Public outrage has finally forced some cities to reconsider Flock Safety license-plate reader cameras. The reason is simple: people learned how easily a system sold as “public safety” can become a tool for tracking ordinary residents.
In Denver, records showed more than 1,400 searches tied to immigration enforcement concerns. That raised serious questions about whether local camera networks were being used, directly or indirectly, to assist federal immigration investigations. The issue was not merely the cameras themselves. It was who could search the data, why they were searching it, and whether the public had any meaningful say in the matter.
But communities should not assume that canceling a Flock contract ends the surveillance debate.
A new generation of equipment is arriving under a different corporate name: Axon, the company already known to most Americans for Tasers, police body cameras, vehicle cameras and digital evidence storage. Axon now markets systems designed to combine license-plate recognition, live video feeds and camera networks into a single police-viewing platform.
One product, Axon Lightpost, is designed to use existing streetlight infrastructure. According to Axon’s own materials, it can provide automated license-plate recognition and live video streaming while drawing power from a streetlight. Axon says its plate-reading technology can capture plates at speeds up to roughly 155 mph and at distances up to 328 feet in daylight.
That should prompt a basic question in every city: How many streetlights could quietly become surveillance points before residents are even told?
The concern is not that every camera is automatically unlawful or that police should be denied tools to solve violent crime. Cameras can help investigate shootings, locate missing people and identify stolen vehicles. The concern is that the same systems can create an always-on record of where innocent people travel, who they visit, what neighborhoods they enter and how often they go there.
Axon’s Fusus platform is central to that concern. It is designed to bring feeds from public cameras and participating private security cameras into a real-time operational view for police. In other words, the surveillance system is no longer just a pole-mounted camera. It can become an integrated network connecting license-plate readers, live video, body-camera footage, dispatch information and privately owned cameras.
That is why the public discussion cannot stop at the name “Flock.”
A city may remove one vendor and still approve another system that gathers similar information, expands the number of cameras, or links police to a wider network of video sources. Longmont, Colorado, for example, moved away from Flock and approved a path toward Axon license-plate readers, though the Axon contract was not yet finalized at the time of reporting.
Axon’s growing reach extends beyond cameras. The company announced a $625 million acquisition of Carbyne, a cloud-based 911 technology company. The deal is intended to connect emergency calls, dispatch systems, video and other public-safety information within Axon’s broader ecosystem.
Carbyne’s past investors and founders have drawn scrutiny, including reporting on former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s involvement and Jeffrey Epstein’s undisclosed investment through that relationship. But those historical connections, while worth transparent reporting and public scrutiny, are not proof that any American city’s 911 system is being operated for a foreign government or intelligence service. That claim requires evidence, not insinuation.
The real issue is already serious enough without exaggeration: private companies are building deeply connected public-safety systems that can collect, store, search and combine enormous amounts of data about the public.
Before any city signs an Axon, Fusus, Real-Time Crime Center or similar contract, residents deserve clear answers:
What data will be collected, and for how long?
Who can search it?
Can outside agencies access it?
Can it be used for immigration enforcement?
Are private-camera owners voluntarily participating?
Is a warrant required for certain searches?
Will audit logs be public?
Who independently checks for abuse?
A company name change is not a privacy policy. A new camera design is not accountability. And “public safety modernization” should never be a phrase used to avoid public oversight.
The question every resident should ask is not simply, “Does my city have Flock cameras?”
It is: “What surveillance system replaced them, who controls it, and what protections exist for the people being watched?”
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