New Jersey’s ‘flock you’ pushback: A revolt against Flock cameras

Last week I said "what the flock" about Franklin Township residents fighting their local Flock camera program. One week later, that joke doesn't even cover it. At this point, most of New Jersey seems to be telling these cameras "flock you," and honestly, I'm hoping they fly south. Far south. Forever.

A statewide petition just landed

A Change.org petition, "Stop Flock Cameras and Mass License-Plate Surveillance Across New Jersey," is calling on the governor, the Legislature, the Attorney General, and local officials statewide to set real rules before this technology expands any further. The petition doesn't ask for an outright ban so much as basic guardrails: how long footage gets kept, who's allowed to search it, what legal justification is required, whether other states or federal agencies can access it, and whether residents even get told when a town installs one of these systems in the first place.

Princeton, and a wrinkle worth knowing

A Princeton resident launched his own push to ban Flock cameras there, arguing the town shouldn't become "one more data point in a nationwide surveillance network we never agreed to join." Here's the wrinkle: Princeton Police Chief Matthew Solovay says the department doesn't actually use Flock's brand of cameras, just other automated license plate reader technology, governed by state Attorney General guidelines. "Flock" has basically become the generic name for this entire category of camera, the way people say Kleenex for any tissue, whether or not the actual company installed it.

SEE ALSO: "We can police without stalking" — NJ's Flock camera fight reaches Somerset County

A Flock Safety license plate reader is seen along a public road, Oct. 16, 2025, in Houston.

DeFlock South Jersey enters the chat

Organizers in Camden County have formed a group called DeFlock South Jersey, aiming to get the cameras removed until there's real oversight in place. The group's leader, Adam Sheridan, told CBS News Philadelphia this isn't a partisan issue, even though he's affiliated with a progressive advocacy group himself. "This is becoming just a really dragnet surveillance, intrusive privacy thing that didn't exist even two or three years ago," he said. People across the political spectrum, he added, are uneasy about it, and that tracks with what I heard out of Franklin Township too.

And it's already reached Trenton

Lawmakers in New Jersey and 34 other states have introduced nearly 100 pieces of legislation this year targeting license plate reader data. One New Jersey bill, from state Sen. Linda Greenstein, D-Plainsboro, would specifically block New Jersey's plate-reader data from being shared with other states investigating reproductive healthcare travel, a direct response to concerns raised since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. An NJ.com investigation earlier this summer found more than 500 of these cameras already operating statewide, a number that's only grown since.

Franklin Township started this thread for me last week. A week later, it's a petition, a Princeton fight, a South Jersey advocacy group, and a stack of bills in Trenton. New Jersey doesn't do things halfway once it decides it's had enough.