Sometimes in business, the first to market isn’t ultimately the most successful.
That’s the reality for surveillance company Flock Safety, a now-infamous firm working to blanket the United States in automatic license plate readers known as ALPRs, which are basically AI-integrated cameras that interface to form wide-reaching webs of surveillance.
If you’ve heard of Flock, there’s a good chance it’s from one of the hundreds of decentralized local protests against the company’s devices currently raging across the country, or from a wave of negative press coverage.
According to data compiled by the anti-Flock site DeFlock.org, at least 53 municipalities have shredded their contracts with Flock over concerns that federal officials were accessing data collected by the company. Unfortunately for privacy activists and citizens concerned about police surveillance, that doesn’t necessarily mean ALPRs are going away — just that they’re increasingly being supplied by Flock’s competitor.
With Flock suffering some major brand damage as the face of ALPRs, the company Axon has emerged as a strong runner up. The publication Gadget Review observes that in cities like Denver, officials are ending controversial contracts with Flock in order to make room for Axon, which provides a remarkably similar surveillance architecture — just without the specter of federal overreach.
While Axon might lack the toxic name recognition that currently hampers Flock, the police tech company has plenty of controversy of its own.
Back in 2024, Axon was panned for the release of “Draft One,” a ChatGPT-integrated piece of software that transcribed law enforcement body cam audio into police reports. As critics noted at the time, the technology was widely prone to hallucinations, and large language models remain particularly susceptible to racial bias.
Prior to that, Axon faced significant backlash for its announcement that it would deploy drones armed with tasers into schools, as part of a hare-brained scheme to combat the school shooting epidemic which continues to plague the US. (They were also implicated in lighting a guy on fire.)
Overall, privacy advocates now face an added challenge: not just of slowing Flock’s advance, but in making the case that there are no good ALPRs, regardless of what company’s logo is slapped on the surveillance pole.
More on Flock: In Light of Overwhelming Backlash, Flock Cancels Creepy Audio Surveillance Feature
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