{"id":12807,"date":"2025-12-02T13:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.startupecosystem.ca\/news\/flocks-use-of-overseas-gig-workers-in-surveillance-ai-raises-concerns\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T13:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T18:11:13","slug":"flocks-use-of-overseas-gig-workers-in-surveillance-ai-raises-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupecosystem.ca\/news\/flocks-use-of-overseas-gig-workers-in-surveillance-ai-raises-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Flock&#8217;s Use of Overseas Gig Workers in Surveillance AI Raises Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Flock, a company specializing in automatic license plate readers and AI-powered cameras, has been found to employ overseas workers through Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms. This has raised concerns about the sensitive nature of the footage being accessed and reviewed. Flock&#8217;s cameras, present in thousands of US communities, enable law enforcement to track vehicles and, in some cases, people, without warrants. This practice has led to lawsuits from organizations like the ACLU. The exposed training panel revealed that many of the annotators are based in the Philippines, working on tasks that include categorizing vehicle features and transcribing license plates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flock, a company specializing in automatic license plate readers and AI-powered cameras, has been found to employ overseas workers through Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms. This has raised&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1434],"tags":[2117,2794,413,496,15977],"class_list":["post-12807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-global","tag-data-privacy","tag-gig-economy","tag-global-startup-news","tag-machine-learning","tag-surveillance-ai"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Flock&#039;s Use of Overseas Gig Workers in Surveillance AI Raises Concerns - Startup Ecosystem Canada<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.startupecosystem.ca\/news\/flocks-use-of-overseas-gig-workers-in-surveillance-ai-raises-concerns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flock&#039;s Use of Overseas Gig Workers in Surveillance AI Raises Concerns - Startup Ecosystem Canada\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Flock, a company specializing in automatic license plate readers and AI-powered cameras, has been found to employ overseas workers through Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms. 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