Flock Safety, the private surveillance company already operating tens of thousands of automated license plate readers across the United States, is quietly expanding its surveillance network to include audio monitoring. The company’s Raven acoustic sensors, originally marketed as gunshot detectors, are now being updated to analyze human voices and sounds of distress. These microphones operate alongside Flock’s camera systems under the same software platform, linking audio and visual tracking within a unified infrastructure.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the company’s new “distress detection” feature scans public spaces for sounds such as screaming or calls for help, then transmits automated alerts to law enforcement. Flock claims it does not record conversations, but that misses the point. To detect and classify a sound, a system must first capture and process it. The analysis itself is surveillance.
The shift represents a new stage in the normalization of mass monitoring. What began as a program to track vehicles has expanded into the surveillance of speech. What began as a corporate experiment now operates as public infrastructure. These systems are being installed in cities and small towns with almost no oversight, justified by the language of “public safety” and “community protection.” Yet their function and intent extend far beyond either.
From Plates to Voices
Flock’s plate readers already document and store the movement patterns of millions of people who have never been accused or suspected of a crime. They scan first and justify later, reversing the fundamental order of lawful search and seizure. The Fourth Amendment guarantees protection from unreasonable searches, yet the act of scanning itself constitutes the search. Each entry into Flock’s database represents a moment of unconsented tracking.
In United States v. Jones (2012), the Supreme Court ruled that warrantless GPS tracking of a vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment. In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Court extended that logic to digital location data, recognizing that long-term surveillance—even of public activity—invades privacy in ways that require judicial oversight. Flock’s systems recreate those violations on an industrial scale.
California law nominally limits such practices. Civil Code Sections 1798.90.5 through 1798.90.55 require public agencies using Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems to adopt written usage policies, maintain access logs, and minimize data retention. Yet few municipalities comply, and even fewer disclose how often the data is shared or for what purpose. The notion that data deletion after thirty days resolves the problem is misleading. The violation occurs at the moment of capture.
Now, the company is expanding from location tracking to behavioral analysis. Its Raven acoustic sensors interpret sound patterns and classify them according to proprietary algorithms. Whether these systems store the raw audio or merely extract metadata is irrelevant. The process itself establishes an automated system of listening—a digital witness embedded in public space, always active, always processing.
The Legal Illusion of “Public Safety”
Authorities defend these systems under the assumption that what is visible or audible in public can be freely collected. That assumption erases the distinction between observation and surveillance. To witness something with the human eye is transient; to record and categorize it for later analysis is an act of coercion. The difference lies in intent and permanence.
The concept of “public safety” has become a legal loophole wide enough to erase the very protections it once justified. In practice, surveillance rarely prevents violence. It documents, predicts, and polices behavior long after it occurs—or before it ever happens. This is the logic of pre-crime: collect everything first, decide later what counts as suspicious.
The United States already operates one of the largest domestic surveillance networks in the world. The spread of systems like Flock’s represents the quiet privatization of that infrastructure. Local governments pay licensing fees while the company retains control over data storage and analytics. Police departments get instant access to tracking tools without needing to build or maintain them, and the corporation gains a permanent revenue stream. The arrangement blurs the boundary between state power and private enterprise.
A System Built on Revenue and Control
The justification that these systems catch criminals ignores the economic incentives driving them. The majority of offenses identified through ALPRs are not violent crimes but revenue events: expired registrations, unpaid tickets, toll violations, or low-level possession charges. Real crime requires a victim. What these systems target are acts of non-compliance—administrative violations that feed fines, forfeitures, and grant renewals.
This model converts surveillance into an industry. Each scan creates data that can be monetized, shared, or used to justify additional funding. As the cameras multiplied, so did the contracts. Flock now operates in more than two thousand jurisdictions nationwide, supplying both hardware and cloud-based analytics to local law enforcement and federal fusion centers. The result is a seamless architecture of monitoring that no longer depends on warrants, only subscriptions.
The expansion into audio detection follows the same path. By claiming to detect “human distress,” Flock introduces an emotional pretext for deeper surveillance. The system no longer tracks vehicles; it listens for feelings. But the pattern of function remains unchanged: data first, interpretation second, accountability never.
The Broader Pattern of Normalized Surveillance
This evolution mirrors a familiar cycle. First, a crisis is invoked—crime, terrorism, school shootings. Then, a new technology is introduced as a solution. Once installed, it is never removed. It is rebranded, upgraded, and repurposed until it monitors something else entirely. Fear builds the infrastructure; bureaucracy sustains it.
The microphones now listening for distress could just as easily be tuned to detect raised voices at protests or “unusual” gatherings. History shows that surveillance tools expand to the full extent of their capability. Once built, their purpose is dictated not by the law but by those who control the data.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has warned that Flock’s “Raven” program is a significant step toward comprehensive audio analytics. Even if the system does not yet store continuous recordings, the technological foundation for that capacity already exists. The temptation to expand it will be irresistible to agencies that measure effectiveness by arrests, not by freedom preserved.
The Philosophical Fault Line
At its core, this is not just a legal or technological issue, but a philosophical one. A society that monitors by default no longer recognizes the individual as a sovereign being. It treats people not as free actors but as data points to be managed. Surveillance reverses the natural order between the individual and authority. The state no longer investigates wrongdoing; it observes everyone continuously and defines deviation as threat.
Liberty cannot exist in that structure. True freedom rejects rule by presumption. It rejects coercion in every form and denies legitimacy to systems that claim authority over peaceful individuals. Whether wrapped in the language of nationalism or collectivism, every form of authoritarian control begins with the same premise—that people exist to be governed, watched, and corrected.
In a society built on voluntary association, safety arises from mutual respect and personal accountability, not from databases or predictive monitoring. Freedom and surveillance are incompatible. When technology is built on the assumption that everyone is a suspect, it enforces submission rather than protection. It replaces consent with compliance and trust with control.
Submission by Infrastructure
Flock Safety’s expansion into audio detection is not an isolated corporate decision. It is part of a coordinated trend toward algorithmic governance, where decisions once made by human beings are now automated and outsourced. The microphones that once claimed to detect gunshots now listen for voices. The cameras that once tracked “suspects” now follow everyone. Each iteration moves the boundary between public space and state property closer to extinction.
The danger lies not only in what these systems do today but in what they make possible tomorrow. Infrastructure, once built, is never neutral. It embodies the logic of those who designed it: the logic of preemption, observation, and control.
This is how freedom is lost—quietly, gradually, through technology framed as safety and sold as progress. The machines do not demand obedience. They simply make disobedience visible.
Sources and References
Electronic Frontier Foundation: “Flock’s Gunshot Detection Microphones Will Start Listening for Human Voices,” October 2025
California Civil Code §§1798.90.5–1798.90.55 — Automated License Plate Recognition Systems: Privacy and Usage Restrictions
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012) — GPS Tracking and the Fourth Amendment
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/565/400/
Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018) — Warrant Requirement for Historical Location Data
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/585/16-402/
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968) — Requirement of Reasonable Suspicion
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/392/1/
Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, 542 U.S. 177 (2004) — Limits on Compelled Identification
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/542/177/