Lobbying and the Funding Behind Flock Safety’s ALPR Network

Flock Safety is often presented to Massachusetts communities as a simple public-safety tool: cameras that help police identify vehicles associated with crimes. But behind Flock is something much larger — a multibillion-dollar technology company backed by some of the most powerful venture-capital firms in America, supported by professional lobbyists working to influence the laws and policies that govern technologies such as these.

That matters because decisions about automated license-plate readers are not being made in an environment where ordinary residents and multinational technology companies have anything approaching equal resources.

Flock Safety has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from major investment firms including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Founders Fund, Matrix Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global, Greenoaks, Meritech Capital, Sands Capital, Bedrock Capital and others. In 2025, a financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz valued Flock at approximately $7.5 billion.

In Massachusetts, Flock has also hired professional help on Beacon Hill.

According to Massachusetts lobbying disclosures, Flock Safety retained Boston lobbying firm Shawmut Strategies Group beginning August 6, 2024. Flock reported paying Shawmut $60,000 during the remainder of 2024 and $120,000 during 2025.

That is important in its own right. But Shawmut’s other technology clients provide useful context for understanding the much larger corporate ecosystem operating on Beacon Hill.

Samsara

What it does: Samsara is a major connected-operations technology company. Its products include GPS fleet tracking, vehicle telematics, AI-enabled dash cameras and driver-monitoring technology used by commercial and government fleets.

Its technology has also generated privacy litigation. In Karling v. Samsara, drivers alleged that Samsara’s camera technology collected facial biometric information without the notice and consent required by Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. Samsara denied wrongdoing. The litigation ultimately resulted in a class-action settlement.

The financial connection: Samsara and Flock Safety share several prominent investors.

Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global and Sands Capital have invested in both companies.

That makes Samsara particularly noteworthy. Flock and Samsara are not merely two unrelated technology companies that happened to hire the same Massachusetts lobbying firm. They operate in overlapping areas involving vehicles, cameras, tracking and data, and they have also shared major financial backers.

There is no evidence that those shared investors directed either company to hire Shawmut Strategies. But the overlap illustrates the enormous financial resources behind companies whose technologies raise questions about surveillance and privacy.

Airbnb

What it does: Airbnb operates one of the world’s largest online short-term-rental marketplaces.

The company’s growth has produced longstanding political battles over housing, taxation, zoning and local control. Critics argue that large-scale conversion of residential properties into short-term rentals can remove housing from the long-term rental market and contribute to housing pressures. Airbnb and its supporters dispute many of those criticisms and argue that the service provides income to property owners and benefits local economies.

The financial connection: Andreessen Horowitz led Airbnb’s $112 million Series B financing in 2011. Andreessen Horowitz is also a major investor in Flock Safety.

The Massachusetts connection: Airbnb has appeared among Shawmut Strategies’ Massachusetts clients.

Again, the significance is not that Flock and Airbnb are coordinating with each other — there is no evidence establishing that. Rather, it demonstrates the scale of corporate clients represented by the same Beacon Hill lobbying operation.

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo presents an especially interesting example, although for a different reason.

What it does: ZoomInfo operates a large business-information and sales-intelligence platform containing information about companies and professionals. Its data-collection practices and handling of personal information have made privacy legislation particularly important to its business.

Unlike Flock and Samsara, ZoomInfo was not funded by Andreessen Horowitz. Its major financial sponsors included TA Associates, The Carlyle Group and 22C Capital.

But ZoomInfo nevertheless hired the same Massachusetts lobbying firm used by Flock Safety: Shawmut Strategies.

And in ZoomInfo’s case, Massachusetts lobbying records tell us exactly what some of that lobbying concerned.

Shawmut represented ZoomInfo on Massachusetts legislation dealing with data privacy, information security, biometric data and open-data standards.

Among the measures disclosed in lobbying records were proposals concerning the Massachusetts Data Privacy Protection Act, Massachusetts Information Privacy and Security Act and legislation regulating personal biometric information.

That history is particularly relevant when examining Shawmut’s subsequent representation of Flock Safety.

Flock’s ALPR network creates enormous databases of vehicle observations — recording license plates, locations and times and making those observations searchable by authorized users. Questions about retention, sharing, government access and aggregation of this information are therefore central to the public debate over ALPR technology.

There is no evidence that Shawmut’s earlier work for ZoomInfo and its later representation of Flock constitute a coordinated campaign. But the public records demonstrate that Shawmut has represented multiple technology companies whose businesses are significantly affected by debates over data, privacy and surveillance.

Deployment First, Public Debate Later

There is another troubling aspect of the Flock story: in many communities, meaningful public debate has occurred only after the cameras were already installed.

That reverses the process that should accompany a technology capable of systematically recording vehicle movements.

Residents should be told what technology their government proposes to deploy, what information it will collect, how long that information will be retained, which agencies will be able to search it, how widely the information can be shared, what safeguards will govern its use, how the system will be funded, and what will happen when temporary grant funding disappears.

Then the community should debate whether the benefits justify the costs and privacy consequences.

Instead, Flock’s extraordinarily rapid nationwide expansion has often occurred through individual police departments, procurement decisions, contracts and grants rather than through highly visible legislative decisions establishing a new surveillance network.

The result can be deployment first and democratic debate later.

That distinction is especially important in Massachusetts. A community may never vote to create a network capable of tracking vehicles. Residents may never be asked whether they want one. Yet individual cameras installed town by town can collectively become part of a much larger searchable network.

The absence of a dramatic statewide vote does not make the consequences any less significant.

The Medway Example

Medway illustrates the problem.

The town now has Flock ALPR cameras, but their original deployment did not result from a broad public discussion in which residents were asked whether they wanted their vehicle movements captured by a privately operated ALPR system.

The cameras were funded through grants and deployed through the public-safety process.

Only after the system was operating did many residents begin learning what Flock was, what information its cameras collected, how ALPR information could be searched and shared, and how large Flock’s nationwide network had become.

Now the community is debating Flock.

But that raises an obvious question:

Why didn’t that debate happen before the cameras went up?

For a technology with significant implications for privacy and government surveillance, public discussion should not begin after deployment. It should be a condition of deployment.

A Business Model That Benefits From Rapid Deployment

This pattern also needs to be considered in the context of Flock’s business incentives.

Flock benefits when additional communities install cameras. Every new customer generates revenue, but expansion also increases the geographic reach and potential usefulness of the overall network.

Grants can make that expansion easier. A municipality offered outside money for a public-safety technology faces a very different political decision from one being asked to appropriate local tax dollars for it.

The initial question can become, Why would we turn down free money?

But the more important questions are easily lost:

Do we want this surveillance capability at all? Who will control the resulting data? Who can search it? With whom can it be shared? What happens after the grant expires? And will taxpayers ultimately be expected to pay to continue a system that has already become embedded in police operations?

Whether or not every instance was deliberately intended to avoid public scrutiny, the practical effect of this deployment model is clear: a powerful surveillance infrastructure can become established before most residents realize there is something they might have wanted to debate.

That is a serious democratic problem.

The Bigger Issue: Corporate Power Arrives Before the Public Does

Lobbying itself is legal. Companies have the right to advocate for their interests before government.

But there is an enormous imbalance in who has the resources to participate.

A resident concerned about cameras recording vehicles through his or her community does not have a multibillion-dollar valuation.

A neighborhood group concerned about privacy does not have Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Matrix Partners, Kleiner Perkins or Tiger Global behind it.

And ordinary citizens generally do not have the resources to pay a professional Beacon Hill lobbying firm $120,000 a year, as Flock did in 2025.

Flock does.

More importantly, those corporate resources are often present long before ordinary residents even know that a policy decision is being made.

Venture capital finances expansion. Sales teams approach governments. Grant programs can provide funding. Police departments evaluate and acquire equipment. Lawyers negotiate contracts. Lobbyists monitor and attempt to influence legislation.

The citizen frequently enters the process last.

By the time residents discover the cameras and begin asking questions, the technology may already have been purchased, installed, incorporated into police operations and connected to a much larger network.

That is why transparency before deployment matters so much.

The issue is not simply whether Flock cameras help solve crimes. The public should be able to weigh that claimed benefit against the consequences of creating a system capable of recording and searching vehicle movements.

That decision belongs to the public before the infrastructure is built — not after.

Follow the Money — And the Process

The relationships documented in public records are significant:

Flock Safety → backed by Andreessen Horowitz and other major venture-capital firms → hires Shawmut Strategies in Massachusetts.

Samsara → backed by several of the same investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global and Sands Capital → also becomes a Shawmut Strategies client.

Airbnb → historically backed by Andreessen Horowitz → also appears as a Shawmut Strategies client.

ZoomInfo → backed by different investment firms → hires Shawmut Strategies to lobby Massachusetts specifically on data-privacy and related legislation.

None of those relationships, standing alone, proves coordination or improper conduct.

But they demonstrate something important about the environment in which surveillance policy is being made.

On one side are sophisticated technology companies with venture-capital financing, government-sales operations, attorneys and professional lobbyists.

On the other are residents who may not even know the cameras have been installed.

When a town considers installing an ALPR, residents see the camera on the side of the road.

What they don’t necessarily see is the multibillion-dollar company behind it, the venture-capital firms financing its expansion, the lobbyists working on Beacon Hill, the grant mechanisms helping governments purchase the equipment, and the much larger network into which an individual town’s cameras may fit.

That is precisely why deployment without meaningful advance public notice and debate is unacceptable.

Before Massachusetts communities expand privately operated ALPR networks, residents should know:

Who is selling the technology? Who is financing the company? Who is lobbying for it? Who is paying for the cameras? What happens when grant funding ends? What legislation are these interests attempting to influence? Who can search the resulting data? With whom can that data be shared? And how does a community get out of the system once it has joined?

Those questions should be answered before the first camera goes up.

Transparency after deployment is not enough.

Surveillance first and democracy later is the wrong order.