Communities across the country are pushing back against automatic license plate readers made by Flock Safety, viewing the cameras as a serious invasion of privacy. Yet some local governments are responding with a vendor swap that leaves remarkably similar surveillance capabilities in place.

Flock cameras are used by police and private security firms to record vehicle license plates in particular areas. Although the company says the equipment is intended only to identify vehicles, reports indicate that the cameras can also identify individuals.

The company operates a data sharing network that has become a central target for critics. Flock has also rapidly expanded its camera network in recent years, attracting more scrutiny as residents learn how extensively the technology can monitor movement.

Police officers across the country have improperly used the cameras to stalk former lovers and monitor other people they know. Reports that ICE uses Flock cameras have fueled additional public anger toward the company and its expanding surveillance infrastructure.

Residents have taken their objections to social media and town hall meetings, demanding that local officials remove the cameras. Some people have ripped cameras down, while more than 100 Flock contracts have been canceled around the country.

William Lawrence, a Democrat running for Congress in a Michigan swing seat, has made opposition to Flock cameras a major part of his campaign. He has spoken against the technology during public meetings and wants federal officials to address the issue.

“I think we should be viewing this as a Fourth Amendment violation and taking it seriously from the perspective of defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” Lawrence told the Prospect. “If I could vote for a federal bill to ban this kind of mass surveillance, I would be eager to.”

But some localities canceling Flock contracts are replacing the company’s cameras with automatic license plate readers from Axon. The technology company has provided police departments with body cameras and Tasers for decades and was named Taser until 2017.

Axon has expanded into drones and other high tech equipment for military and law enforcement use. It entered the license plate reader business last year after previously partnering with Flock to integrate license plate surveillance into Axon technology.

The Axon Outpost is a pole mounted camera, while the Axon Lightpost is a so called smart streetlight using the same technology partner as Flock. Denver’s city council voted in March to replace Flock cameras with Axon products, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, made the same move last month.

Richmond, California, is evaluating a similar switch. Lawrence said replacing the company without ending the surveillance is not “in the spirit of what people are asking for.”

“My fear is that there will be a Pyrrhic victory of winning the battle against Flock but losing the war against mass surveillance,” Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Prospect. He said concerns involving pattern recognition, investigations and tracking at sensitive locations remain regardless of the vendor.

Ferguson argued that public criticism should focus on “real-time crime centers,” the data hubs where law enforcement aggregates information from numerous surveillance sources. A different camera company does little to address what happens when those streams of information are assembled.

Beryl Lipton, a senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Axon has successfully used its existing relationships with police departments to obtain contracts for additional technologies. She noted that the public backlash against Flock is stronger because people are less familiar with concerns involving Axon and other surveillance companies.

Flock’s data sharing network is currently viewed as more problematic than Axon’s, but Lipton warned that Axon could facilitate comparable or even more extensive sharing. Axon has built its business around installing, integrating and analyzing many kinds of cameras.

The Prospect contacted Axon for comment but did not receive a response before publication. Meanwhile, another possible shift looms as communities purchase surveillance drones from both Flock and Axon, moving monitoring equipment from poles and streets into the air.

Police departments around the country already possess drones, and Lipton said more could view them as an increasingly attractive surveillance platform. Ferguson warned that residents concerned about street cameras should also consider overhead drones and the real time crime centers capable of connecting the information.

Lawrence described the broader problem as a surveillance state that has been expanding for several decades. He welcomed the backlash against Flock but urged the public to use it as a starting point for stopping and reversing mass surveillance, rather than accepting a corporate switch dressed up as reform.