It's really not. These systems are bought and paid for predominantly by local governments. Most of whom don't spend any resources on immigration enforcement. Some of which have policies prohibiting such co-operation.
Flock is required to comply with "lawful" requests and seems happy to do so.
This is largely the same for all major cloud camera operators. See also: Verkada and their facial recognition. These things are installed all over the place in public areas. And you think their facial recognition is compartmentalized to their specific tenant?
Simplified: you can make something illegal locally, but federal law will almost always win out.
https://www.courierpress.com/story/news/local/2025/07/22/eva...
https://www.wyso.org/news/2026-05-01/dayton-suspends-automat...
https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-suspends-licens...
Other coverage:
Dayton mayor demands accountability after plate-reader data breach
https://www.wdtn.com/news/mayor-commissioner-demand-alpr-dat...
https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-suspends-licens...
I think it's fairly obvious why this got so aggressively flagged.
If your imagined competitor doesn't offer that feature, then how is it a competitor?
If your competitor does offer it, then why would it even matter whether ICE gets access to inferences derived from the cloud vs. some federation of local storage devices?
You can put a camera on a pole with a cell router and enable the LPR plugin in your recording software pretty darn cheap. But you probably can't do that with a single subscription apart from Flock.
Flock provides a fire-and-forget service. The city contracts Flock, and then the cameras are put up and managed. I'm asking if anyone else does this without Flock's baggage.
Probably not. A state can regulate how its own resources are used. It can't block a federal warrant.
Exactly. If they all submit to federal warrants, and the state has a law effectively against that, then it becomes illegal to use the cameras.
The local governments are in compliance with state law until the feds use it for immigration enforcement. Then the supremacy clause takes over and more or less nullifies it. As long as it isn’t the local agency using it for enforcement, then they are in the clear.
I think that Flock contracts are getting cancelled due to unpopularity, not because of compliance worries. Can you point to any actual cases where enforcement of the state law led to a termination of service?