Considering the rampant, and well-documented nationwide abuse of Flock cameras by police, the City of Cleveland has been researching other ALPR vendors to contract with in 2027. Because we expect an ordinance for a new contract to be introduced soon, I would like to paint a picture of what life might be like if we got our surveillance from a different company…
Switching away from Flock could result in some big changes!
For example, if we contracted with Motorola for their Vigilant Solutions ALPR, we could finally stop wondering whether federal immigration officers are accessing our data through backdoor or side door methods, because we’d know for sure that they are! ICE has been using the Vigilant Solutions database to organize its raids since 2018, and currently has an active $22.8M contract with Motorola.
Another exciting new feature we’d get with Motorola is their National Vehicle Location Service. Now, this might not sound very different from Flock’s national lookup tool, but Vigilant Solutions makes deals with fleet vehicles like tow trucks to install ALPRs and collect data as they drive around, so they get half a billion readings every month! Then, they sell this information to insurance companies so that they can deny you coverage after a crash! You just can’t get this kind of ruthless commercial mindset anywhere else.
Well, actually, you might be able to get it from Axon. Axon is an expert at bundling products into multi-year contracts so that customers get completely entrenched in their ecosystem and can never get out. Doesn’t it sound nice to get in bed with just one company and lose all of our local autonomy and negotiating leverage?
Plus, with Axon, instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to enrich investors like Peter Thiel, we can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to enrich investors like Donald Trump! Trump bought $5M in Axon stock just two weeks before ICE gave them a $220M contract for tasers, so again, if we pick Axon over Flock, we can finally stop questioning the exact nature of our ALPR vendor’s relationship with federal immigration. What a relief!
But if all of this sounds like a lot of new stuff to manage, don’t worry - at the end of the day, leaving Flock behind for a different company won’t actually change a thing. The good news is that no matter who is supplying our surveillance technology, cops will still be able to use this data to stalk their exes. No matter who is supplying the technology, its deployment will have a chilling effect on free speech, which is exactly what we need in this political moment. No matter who is supplying the technology, we can rest easy knowing that our movements, behaviors, and associations are being tracked, analyzed, and monetized to enrich some of the worst people on the planet.
I, for one, look forward to seeing who you all choose to be our next corporate overlord! Thanks so much for continuing to sell us out.
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