Privacy by Editorial Team

VIDIZMO Is Pitching Cops Facial Recognition on Flock Footage

A small vendor is pitching Tennessee police on bolting facial recognition onto Flock's ALPR cameras. Flock says no; the vendor is going around them.

A video software company called VIDIZMO is cold-emailing police departments with an offer that the largest automatic license plate reader (ALPR) vendor in the country has publicly refused: a facial recognition product that, in the company’s own words, would identify which person is on camera and link that name to a face in a watchlist. The pitch is aimed at footage captured by Flock Safety cameras, and it works around the fact that Flock itself says it will not build facial recognition into its devices. The email, obtained through a public records request, landed in Johnson City, Tennessee in May.

For readers who already know what an ALPR is, this is the moment a piece of surveillance infrastructure starts to grow sideways. Flock’s cameras identify vehicles, not people, and the company’s stated policy is that “ALPR system searches are based on vehicle details, not faces” and that “In plain terms: It cannot recognize people” (Flock Safety). A separate vendor adding facial recognition to the same feeds would change that, even if Flock never touches a face.

What VIDIZMO is actually selling

404 Media reported on September 29, 2026 that a VIDIZMO salesperson emailed the Johnson City Police Department in May with an integration pitch. The department’s deputy chief, Michael Adams, was the recipient. The department said it did not take a call with the company.

The pitch sits on top of VIDIZMO’s existing product line. The company sells AI Live Insight, which does live camera detection of people, vehicles, and behavior; Nexus, its foundational platform; and AI Intelligence Hub, which it describes as a searchable evidence platform that combines Flock, Axon body camera footage, and other feeds. The facial recognition layer uses an Object Library where faces are uploaded, enrolled, and then fed into watchlists (404 Media).

VIDIZMO’s own marketing copy frames the gap it is filling. “Detection tells you a person is in frame,” one slide reads. “Face recognition tells you which person,” reads another. A third promises “enrolled people and objects recognized on live feeds, with named alerts and snapshots for review.” A fourth advertises demographic filtering “by age, gender, race” across seven categories: “White, Black, Indian, East Asian, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino Hispanic” (404 Media).

VIDIZMO documents an integration path for FlockOS, the operating system that runs Flock’s cameras and feeds. The pitch targets both ALPR data and Flock’s livestream cameras, including Flock’s “real time crime center” product. CEO Nadeem Khan told 404 Media that “Flock has not been involved in or informed of this.”

What Flock says, and why that may not matter

Flock CEO Garrett Langley has been on the record for months saying no. Asked directly about facial recognition, Langley has said: “We will not add facial recognition to our devices” (404 Media). Flock’s public safeguards page repeats that “ALPR Does Not Use Facial Recognition” and that “In plain terms: It cannot recognize people” (Flock Safety). Both Flock and Axon declined to comment on the VIDIZMO pitch when 404 Media asked.

Khan framed the workaround as exactly that. “Flock is trying to get out of the way rather than trying to implement the technology right,” he told 404 Media. Khan said VIDIZMO has not yet run facial recognition on Flock footage and has not built the specific Flock export tool, but “would love to do the integration.”

Khan also pointed to the same kind of product audit police already rely on. VIDIZMO “collects no data itself,” Khan said, and that cops cannot use the system “without a case number” and that every action is logged (404 Media). VIDIZMO is bootstrapped, and Khan argued that “as a small company who is running without a VC, we have to provide alternatives to the industry” (404 Media).

The company’s existing procurement footprint is real. Its contracting vehicles page lists 37 competitively solicited vehicles across federal, state, local, and education procurement, including GSA Multiple Award Schedule access via Carahsoft, CDW-G, TD SYNNEX, and Insight Public Sector; NASA SEWP V access via the same resellers; Army CHESS ITES-SW2 contracts via Carahsoft and CDW-G; and multiple Texas DIR and OMNIA Partners vehicles (VIDIZMO). Its about page lists the US Department of State, California DMV, ExxonMobil, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Cleary Gottlieb among its customers (VIDIZMO).

What the demographic filter actually does

The seven racial categories in VIDIZMO’s marketing are the part privacy researchers flagged first. Chris Gilliard, the privacy researcher writing the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance, told 404 Media: “I’m appalled at the willingness of VIDIZMO to tout their capabilities to filter along the lines of race, age, and gender.”

Gilliard’s objection is the structural one. “What Flock says about their capabilities is to some degree irrelevant because they have built the infrastructure for mass surveillance” (404 Media). The race, gender, and age filters in VIDIZMO’s pitch slide are not a fringe feature; they are advertised as a use case. A separate slide markets demographic analysis to retail and marketing users: “By analyzing the activity in their store, sellers can determine which group spends the most time” (404 Media).

Khan pushed back on the framing. “Much of the harm your reporting has documented comes from implementation choices,” Khan said (404 Media). Khan told 404 Media that facial recognition “is the way the world is going, the way the world will have to be,” and “It is completely in line with what we want to do.”

The Johnson City email landed in the middle of a national backlash against Flock. Texas directed state agencies in late August to stop funding Flock cameras after a Texas Tribune investigation tied roughly $30 million in MVCPA grants to about 3,200 Flock cameras (Texas Tribune), and Flock’s CEO has publicly called for “compromise” while cities move to cancel their contracts (TechCrunch). Local opposition groups are now a recurring feature of any Flock rollout.

What This Means

VIDIZMO’s pitch shows how a refusal by the platform vendor does not actually block the capability. Flock says no; a smaller reseller says yes; the same cameras, the same footage, and the same officers can get a feature that the policy said would never ship. The vendor’s defense, that “implementation choices” sit with the police department that buys the tool, is the same defense the rest of the police-tech industry has used to defer accountability for years.

For readers, the practical effect is that a warrantless ALPR lookup could, at any department that adopts this stack, become the first half of a name lookup that ends with a face. The race, gender, and age filters in the pitch are not a configuration mistake; they are listed use cases. A federal or state “no facial recognition on ALPR” rule is the only mechanism that would actually close this gap, because product policy at one company cannot.

The Bottom Line

VIDIZMO is small, bootstrapped, and on the federal contracting vehicles. It has not yet run facial recognition on Flock footage and is pitching the deal. Flock says it will not build facial recognition. The integration will happen at a police department that says yes.