They Removed Flock, And Replaced It With Something Even Worse

Our Take

Credit to DontLieToMe for flagging a pattern we've been tracking too: communities celebrate ripping out Flock cameras, then quietly sign up with Axon, a company that makes Flock's ALPR network look almost quaint by comparison. Hidden streetlight cameras, body cams that search footage by clothing description, and fususCORE pulling in your neighbor's Ring doorbell and the HOA's parking lot camera into one police dashboard — this isn't a step back from mass surveillance, it's a vertical integration of it.

The lesson here isn't 'Flock bad, Axon fine' or vice versa — it's that the fight can't stop at one brand of camera. Cities that pat themselves on the back for cutting a Flock contract while handing the same data-hungry infrastructure to a different vendor haven't actually restored anyone's privacy. They've just rebranded it, often with even less transparency since Axon's tech is built to be less visible by design. That should worry anyone who thought the ALPR backlash was solving the underlying problem.

If your town is debating a camera contract — Flock, Axon, or otherwise — the vendor name matters less than the policy: retention limits, audit access, ICE/DHS data-sharing bans, and public oversight. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action resources before your city council trades one black box for a bigger one.