A former Flock employee has quit the company in disgust, saying it lied to workers about how its surveillance cameras were used and that it used dirty tricks to silence its critics.
The employee, Jonathan Paz, joined the company as a government affairs manager two years ago. Nominally, his job was to represent Flock’s “product as best as possible making sure that we can get approved at council,” he told 404 Media in a new interview. Or in other words, his gig was to convince cities to buy and deploy its AI-powered cameras.
Paz maintains that he earnestly believed at the time that its license-plating scanning cameras would help find missing persons, not to conduct mass surveillance. As part of his job, he flew out to towns and cities to help Flock get approved by local lawmakers.
But his belief in the company’s vision was shattered when he was confronted by locals who strongly opposed Flock cameras being set up in their communities. That’s when he realized his job was, in reality, to “make sure that this resistance doesn’t become a vote reflected in the vote of the council.”
