Flock Safety has stopped testing a feature that would have used its acoustic surveillance devices to detect human distress, according to a company blog post cited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The decision affects Flock’s audio devices, formerly sold as Flock Raven and now marketed as Audio Detection. Those devices are best known as gunshot-detection microphones, but Flock had been preparing a feature called Distress Detection that the EFF said would scan for signs of distress in human voices. Earlier Flock marketing described the target sound as “screaming,” according to the EFF, which said the company later changed that webpage to say “distress.”
Flock said in its blog post that, “After careful consideration and community consultation, we decided to remove the feature.” The company did not, in the material described by the EFF, say that it was withdrawing its gunshot-detection product.
What the feature would have done
The feature would have run on microphones placed around a city for acoustic detection. Instead of listening only for sounds classified as gunfire, Flock’s system would also try to identify human distress. The EFF warned in October 2025 that this would expand the purpose of deployed microphones from gunshot detection into voice-adjacent surveillance.
The civil liberties group argued that the feature could draw armed police responses to loud arguments or other street noise, even when no violent crime was taking place. The EFF also said the feature could conflict with state eavesdropping laws in some jurisdictions.
Flock previously responded to criticism of its surveillance products in a company post about mass surveillance, and, according to the EFF, addressed the group’s objections to Distress Detection there.
Gunshot detection remains in place
The EFF said Flock’s retreat on distress detection does not resolve its concerns about acoustic surveillance. The group pointed to broader criticism of gunshot-detection systems, including reports that cities have abandoned ShotSpotter contracts and an incident in Chicago where police shot at children who were lighting fireworks after responding to a gunshot-detection alert.
Flock has acknowledged limits to the technology. “No acoustic system is perfect, and we don’t claim otherwise,” the company said, according to the EFF. That admission cuts both ways: false or ambiguous alerts are not harmless when the expected response may involve officers arriving prepared for an active shooting.
Flock’s own marketing also says its audio product can detect more than gunfire. The company describes alerts for “community disruption,” including events it labels as non-violent, such as fireworks and car sideshows.
The EFF framed the dropped feature as a case study in mission creep. A microphone network sold for one public-safety purpose can later be repurposed for another, without a fresh public vote or community consent. The group compared that pattern to expanded uses of Flock’s automated license plate readers.
The decision also shows that public pressure can change what surveillance vendors ship. Flock has ended this pilot, according to its own blog post. Cities that already bought into its microphones still have to decide how much imperfect audio surveillance they want aimed at their streets.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
