VIDIZMO told a Tennessee police department it could combine Flock and Axon evidence with facial-search technology, even as Flock Safety publicly promises it will not put facial recognition on its devices — though VIDIZMO’s CEO says the proposed Flock integration has not yet been built.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom

A surveillance technology company has pitched police on combining data from Flock Safety cameras with facial-recognition software, exposing a potential path around Flock’s public commitment never to add facial recognition to its own devices.

VIDIZMO, a video-analysis and digital evidence company, approached the Johnson City Police Department in Tennessee in May with a proposed system that would bring Flock camera data, Axon body-camera footage and other evidence into a single platform capable of searching for people by face, vehicles and objects, according to emails obtained through a public records request by the watchdog group DeFlock Johnson City and first reported by 404 Media.

The proposal is significant because Flock CEO Garrett Langley has publicly promised that his company will not incorporate facial recognition into its cameras.

“We will not add facial recognition to our devices,” Langley said in a recent company video.

Flock has also said it will not sell automated license plate reader data to third parties and has announced additional auditing and privacy controls as scrutiny of its nationwide camera network grows.

VIDIZMO’s proposal illustrates a separate issue: Police agencies that possess surveillance footage may be able to move or import authorized copies of that material into software made by another company with capabilities Flock itself does not offer.

VIDIZMO CEO Nadeem Khan told 404 Media that his company has not actually performed facial recognition on Flock footage and that the tool needed to export Flock data directly into VIDIZMO’s platform does not currently exist. He said VIDIZMO would like to develop such an integration.

Khan described facial recognition as “the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be.”

Johnson City police told 404 Media that the department did not take a sales call with VIDIZMO.

Sales Pitch Proposed One Search Platform for Flock and Axon Evidence

The May email was directed to Johnson City Deputy Police Chief Michael Adams and promoted VIDIZMO’s Intelligence Hub.

“Flock Safety generates plate reads and clips continuously,” the salesperson wrote. “Your investigators use that data on active cases. But that Flock data does not connect automatically to your Axon evidence system. VIDIZMO Intelligence Hub closes that gap.”

The sales representative said investigators could consolidate multiple sources of evidence rather than search each system separately.

“It brings Flock Safety data, Axon body worn camera footage, and any other evidence source into one searchable platform. Investigators search across all of it simultaneously — by face, vehicle, or object in seconds.”

VIDIZMO’s description went beyond Flock’s core function as an automated license plate recognition system.

Flock cameras generally capture vehicles and license plates as they pass fixed locations, allowing authorized users to search data by characteristics such as plate number, vehicle make or other identifying details.

VIDIZMO markets broader video-analysis tools that include facial recognition and other forms of artificial-intelligence processing.

Khan told 404 Media that police departments could import plate reads or clips they had exported through their own authorized access to Flock’s platform.

“Flock has not been involved in or informed of this,” Khan said.

The distinction means VIDIZMO was not describing a facial-recognition feature developed or approved by Flock.

Rather, the proposed system would take data available to a police agency and process it through a separate vendor’s technology.

Flock and Axon did not respond to 404 Media’s requests for comment about the proposal.

VIDIZMO Software Predicts Age, Gender and Race

VIDIZMO also markets software that analyzes faces and attempts to classify them according to demographic characteristics.

The company’s own technical documentation says its “Face Attribute Prediction” system can classify detected faces using age, gender and race categories and allow users to search or filter video based on those predictions.

VIDIZMO separates basic person detection from facial identification.

“Detection tells you a person is in frame,” company materials state. “Face recognition tells you which person.”

The company says its software can create searchable facial profiles and watchlists, enabling a system to identify an enrolled person when that face appears in camera footage.

Its separate demographic-analysis feature attempts to estimate attributes without necessarily identifying a specific person.

VIDIZMO lists age ranges and two gender classifications — male and female — along with seven categories its system labels as race: White, Black, Indian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern and Latino Hispanic.

The company says the categories are AI predictions rather than verified demographic information about a person.

VIDIZMO markets the feature for several purposes, including law enforcement searches, redaction, demographic analysis and commercial audience research.

Its documentation specifically describes a law enforcement scenario in which officers could filter evidence when they have a suspect description involving an estimated age, gender or race.

Privacy researcher Chris Gilliard, author of the forthcoming book Luxury Surveillance, criticized the demographic-classification capability.

“I’m appalled at the willingness of VIDIZMO to tout their capabilities to filter along the lines of race, age, and gender,” Gilliard told 404 Media. “There’s decades of scholarship that show why this is not possible, and even more so not desirable.”

VIDIZMO has publicly promoted what it calls “Facial Attribution” since at least 2024, when the company announced that its software could automatically estimate age range, gender and ethnicity from faces appearing in video and images.

Flock Promise Applies to Its Own Technology

Langley’s statement is categorical about what Flock intends to put on its devices.

Flock “will not add facial recognition to our devices,” he said.

But the VIDIZMO pitch raises a different question: what can happen after surveillance information collected by one system is placed into another?

Khan told 404 Media that VIDIZMO has not yet created its proposed Flock export integration and has not used facial recognition on Flock footage.

That makes the Johnson City communication a sales proposal rather than evidence that the facial-recognition integration is currently operating.

Still, Gilliard argued that the existence of a large surveillance-camera infrastructure makes additional uses of collected imagery possible regardless of the original vendor’s intentions.

“What Flock says about their capabilities is to some degree irrelevant because they have built the infrastructure for mass surveillance,” he said. “Their entire existence provides the foundation for other perhaps even more invasive technologies to be built on top of it.”

Flock disputes characterizations of its network as indiscriminate mass surveillance and says its technology gives law enforcement a tool for locating wanted vehicles, stolen cars, missing people and suspects in criminal investigations.

The company has also been adding privacy protections amid mounting criticism.

Langley recently announced that law enforcement users will be required to provide standardized reasons for searches, with case numbers eventually required for most queries. Flock has also called for legislation establishing auditing and accountability requirements across the surveillance industry.

Surveillance Companies Decline Senate Invitations

The VIDIZMO proposal became public as Congress intensified scrutiny of artificial intelligence, automated license plate readers and large privately operated surveillance networks.

On Sept. 23, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held a hearing titled “Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network.”

Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., invited Langley and the CEOs of Axon Enterprise, Motorola Solutions and Verkada to testify.

All four declined.

The hearing instead included testimony from surveillance experts, law enforcement representatives and people who said they had been harmed by erroneous or improper use of camera data.

Hawley focused part of the hearing on the amount of information collected about people who are not suspected of crimes and on the ability of law enforcement agencies to search that information later.

“There are many players in this industry, but there’s one name that really stands out above the rest, and that is Flock,” Hawley said.

Hawley and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois both raised concerns about balancing law enforcement uses of the systems against Americans’ privacy rights, illustrating that scrutiny of automated surveillance technology has crossed party lines.

“We’ve got to find a way to protect and enforce the Bill of Rights and the basic personal liberties of every law-abiding citizen in this country no matter what the technology is,” Hawley said.

Durbin similarly said Congress has a role in establishing limits.

“We have got to find a way to balance in America privacy and security. I think there is a balance,” Durbin said. “Congress needs to lead the way.”

Congress Considers Limits on Automated Surveillance

Several lawmakers have introduced legislation seeking to restrict federal access to automated surveillance systems.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., introduced the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act in July, which would prohibit federal agencies from purchasing, deploying, operating or accessing systems that identify or track individuals using automated license plate recognition, facial recognition or other biometric technology.

The proposal specifically identifies Flock Safety cameras among the automated license plate systems that would be covered and would also prevent state, local and tribal governments from using federal funds for prohibited surveillance systems.

Other lawmakers have proposed warrant requirements or narrower restrictions on access to automated license plate data rather than outright federal prohibitions.

None of those proposals has established a comprehensive national framework governing all police use of license plate readers and facial-recognition systems.

That leaves policies varying considerably among jurisdictions and vendors.

The VIDIZMO proposal underscores another challenge for regulation: increasingly, the relevant surveillance capability may not reside in a single camera or a single company.

A camera can collect one category of information, a digital evidence platform can store it and separate artificial-intelligence software can analyze it for additional characteristics.

VIDIZMO has not yet built the Flock integration it pitched to Johnson City, according to its CEO, and there is no indication Johnson City police used the proposed system.

But the sales email demonstrates that surveillance vendors are already exploring ways to combine separate police data systems with facial search and demographic-analysis technologies, even as Flock publicly promises that facial recognition will not become part of its own cameras.

Original article