VIDIZMO is offering police a way to analyse data from Flock cameras with its AI tools, including facial recognition, according to 404 Media. The company says it has not yet built the specific Flock data-export integration it is advertising, but its proposal shows how third-party tools could add surveillance capabilities beyond those offered by camera makers.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
404 Media reports that a VIDIZMO salesperson told Johnson City, Tennessee, police that the company could bring Flock and Axon evidence into one searchable platform. The account was based on an email obtained through a public-records request and shared with the publication. Johnson City police told 404 Media they did not take a call with the company.
VIDIZMO chief executive Nadeem Khan told 404 Media the company has not started running facial recognition on Flock footage and has not built the specific tool to export data from Flock’s system. He said VIDIZMO would like to build the integration. The company’s documentation says it can ingest data from FlockOS into several VIDIZMO products, which offer AI analysis.
Those products include facial recognition against enrolled faces, watchlists and alerts, as well as searches by estimated age, gender and race. VIDIZMO’s documentation describes those capabilities; their presence in its products does not establish that police have used them on Flock footage. Khan also told 404 Media that system use requires a case number and is logged for potential audits. 404 Media’s report contains the company’s account and the relevant documentation and email details.
Why it matters
Flock has said it will not add facial recognition to its devices. But data collected by one company may still be brought into another company’s tools, potentially extending what police can search for and infer. The distinction between a camera’s built-in features and analysis layered on later matters: a stated product boundary is not necessarily a boundary around how its data can be used.
404 Media also quotes privacy expert Chris Gilliard criticising the use of facial recognition and demographic filters. He argues that race and gender are not categories a computer can reliably determine. Flock and Axon did not respond to the publication’s requests for comment.
Our read
This is a proposed capability, not evidence that VIDIZMO has already matched faces in Flock footage. Still, the gap between a company’s own product limits and what third parties may build around its data deserves close attention. For police and the public, the practical questions are who can access the data, what searches are allowed, and whether audits can meaningfully be scrutinised. “It’s not our feature” is a thin comfort if the data can travel.
What to watch
- Whether VIDIZMO builds the advertised Flock data integration.
- Whether any police agency uses facial recognition or other AI analysis on Flock-derived footage.
- What access controls, case requirements and audit processes agencies adopt.
- Whether Flock or Axon responds to the proposed third-party use of their systems’ data.
Discussion spark: If a camera company refuses to offer facial recognition but third-party tools can analyse its data, should responsibility for that use fall mainly on the camera maker, the software vendor or the police agency?
Sources and evidence
- Surveillance Company Tells Cops It Wants to Add Facial Recognition to Flock Cameras (29 September 2026, 13:53 UTC)
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