Flock Safety’s solar-powered cameras could make surveillance more widespread

Flock Safety is a multibillion-dollar startup that’s got eyes everywhere. As of Wednesday, with the company’s new Solar Condor cameras, those eyes are solar-powered and use wireless 5G networks to make them all that much easier to install.

Adding solar power to the mix means that the company’s mission to blanket the country with cameras just got a lot easier. The company says that its Condor camera system is powered by “advanced AI and ML that is constantly learning with cutting-edge video analytics” to adapt to changing needs, and that “With solar deployment, Condor cameras can be placed anywhere.”

However, the company has drawn resistance and scrutiny from some privacy advocates, including the ACLU.

“The company has so far focused on selling automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras,” writes the ACLU in a report back in 2022, finding ethical problems with tracking cars with networked tracking as they traveled around. The ACLU has recommended that communities reject Flock Safety’s products. Last year, it published a guide for how to slow down mass surveillance with the company’s products.