A man dressed as Darth Vader appeared before San Diego officials this week to offer what sounded, at first, like an enthusiastic defense of the city’s use of Flock surveillance cameras.
But the performance quickly revealed itself as satire.
According to a video report from The Guardian, the unidentified speaker appeared at a San Diego public safety committee meeting dressed as the Star Wars villain and delivered a speech mocking the city’s continued use of automated license plate readers by describing them as exactly the kind of surveillance tool the Galactic Empire would want.
“The emperor is a fan of Flock,” the man said.
From there, he leaned heavily into the character, arguing that the technology should remain in place so authorities could track “rebel scum” as they moved around the city.
Darth Vader Praises Surveillance — Sort Of
The man told officials that Flock technology was useful because it could allow the empire to follow people “from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium.”
He then moved from science-fiction jokes into a much more pointed criticism of surveillance.
According to the Guardian report, the speaker suggested the cameras could be used to track children and even joked that he personally needed the technology so he could “stalk my ex-girlfriend.”
The line was clearly designed to sound absurd, but it also targeted one of the central concerns raised by critics of Flock systems: that technology built for public safety can potentially be misused by individual officials.
The Guardian noted that a Louisiana sheriff’s deputy was recently fired after using the Flock system to track his ex-fiancée’s vehicle thousands of times.
That gives the Darth Vader joke a sharper edge than it might first appear to have. What sounds like a ridiculous villain’s confession is actually built around fears that have already surfaced in real-world disputes over surveillance.
Speaker Turns The Empire Into A Stand-In For Government
The man continued speaking in character, using the language of the Star Wars Empire to mock broader city policies.
He said residents should not expect storm drains to be cleared if doing so would require raising taxes, before questioning how people could trust city leaders who continue approving surveillance technology.
He then addressed Councilmember Jennifer Campbell directly and told her to work on her “Jedi mind tricks.”
The speaker accused city officials of using softer language around policing while, in his view, pursuing policies that criminalize homelessness.
His argument became increasingly exaggerated as he praised jail labor and detention conditions in the same sinister tone he used to praise surveillance.
According to the video, he claimed that criminalizing homelessness was “good” because it allowed authorities to fill jails with cheap prison labor, and he referenced the Otay Mesa Detention Center while speaking about low wages and tuberculosis cases.
Again, none of that appeared to be genuine praise.
The entire speech worked by taking policies the speaker opposed and endorsing them from the perspective of one of popular culture’s most recognizable authoritarian villains.
The Flock Debate Is Already Heated
The stunt came against a much larger debate over Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader technology.
The Guardian reported that San Diego city council members voted in December to continue using the company’s camera system.
Flock Safety promotes the technology as a tool that can help law enforcement find missing people, locate stolen vehicles and identify suspects.
But critics have increasingly focused on privacy, misuse and false matches.
According to the Guardian report, a San Diego man spent about a month in jail after a Flock license plate reader mistakenly connected him to an attempted violent carjacking.
The report also said that, by August 2026, roughly 100 municipalities had deactivated, canceled or rejected Flock contracts, citing figures from the grassroots organization DeFlock.
Those numbers help explain why someone would show up to a public meeting dressed as Darth Vader. The costume may be theatrical, but the argument underneath it is part of a serious and growing dispute over how much surveillance local governments should accept in the name of public safety.
‘We Must Continue Utilizing Flock Technologies’
The speaker repeatedly returned to the language of the Galactic Empire.
“We must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum,” he said.
Toward the end of his remarks, he pushed the joke even further by claiming that the cameras would help the empire locate its enemies.
“This technology will help us find the rebel scum and their hidden base on Hoth,” he said.
He also said the technology could help find Luke Skywalker as he traveled through the universe in his X-wing.
“This technology is a necessary, necessary force,” the man concluded.
The phrasing was designed to blend surveillance criticism with Star Wars references, but there was little ambiguity about the underlying message.
He was not really defending Flock cameras.
He was portraying support for broad surveillance as something so authoritarian that Darth Vader himself would approve.
Flock Has Announced New Safeguards
The Guardian reported that Flock has recently announced additional policies intended to limit misuse.
Among those changes is a requirement that law enforcement agencies adopt an audit assistance feature by the end of the year.
The company has presented those measures as a way to improve accountability, although some legal experts cited by the Guardian have argued that the safeguards still do not go far enough.
Critics have also taken more extreme steps against the cameras.
The report noted that some people have physically damaged or dismantled Flock equipment, including an Ohio man who was arrested after allegedly damaging one of the cameras. A grand jury later declined to indict him on felony vandalism charges.
The San Diego speaker chose a very different approach.
Instead of destroying anything, he used three minutes of public comment, a black helmet and one of cinema’s most famous villains to make his point.
A Joke With A Serious Target
Public meetings are often filled with dry testimony, technical language and repetitive debate, which is exactly why the appearance of Darth Vader attracted so much attention.
The costume made the speech funny enough to spread widely, but the humor worked because the criticism underneath it was easy to understand.
The man was effectively asking officials to imagine how surveillance looks when described by someone who openly celebrates control, tracking and intimidation.
That does not settle the debate over whether Flock cameras are useful or justified, and supporters of the technology can point to legitimate law-enforcement uses.
But the stunt was effective because it turned an abstract privacy argument into something visual and memorable.
The unidentified speaker never dropped the Darth Vader persona.
He simply thanked officials after praising surveillance as a tool for finding Luke Skywalker, hunting down rebels and helping the emperor maintain control.
For a city already debating how much monitoring is too much, that may have been exactly the point.
Raised in a small Arizona town, Kevin grew up surrounded by rugged desert landscapes and a family of hunters. His background in competitive shooting and firearms training has made him an authority on self-defense and gun safety. A certified firearms instructor, Kevin teaches others how to properly handle and maintain their weapons, whether for hunting, home defense, or survival situations. His writing focuses on responsible gun ownership, marksmanship, and the role of firearms in personal preparedness.
