Article By Frank Bergman
A former employee of surveillance giant Flock Safety has blown the whistle on the company’s secretive practices, accusing it of misleading workers about how its AI-powered spy cameras were being used and deploying aggressive tactics to silence public opposition.
Jonathan Paz, who worked as a government affairs manager for Flock, said he joined the company believing its technology would help police locate missing people and solve serious crimes.
Instead, Paz says he discovered that his real job was to stop local resistance from influencing elected officials before they approved Flock’s surveillance systems.
The company’s cameras continuously record and track vehicles, cataloging details such as license plates, bumper stickers, and visible damage before allowing law enforcement agencies to search through the data.
Former Employee Says He Was ‘Lied To’
Paz joined Flock roughly two years before leaving the company in July 2025.
His official responsibility was to help present Flock’s products to local governments and secure approval for camera deployments.
His job was to represent the “product as best as possible, making sure that we can get approved at council,” Paz told 404 Media.
That meant traveling to communities and persuading local officials to authorize Flock’s growing surveillance network.
Paz said his faith in the company began to collapse when residents showed up to oppose the cameras and raised concerns about privacy and mass surveillance.
He eventually realized that his role was not simply to provide information to elected officials.
It was to neutralize the public opposition before it could affect the outcome.
Paz said his job was to “make sure that this resistance doesn’t become a vote reflected in the vote of the council.”
“That’s kind of what started unraveling for me very quickly: this facade that we were helping these democratically elected boards represent their constituents,” he added.
Flock’s Crime-Fighting Pitch ‘Turned Out to Be a Lie’
According to Paz, Flock repeatedly assured employees that its cameras were not being used to spy on innocent Americans.
Workers were told the company’s mission was to assist law enforcement and protect communities.
Paz said he believed Flock had “a deep respect for civil rights and liberties” and would never allow its network to become a nationwide surveillance dragnet.
He now says those assurances were false.
“That was what I was sold and lied to about,” Paz told 404 Media.
“I didn’t know that there were these mechanisms inside the company that were essentially fighting to get this pilot to happen.”
Paz ultimately quit and says he rejected a lucrative severance package before publicly exposing what he witnessed.
AI Cameras Track Far More Than License Plates
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Atlanta, Flock is one of America’s largest providers of automatic license plate reader systems.
Its cameras do not resemble traditional surveillance equipment.
They are typically mounted inside small rectangular boxes attached to metal poles, often with solar panels installed above them.
Once activated, the cameras continuously photograph vehicles and use artificial intelligence to record identifying details.
The system can track license plates, vehicle models, colors, bumper stickers, dents, scratches, and other characteristics.
Law enforcement agencies with access can then search the database to reconstruct where vehicles have traveled.
It’s estimated that between 80,000 and 100,000 automatic license plate readers are operating across the United States.
The exact number controlled by Flock remains unclear.
That lack of transparency has only intensified concerns about the scale of the company’s surveillance network.
Police Officers Caught Using System To Spy On Women
Flock insists its technology is protected by strict oversight and internal safeguards.
But a growing list of law enforcement officers has been accused of abusing license plate reader databases for personal purposes.
At least 20 officials in Georgia have reportedly been placed on leave over improper access to Flock systems.
One sheriff’s deputy was arrested after investigators said his alleged misuse involved someone with whom he had a “personal relationship.”
Days earlier, an investigator working for a district attorney’s office was arrested and suspended after allegedly accessing Flock technology more than 60 times in less than one month.
An Atlanta-area police chief accessed Flock cameras 500 times to track the movements of his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter. At least 50 cops have been similarly charged with misusing Flock "including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent" pic.twitter.com/QFkGZ58ooV
— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) August 2, 2026
The abuse extends far beyond Georgia.
The Washington Post reported that at least 50 law enforcement officers have been accused or charged with misusing automated license plate reader technology.
At least 26 allegedly used the systems to track romantic partners, former partners, their exes’ new partners, or women whose private lives they wanted to investigate.
The technology sold to the public as a crime-fighting tool has repeatedly been used by officials to conduct personal surveillance.
Flock Used Legal Threats Against Critics
Flock’s response to mounting scrutiny has also drawn criticism.
In February 2025, the company sent a cease-and-desist letter to an open-source developer who was identifying the locations of its cameras.
The move appeared designed to prevent the public from learning where the surveillance network was operating.
Communities across the country have since begun terminating contracts with Flock, while residents have increasingly protested, obstructed, or damaged the cameras.
Paz’s testimony now offers an inside account of how the company dealt with public resistance.
Flock told communities that its systems would make them safer.
According to its former employee, the company was privately working to ensure opposition never became strong enough to stop the cameras from being approved.
The result is a rapidly expanding surveillance network capable of tracking the daily movements of millions of law-abiding Americans.
And the people operating it have already shown how easily that power can be abused.
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