Privately run companies that exist solely to build a massive "Big Brother" surveillance system are, quite rightly, facing a bit of a public relations crisis at the moment. 

And it's easy to see why. 

The idea of law enforcement having warrantless access to an all-seeing surveillance apparatus is, at the very least, pretty creepy to most of us — our partisan differences notwithstanding. It's therefore no surprise that the widespread use (and misuse) of automated license plate readers by local law enforcement agencies has generated outrage among national politicians in the two major parties and outright vandalism from vigilante citizens throughout the country. 

Flock Safety, the company that runs the camera systems in Las Vegas as well as countless other jurisdictions across the nation, has apparently responded to such backlash by trying to beef up "accountability, security and transparency" safeguards in its software. 

Such safeguards, however, seem to be little more than a public relations gimmick, considering the degree to which the company has turned into a full-fledged, artificial intelligence-powered policing apparatus for hire. 

Like all automated license plate readers, Flock cameras capture and read license plate numbers in real time, then the system cross-references them with countless public and private databases to help law enforcement locate everything from stolen cars to "persons of interest." 

But, in actuality, it goes so much further. 

As the American Civil Liberties Union has already noted, Flock's own website touts its ability to use its vast treasure trove of data to proactively profile and identify potential threats, allowing private and public entities to "add vehicles to Flock Hotlists" and "identify patterns, suspects, and criminal networks that might not be apparent to a single security team." 

In other words, the technology company has already gone well past passive surveillance of our streets and now offers services that effectively "generate suspicion" for law enforcement to use as justification for further investigations or even arrests.

And, according to a new report by Wired.com, Flock is now working on incorporating a new AI tool for law enforcement that would allow officers to directly "identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement." The AI-operated system can access the company's nationwide network of cameras, scan plates, track vehicle movement, report camera metadata, pull arrest records, coordinate with police case files, comb through dispatch logs and even access commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses and other sensitive personal information.

And all that information would be, ostensibly, available to law enforcement without a single warrant being issued because it's privately accumulated and being sold by a private sector company. 

If that unfettered dissolution of privacy rights sounds like a recipe for disaster, that's because it is. Even before Flock's latest expansion into AI-powered sleuthing, there have been plenty of instances where dependency on Flock's system has resulted in profoundly troubling results. 

In Colorado, for example, a woman was falsely accused by law enforcement of stealing packages from people's front porches, based entirely on supposed Flock camera footage showing her vehicle in the area of the alleged crime. Lucky for her, she had a dashboard camera on her car that definitively refuted the allegations against her, but her ordeal is neither isolated nor excusable. 

When law enforcement in Florida identified the wrong car in a fatal hit-and-run using Flock cameras, 23-year-old Lindsey Isaacs was arrested and spent more than seven months of legal action trying to prove her innocence — despite the fact that her car had no damage and didn't even fully match the description given by eye witnesses. 

Other individuals have had guns drawn on them by police and suffered repeated stops merely because their vehicles were incorrectly identified or "tagged" by Flock's database. 

Similarly, another technological surveillance company that uses photos scraped from the internet to build facial recognition databases ended up leading North Dakota authorities to incorrectly issue a warrant for the arrest of a 50-year-old Tennessee grandmother who had never even visited the state. 

That grandmother spent months in custody before authorities eventually admitted their mistake and dropped the charges, but the incident should highlight the danger of outsourcing basic police work to automated surveillance technologies. 

And, of course, this isn't to mention the countless number of headlines reporting that police officers or public officials have used Flock's database to stalk or harass former romantic partners. 

Considering the potential for such abuse as well as the potential for shoddy policework to become even shoddier, it's no wonder there's such a growing backlash to these cameras.  Some jurisdictions have banned the cameras altogether, while others are merely looking at adding new restrictions or updating usage policies. California, for example, is currently looking at potential legislation to limit how authorities can access camera data and with whom they can share it. 

Even if it's only tepid reforms, such restrictions are probably a necessary first step, considering that a lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice revealed authorities conducted more than "15,000 searches per day" of images and data from a mere 474 Flock cameras located in San Jose, California.  

But merely tinkering around the edges on the local or state level will not be enough. After all, Flock's entire business model is focused on building a "collaborative hub" for private and public crime fighters across the nation, meaning local camera grids as well as the regulations that govern them are not likely to be of much use. 

The city of Mountain View, California, knows this better than most. The city recently discovered that state and federal agencies were accessing its Flock cameras without a single warrant, preauthorization or even the consent of local authorities. Apparently, a "nationwide search setting" was "turned on" by Flock without the city's knowledge, allowing outside agencies broad access to its camera grid and data. 

And that is what makes Flock's most recent "privacy" update appear so disingenuous: It comes with no hard limitations on how, when or why authorities can access information. 

As Institute for Justice attorney Michael Soyfer noted in a statement, "One word you don't see mentioned anywhere in Flock's proposed reforms is the word 'warrant.'" And that's a noteworthy omission, considering that a warrant requirement has long been the most effective way of limiting law enforcement's ability to abuse its power. 

As a result, any "safeguards" put in place that continue to allow for government's use of warrantless mass surveillance isn't really a safeguard by any meaningful metric. 

Instead, it's merely a shallow attempt to make those eyes that are always watching us look at least a little less like something plucked directly from a George Orwell novel.

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.