By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-10-07 01:16:53 | Updated at 2026-10-07 02:03:32
58 minutes ago
In many parts of the United States, Flock Safety surveillance cameras are on the way out as citizens and municipalities push back against what they see as an unconstitutional overreach in the new technology. But as new alternatives are silently phased in to replace them—by competitors such as Axon Enterprise and Motorola—experts and watchdogs say these companies could raise even more concerns than Flock.
The Los Angeles Police Department is currently planning to roll out a 10-year contract with Axon Enterprise, a $235 million arrangement that would equip America’s second-largest metropolis with more than 1,600 license plate readers.
“The Los Angeles Police Department … is implementing enhancements to Automated License Plate Reader technology designed to preserve its value in criminal investigations, missing-person cases, and other serious public safety matters while strengthening privacy and accountability,” the Los Angeles Police Department told The Epoch Times in an email.
The department cited data safeguards, a 90-day limit for accessing “routine searchable data,” multiple command approval layers for older data, and an absolute one-year limit to access data from the cameras.
Both Flock and Axon sell multiple lines of technology to police departments that integrate artificial intelligence—license plate-reading surveillance cameras, drones, and 911 services.
Axon was previously known as one of the largest national suppliers of police body cameras, dominating around 85 percent of the market for such goods. The company is also the largest producer of police tasers, with roughly 95 to 100 percent of the market share for the stun weapon.
Motorola, best known for its telecommunications hardware, has also been moving to break into the police technology market. The multi-billion-dollar tech giant already has its foot in the door, having spent decades building up land mobile radio networks and 911 emergency dispatch consoles. The company has also gathered data from police cars tow truck drivers as they go about their work, expanding its database.
Unlike Flock, neither of these services offer an automatic nationalized database for their data. Axon focuses on individual police departments, which can elect to pool their data with other law enforcement agencies. Motorola sells subscription services that allow law enforcement to access data not captured by the agency. Data collected through Motorola is also sold to auto finance, insurance, recovery agencies, and other commercial customers.
For municipalities, companies like Flock, Axon, and Motorola offer a potential melding of technology and traditional surveillance tech to reduce crime and make roadways safer. But the cameras they operate have boosted a growing artificial intelligence-powered surveillance network accessible by thousands of U.S. law enforcement agencies, which critics say runs afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
Flock states on its website that it “built this technology to protect and maintain citizen privacy.”
Critics say that doesn’t outweigh the concerns raised by its adoption, or by the adoption of similar technologies from competitors.
“It doesn’t matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood; they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it,” wrote the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been outspoken in its opposition to the technology.
Though they have less name recognition, these competitors use “the same exact approach as Flock,” Suraj Mirpuri, an AI engineer and the founder of Lowdown Labs, told The Epoch Times.
“There’s no real difference in outcome for the average consumer citizen or person concerned about their rights. In some ways these could be worse,” he said.
The license plate-reading cameras operated by Flock Safety have faced
scrutinyfrom lawmakers and private citizens alike, ranging from municipal bans to vigilante acts of vandalism from activists. In some incidents, activists have cut cameras down with reciprocating saws, hit them with trucks and baseball bats, and defaced lenses with spray paint.
In several other cases, the opposition has moved through legal channels.
In Georgia, a woman filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging that its practices violated Americans’ privacy rights. Another lawsuit against Flock has also emerged in Georgia: a class action citing widespread concerns that police are misusing the technology.
Recognizing the growing, often-viral opposition to Flock Safety, dozens of police departments and local bodies are turning to competitors such as Axon and Motorola, which offer similar services without the same public baggage.
Mirpuri suggested that the switch to Axon Enterprise—and growing interest in Motorola—reflect rising public angst with Flock.
“I think that the Axon switch is part of that backlash,” he said. “I think people are trying to toe the line and curb the impulse, despite doing something perhaps a little worse.”
Other critics agree these competitors’ approach could have even more troubling implications for Americans’ constitutional rights.
Two Flock safety cameras in a neighborhood in Jessup, Md., on Aug. 26, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times
“With Flock rightly receiving most of the heat, it’s important to realize that its competitors aren’t so great either, and that simply replacing Flock surveillance with another company’s surveillance won’t necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems posed by this mass surveillance technology,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, wrote in a commentary in August.
While Flock emphasizes its national database of information gathered from the cameras—a key driver of anxiety about the technology—Axon has billed itself as a smaller-scale operation.
“The thing that they sell as a benefit of Axon … is that it’s not nationally integrated like Flock,” Mirpuri said.
“If you sign on with Axon, you as a police department get access to your police department’s data. If you sign on with Flock, you get the national database.”
While local access may seem better, he said, this raises concerns that the nature of private data collection and storage in the United States could easily allow the data to be nationalized later.
“Another entity can integrate Axon’s database with Flocks,” Mirpuri said. “Like, say I’m … just a private company. I could buy access to Axon’s database and link it with Flock’s, so now they’re unified.”
It’s not a far-out claim: The federal government, including Immigration and Customs Services (ICE), through anti-drug trafficking initiatives, has already queried data from companies like Axon, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mirpuri said that these concerns are enabled in part by the U.S. regulatory regime over how private companies collect, store, and share data, with few rules governing how data is held and when it’s deleted in the tech industry.
“There’s no standards in software. There’s [nothing] that says you have to do X, Y, or Z for privacy,” Mirpuri said. “There’s barely any regulations on that in the United States of America.”
Unlike data held by police or government actors, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and other efforts by the public to obtain the data face steeper hurdles.
“That’s police interactions. That’s things they have access to that, even via FOIA request … the public will not be able to easily get,” Mirpuri said.
Flock Safety, Axon Enterprise, and Motorola did not return a request for comment.
