Tucker Carlson: ‘Flock’ surveillance cameras are turning US into a ‘slave state’

Podcast host Tucker Carlson called the introduction of the Flock network of cameras ‘a North Korean setup that we’re building here in the United States' while stripping away privacy rights.

(LifeSiteNews) — Tucker Carlson said that Americans are giving up their privacy and freedom through the creation of a network of thousands of cameras surreptitiously recording unsuspecting citizens’ every move without them being aware of it. In his most recent podcast. Carlson said that the introduction of “Flock” cameras in municipalities across the country — purportedly to be used simply as license plate readers but that are capable of so much more — is creating a “slave state,” and the stripping away of privacy rights amounts to “torture” inflicted by local governments.

The information collected by Flock cameras is owned not by government or law enforcement entities but by the manufacturer of the devices, meaning the data is not subject to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests. This gives nameless government bureaucrats, law enforcement, and Flock employees easy access to track your life with no accountability or oversight. The information can also be used in conjunction with facial recognition software that makes compiling information far more harrowing.

He compared the rising situation across “state, federal and local” governments with being stripped naked and made to live in a glass box in the middle of a prison camp. “And we all reside in it,” he added. “Police departments across the country are participating in the dehumanizing of entire populations by stealing their privacy.

You can’t go anywhere without being watched. So you’re not actually a citizen anymore. You are enslaved by the government,” he declared.

Carlson called it “a North Korean setup that we’re building here in the United States.’ All this has been sold as a means of increasing safety. Yet as Carlson noted, if the presence of cameras ensures safety, prisons would be the safest places on earth, but the opposite is true.

They remain a dangerous place for their residents. Currently, there are over 116,000 such surveillance cameras, placed mostly at intersections in urban and suburban neighborhoods. According to investigative journalist Benn Jordan, who has done yeoman’s work reporting on the threat of Flock cameras, the company has plans to have a huge fleet of “drones that are persistently in the air.”

“You’re describing a war zone,” Carlson said. “This is military technology, these weapons of war — could be used as tools of political repression.” “We’re not enemy combatants, we’re Americans.

Why would they be treating us like we’re the enemy?” Carlson wondered. “In the end, everything that you’re scared of absolutely could happen,” Jordan warned.

“I think back to COVID, just five, six years ago — imagine Flock cameras. You leave the house to go pick up food during quarantine and Flock cameras, or facial recognition cameras like the ones they have in retail stores, are now sending you a ticket because you violated quarantine or because you didn’t wear your mask properly, because your nose was sticking out the top.” Jordan told the story of a large, private Jewish Community Center near Atlanta that installed its own non-Flock security cameras throughout its facility.

But because the center shared its camera feed with the local police department, without knowing it the center was also making it available to Flock. An associate of Jordan discovered that male employees of Flock — not law enforcement — had viewed those cameras inside this private community center over 1,000 times, “including but not limited to the pool, the daycare center, the children’s gymnastics room.” “And nobody had been arrested, nobody had to answer any questions about it,” Jordan noted.

If surveillance makes us safe, why are so many people murdered in prison? Flock cameras and the coming slave state. pic.twitter.com/7W6rXulFzk — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) July 16, 2026

A website named “deflock” that aims to make Americans aware of the rise of the unwanted surveillance cameras provides an online national map pinpointing the location of every automated license plate reader (ALPR) in the country. Deflock explains: The ALPRs are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time. They also capture your car’s make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.

These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. These systems are marketed as indispensable tools to fight crime, but they ignore the powerful tools police already have to track criminals, such as cell phone location data, creating a loophole that doesn’t require a warrant. ALPRs are a serious risk to your privacy and civil liberties.

These systems continuously record your movements without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Your driving history is rarely confined to the town or city where the cameras are installed. It’s typically shared with thousands of other agencies nationwide (secretly).

Once the data is out of your community, you have no control over how it’s used or what rules apply, leading to instances of misuse. The threat is not far-fetched. In Houston recently, a police sergeant resigned before he could be investigated by internal affairs after allegations arose that he had used the Flock system to track a female colleague.