DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, HOST:
The software company Flock Safety is at the center of a firestorm over its license plate readers, a technology which police use to track cars and solve crimes. Dozens of American cities have canceled their contracts with Flock Safety over privacy concerns. And as NPR's Jaclyn Diaz reports, some of the company's competitors see an opening.
JACLYN DIAZ, BYLINE: Loreal Hawk (ph) is a member of DeFlock DC. It's a group dedicated to ending the city's contract with Flock Safety. That's the maker of AI-powered license plate readers. On Monday, Hawk and other members of the group packed a room at a local library to teach residents about the surveillance technology. She spoke to NPR as the meeting was letting out.
LOREAL HAWK: Flock is just one thing that, like, feeds into it. But I think a lot of people are beginning to realize, like, we need to chip away at these things bit by bit.
DIAZ: There are more than 130,000 cameras across the country. That's according to deflock.org, a group that tracks these cameras nationwide. Flock cameras are usually along roads. They take images of license plates. They collect the makes and models of vehicles, too. Here's Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. That's a privacy advocacy group.
MATTHEW GUARIGLIA: It is tantamount to putting a GPS device on your car because if you drive past 12 Flock cameras on your way to work, they can map your entire route.
DIAZ: And that level of personal data in the hands of law enforcement without a warrant has made many people uncomfortable. Flock Safety is one of the leading makers of automated license plate readers, but they're not the only game in town. Competitors like Axon and Motorola Solutions have offered similar products for years, and some of these competitors have started cashing in on the backlash against Flock, like Axon, a decades-old multibillion-dollar company. It offers license plate readers and a host of other tools for police and the military. Axon CEO Rick Smith told investors on a recent earnings call that law enforcement agencies are making the switch.
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RICK SMITH: So I would say we're seeing a significant number of agencies want to come over to Axon and convert from existing license plate readers to us, specifically because of the controls and privacy work that we've done around this space.
DIAZ: It's not clear how many departments have made the move to Axon. The company declined to disclose that. But Guariglia says the shift changes nothing.
GUARIGLIA: The important thing to do is not just to move over to Axon. It's to understand that you are replacing one color of camera for another color of camera, and those dangers that you were concerned about are still going to be there.
DIAZ: Flock CEO Garrett Langley tells NPR he's not worried about losing customers to competitors.
GARRETT LANGLEY: We will have added seven times the number of new customers that have left us this year. I would say, by and large, we're adding way more customers by a landslide.
DIAZ: Langley mentioned Denver, which recently signed a one-year deal with Axon after dropping Flock. He says that's a head-scratcher.
LANGLEY: That company works with ICE. That company has a contract with most federal agencies. That company lacks the guardrails we have. They lack the accountability and transparency we have. And so I don't know why they made that choice.
DIAZ: Axon does hold several multimillion-dollar contracts with the Department of Homeland Security for things like body cameras and tasers. But federal immigration agencies like Border Patrol have accessed Flock camera data - another source of controversy for the company. As Flock continues to face scrutiny, it recently announced changes to its data-retention policy. The company also emphasized safeguards around local data searches, but critics say those changes don't go far enough. Jaclyn Diaz, NPR News.
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