Flock Safety Admits It: Mass Surveillance — In Writing

We’ve known it all along. Now we have the receipts.

Flock Safety has spent years telling communities that its automated license plate reader network is about public safety — stolen cars, missing persons, solving crime.

But buried inside Flock’s own guide for briefing city councils is something far more revealing than any press release.

It’s a document titled “How to Speak to City Councils About Public Safety Technology.”

This isn’t a technical manual. It’s a communications playbook — built from Flock’s own internal experts — coaching law enforcement agencies on how to defend Flock’s technology before elected officials and the public.

And on page four, Flock gives away the game. Not in a leak. Not in a critic’s interpretation. In its own words, from its own staff.

The Smoking Gun

The document addresses one of the most obvious questions citizens keep asking about automated license plate readers: is this mass surveillance?

Here’s Flock’s advice to the agencies it sells to, straight from Jamie Hudson, Flock’s Real Time Strategist for Product Consulting & Training:

“Don’t avoid the concept of mass surveillance because you’re not going to convince opponents that it’s not.”

Read that again.

They aren’t telling agencies how to prove the technology isn’t mass surveillance. They aren’t saying, “Here’s the evidence you’re wrong.” They’re saying: don’t bother trying to convince opponents that it isn’t.

That’s the tell. It tells you something important about how Flock itself views the fight over this technology — they know the public sees the surveillance. So the playbook’s actual advice isn’t rebuttal. It’s redirection.

The Bait-and-Switch

The very next line in Flock’s own materials makes the pivot explicit:

“Instead of debating terminology, successful council presentations focus on governance.”

There it is.

Citizen: “Are you building a mass surveillance system?” Flock’s recommended response: “Let’s talk about governance.” Who controls the system? Who can access it? How is information used? How are searches reviewed? What safeguards exist?

Those are legitimate questions. They are also not the question that was asked.

The original question is whether government should be building a searchable network of where people’s vehicles travel in the first place. An audit trail doesn’t make surveillance disappear. A policy doesn’t make surveillance disappear. A transparency dashboard doesn’t make surveillance disappear. You can regulate surveillance without changing the fact that it is surveillance — and Flock’s own materials coach agencies to make that distinction vanish from the conversation.

This Isn’t a Technical Manual. It’s a Political Playbook.

Look again at the title: “How to Speak to City Councils About Public Safety Technology.” Then look at what agencies are actually taught to do.

The playbook notes that opponents typically arrive with, in its own words, “a very carefully scripted narrative” — and its advice is that agencies should show up with a carefully scripted presentation of their own, one that “addresses those concerns ahead of time.” It goes on to recommend that agencies:

• Brief city managers early.
• Meet with council members before votes occur.
• Share policies proactively.
• Answer questions before public comment becomes the public’s first introduction to the program.

Sit with that for a second. A resident hears their city is considering a network of surveillance cameras. They show up to the council meeting. They get their three minutes at the podium. But by the time they stand up, the people voting may have already sat through the vendor’s presentation, already heard the talking points, already been walked through the safeguards, already had their questions answered — before the public ever touched a microphone.

That’s not “education.” That’s message management, and Flock says so itself.

Don’t Let the Public Define the Story

Flock’s Chris Colwell, who leads the company’s product consulting and training work, makes the underlying philosophy explicit near the end of the document:

“This story is going to get told either way. The only question is whether you’re going to be the one telling it.”

That line is the whole document in miniature. Control the narrative. If citizens call it surveillance, talk about governance. If taxpayers question the price, talk about the cost of crime. If residents demand accountability, hand them an audit log. If opponents organize, prepare your own carefully scripted presentation.

The technology doesn’t necessarily change. The story does.

The Surveillance Bait-and-Switch, Restated

A citizen asks: why is my government collecting information about where my vehicle goes?

The recommended response becomes: don’t worry, we have policies, audits, access controls, and oversight.

Notice what happened. The question changed — from should government be collecting this information, to aregovernment employees following the rules once it’s collected. Those are two completely different questions, and the second one is much easier to win, because nobody is against accountability. Of course we want audit logs. Of course we want access controls. Of course we want policies.

But accountability for surveillance is not the same thing as consent to surveillance.

Then They Show Agencies How to Sell the Price

The reframing doesn’t stop at privacy. Flock’s Director of Public Trust and Technology, Max Weinstein, tells agencies to steer budget conversations away from “technology versus nothing” and toward “technology versus the cost of unresolved crime,” pointing agencies to third-party tools that estimate the dollar cost of crime per household.

Watch the question move. It starts as: is this technology worth what taxpayers are paying? It becomes: can we afford not to have it? That isn’t answering the budget question — it’s changing the emotional stakes. An elected official who questions a surveillance contract can suddenly be made to sound like they’re questioning public safety itself.

They Know Public Pushback Is a Problem

The document spends real space on what happens when a community pushes back — and its own case study proves the point. In Oakland, the company’s materials note, the LPR proposal drew more than 140 public comments, opposition from the Privacy Advisory Commission, and a deadlocked Public Safety Committee before it ever reached the full council.

The lesson Flock draws from that fight is not “maybe this community doesn’t want this technology.” It’s that demonstrating audit logs, approval requirements, and compliance reviews can move a conversation “from speculation to verification” — and, in Oakland’s case, produce a 7-1 council vote in favor.

Again: control the conversation. It isn’t a coincidence that this case study sits in the same document as the “don’t argue you’re not mass surveillance” line. It’s the proof of concept.

They Even Sell “Accountability”

Flock’s own materials promote governance tools built to show agencies “who searched what, when they searched it, and why.” Good — those things should matter.

But let’s not confuse two different concepts. An audit log can tell you who accessed the system. It cannot tell you whether the system should exist. A policy can tell an officer what they’re supposed to do. It cannot guarantee what happens when nobody is watching. A transparency portal can show selected information. It cannot answer the underlying privacy question.

You cannot audit your way out of a constitutional debate.

And That’s the Part Flock Doesn’t Get to Decide

The company can sell technology. It can write policies. It can build audit tools. It can produce glossy PDFs and run webinars coaching police chiefs on message discipline. What it doesn’t get to do is define what Americans are allowed to call surveillance.

Citizens do. Elected officials do. Courts do. The Constitution does.

The question isn’t only “can police use this technology responsibly?” It’s also “what kind of government surveillance are we willing to normalize?” That deserves an honest public debate — not a vendor-produced script delivered to council members before the public ever gets the floor.

This Is Bigger Than Whether Flock Cameras Solve Crimes

To be fair: nothing in this document proves Flock cameras never solve crimes. It doesn’t prove every officer using the system abuses it. It doesn’t prove every safeguard is meaningless.

We don’t need to make those claims. The document speaks for itself. What it shows is a sophisticated, professionally produced effort to help agencies win the political fight over this technology — anticipate opposition, script the presentation, brief officials before public comment, redirect the mass-surveillance question, reframe the financial argument, and, in the company’s own words, own the narrative.

That’s not speculation. That’s the playbook, written down by Flock’s own staff for Flock’s own customers.

So Read It Yourself

Don’t take our word for it. Don’t take Flock’s word for it either. Look at page four. Read what Flock’s own Real Time Strategist says about mass surveillance. Read what the document says about “carefully scripted” presentations, about briefing officials before votes, about reframing cost as “the cost of unresolved crime,” about owning the story before anyone else can tell it.

Then ask yourself: if this technology is so easy to defend on the merits, why does the company need a professionally produced playbook teaching government how to defend it?

The Public Isn’t the Obstacle. The Public Is the Oversight.

Flock has the cameras. Flock has the software. Flock has the sales team, the talking points, and the playbook.

Now the public has the playbook too.

Once citizens can see how the presentation is built, elected officials don’t get to say they didn’t know. They have a responsibility to ask harder questions, to demand real transparency, and to remember whose government this actually is.

This is our government. Not Flock’s.

The question was never really whether we’re being watched. Flock’s own materials all but concede that point. The real question — the one no vendor gets to answer for us — is who decides how much we’re watched, and under what oversight.

We’re going to keep asking it.

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