Policy Shift to Surveillance

On September 25, 2025, President Trump issued the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), titled "Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence." Within this memorandum, the administration redefines "domestic terrorism" indicators to include:

"opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration; adherence to radical gender ideology"

This policy shift, covered in our previous articles, has moved beyond theory to become real-world investigative policy. It is no longer only about physical violence, but also includes opposition to this administration's beliefs.

When the government defines opposition as a domestic terrorism indicator, it needs to have a way to investigate political opposition. This requires widespread surveillance. Enter Flock Safety.

What Is Flock Safety?

At its core, Flock Safety is an Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) system designed to enhance public safety.

Flock Safety implements cameras in public places to capture images and video. Then they use AI to analyze and scrape the video footage quickly, pulling information such as vehicle type, license plate, and even aftermarket alterations. This information is then uploaded to a cloud-based server in real-time and becomes easily searchable.

Flock works to make maximum data sharing enticing and easy to opt in to. According a Flock training video obtained through a public records request, all a local law enforcement agency needs to do is click a single checkbox and all of the data gathered is searchable nationally.

Flock was also granted a patent in 2022, titled "System and Method for Object Based Query of Video Content Captured By A Dynamic Surveillance Network", that described much more alarming capabilities than just license plate look-ups.

See below, the patent grants the ability to detect human beings, and if it does, it can analyze the images, looking for:

• Sex
• Race
• Clothing
• Height
• Weight

Why This Matters to the Policy Shift

The government says that certain beliefs are indicators of "domestic terrorism". To prosecute for domestic terrorism, they need tools to identify and monitor people who hold those beliefs. The above patent allows Flock Safety to capture images and video, upload them to cloud storage, and make the inventory of images and video easily searchable for law enforcement.

Using this technology, law enforcement can:

• Track vehicles of "No Kings" protesters: Who showed up? Where did they come from and where did they go afterwards?
• Access vehicle information about Observers, and then use that to track where they go and get real-time information
• Track citizens based on race and travel patterns to find people who might be immigrants
• Track people attending meetings in certain locations

Flock Safety provides a potent tool to keep an eye on where people are and where they go.

We Are Seeing This Right Now

This is not speculation. As recently as the past week, there have been reports of ICE using license plate information to intimidate Observers in Minneapolis.

Late last year the EFF Reported that law enforcement has used Flock to track No Kings protesters:

Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate. 

Flock as the Enabling Infrastructure

"Flock's system makes such discrimination faster and easier to execute at scale."
- EFF 2025 Surveillance Analysis

Historically, police departments have had to manually track suspects. This costs the departments a lot of time, money, and resources. Manually tracking caused challenges in tracking over state lines and communicating with other departments. With Flock Safety, police departments can target anyone who fits into their description of a "domestic terrorist" under NSPM-7 via a central database and track their every move with the click of a button. With the growing deployment of Flock Safety cameras and their networked cloud-based database, it is increasingly easier for law enforcement to:

• Track the vehicles of people showing up at protests
• Search for people who meet certain criteria
• Target specific communities

This level of mass surveillance, especially coupled with broad ideological targeting by this administration, is dangerous for everyone.

Flock Safety in Kent County

In this article, we've explored how the administration’s decision to label opposition to its beliefs as “domestic terrorism” signals an effort to investigate dissenting individuals. This is an effort made possible by the widespread use of AI-powered surveillance cameras from Flock Safety.

For those of us living in Kent County, this is not some far-off issue we can shut our eyes to.

Deflock.me indicates that there are at least 162 ALPR cameras deployed in Kent County and these are just the ones reported by people in the community. These cameras are already being used: as early as July of last year, Michigan Advance reported on Flock Safety data being searched by the Grand Rapids police department, directly related to protests.

Included among the data is five searches from the Grand Rapids Police Department with protests listed as the reason.
- Michigan Advance

Keeping our community safe is important. Allowing our tax dollars to be spent on a system that is being used to target people based on their physical characteristics or stereotyped beliefs is dangerous and unacceptable.

In our next post, we'll explore what we can do and how we can do it, and we will need your help.

Join the discussion about this and more on the Kent County Indivisible Discord

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