A new and rapidly growing surveillance company called Flock Safety is building a form of mass surveillance unlike any seen before in American life. The company has so far focused on selling automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras to homeowner associations and other private parties, as well as to police departments. But it has done so through a business model that effectively enlists its customers into a giant centralized government surveillance network — and the company is aiming to expand its offerings beyond ALPR to traditional video surveillance, while also expanding its AI machine vision capabilities.
In this paper, ACLU's Jay Stanley looks at Flock's products, business model, and future aims, and how those embody some of the more worrisome trends in surveillance technology today.