Victory! Flock Ends Rollout of Audio “Distress Detection” of Human Voices
Flock Safety has ended its pilot program for 'Distress Detection,' a feature that would have used its citywide acoustic gunshot detection devices to identify sounds of human distress. The reversal follows public warnings from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the privacy implications of the technology.
Why this matters: Flock already has license plate readers across hundreds of cities. Adding microphones that listen for human voices — not just gunshots — is a different kind of surveillance entirely. It turns ambient city sound into a searchable feed. Who decides what 'distress' means? What gets stored, and for how long? Flock backing down here matters because it shows public pressure can work. But the infrastructure is still out there. The feature going away does not mean the microphones do.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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