As backlash against surveillance grows, governments overseeing cities, townships, and counties around the US are dropping their Flock contracts at a record pace — a retreat so widespread that some say it could affect the company’s viability.
The police tech company, known for its sprawling network of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), has become one of the flashpoints for the country’s revulsion at AI infrastructure, joining data centers and drone-as-first-responder programs as symbols — and targets — of a rising AI dystopia.
According to reporting by TechSpot, some 214 municipal governments have opted to drop previously-held contracts with Flock since 2021.
That data comes courtesy of Secure Justice, an anti-surveillance group based out of Oakland, California. Just across August, Secure Justice analysis found that some 90 local administrations dropped or non-renewed Flock contracts, quadruple the number of cancellations across July, and a rate of three per day across the whole month.
And as cancellations increase, the hit to Flock’s collective utility — not to mention the company’s bottom line — only becomes more pronounced. That’s because Flock offers police the ability to reference data collected by ALPRs belonging not only to other law enforcement agencies, but also to commercial and individual contractees as well.
Recent history has shown that when Flock cameras in neighboring towns go down, police become much more likely to cancel or non-renew their own contracts, as the main utility for law enforcement comes from the combined network, rather than just those ALPRs local to one jurisdiction (granted, police officers have often used that network to stalk women instead of actually fighting crime, but that’s another story.)
Though Flock told TechSpot its new contracts still outnumber its cancelled contracts at a rate of 10 to one, privacy activists are more focused on the cumulative effects rising cancellations will have in the long term.
“When you see that now 165 [cancellations] are just in the first almost eight months of this year… At that speed, if it goes another year, we’re talking serious money,” Secure Justice executive director Brain Hofer told TechSpot. “That number is going to get huge, fast.”
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