Flock sucks but I think these kind of conspiracies hurt the argument. You can go look at a number of these contracts since they are part of your local city/municipality.

A typical flock agreement is pretty firm that the data is the customers. Some of it might be used for training. There is opt-in to share with other law enforcement but I have not yet seen anything around commercial use.

I don’t think much padding is necessary. It’s a metal pole with a cheap camera and SIM card. They charge $3-5k a year per camera. The only upfront cost is a local contractor to install the camera, they typically have one that covers a very large region. Huge margins with that alone.