WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats this week passed sweeping legislation requiring every Flock device in the country to be fitted with its own body camera, after months of grassroots organizing demanding the removal of the surveillance cameras from their neighborhoods, sources revealed.
“We heard the people loud and clear. They want accountability and that is exactly what we’re delivering,” said Senator Cory Booker, the bill’s author. “Nobody is asking for these cameras to be ripped down. What they’re really asking for is a robust framework of oversight. When a Flock camera records you, a second camera will now be there to record the first one doing it. The body cameras must remain recording at all times, including while the Flock cameras they are mounted on are also recording.”
An earlier version of this bill included a mandate that all Flock devices be prevented from wearing facemasks, but members of the Democrats’ own caucus shot it down as being overly radical.
“We spent a year knocking on doors to get these things off our block. We collected 800 signatures,” said Luisa Rodriguez, an 11-year resident of a housing block where Flock is piloting its Watch the Watchers initiative. “There used to be one camera pointing right into my kitchen window. Now there are two. I asked my landlord how I could get that camera footage and he told me that it was private. To protect me.”
Reports suggest that the Flock corporation is celebrating this move as it would save them the hassle of changing their name to something else while carrying on their surveillance program unimpeded.
“We’ve always stood for transparency, so we’re overjoyed that Congress has finally caught up,” said Flock founder and CEO Garrett Langley. “That’s why every one of our cameras ships with its own miniature camera. If something goes wrong, we’ll be the first ones to know. We’ll be the only ones to know.”
At press time, triumphant Democrats advanced a companion bill requiring all data centers found poisoning local groundwater to undergo implicit bias training.
