A few weeks ago, while walking my dog near my home in Keller, I noticed a couple of new license plate reader cameras being set up near local schools. As a resident who cares about privacy, seeing these Flock Safety cameras installed so close to my home and our schools stirred up real alarm.

Flock Safety claims their license plate readers enhance community safety, but at what cost? These cameras collect sensitive data, tracking our whereabouts without our explicit consent. The presence of such surveillance tools near school zones is particularly troubling. Our children's right to privacy should be paramount.

The concerns here aren't hypothetical. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's 2025 review of over 12 million logged Flock searches found law enforcement using the network to track protesters, monitor women seeking reproductive healthcare, and run searches using discriminatory language targeting Romani communities. Separately, security researcher Ben Jordan disclosed dozens of vulnerabilities in Flock's camera network, including cameras found broadcasting live, unsecured video feeds on the open internet. Cities across the country — including Austin, which canceled its contract over data-sharing and misuse concerns, and Cambridge, which terminated its contract after Flock installed cameras without the city's authorization — have ended their Flock agreements amid this same pattern of oversight failures.

The city's own stated justification is that these cameras track vehicles as they enter and leave Keller. But cameras have shown up on interior neighborhood streets, not just city entry points — meaning residents are being monitored well beyond what the city's own reasoning claims to justify.

Instead of deploying invasive technology like this, our city should invest in community-driven safety measures that don't compromise residents' privacy — neighborhood watch programs, better street lighting, and community policing models that build trust without building a surveillance database of everyone's daily movements.

We must stand together and urge the City of Keller to remove Flock Safety cameras from our neighborhoods. Let's protect our right to privacy — especially for our kids near schools — and demand transparent, democratic processes for community safety decisions going forward.

We're calling on Mayor McMullin and the Keller City Council to:

End the city's contract with Flock Safety and remove all ALPR cameras from Keller
Hold a standalone public agenda item on this decision — not a quiet vote
Require any future camera placement to go through a public vote before installation
Please join me in asking the City Council to reconsider and prioritize privacy-respecting approaches to safety. Sign this petition to help keep our homes and schools free of unwarranted surveillance.