Why a Flock Worker Quit: ‘They Lied’
This is an adaption of a podcast interview 404 Media recorded with Jonathan Paz, a former Flock employee who is now running running for Congress in Massachusetts’ 5th District. Check out the whole thing here on YouTube.
Jonathan Paz was initially nervous when he started working at the surveillance company Flock. It was his first tech job. But he was interested in the company’s mission. Flock’s cameras, which constantly scan the license plate of every vehicle driving past, were for finding missing people. Staff at the company were able to solve real issues.
In his job as a government affairs manager a couple of years ago, Paz represented Flock in public hearings, with the goal of getting a city to purchase Flock cameras. These sorts of hearings are happening on a near constant basis all across the country, as cities and towns participate in a national conversation about whether they want Flock cameras in their community or not.
“My job was to make sure that we were not only defending the company, but also representing the product as best as possible and making sure that we can get approved at council,” Paz said. He would get flown out to different cities and towns to help get Flock across the finish line. He was the break-in-case-of-emergency button.
In one case, Paz went to a place that was planning on purchasing Flock cameras but there was a lot of community pushback. Those people did not want these cameras in their community. Paz realized his job was to “make sure that this resistance doesn't become a vote reflected in the vote of the council.”
“That's kind of what started unraveling for me very quickly: this facade that we were helping these democratically elected boards” represent the people who voted for them.
youtube.com/embed/BKYYpLC9u5I?…
Before Flock, Paz had a career in social justice work, including as an activist, union organizer, and an elected city councilor in Waltham, Massachusetts, he said. He focused in part on municipal broadband. At the time he held some “techno optimism, that maybe technology can be the answer to some of these existential crises of our time,” he said.
He ran for mayor but didn’t win. After that, he went to the 2023 National League of Cities conference in Atlanta, Georgia, a large meeting for municipal officials. Flock is headquartered in Atlanta.
This is where a Flock representative pitched him the idea of joining the company, Paz said. To him, Flock’s technology made sense. Flock sold cameras, and they helped find missing people. It definitely wasn’t part of some broader surveillance apparatus.
He joined Flock and found the company had a startup culture. Things moved fast and the people were “brilliant.”
💡
Do you work at Flock or Axon? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
At the time, Paz thought Flock “had a deep respect for civil rights and liberties.” There was an emphasis on catering to the values of whatever municipality or agency they happened to be working with. “We were honoring and respecting the wishes of the people,” Paz thought. His coworkers at Flock would speak about the company’s mission and how it was helping to solve crime.
Then things changed. Beyond Paz’s evolving feelings around his own job’s purpose, 404 Media revealed how local cops were performing Flock searches for Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE).
“Throughout this whole time, I'm expressing my concern within the company,” Paz, who also happens to be the son of immigrants, said. “Do we work with ICE? Are we working with ICE? Are there plans to work with ICE? And throughout the whole time, the company line was ‘we don't work with ICE.’”
Journalists around the country followed our reporting, including 9NEWS in Denver which found evidence Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had direct access to Flock’s cameras. At the time, Flock strongly denied such direct access by federal agencies existed. Eventually, Flock came clean: CBP did have direct access, as part of a pilot program. So did ICE.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
404 Media then reported the Secret Service and the Navy’s criminal investigation division had access too.
“That was what I was sold and lied to about,” Paz said. “I didn't know that there were these mechanisms inside the company that were essentially fighting to get this pilot to happen.”
Come July 2025, Paz quit Flock. Paz said he “rejected tens of thousands in company equity and a severance package from Flock.” After leaving Flock, he founded an organization to help pay rent, food, and legal fees for people impacted by ICE’s mass deportation effort. Now he is running for Congress in Massachusetts’ 5th District.
404 Media asked Flock for comment on what exactly workers in Paz’s previous role do when it comes to helping convince cities to buy Flock. A company spokesperson told 404 Media in an email “Our conversations with communities are valuable and give us direct feedback from the people we serve. That input has helped us enhance product controls and refine our positions on important matters of public policy.”
The statement added: “We will continue investing in public engagement and continue to make improvements to Flock based on our dialogue with communities nationwide. The decision to adopt Flock technology rests solely with each community.”
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Jonathan Paz (YouTube)
