Surveillance Nation on Trial

A major lawsuit tests the balance between public safety and constitutional privacy rights.

Christina Maas

Flock Safety is a company that markets itself as providing ways to “eliminate crime in your community” – by means of collecting “evidence” via its license plate-reading cameras (ALPRs) that in turn supposedly allow law enforcement to solve crime quicker, thanks to Flock’s “city-wide safety platform.”

A new lawsuit, however, interprets Flock’s business as unconstitutional, i.e., as warrantless deployment of security cameras, that ends up producing dragnet-style mass surveillance.

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