Over the weekend, more than a dozen local TV news stations ran a video report called “Far-left network behind ‘No Kings’ protests targeting AI data centers, Flock cams.” The report paints those opposing Flock not as a diverse, decentralized, bipartisan group of ordinary citizens who oppose mass surveillance, but as well-funded radical leftists who are spreading propaganda at the behest of China and rich billionaires. The opposite is true, of course: The entities defending Flock and painting their opponents as cynical, paid influencers have a specific agenda, have deep pockets, and are connected to some of the most powerful people in the world.
Many of the most vocal defenders of Flock are attempting a strategy that Flock itself tried soon after evidence of the abuse of its automated license plate reader camera systems was reported by 404 Media and other local news outlets: They are suggesting that anyone who opposes this technology or points out its shortcomings must be part of a coordinated group of people who hate the police and want the United States to fail by picking out a few generally inconsequential social media posts by people on the fringes. Some of Flock’s defenders—a mix of people who work for billionaire-funded think tanks or have direct financial investments in Flock—have suggested that the people who oppose Flock are being quietly funded by billionaires or shadowy organizations to do so. 
Last year, Flock CEO Garrett Langley
told
Forbes
that DeFlock
, an open-source, crowdsourced map of ALPR cameras, was a “
terroristic organization
whose primary motivation is chaos, they are closer to ANTIFA than anything else.” In December,
emails obtained via a public records request
and shared with 404 Media showed Langley told the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, which was considering canceling its Flock contract, that “Flock and the law enforcement agencies we partner with are under coordinated attack […] from the same activist groups who want to defund

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