404 Media – “After months of discussion and outrage from residents, the city council of the tiny town of Bandera, Texas voted 3-2 to immediately end its contract with the surveillance company Flock. In the aftermath of the vote, one of the dissenting council members crashed out and said he would be introducing measures to ban cell phones, the internet, cameras, and nearly all technology in the town of roughly 900 people. Bandera had a state grant to install eight Flock Safety AI license plate reader cameras in the tiny town. The technology proved to be incredibly controversial, with residents repeatedly turning out to city council meetings to say that they did not want government surveillance in the town; the poles that the cameras were installed on were repeatedly destroyed by vandals in protest, leading the town to have to replace them at their own expense. Last week, the town formally decided to abandon its contract with Flock entirely…”