The Bank Secrecy Act doesn’t just violate our freedoms; it also crushes small businesses. 

The Trump administration expanded financial surveillance last year by decreasing the reporting thresholds for currency transaction reports from $10,000 to just $200. After public pushback and a legal challenge by the Institute for Justice, the threshold was raised to $1,000.

Yet, the damage was done. Evangelina Ornelas told The Guardian that her business was already destroyed. Ornelas runs a small, family-owned grocery store that used to have long lines of customers waiting for their money services (e.g., check cashing and remittances). Those lines have dried up, however, due to privacy concerns under the new surveillance.

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A sizable crowd had gathered around the camera.

More than 25 people stood at the edge of a Home Depot parking lot in Berlin Township on Saturday afternoon, signs in hand.

“Get the Flock outta Jersey!” “Don’t spy on me” “This camera is spying on you.”

Among them, a volunteer sweated inside a homemade costume built to resemble the very thing they’d come to protest — Flock cameras. The costume was black and boxy, with white gloves and sneakers.

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The surveillance state no longer needs to build the surveillance state. It can increasingly purchase the capability from private firms, plug that capability into ordinary law enforcement, and allow the distinction between public and private ownership to become most useful precisely when citizens begin asking uncomfortable questions. That is the problem presented by companies like Flock Safety. The cameras may be privately manufactured, the servers privately operated, and the software owned by a corporation rather than a police department, but those distinctions become considerably less reassuring when the resulting system is being used by agents of the state.

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A new database lets New Jersey drivers see whether someone using a Flock Safety system searched for their license plate. Drivers can now check whether law enforcement agencies have searched their license plates through a public database built from records requests involving Flock Safety camera systems.

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A national movement against Flock cameras, which can record your license plate and the make, model, color and location of your vehicle, is growing. 

Some organizers in Camden County have formed "DeFlock South Jersey," a group aiming to get the cameras removed until there's more oversight and regulation.

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There are growing concerns about the widespread use of Flock cameras, a type of ALPR – automated license plate reader. 

Flock is just one manufacturer, but there are others, including Motorola. You will find some variation of ALPR’s in virtually every city in America. 

Passaic, New Jersey is no exception. 

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Imagine if police had the Flock cameras when states were locked down in 2020.

Imagine how they would be used to track people and punish them for doing things like going to church or going to the beach.

This is not a left vs right issue. Its a wrong vs right issue and we all…

— Chase Oliver (@ChaseForLiberty) August 10, 2026

Wesley Jackson, a 20-year-old from Gerrardstown, West Virginia, is facing two felony charges after deputies say they caught him on camera cutting down Flock license plate readers in Monongalia County. He has pleaded not guilty. The internet, however, has a different idea – and roughly 20,000 people are willing to testify to it.

When a local news station posted about Jackson’s arrest on Facebook, the comment section transformed into something between a community character witness stand and improv comedy night. Strangers from across the country flooded in with alibis so heroic they’d make a Boy Scout blush.

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