Flock's Nationwide Network of Your Data Has a Price List
Flock keeps telling city councils they don't sell your data. I obtained their own pricing sheets, which show them charging tens of thousands of dollars for it.
Flock collects, aggregates, and analyzes information from AI cameras that track people, public and private data, including drone footage, property records, social security info and credit histories, and even 911 calls.
As you would expect, many locales across the county have been worried about what Flock does with this data, and if they sell it.
At my own city council meeting, my representatives brought up the same concerns. Flock representative Kerry McCormack said “Uh we do not sell data. So, you might think of a social media site or some other site that will aggregate customer data and sell it to a third party. Flock has never done that and does not do that.”
But statements by their PR people who are constantly lying to the public do not matter, what matters is what is in the legal documents.
As I said in my public comment before Kerry presented, Flock’s legal terms are constantly evolving, and Flock “really removed ‘we do not sell customer data’ the second footage and metadata was included back in [their definitions]. There’s literally zero harm in them including the statement if they don’t intend to sell it. So why did they take it out?”
The answer to my question is very simple: because they already sell our data, and price sheets I’ve obtained through a procurement contract prove it.
You can see the price sheets in their full here. They are public documents from Omnia Partners, who were conducting an RFP on behalf of the Region 4 Education Service Center in Houston Texas.
They contain 18 different line items for Flock selling access to their ‘nationwide network’. Here’s an example:
“1 year subscription pricing; min contract length 2 years; FlockOS Essentials gets you access to the nationwide network of Flock LPR cameras with unlimited users. Bucket 13 is for law enforcement agencies with up to 3000 sworn officers in approved headcount”
Or, in plain English, 18 different ways that citizen’s data from around the country can be purchased from them.
Note that these line items are completely separate from any camera or device.
And as reported by 404 Media, “ICE, Secret Service, [the] Navy All Had Access to Flock’s Nationwide Network of Cameras”.
These agencies do not have Flock cameras. You do not need to have any Flock cameras to purchase access to their system.
They are selling one product here, which is access to other customers’ data who have been put into the nationwide network.
And if you’re a city, when you buy their data you sign up for mutual sharing, which means your data is being sold as well: “Police can only perform nationwide searches if they also provide access to their own data”.
Price sheets like this are another clear example of their data selling model, which, as you can see, makes them 10s of thousands of dollars annually for a single contract.
Please show these sheets to your city council members or county commissioners next time Flock tells them they don’t sell your data. If Flock really doesn’t sell customer data, then have them put it in the legal documents.