Surveillance camera maker Flock is cutting its workforce as the company faces ongoing and growing backlash to its license plate readers and people-tracking technology.
News of the staff cuts comes from Reuters, which reported that Flock is reducing its staff by 18%, or around 270 employees, across the board. The publication said the employees are leaving at the end of October following a voluntary buyout program.
Wired reported last month that Flock was asking some of its employees to leave, citing the need to shrink its staff to avoid mandatory layoffs.
Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel told TechCrunch in a statement on Friday: “Flock recently offered current employees a generous Voluntary Separation Program as part of our efforts to position the company for its next phase of growth. This was a voluntary program, not a layoff, and reflects our continued focus on building a strong, sustainable business for the future.”
I don’t think it’s going to matter if local communities just switch brand names.
There seems to be something in the American DNA that is outright hostile to this kind of surveillance, and it’s bipartisan and crosses class lines. This is one of the few examples where protests and vigilantism have translated into widespread legal resistance to mass surveillance. One has to consider that Flock hasn’t just lost 300+ contracts in three months, but it’s happened in 36 US states.
That is undeniably a very big deal.
We’ll see in the next few months. I edited my comment while you were replying so you probably didn’t see, but a friend of mine just won against Flock in his own county, the sheriff and DA agreed to take them all down. And within the same day his citizen group got information that there is already a local bill in the works from the same politicians who pretended to support them - Democrats - That plans to just switch to new contractors that aren’t Flock. He’s going to keep fighting but it remains to be seen if the outrage here can carry the movement through the inevitable burnout / political exhaustion when people are confronted by the single-minded indifference of the political machine.