Flock says its new tool will help identify police abuse, but hasn’t explained how it works
The surveillance company announced it's making a tool called "Audit Assistance" mandatory for all customers, claiming it's already helped catch abuse. But the company has yet to explain how the tool works in detail, raising questions about its effectiveness.
Flock Safety is making a familiar move: announcing a self-regulatory feature with a reassuring name, then letting the silence do the marketing. The company says its new "Audit Assistance" tool will be mandatory for all customers and claims it has already caught police abuse. That is a strong statement, and it deserves scrutiny precisely because the mechanism remains unexplained.
For a surveillance firm, trust is the product. Flock's entire business model depends on law enforcement agencies and the public believing its cameras and analytics are used responsibly. A tool that audits its own customers' behavior is a direct answer to critics who argue that surveillance systems are prone to misuse. By making it mandatory, Flock positions itself as the rare vendor willing to police its own technology.
But the lack of technical detail is telling. If the tool genuinely detects abuse, the company would have an incentive to demonstrate its rigor—showing how it flags anomalies, what data it reviews, and how it avoids false positives. Instead, Flock offers a claim without a method. That is not necessarily evidence of deception, but it is a gap that matters in an industry where accountability is often measured by transparency.
The timing also matters. This announcement comes amid growing public and legislative pressure on surveillance companies to prove their products do not enable overreach. Mandatory self-auditing is a low-cost way to signal responsibility without inviting external oversight. It shifts the burden of proof from the vendor to the tool, and from the tool to the customer's own records.
What remains unasked is whether an audit tool built by the same company that sells the surveillance system can be truly independent. Flock has a financial interest in keeping its customers happy, and an audit that finds too much abuse could hurt sales. The company's silence on how the tool works does not resolve that conflict; it deepens it.
For now, the story is not that Flock has solved police abuse. It is that Flock has announced a solution and asked the public to take it on faith. In a market where trust is the currency, that faith may be the most expensive thing on offer.