A handful of towns are making some moves on their streets. They're taking down Flock brand automatic license plate readers. Don't think for a minute that means the surveillance is ending. The cameras aren't going anywhere. Instead, city halls are just putting up new ones, often right away, from Axon. That company is a major player in police tech. It’s like watching a restaurant kitchen swap out a worn deep fryer for a shinier, identical model. The heat and the grease are still there, just with a new brand name stamped on the side.
The old Flock cameras sometimes stuck out on poles, easy enough to spot. Axon’s new systems are built to blend in. They hook right onto existing streetlights, disappearing into the common tangle of power lines and utility boxes. For ordinary people driving these roads, this means the eyes on their cars are still watching every trip. All the data still flows to some server farm. It's the same grind, just with a fresh coat of paint on the machinery, making it harder to see who is tracking what.