Shh...Your city is recording your conversations: Flock’s new AI-powered audio sensors quietly installed in thousands of communities nationwide
- Feb 11
- 4 min read
Source: Leo Hohmann
'The shift represents a new stage in the normalization of mass monitoring.'
What began nearly a decade ago as a program to track vehicle license plates has evolved into the mass surveillance of all human movement and even our conversations across a wide swath of America.
Flock Safety, a private surveillance company based in Atlanta, deploys its Automated License-Plate Readers as part of a public-private partnership in upwards of 6,000 communities nationwide. With little to no coverage in the mainstream media, Flock’s cameras were “upgraded” in October 2025 with AI-powered Raven Acoustic Sensors capable of picking up human voices.
The system was at first marketed toward the detection of gunshots, but then the speakers became sensitive enough to pick up human conversations, under the guise, of course, of helping police respond to people “under distress.” Yes, it’s always about keeping us safe and we are supposed to just trust them on how our data is used.
Like all technocratic policies, what starts out as a reasonable sounding application gradually grows to include privacy-stomping invasive applications that advance the surveillance state. They are masters of incrementalism.
Flock’s super-sensitive microphones include the ability to hear not only gunshots and loud screams but also many voice conversations, raising privacy concerns and, hopefully, a bevy of lawsuits. But that hasn’t stopped Flock from deploying it in cities of all sizes. If it’s not stopped, it won’t be long before even rural outposts are outfitting with this Orwellian technology.
The company says on its website:
“IntelliSee transforms passive video surveillance into active threat detection, without replacing a single camera. Our AI-powered risk mitigation platform helps you identify threats like drawn guns, falls, vehicles, intruders, and more, so your team can act before it’s too late… Our AI doesn’t just detect, it prioritizes and contextualizes threats in real time with the IntelliSee Risk Matrix.”
Newly released stress-detection sensors automatically alert the cops. With these high-powered microphones above city streets, almost nothing goes unheard. Audio captures everything, not only the words you say but the emotions conveyed by your voice. It can even analyze your health, can be used to create a dossier on you, including everywhere you go and who you are with.
This presents a problem for people expecting their conversations to be private.
The Free Thought Project observed in a December 2, 2025 article:
“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.”
An investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) found that Flock’s system was being used by police not just to respond to potential emergencies but to monitor protest rallies and other events not related to any crime.
What’s being set up in these communities where Flock AI video/audio systems are installed is a department of pre-crime. But the so-called crime is often just a normal situation that the technology misinterpreted (imagine that: AI isn’t perfect).
In one case described in the video below, a child got shot at by officers responding to a false alarm. Police showed up thinking they were responding to an emergency and suddenly a normal situation becomes dangerous, even deadly.
Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
“In October 2025, Flock announced plans to expand its gunshot detection microphones to listen for ‘human distress’ including screaming. This dangerous expansion transforms audio sensors into powerful surveillance tools monitoring human voices on city streets. High-powered microphones above densely populated areas raise serious questions about wiretapping laws, false alerts, and potential for dangerous police responses to non-emergencies. After EFF exposed this feature, Flock quietly amended its marketing materials to remove explicit references to ‘screaming’—replacing them with vaguer language about ‘distress’ detection—while continuing to develop and deploy the technology.”
Most states have eavesdropping or wiretapping laws requiring all parties to grant permission to have their conversations recorded. In the case of Flock’s tech, the government isn’t part of your conversation but it’s recording you anyway. Somebody needs to take Flock to court and challenge its right to snoop on conversations in public spaces where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications. If not, a company like this will keep pushing the envelope. How long before they are recording your speech and behavior on your front porch, or even inside your home?
Oh wait, a company is already doing that! It’s called Ring Doorbell, owned by Amazon.
Here’s James Li, in the video below, talking about that sneaky new tech that Ring was bragging about in a Super Bowl ad.
Americans and the world need to start getting real with these companies. Stop inviting them onto your property and into your homes. Stop buying cars that spy on you with multiple cameras. Baby monitors that record voices inside your homes. Smart TVs that spy on you. And phones that track you. It’s all part of the matrix designed to track and control all human beings and herd them like cattle into AI algorithms that rule their lives.
And if your city has been engaging with Flock, maybe it’s time to let them know you don’t approve.
That or bow to the chilling effect this tech has on free speech and freedom of movement.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation concluded:
“In June, EFF explained why Flock Safety’s announced feature updates cannot make ALPRs safe. The company promised privacy-enhancing features like geofencing and retention limits in response to public pressure. But these tweaks don’t address the core problem: Flock’s business model depends on building a nationwide, interconnected surveillance network that creates risks no software update can eliminate. Our 2025 investigations proved that abuses stem from the architecture itself, not just how individual agencies use the technology.”
Also keep in mind that Flock is not the only private company profiting big time off of governments’ unquenchable appetite for more personal data on its citizens.
Other significant players in North America include Motorola Solutions, Amazon, Genetec, Rekor (OpenALPR), Verkada, Palantir, Axon and Digital Ally, among others.
