Their cities dropped Flock surveillance cameras. They’re still being watched
Cities that dropped surveillance contracts with Flock Safety are discovering they remain under similar monitoring, either because a rival vendor has stepped in or because the original cameras have not been removed. In Longmont, Colorado, campaigners celebrated when the city let its Flock contract lapse in December, only to see the council approve a new automated licence-plate reader (ALPR) system from Axon just months later, leaving them concerned that switching suppliers does nothing to address underlying privacy and surveillance issues.
Flock Safety operates more than 120,000 cameras across US roads, scanning licence plates billions of times a month, and police say the data helps solve crimes and locate stolen vehicles. Critics argue the system amounts to a warrantless dragnet, citing cases of officers misusing it to track romantic partners and concerns over data reaching federal immigration authorities. At least 56 municipalities have cancelled or rejected Flock contracts this year, according to advocacy group DeFlock, prompting Flock to announce new auditing and data-retention policies last week, which critics call inadequate; meanwhile Axon, a $48bn company, has replaced Flock in at least seven municipalities across five states, and some cities have resorted to covering cameras with bags after removal delays.
- Cities dropping Flock cameras often just switch to rival surveillance vendors
- Flock operates 120,000+ cameras; 56 cities cut contracts this year
- Axon has replaced Flock in at least seven municipalities so far
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Automated licence-plate readers photograph passing vehicles and use software to read their number plates. Police can search the records to help investigate crimes or find stolen vehicles, but the cameras can also create detailed records of where people travel.
Flock Safety is one major US supplier of these cameras; Axon, known for police equipment and software, also sells them. Supporters say the systems help police, while critics raise concerns about privacy, misuse of searches and access to data by federal agencies.
When a city ends a contract with one supplier, cameras may remain in place or another company may take over. The debate is therefore about more than which firm provides the technology: it also concerns how long travel records are kept, who can search them and what rules should govern their use.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Law enforcement and civic officials maintain that ALPR systems are essential public safety tools delivering measurable benefits—recovering stolen vehicles, locating missing persons, assisting with serious criminal investigations—and that such surveillance is proportionate when accompanied by robust oversight, auditing, and clear data-governance policies. They argue that concerns about individual officer misconduct do not discredit the technology itself, and that abandoning such tools places communities at a disadvantage in an increasingly complex security landscape.
The case against
Privacy advocates and civil liberties organisations contend that ALPR systems amount to pervasive, warrant-free mass surveillance that fundamentally violates citizens' right to privacy and freedom of movement. The recurring evidence of officer abuse, combined with data-sharing extending to immigration enforcement, demonstrates that auditing mechanisms fail to prevent misuse, whilst the vendor-switching phenomenon reveals that cancelling one contract merely substitutes one surveillance system for another, leaving the underlying infrastructure of mass monitoring intact.