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Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/muni

by infecto 1mo ago

Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/municipality. A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use. I don’t think much padding is necessary. It’s a metal pole with a cheap camera and SIM card. They charge $3-5k a year per camera. The only upfront cost is a local contractor to install the camera, they typically have one that covers a very large region. Huge margins with that alone.

FireBeyond 1mo ago
> A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use. And yet even when opting out, and/or specifically disallowed by the contract, Flock will happily share with other agencies, particularly Federal. It has happened multiple times in my state alone (Washington): https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-safety-cancel-wave-30-cities-alpr-surveillance-contracts-2026/ https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-safety-cancel-wav...
- infecto 1mo ago
  Agree and that is a massive fact issue that we should be focusing on. I think folks are conflating me wanting to focus on the facts as that should be the evidence we use and not what if scenarios.
thaumaturgy 1mo ago
This issue is a lot more nuanced than Flock's standard contract with municipalities. You're right that Flock explicitly -- and repeatedly -- states that agencies "own" the data. They make those statements not just in their contract but also in their marketing materials, in interviews with city councilors, and to the press. But that could also be seen as a fig leaf for their actual control over the data, and as a disclaimer of liability. They've wanted to have it both ways: they get to own every endpoint that the data flows through, and at no time does the supposed customer have real control over the collected data, and yet they aren't responsible for the content or consequences of collecting, transporting, and storing that data. Customers do not even control whether the devices are powered on or off. Two cities here had to ask Flock to disable the devices while the cities reconsidered their contract, and in both cases some devices got reactivated without the cities' permission. We aren't the only ones. Flock has also been incredibly dishonest about their object detection. They repeatedly made statements that it was "just the rear corner of vehicles" or "just a license plate", but when we (legally) acquired some of their devices for analysis, we found hardcoded tags for multiple other objects, including people and bicycles. Flock's "FreeForm" product marketing further supports that they are collecting images of people, and internal training materials from our local police department also supports the belief that Flock is uploading far more than just images of vehicles and license plates. So, my question would be: if you don't control the devices, and you don't own the network, and you don't know what's in the data, then... do you actually own that data? In what substantive way is this situation different from DRM-encumbered media with a revocable license? I mean, sure, you paid for that game or that movie, but if someone else can decide at any time to change your access to it, do you own it? You also made a few other comments rebutting arguments about commercial use of the data. Again, you're technically correct: to date, there are no known cases of Flock directly selling access to ALPR data to a third party in direct exchange for money. But, Flock is a subscription service and cities don't own any of the hardware or the software involved. Flock is directly collecting ALPR data in each city and then selling it back to the city. Even setting that aside, their valuation in 2025 strongly suggested a connection between the data they were collecting and the amount of capital investors were willing to provide. $7.5 billion valuation against $300 million ARR, combined with ALPRs mostly cobbled together from open source or off-the-shelf software and cheap hardware and installed by a nationwide fleet of contractors: it's really hard to look at all the numbers and not conclude that the most valuable asset Flock had was the data they were collecting. If Flock did get $275 million of additional funding largely on the value of the data they had access to, is that really substantially different from commercial sale of the data?

by infecto 1mo ago

FireBeyond 1mo ago

> A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use. And yet even when opting out, and/or specifically disallowed by the contract, Flock will happily share with other agencies, particularly Federal. It has happened multiple times in my state alone (Washington): https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-safety-cancel-wave-30-cities-alpr-surveillance-contracts-2026/ https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-safety-cancel-wav...

infecto 1mo ago
Agree and that is a massive fact issue that we should be focusing on. I think folks are conflating me wanting to focus on the facts as that should be the evidence we use and not what if scenarios.

thaumaturgy 1mo ago

This issue is a lot more nuanced than Flock's standard contract with municipalities. You're right that Flock explicitly -- and repeatedly -- states that agencies "own" the data. They make those statements not just in their contract but also in their marketing materials, in interviews with city councilors, and to the press. But that could also be seen as a fig leaf for their actual control over the data, and as a disclaimer of liability. They've wanted to have it both ways: they get to own every endpoint that the data flows through, and at no time does the supposed customer have real control over the collected data, and yet they aren't responsible for the content or consequences of collecting, transporting, and storing that data. Customers do not even control whether the devices are powered on or off. Two cities here had to ask Flock to disable the devices while the cities reconsidered their contract, and in both cases some devices got reactivated without the cities' permission. We aren't the only ones. Flock has also been incredibly dishonest about their object detection. They repeatedly made statements that it was "just the rear corner of vehicles" or "just a license plate", but when we (legally) acquired some of their devices for analysis, we found hardcoded tags for multiple other objects, including people and bicycles. Flock's "FreeForm" product marketing further supports that they are collecting images of people, and internal training materials from our local police department also supports the belief that Flock is uploading far more than just images of vehicles and license plates. So, my question would be: if you don't control the devices, and you don't own the network, and you don't know what's in the data, then... do you actually own that data? In what substantive way is this situation different from DRM-encumbered media with a revocable license? I mean, sure, you paid for that game or that movie, but if someone else can decide at any time to change your access to it, do you own it? You also made a few other comments rebutting arguments about commercial use of the data. Again, you're technically correct: to date, there are no known cases of Flock directly selling access to ALPR data to a third party in direct exchange for money. But, Flock is a subscription service and cities don't own any of the hardware or the software involved. Flock is directly collecting ALPR data in each city and then selling it back to the city. Even setting that aside, their valuation in 2025 strongly suggested a connection between the data they were collecting and the amount of capital investors were willing to provide. $7.5 billion valuation against $300 million ARR, combined with ALPRs mostly cobbled together from open source or off-the-shelf software and cheap hardware and installed by a nationwide fleet of contractors: it's really hard to look at all the numbers and not conclude that the most valuable asset Flock had was the data they were collecting. If Flock did get $275 million of additional funding largely on the value of the data they had access to, is that really substantially different from commercial sale of the data?