Flock AI Uses Overseas Gig Workers for Surveillance Data

Imagine every car, person, and even scream in your neighborhood being analyzed by anonymous gig workers 8,000 miles away. Surveillance giant Flock uses overseas gig workers to train its pervasive AI monitoring systems. An accidental leak revealed Flock hires workers in the Philippines via Upwork to review sensitive US footage, performing thousands of annotations daily. They meticulously classify everything from vehicle models and license plates to what people are wearing and even categorize audio for sounds like gunshots and screaming. This practice raises profound privacy questions, exposing sensitive data of US residents to a global, low-cost workforce without public knowledge or oversight. This AI directly powers the surveillance network used by thousands of US police departments to track vehicles and investigate crimes, often without a warrant.