Surveillance Vendor Pitches Facial Recognition on Flock Cameras, but the Tool Isn't Built

VIDIZMO has been pitching police on piping Flock camera data into its own facial recognition platform, but its CEO admits the integration tool does not exist yet.

Flock, the company behind a nationwide network of license plate reading cameras in the US, has publicly pledged not to add facial recognition — CEO Garrett Langley said, "We will not add facial recognition to our devices." According to a sales email obtained by 404 Media through a public records request, VIDIZMO, a decades-old video analysis company, pitched the police department of Johnson City, Tennessee in May on a platform that would bring Flock and Axon data together, searchable "by face, vehicle, or object in seconds."

VIDIZMO CEO Nadeem Khan told 404 Media the company has not yet run facial recognition on Flock footage and has not built the export tool, though it "would love to do the integration." The company's online documentation also advertises classifying faces by seven race categories, age and gender; privacy researcher Chris Gilliard called that capability "appalling," noting race and gender are not static categories a computer can determine. The Johnson City police said they did not take a call with the company.