memes

While you're not exactly wrong, there are multiple types of cameras.

The ones at the convenience store or watching the street in front of a business are probably CCTV, and the store only has so much history stored and, most importantly, it's only accessible with a warrant.

Speed trap cameras are maybe isolated and only deliver data to the police... I'm not aware of how they work and they predate the 'hardware as a service' model we have to live with today.

Flock and similar kinds of cameras, though, are a service that your local government or businesses subscribe to. They are tracking vehicles (maybe people/faces, who knows, black box) and other metadata across the country, collating that data centrally, are not accountable to tax payers, have no ToS for the people they are tracking and thus no way to request or delete your data, the data at rest is not subject to many government regulations the way data on a government server would be, and accessing that data doesn't require a warrant. While theoretically that data is "owned" by the local jurisdiction or business, there appear to be no safeguards preventing the federal government from querying it all at once, or any hacker with a stolen credential.

Notably, Flock's privacy policy doesn't include the actual humans and cars it is monitoring, only the 'administrator, customers, and team creators' that access the data. Police privacy is maintained, but not yours.

This "infrastructure hardware" is owned by the corporations, not your government. We have corporations acting as government intelligence agencies and if that doesn't frighten you, it should: They aren't beholden to the same laws and restrictions that come with that scope and scale.

Use a FOIA request to find out if a given camera is owned by your city/state. If not, show up at your townhall and demand it be accountable as if it were.