Across the United States, a quiet but intensifying conflict is unfolding on suburban streets and rural highways. Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that has installed tens of thousands of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in communities from coast to coast, is facing an unexpected adversary: ordinary citizens who are physically destroying its cameras. The vandalism, which has accelerated in recent months, represents a tangible manifestation of growing American anxiety over the expanding surveillance state — and it is forcing a reckoning among law enforcement agencies, civil liberties advocates, and the technology companies that profit from monitoring public movements. The phenomenon was brought into sharp focus by a report from Slashdot , which aggregated accounts of citizens across multiple states taking matters into their own hands — sometimes literally with power tools, sometimes with spray paint, and in some cases by simply ripping the solar-powered units off their poles.…