While every activist in America was focused on tearing down Flock cameras, a 40-year-old company was quietly installing surveillance devices inside existing street lights. Denver canceled its Flock contract. Then it signed a deal with Axon for something far more capable — and far harder to see.
Denver called Flock a 'bad actor.' Evanston covered the cameras with plastic. Oshkosh reversed a contract in 24 hours. Then a Washington citizen won the right to see his data, and the legislature passed a law to make sure nobody could ever do it again.
Two Virginia residents are suing their city for placing them under continuous warrantless surveillance by 200 Flock cameras. The legal theory behind their case has already killed one surveillance program. Flock's entire business model is next.
A researcher found live police cameras streaming to the open internet with no password. Hardcoded keys in the source code. A $5 USB stick that gives root access. Flock Safety is worth $8.4 billion. It runs on Android 8.
A Milwaukee officer ran a woman's plates 170 times in two months. The detective assigned to investigate him was stalking a different woman. In Idaho, a sheriff searched his own wife 700 times. Nobody audited any of it.
A camera misread a plate number and a mother and her children were held at gunpoint on hot asphalt. The system that did it now operates in 6,000 cities, scans 250 million plates a month, and has never been independently audited.
