cameras in your community?
At that point, after a humiliating pat-down, Feder learned that Flock’s cameras had flagged the vehicle’s plates as stolen.
Moreover, the ambush at Kohl’s occurred after officers had tracked the vehicle for days.
After a fair amount of difficulty, Feder and the officers finally learned that the problem began in faraway Los Angeles, California. There, a Jaguar Land Rover dealership had reported New Jersey plates 34 03 DTM stolen. Flock’s system, however, had recorded the allegedly stolen plate as simply 34 DTM. Then, the system flagged Feder’s Range Rover, which had a plate number of 34 10 DTM.
In other words, Flock’s surveillance system ignored the two middle numbers.
After the officers relaxed, Feder “connected the final dot.”
“A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure — 34 ## DTM,” Feder wrote, which meant that “[a]nywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen.”
Thus, other drivers may expect the same unpleasant experience. Will everything turn out as well for them?
“You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth,” one of the detaining officers said of the suburban location. “If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”
Meanwhile, Feder posted police body cam footage of the incident on the social media platform Instagram. Readers may watch that footage below.
Feder’s harrowing experience hardly qualifies as isolated.
For instance, according to the Denverite, in September, an officer from the Columbine Valley Police Department in Denver, Colorado, visited the home of financial planner Chrisanna Elser. The officer issued her a summons for petty theft and accused her of stealing a $25 package from a porch in nearby Bow Mar, not because Flock cameras had captured her vehicle plates at the scene of the alleged crime, but because those cameras captured her vehicle entering and then leaving the town around the time someone stole the package.
The officer also erroneously claimed to have Ring doorbell camera footage of Elser swiping the package.
Worst of all, after she received the summons, Elser had to prove her own whereabouts. The fact that she did so successfully and that the police department eventually voided the summons, however, does not diminish the broader crime against civil liberties.
“She’s considering suing,” the outlet wrote. “And even with the ticket dropped, she’s left unnerved by the prospect of being wrongfully accused on the basis of circumstantial evidence from a mass surveillance system.”
In Washington, D.C., of course, legislators love mass surveillance. For proof, see their behavior this entire century, from the 2001 Patriot Act to the present day.
Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, a notable exception, has tried and failed to end this abomination.
“Flock and Flock-like cameras track where law-abiding people go, who they visit, and how they live – all without a warrant. I attempted to stop this with an amendment, which unfortunately failed recently in Committee; that’s not the end of this, though. The mass surveillance of the American People must end. Call your legislators. STOP THE FLOCK,” Perry wrote Tuesday on the social media platform X.
Flock and Flock-like cameras track where law-abiding people go, who they visit, and how they live – all without a warrant.
I attempted to stop this with an amendment, which unfortunately failed recently in Committee; that’s not the end of this, though. The mass surveillance of… pic.twitter.com/hbrPQcVOJ2
— Rep. Scott Perry (@RepScottPerry) July 7, 2026
On this issue, free citizens must draw a line in the sand.
The proliferation of phone cameras in a digital world is bad enough. Unfortunately, that horse has probably left the barn for good.
The placement of surveillance cameras on stoplights, however, amounts to a choice. Regardless of its crime-fighting utility, that choice, as Perry noted, is a Fourth Amendment violation.
England’s Luddite rebels, who never enjoyed such constitutional protections, would have agreed.
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