The Surveillance Swap: How Axon Is Winning the War on Flock Safety

Across the United States, privacy activists and civil liberties advocates have spent months celebrating what appears to be a major victory: city after city is tearing down or canceling contracts with Flock Safety, the automated license plate reader (ALPR) firm whose distinct black solar-powered cameras have spread to over 5,000 U.S. cities.

However, investigative records reveal that while city councils claim to be responding to citizen outrage over mass surveillance, many are engaging in a corporate bait-and-switch. Local governments are canceling Flock contracts, only to quietly sign new agreements with law enforcement tech giant Axon Enterprise to deploy ALPR technology that performs the exact same mass tracking function.

The Great Flock Exodus

Over 50 municipalities across 23 states have voted to cancel, reject, or disarm Flock's camera network. The backlash stems from severe privacy vulnerabilities, high error rates, and fears of unchecked data sharing.

A severe internal audit by the Los Angeles Police Department revealed that Flock’s ALPRs generated 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in just two months, a 32.3% false positive rate. Elsewhere, civil rights groups revealed that Flock enabled out of state law enforcement agencies and federal authorities like ICE to search local vehicle movement data without municipal oversight.

For local politicians, dropping Flock offers an easy PR win. For the surveillance state, however, it is merely a brand refresh.

Why Cities Are Swapping to Axon

Instead of dismantling municipal surveillance infrastructure, police departments and city administrators are redirecting anti-Flock momentum toward Axon Enterprise the legacy contractor best known for Tasers and body cameras.

Axon is capturing Flock's lost market share through three key tactics:

• Stealthier Form Factors: Flock’s standalone solar poles act as visible lightning rods for community anger and physical sabotage. In contrast, Axon advertises ALPR cameras (such as its streetlamp-mounted units and Fleet 3 cruiser systems) that mount directly onto existing infrastructure, making the surveillance apparatus far less visible to the public.
• Political Cover: Canceling Flock allows city leaders to announce that they heard citizen privacy concerns, while simultaneously approving Axon contracts under routine police equipment upgrades.
• Decentralized PR Framing: While Flock relies on a central nationwide lookup database (reading over 20 billion plates monthly), Axon positions its network as "agency-controlled". In practice, police departments using Axon can still enter peer to peer data-sharing agreements, achieving similar nationwide tracking reach.

The Illusion of Reform: Real-World Swaps

• Denver, Colorado: Following months of public protest over Flock's data-sharing with federal immigration enforcement, Denver's contract with Flock ended. Immediately after, the Denver City Council voted 7-6 to replace the Flock units with an Axon ALPR dragnet, bypassing requests from the city's Surveillance Task Force for privacy regulations.
• Syracuse, New York: Syracuse lawmakers voted 7-1 to approve an ALPR contract with Axon after cutting ties with Flock over privacy and data handling.
• Austin, Texas: Activists celebrated a landmark victory when the city canceled its Flock contract due to concerns over out-of-state tracking. Yet, the police department maintained automated plate tracking through its ongoing multi million dollar Axon ecosystem.

How the Public Can Legally Fight Back

When citizens focus their opposition solely on brand names like Flock, law enforcement agencies easily pivot to competitors like Axon. To stop the expansion of automated license plate tracking altogether without destroying physical infrastructure or breaking the law, community members, activists, and legal advocates are using five distinct legal and political strategies:

1. Pass Tech-Neutral "CCOPS" Ordinances: The single most effective legislative safeguard against vendor-swapping is passing Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) laws at the city or county level. Developed by privacy organizations like the ACLU, model CCOPS ordinances require law enforcement to obtain explicit city council approval before acquiring, testing, or funding any new surveillance technology—regardless of the vendor.
2. Demand Function-Based Bans, Not Brand Bans: When petitioning city leaders, organizers frame demands around the function of mass location tracking rather than a specific company's name. Prohibiting "unwarranted automated vehicular tracking and mass location databases" legally blocks police departments from signing replacement contracts with Axon, Genetec, Motorola/Vigilant, or Rekor.
3. File Public Records Requests to Expose Secret Data-Sharing: Civil liberties groups frequently use state public records acts and FOIA requests to audit ALPR usage. Uncovering secret data-sharing arrangements—such as local police sharing plate data with out-of-state agencies or federal authorities—creates undeniable legal leverage and has prompted immediate demand letters and lawsuits from groups like the EFF and ACLU.
4. Impose Strict Statutory Guardrails: If a municipality refuses to ban ALPR technology outright, local advocates push city councils to pass binding statutory addendums on any ALPR procurement, including short data retention windows (24–72 hours), prohibitions on uploading to nationwide search networks, and strict judicial warrant requirements.
5. Support Constitutional Fourth Amendment Litigation: Privacy organizations are actively litigating the constitutionality of widespread ALPR networks in federal court. Appellate challenges argue that continuous, automated tracking of an individual's public movements across weeks or months violates reasonable expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

Moving Beyond the Brand Name

The corporate swap between Flock Safety and Axon demonstrates that municipal surveillance is rarely dismantled by privacy petitions alone. Replacing one surveillance vendor with another does nothing to address the core threat: the unregulated, automated tracking of innocent citizens. Until city councils enact strict statutory bans on automated license plate tracking, public outrage will continue to be harvested as a competitive advantage by police technology contractors.

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Sources & Investigative References:

1. 404 Media – "Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers"
2. ACLU of Colorado – "Denver City Council Approves New Axon Contract to Replace Flock"
3. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – "Victory! Austin Organizers Cancel City's Flock ALPR Contract"
4. Futurism / Washington Examiner – "Flock Is Losing Dozens of Contracts as Controversy Grows"