Source: Ars Technica
Flock Safety's automated license plate reader network—positioned as an alternative to government surveillance infrastructure—is collapsing in its core markets as municipalities face organized privacy pushback and political pressure. The defections show that surveillance-as-a-service models built on aggregation and opacity encounter genuine municipal resistance when residents demand accountability, even at the cost of lost crime-fighting tools. In a tech-skeptical, civic-minded region sympathetic to Flock's pitch, customer defection suggests the company's growth depends on inertia and vendor lock-in rather than genuine value creation.