VIDIZMO Pitched Police Face Searches of Flock Footage, but Has Not Built the Connection

Flock says it will not put facial recognition on its cameras. That promise may not settle what happens after police export the footage. In an obtained email, surveillance vendor VIDIZMO pitched a way for investigators to search Flock data by face alongside other evidence. But its CEO told 404 Media that VIDIZMO has neither run face recognition on Flock footage nor built the specific export tool it advertises.

The pitch reached a Tennessee police department

A VIDIZMO salesperson sent the May email to Michael Adams, Johnson City’s deputy police chief. It proposed bringing Flock camera data and Axon body-camera footage into VIDIZMO Intelligence Hub, where investigators could search across the material by face, vehicle or object. The email presented that combined search as a way to bridge systems that do not automatically connect.

The local group DeFlock Johnson City obtained the email through a public-records request and shared it with 404 Media. Johnson City Police Department told the outlet it did not take a call with VIDIZMO. The email shows an offer to police, not evidence that the department bought the product or used it on Flock data.

The proposed path around Flock’s boundary

Flock CEO Garrett Langley has said the company will not add facial recognition to its devices. VIDIZMO’s proposed route is different: an agency would export data under its own authorized access and import it into VIDIZMO’s software, CEO Nadeem Khan told 404 Media. Khan said Flock was neither involved nor informed. That distinction matters: a camera maker’s decision about its own devices does not necessarily govern analysis by another company after data leaves its system.

VIDIZMO’s online materials describe bringing Flock license-plate reads and live-camera data into three of its products: AI Live Insight, Nexus and AI Intelligence Hub. They also describe face-recognition tools that match people against enrolled faces and can trigger named alerts or recordings. Those are descriptions of what VIDIZMO markets across its products, not proof that the Flock workflow works.

What the proposed search could add

VIDIZMO says its tools can also sort or search faces by estimated age, gender and race. Chris Gilliard, a privacy expert interviewed by 404 Media, objected to marketing those classifications to police. He argued that race and gender are not fixed categories a computer can reliably determine. His concern reaches beyond a face match: investigators could use software-generated labels to narrow a search of recorded people.

Khan defended facial recognition as a technology whose risks depend on how it is used. He said officers need a case number to use VIDIZMO’s system and that their actions are logged for potential audits. He also said facial recognition could automatically hide bystanders’ faces in footage. Those safeguards are his account of the system; they do not establish that a police agency has applied them to Flock data.

Gilliard’s objection goes to the infrastructure itself: once cameras collect footage, another company can propose more intrusive ways to search it, regardless of the camera maker’s stated limits. For now, the Johnson City pitch leaves a narrower, concrete question. VIDIZMO wants that connection, but Khan says it has not built it. Flock and Axon did not respond to 404 Media’s requests for comment.