GoKawiilThe first time that “NoMark” tried to knock out a Flock camera feed, he waited an hour for the perfect moment – pacing in and out of bushes that towered over him, a few feet behind a pole holding up the device.
“I was just so nervous,” he said.
NoMark, as he’s known on Instagram, had already gained an online following of hundreds of thousands for posting videos of himself wearing a black mask and taking on small-time vigilante missions: breaking up fights outside a bar and breaking into a refinery he believed was “polluting the city real bad”. The Minnesota Star Tribune dubbed him “Minneapolis’ Batman”. He spoke to the Guardian under condition of anonymity to discuss potentially illegal acts.
On this June night, he set his sights on a new target: automated license plate readers (ALPRs) made by the US company Flock Safety.
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These black cameras, which are hooked up to a rectangular solar panel and typically mounted on a pole, snap photos of passing vehicles and run the pictures against large databases. They have sparked nationwide backlash from pro-privacy critics, who point to public records suggesting that these devices can help law enforcement keep tabs on specific license plates and the people driving these cars. That they can sweep in so many people’s location from an innocent act in a public space – regardless of whether the target is a suspect in a crime, and without a warrant – has led to fears of mass surveillance.
Flock, based in Georgia and valued at $8.4bn, says its cameras scan license plates billions of times each month in about 6,000 communities in nearly every state in the US.
The company said in a February blogpost that its ALPRs are “not mass surveillance tools” and that it “cannot track vehicles, much less individual people”.
Across the street from a Taco Bell, NoMark couldn’t stop thinking about whether he would get caught, and the adrenaline felt paralyzing – even though this felt “on brand” for his online persona, which has won him more than 700,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. After a few minutes of not spotting any cars on the road, he climbed a few feet up the pole, taped up the camera to block its lens and snipped the wires that powered the whole operation. Then he ended his phone’s recording and fled.
Nowadays, NoMark is much calmer on these excursions, and it only takes him a few minutes to get the job done after having taken down more than a dozen cameras, he says. But he still assumes the police are looking for him. Even if he does get arrested, he’s hopeful the charges won’t be too severe – and more important, he “just wants to send a message”.
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