This is an adaption of a podcast interview 404 Media recorded with Jonathan Paz, a former Flock employee who is now running running for Congress in Massachusetts’ 5th District. Check out the
whole thing here on YouTube
.
Jonathan Paz was initially nervous when he started working at the surveillance company Flock. It was his first tech job. But he was interested in the company’s mission. Flock’s cameras, which constantly scan the license plate of every vehicle driving past, were for finding missing people. Staff at the company were able to solve real issues.
In his job as a government affairs manager a couple of years ago, Paz represented Flock in public hearings, with the goal of getting a city to purchase Flock cameras. These sorts of hearings are happening on a near constant basis
all across the country
, as cities and towns participate in a national conversation about whether they want Flock cameras in their community or not.
“My job was to make sure that we were not only defending the company, but also representing the product as best as possible and making sure that we can get approved at council,” Paz said. He would get flown out to different cities and towns to help get Flock across the finish line. He was the break-in-case-of-emergency button.
In one case, Paz went to a place that was planning on purchasing Flock cameras but there was a lot of community pushback. Those people did not want these cameras in their community. Paz realized his job was to “make sure that this resistance doesn't become a vote reflected in the vote of the council.”
“That's kind of what started unraveling for me very quickly: this facade that we were helping these democratically elected boards” represent the people who voted for them.
Before Flock, Paz had a career in social justice work, including as an activist, union organizer, and an elected city councilor in Waltham, Massachusetts, he said. He focused in part on municipal broadband. At the time he held some “techno opt
