WATCH: ‘Darth Vader’ Pleads For Flock Camera Surveillance At City Council Meeting – “Surveil The Rebel Scum”

Darth Vader told the San Diego city council he is in favor of flock cameras!

pic.twitter.com/lnYVMLjAPY

— Garret Lewis (@GarretLewis) August 20, 2026

Click to expand...

Addressing City Council member Jennifer Campbell, the man said she needs to work on her Jedi mind tricks.

“And how will the people trust this City Council when this City Council continues to vote for surveillance technology that imprisons them? Ms. Campbell, you must work on your Jedi mind tricks,” he said before waving his hand to the audience.

In December 2025, the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) signed a one-year pilot agreement for Flock Nova, a separate investigative platform designed to integrate data from various sources. The department later said it was not using the platform and did not plan to integrate its license plate reader data into it. SDPD later told Axios it was not using the platform and did not plan to integrate its license plate reader data into it.

Local activists and some city officials have called for alternatives as public criticism of the cameras continues to mount in communities across the country, Axios reported.

SDPD uses Flock automated license plate recognition cameras at approximately 500 locations citywide, according to the department’s 2025 annual surveillance report. A crowdsourced map maintained by the anti-surveillance project DeFlock lists additional cameras in the area, though its entries are not an official city inventory.

San Diego police say the technology is used for official law enforcement purposes, including locating vehicles connected to investigations. The department says its ALPR database can only be accessed by authorized SDPD personnel and that data is retained for up to 30 days and automatically deleted unless it is preserved as evidence in an active investigation.

Click to expand...

Darth Vader comes out in favor of Flock cameras pic.twitter.com/YL3jaiwIEx

— Orwell Day (@OrwellDay) August 20, 2026

Click to expand...

Flock announced that it made changes to its privacy and data retention policies, saying it will shorten the recommended default data retention window from 30 to seven days to cut the amount of time data will sit in Flock’s systems. Law enforcement will have a case code to search Flock data.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the company’s primary critics that has several pending cases against Flock, called the changes a “thinly-veiled PR attempt.”

Click to expand...