Flock Safety, which makes automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) and the AI software behind them, is in serious trouble. According to The Verge AI, hundreds of cities, counties and other local governments have started canceling their Flock contracts. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has opened an investigation into the company, and Reuters reports that Flock plans to cut about 18 percent of its workforce. The pressure peaked at a hearing on Flock and other ALPR systems held by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism.
One of the witnesses was Benn Jordan, an experimental musician who became a YouTuber and investigative journalist. In a new Decoder interview with The Verge, he explains how a hobby of taking gadgets apart turned into one of the most effective accountability campaigns in surveillance tech.
🔍 How one curious resident started this
Jordan lives in Atlanta, which has more Flock cameras per square mile than anywhere else. About two years ago he noticed them and assumed they were traffic cameras. Then he looked into what they actually did and started finding security vulnerabilities.
His point about the current backlash is simple. Most of what’s in the news now is just “people just figuring out that these have existed the entire time.” The cameras weren’t hidden. Nobody was paying attention.
What stands out is how far the backlash reaches across party lines. Civil liberties groups on the left and a Republican senator on the right are going after the same company. The Verge compares it to the local fights over AI data centers, and that’s a fair comparison. Both started as a local annoyance and turned into a national political issue.
⚖️ This isn’t really about one company
The most useful part of the interview is that Jordan doesn’t want to tear Flock down. He says he doesn’t hate the company. He calls its handling of critics a colossal PR failure that made it “low-hanging fruit,” while competitors like Axon and Motorola quietly build the same kind of networks.
These days he talks with Flock directly, including CEO Garrett Langley, and reports vulnerabilities to the company when he finds them. He calls it an olive branch. His real target is how private companies, government and police work together in a way that favors secrecy over transparency.
“A lot of my focus now is on the lack of transparency from the government,” Jordan says. Companies will always try to make as much money as they can, especially from taxpayers. “But in this case, I feel like our government missed it.”
This matters because if Flock goes away, the problem doesn’t. If the backlash stops at Flock, the market just moves to vendors that do a better job of keeping their heads down.
🔮 What the next 1-3 years could look like
The Flock story fits a larger pattern. Interviewer Nilay Patel points to camera glasses, Mark Zuckerberg brushing off privacy worries by saying phones don’t have a recording light, and public pushback against automatic transcription on the Apple Watch. People seem to have noticed all at once that everything around them is recording.
Here’s where I think this is heading:
- Procurement gets political. City council votes on surveillance contracts will turn into public fights, like data center zoning hearings did.
- Federal rules start taking shape. A bipartisan Senate hearing plus an active investigation usually means legislation is coming, probably focused on data retention, who can access the data, and audit logs.
- Independent security research gets more influential. Jordan showed that one researcher with a YouTube channel can shift policy. Expect other companies selling AI-powered public infrastructure to get the same treatment.
- Competitors get a closer look. Axon and Motorola shouldn’t expect to stay out of the spotlight for long.
🛠️ What businesses should do now
If you build or sell AI systems that collect data about people in public, take notes from Flock’s experience:
- Treat security researchers as allies. Fighting them is how Flock ended up as the face of the whole problem.
- Publish clear rules on access and retention. Hiding them is a bad bet when local governments are your customers.
- Assume your customers will have to defend you in public. If your contract can’t hold up at a city council meeting, it won’t last.
- Watch for bipartisan risk. A product that worries both the left and the right is a regulatory target.
Jordan puts the central issue plainly: nobody voted for an insecure network of cameras on every street corner. The AI companies that make it through the next few years will be the ones that ask the public before the public starts asking them.
The full conversation, including more on Jordan’s security research and his contact with Flock’s leadership, is available at The Verge.