What happens when a third party proceeds to add FR to Flock? Another meaning for third party risk management.
I intentionally used abbreviations in my title for letter count purposes, so I should explain that “FR” means facial recognition, and “TPRM” is third-party risk management. The latter usually refers to managing data that third parties process for your company (or mismanaging it). But what if it meant that the third parties do something to your software that you refuse to do yourself?
Flock Safety and facial recognition
Take Flock Safety, a company that has its own controversies. But there are some things that Flock Safety will NOT do.
“No. Flock cameras do not use facial recognition.
“They are built to identify vehicle information, not personal biometric data.”
Add FR to Flock via VIDIZMO
But before you breathe a sigh of relief, remember that just because Flock Safety doesn’t incorporate facial recognition doesn’t mean that third parties can’t do it either. 404 Media:
“A company called VIDIZMO is advertising the capability to export footage from FlockOS to its own platforms that do facial recognition, behavior prediction, and racial and gender analysis on live camera feeds.”
This is not some great fault of Flock Safety, because ANY program that allows export (or a screenshot) can pass its data to some other program.
I can take a screenshot of something that displays on a religious website and feed it into a porn generator. That’s not the religious website’s fault.
Oh, and just to confuse the issue: VIDIZMO advertises this capability, but doesn’t have it yet.
“VIDIZMO’s CEO, Nadeem Khan, told 404 Media on a video call that the company has not yet started running facial recognition tech on footage from Flock cameras, and that it has not actually built the specific tool that would export data from Flock’s system to its own platform.”
Add FR to Flock via Clearview AI
But VIDIZMO isn’t the only game in town. The DeFlock folks note that at least one jurisdiction has both Flock Safety and Clearview AI software.
“As WECT reported on August 10, 2026, in a July email to county leaders Sheriff Ed McMahon wrote that the county’s [Flock Safety] system does not use facial recognition, is not used for traffic enforcement, and is not a live surveillance system, collecting only what he called ‘limited’ vehicle information.”
But…
“The Sheriff’s Office…purchased Clearview AI — ‘Clearview Search PRO,’ $12,995 per year (plus a $500 setup fee), County Contract #24-0236 — procured through Carahsoft and set to auto-renew. Facial recognition is not something New Hanover might acquire; it is software the Sheriff’s Office already owns.“
At the same time, DeFlock makes it very clear that it has no evidence that the agency HAS linked the two software programs. Just that it COULD.
This fits within the realm of the possible, but not necessarily the realm of the probable.
