Why a Flock Employee Quit: “They Lied”

Jonathan Paz came to the video surveillance company Flock with some wariness — it was his first job in the tech industry — but the idea drew him in. Flock's cameras continuously read the license plates of every passing car and, as he was told, serve first and foremost to find missing people. The company's employees really did help solve real cases.

A “break glass in case of emergency” job

Paz held the position of government relations manager. His task was to get the next city to approve buying the cameras. Public hearings are held constantly across the country, where municipalities decide whether they need such a system. Paz was sent on business trips to “get the deal over the finish line” — he was, in his own words, the “break glass in case of emergency” button.

One time he arrived in a city where the purchase was planned, but residents were actively opposing the cameras. That was when Paz realized what his role actually was: to make sure this resistance “didn't turn into a no vote when the council voted.” It was from that point on, he admits, that the image of a company supposedly helping democratically elected bodies represent the interests of voters began to fall apart for him.

From activism to surveillance — and back

Before Flock, Paz had a career in social justice: an activist, a union organizer, an elected member of the city council in Waltham, Massachusetts. He believed in “techno-optimism” — that technology can solve the pressing problems of our time. He met a Flock representative at the National League of Cities conference in Atlanta in 2023, where he got the job offer.

Inside the company, a startup culture reigned: everything moved fast, and his colleagues were “brilliant.” Paz was assured that Flock deeply respected civil rights and liberties and acted in line with the values of each municipality.

“I was deceived”

The turning point came when 404 Media discovered that local police were running searches through Flock's databases on behalf of the immigration agency ICE. Paz, himself the son of immigrants, had repeatedly asked management whether the company cooperated with ICE. The official answer was always the same: “We don't work with ICE.”

Later, journalists found that Customs and Border Protection, the CBP, had had direct access to Flock's cameras. The company at first denied this, but then admitted it: the access had indeed existed, as part of a pilot program. That same access turned out to be available to ICE, and then it emerged that the Secret Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service were connected to the system as well.

“This is exactly what they lied to me about,” Paz says. “I didn't know that mechanisms were at work inside the company that literally pushed the launch of this pilot through.”

In July 2025, Paz quit, giving up, by his account, tens of thousands of dollars in company stock and severance pay. He founded an organization that helps pay for housing, food, and legal services for people affected by mass deportations, and he is now running for Congress in Massachusetts's 5^th District.

In response to a request for comment, Flock said that dialogue with communities is “valuable” and helps the company improve its product and clarify its positions, and that the decision to adopt the technology “is made solely by the community itself.”

Source: 404 Media