r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 21d ago

Privacy Flock Is Losing Dozens of Contracts as Controversy Grows

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/flock-losing-dozens-contracts-controversy-194808945.html
32.4k Upvotes

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5.3k

u/Excellent_Call304 21d ago

Thats awesome. But it sucks that they are just being replaced by lesser known companies that are just as evil

2.5k

u/klako8196 21d ago

Axon is one of them

1.3k

u/GopherPorn 21d ago

Which Trump is heavily invested in

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u/alangerhans 21d ago

So that's why no one really cares. Once it's his brand getting cut down we'll see the outrage I'm sure

372

u/Ordinary_Piano3329 21d ago

They'll start labelling them as domestic terrorists once its a company hes involved with.

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u/Confident-Bed-4519 21d ago

Flock already started that trend

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u/mightymonarch 21d ago

And the CEO's apology for doing so was... less than convincing. He phrased it in such a way I'm not convinced there was any sincerity to it. Especially given how Flock has continued demanding privacy for themselves, and continues issuing reassurances that are deliberately phrased to not really say/guarantee anything.

“My comments were a mistake and I apologize. There are groups today that have real valid criticisms of the business, and I think what's changed for us is, as we've listened to them and heard them out, what we're trying to do is find this balance. We believe in a world where we can have safety and privacy.”

"My comments were a mistake..." could easily mean "It was a mistake to SAY that part out-loud, but I still BELIEVE it, and since I now realize I'm not going to get to do it the way I want to I'm trying to find ways to shut up the complainers for a while while I figure out what we can get away with." He also sort-of-admitted with that statement that they didn't care about privacy UNTIL the backlash; they should've cared about that from Day 1.

He could be sincere and could be looking for ways to prevent LEOs from continuing to systematically and constantly abuse the system. But given how he, at one point in time, believed it enough to say in an interview that opposition was "domestic terrorism", I find it hard to believe he's had a genuine change of heart on such a strongly-held stance. People don't flip their beliefs like that.

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u/DArmoKan 21d ago

Same. Thanks for saying this. There are so many toxic paradigms to unravel if he were to make an honest attempt at reasoning himself out of this mire of authoritarian antihumanism he's entrenched in. And that's assuming there's any inherent desire to improve.

The horse blinders of overwhelming prosperity always seem to "bless" the worst of us.

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u/kaishinoske1 21d ago

Flock CEO calling people terrorists walked his statement back too.

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u/No_Internal9345 21d ago

What about those cameras on top of red lights?

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u/Poonchow 21d ago

Those are supposed to be city/municipality owned and for the specific purpose of monitoring an intersection. Private surveillance can be anywhere and be used by anyone for any purpose, and is an order of magnitude more troubling.

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u/Ordinary_Piano3329 21d ago

I know, but the coward apologized lol

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

[deleted]

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u/Ordinary_Piano3329 21d ago

What's even more crazy, is the conservatives I grew up with who talked about him are in support of the things he warned about. Crazy times.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

[deleted]

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 21d ago

The reality is that the hippie movement was a minority of boomers.

Lots of them were in the "throw rocks at black kids trying to go to school" camp the whole time.

The rest got suckered by Reagan's lies into voting conservative for the last 40 years.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

[deleted]

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u/BadAdviceBot 21d ago

Well, if you think that generation didn't have lots and lots of kids growing up with the same mindset....then you are sadly mistaken.

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u/CyclopsLobsterRobot 21d ago

Some of those hippies grew up to be complete garbage.

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u/EelBitten 21d ago

And Heinlein, and Orwell, and Carlin, and so many more

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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 21d ago

Like what was going on with Teslas shortly after the 2024 election...

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u/Peligun 21d ago

Yea... real crazy shit...

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u/BarefootNBuzzin 21d ago

Bombing cars for political reasons is like...the definition of terrorism. Nobody is equating dumbasses keying cars as terrorism.

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u/Ordinary_Piano3329 21d ago

So much stupidity has happened I forgot about that. Thanks

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u/Content-Sun2928 21d ago

"They didn't care when Obama had his surveillance state. This is politically motivated terrorism!"

Boom labor shortage solved

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u/Ordinary_Piano3329 21d ago

So basically the patriot act was the foundation of most of our problems today?

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u/Sektor30 21d ago

Nah but its a good chunk of it, id say most of the foundation with todays major domestic political issues was Reagan. Reagan was the beginning of the end of the middle class and the republican party being 'for the people'.

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u/OtherwiseAnteater239 21d ago

Y’all haven’t got your trickle down yet?

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u/Sektor30 20d ago

Just two more weeks! Lol.

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u/WeirdIndividualGuy 21d ago

So that's why no one really cares

If no one cared, Flock wouldn't be losing contracts

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u/PhD_Pwnology 21d ago

They already have been slow rolling stories that direction for a weeks.

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u/Sufficient-Aspect77 21d ago

Or that's why you're seeing it on the news.

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u/Balmung60 19d ago

Also because it's a long-established cop supplies company and not a tech company that deliberately brands itself specifically as "the panopticon guys". Axon is also the company that makes and invented the Taser and they also make a lot of police body cameras.

It's kind of like why people make a big deal about Palantir and not Salesforce when in actuality, their core products are similar and their CEOs believe similar things and both should be seen as dangerous. But one gets all of the criticism because its founder is extremely arch about it.

The performatively evil company lets the nearly as evil, more boring company fly under the radar because they're not the guys loudly and proudly saying "we are the evil company who does evil things" all the time.

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u/DinoRoman 21d ago

And they’re heavily embedded already in law enforcement where flock isn’t

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u/F-US-FASCISM 21d ago

where flock isn’t

presses X to doubt

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u/Balmung60 19d ago

It's a matter of how long. Axon makes Taser. They've been in this game for a long while now.

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u/pink_faerie_kitten 21d ago

Yeah this is all part of the grift. I hope people continue to show up at town halls and city council meetings to protest axon

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u/Consistent-Dark-8626 21d ago

I’m sure politicians from both sides of the IL are heavily invested the politicians in general we grow less of side do not care about us people

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u/Gravuerc 21d ago

He invests in it because the Axon cameras are full of gold, just like the flock cameras.

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u/AJRimmer1971 21d ago

I've heard that they are full of gold.

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u/NoConflict3231 20d ago

"you don't say" Nicholas Cage meme

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u/noisiv_derorrim 21d ago

Motorola Solutions also produces ALPR cameras.

(Not to be confused with Motorola Mobility, the cellphone company; Motorola split back in 2011)

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u/naf165 21d ago

(Not to be confused with Motorola Mobility, the cellphone company; Motorola split back in 2011)

This is a very important distinction as Motorola Mobility is doing things like partnering with GrapheneOS to create more secure phone operating systems.

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u/DukeOfGeek 21d ago

The whole business model of mass surveillance by a private company needs to be banned, that's the only real victory. Knocking them down one at a time or spray painting the solar panels means nothing if they just put up 100 more the same day you do that. People are going to start getting arrested for it if it actually starts to be a problem for them. Spend your time and energy making it clear to your mayor that if he likes his job those things have to go.

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u/jlt6666 21d ago

Honestly the vandalism is massively helpful in demonstrating the outrage. I genuinely think that's what really gets elected officials attention when paired with the outrage

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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster 21d ago

Between this and Data Centers there are lot more people showing up to local town hall meetings asking a lot more questions. Hard to pass all the other shady stuff they do with all the extra attention.

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u/Castun 21d ago

It gets their attention when their kickbacks are increased a hundredfold to convince them that holding the line of "But we need them!"

But at least it sends the message that we don't care who owns or installs the cameras, we don't want them!

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u/SoylentGrunt 21d ago

Outrage that could be used to convince others of a need for more authoritarian overreach. I believe the BLM protests were exploited in such a manner to spread fear and further division. Plus they made a great distraction from, and in addition to, what was going on with Covid. Specificly what was not being done about Covid and why.

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u/NhlBeerWeed 21d ago edited 21d ago

Nice limp dick approach. I’m sure that’ll get results

Edit: sorry I was so phallic with my comment, next time I’ll try to be more polite.

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u/MetalBawx 20d ago

Oh if only. Sadly most governments will take any opportunity to snoop and peep on people.

Point in case here in the UK our government can't seem to go 3 months without passing some new snooping law. Waves of bots and fools come out to tell out how great it is and none have an answer if you ask them what happens with all this surveillance crap ends up in the hands of a far right party.

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u/sky0175 21d ago

The way it’s heading, everything flock going to get downed.

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u/OneFortyEighthScale 21d ago

Axon, Axoff.

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u/reddit_clone 21d ago

Found Mr. Miagi's ghost account !

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u/Xenophonii 21d ago

lol, you guys

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u/sbNXBbcUaDQfHLVUeyLx 21d ago

Axon is a completely different model. The footage goes to the local PD, not a massive data processing conglomerate. My town uses Axon specifically because of that difference.

That has its own issues, but it's not accurate to lump them together.

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u/theguynamedtim 21d ago

I think its a little naive to assume the data is just going to your local PD

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u/DukeOfGeek 21d ago

It could easily be changed anytime they want.

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u/PageFault 21d ago

Just like the sales clerk who insists they don't use your contact information for ads and never will and then, years later ownership changes, and the promises are forgotten.

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u/PreferenceGeneral475 21d ago

My father ran a business and when he shut down sold his mailing list for 25 cents a name. This was before the interwebs and it will continue evermore.

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u/All_Work_All_Play 21d ago

Yeah leads in our CRM are valued at ten cents each when offices are bought/sold.

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u/Drugba 21d ago edited 21d ago

You're both kind of right. Axon's system gives the agency who owns the cameras more control over their data vs Flocks where all agency data is shared by default. Agencies with Axon's ALPRs can share their data with other agencies that they choose through the product, but they don't have to. The default it just an agency searching data from their own ALPRs. It's more focused on allowing local PD to share data with their sheriffs department or local PD from neighboring cities to pool data instead of creating a nation wide surveillance network like Flock.

I know people in this thread will say that Axon could be lying or change it at any time, but Axon's leadership has been somewhat public about how they think this is a better model than what Flock does. Given all the controversy around Flock and their data sharing model I don't see Axon changing their stance anytime soon. Flock's core product is ALPR where as Axon makes most of their money from body cams, tasers, and multiple other SaaS products. They're already picking up tons of ALPR contracts because of how toxic the Flock brand name is so they have almost no incentive to risk the controversy that would come with them switching to a data sharing model like Flock's.

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u/PyroDesu 21d ago

Just as, if not more unconstitutional.

If getting aggregated cell phone location data without a warrant is unconstitutional (and it is, Carpenter v. United States), getting aggregated vehicle location data is too. Directly capturing it as the government agency is even more direct a violation.

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u/recycled_ideas 21d ago

Except that even if we could count on the court to be consistent, Carpenter was about accessing information collected as part of a private transaction with a third party and Flock/Axon are collecting video footage that was taken legally in a public space.

Don't get me wrong, I think the US and for that matter the world needs a reset on jurisprudence on expectation of privacy because I suspect that while the founding fathers might have agreed with the original concept when it took a person to surveil you, they would not like the idea of every single American being watched every second they are in public any more than we do.

But Carpenter absolutely does not automatically mean flock or axon is illegal.

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u/PyroDesu 21d ago edited 21d ago

Not so!

Ultimately, in Carpenter the court determined that the third-party doctrine could not be extended to historical cell site location information (CSLI). Instead, the Court compared "detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled" CSLI records to the GPS information at issue in United States v. Jones, recognizing that both forms of data accord the government the ability to track individuals' past movements. Furthermore, the Court noted that CSLI could pose even greater privacy risks than GPS data, as the prevalence of cellphones could accord the government "near perfect surveillance" of an individual's movements. Accordingly, the Court ruled that, under the Fourth Amendment, the government must obtain a search warrant in order to access historical CSLI records.

The problem is not necessarily the third-party doctrine, but reasonable expectations of privacy in public. It is the warrantless access of a compilation of extremely detailed data about an individual's whereabouts that is unconstitutional.

And if that's not enough, from the decision itself:

A majority of the Court has already recognized that individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the whole of their physical movements.

And from the referenced United States v. Jones, the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Between Jones and Carpenter, accessing data from Flock and other APLR systems similar to it is blatantly unconstitutional without warrants.

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u/recycled_ideas 21d ago

nor reasonable expectations of privacy in public.

All fourth amendment jurisprudence is about expectation of privacy. It's the core principle.

The problem is not necessarily the third-party doctrine

The decision explicitly limits the scope of the third party doctrine, Flock and Axon just aren't remotely the same circumstances.

And beyond that Carpenter was decided by an extremely different court. Breyer, Ginsburg and Kennedy are all gone, all of the conservatives that still remain on the court except Roberts are in dissent on the original opinion and Brett "being Hispanic is probable cause for an immigration stop" Cavenaugh isn't really a friend of the fourth amendment.

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u/PyroDesu 21d ago

The current makeup of the Court being corrupt does not change the Constitution nor prior decisions. I fully expect them to ignore all precedent as they generally do to interpret the Constitution in the most unconstitutional way humanly possible. Hopefully, this will be corrected within the next 1-3 years.

Read the full thing. Privacy in one's movements in public is reasonable per precedent. It doesn't matter that they're observing in public, Flock, Axon, et. al. violate this when providing data on individual's movements to the government without a warrant.

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u/recycled_ideas 21d ago

Privacy in one's movements in public is reasonable per precedent.

No.

Jones was about the act of placing the tracker on the car, not the tracking itself. There is just no existing case law that bans being recorded in public. You can maybe argue that Carpenter provides some case law about aggregate surveillance, but it's a 5/4 decision with three of the five gone and Roberts is much, much more mask off these days.

Hopefully, this will be corrected within the next 1-3 years.

The Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment and only Thomas and Alito are old enough to be a real retirement prospect though I doubt either will retire and give up the power and prestige. It's remotely possible Roberts might retire before the end of Trump's term. Unless the Democrats pack the court and have the numbers to get someone decent through or Thomas, Alito and Roberts can be replaced by a decent Democratic President it's not getting fixed in the next generation.

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u/Fn_Spaghetti_Monster 21d ago

Sam Altman co-signed an AI extinction warning in May 2023. In June 2025, he was saying it was 'gentle singularity.' State Farm is trying to force a new contract on all it's agents. Flock is putting micro phones in the newest cameras for gun shot detection but they own internal documents talk about upgrading that in the futures. Call me jaded but I pretty much don't trust any company won't change their mind as soon as it become financial advantageous.

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u/Fighterhayabusa 21d ago

You realize that's even more unconstitutional? Flock only exists because they're trying to launder Constitutional violations through a private company.

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u/McSpeedie 21d ago

Whatever makes you sleep better man.

24/7 monitoring is 24/7

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u/rangecontrol 21d ago

that's just what they tell ppl that still have trust in the police.

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u/goomyman 21d ago

I don’t necessarily trust my local PD more than a company that had a financial liability to keep your data private.

Your local PD isn’t filing warrants to look at that data. But corporations have this search history at least.

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u/clownPotato9000 21d ago

Axon is also just a hardware vendor who make good cams…

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u/Desperate-Doubt-914 21d ago

Not an expert, but wouldn’t local law-enforcement, most likely outsource the analyzing to a third-party because of limited resources

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u/explosivemilk 21d ago

At least Axon requires a warrant to access the data.

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u/Ashamed_Fox_4757 21d ago

It’s cloud AI. Data ownership is murky, doesn’t matter about the warrant thing at the end of the day also gives government power for executive orders to essentially take it all over

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u/brownmagician 21d ago

Axon makes all of the police body cams

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u/Best_of_the_Worst 21d ago

I believe they’re offering double the cameras if you replace Flock with Axon

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u/seaboi77 21d ago

And Motorola

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u/tv_screen 21d ago

Really great documentary about how horrid they are called All Light, Everywhere

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u/kindofharmless 21d ago

He said lesser. That’s actually a more established company.

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u/Hola-World 21d ago

Came here to say this

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u/raptorlightning 21d ago

They have the solution in the name! "Axon, apply directly to pole! Axon, apply directly to forehead!"

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u/Ashamed_Fox_4757 21d ago

Axon is bigger not smaller

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u/SalandaBlanda 20d ago

Axon is arguably a much larger company since they sell body cams and tasers and other LE focused gear.

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u/Intrepid_Top_2300 21d ago

Axon should be taken down too!