SB DUMPS FLOCK CAMERAS: MORE PRIVACY OR JUST MORE PROGRESSIVE BUREAUCRACY?

Santa Barbara's City Council, bless their ever-so-progressive hearts, has decided to end its contract with Flock Safety, the company behind those ubiquitous license plate readers. KEYT NewsChannel 3-12 breathlessly reported this development, suggesting it's all about safeguarding citizen privacy. Of course, when the left-leaning politburo here talks 'privacy,' what they usually mean is 'less data for law enforcement, more data for whoever pays us the most to harvest it for social engineering schemes.'

Councilmember Wendy Santamaria, in a classic display of progressive logic, reportedly cited 'resident concerns' about how the automated plate readers might share data. One must wonder if these 'residents' are the same vocal minority who complain about everything from perfectly normal car exhaust to the existence of property taxes. Meanwhile, actual residents — the ones who don't spend their days crafting petitions in organic coffee shops — might just want their cars not stolen and their streets safe. But why let practical crime deterrence get in the way of a good, self-congratulatory policy statement?

The real story, naturally, isn't the sudden epiphany about privacy, but the usual shell game. The council, ever eager to appear responsive while actually doing very little, is now 'considering a replacement surveillance system.' Translation: they’ll hire another expensive consultant to find an identical system, but this one will have a different name, a more agreeable corporate donation history to favored politicians, and a fresh set of buzzwords about 'equitable data governance' or some other such drivel to justify the same monitoring under a new, more progressive label. It’s not about privacy; it’s about control, and ensuring the right people are in control of the data, not just preventing crime efficiently.

This isn't about privacy; it's about control. It's about making sure that whatever system eventually replaces Flock has the right progressive bona fides, regardless of whether it actually makes our community safer or just creates more make-work for government employees to 'manage' data that could otherwise be helping our already understaffed police force. Perhaps if we spent less time debating the political correctness of license plate readers and more time supporting law enforcement, Santa Barbara might just be able to catch criminals instead of just talking about how to manage their data in a 'socially responsible' way.