No Mass Surveillance Flock Watch
Work in progress. We're actively filling in dates, quotes, and sources on this profile — anything marked "Needs source" is a lead we haven't nailed down yet, not a settled fact. The research on this page is AI-assisted: every claim is checked against a cited source, and source material is included wherever possible, but mistakes can still slip through. If you spot an error, email contact@nosurveillancepledge.com and we'll correct it.

Company Histories

ShotSpotter / SoundThinking

Not an ALPR vendor itself — ShotSpotter (renamed SoundThinking in 2023) sells gunshot-detection audio sensors, deployed alongside Flock cameras in at least two cities on this site (San Pablo, Pittsburg). Included here because it’s the same playbook: a surveillance vendor selling cities on crime-fighting technology whose real-world accuracy and civil-rights record turned out to be far shakier than the pitch — and, unlike most vendors on this page, ShotSpotter’s story includes an actual ending: Chicago cancelled its contract and settled a class-action lawsuit over it.

  1. Founding 1996 — founded by physicist Robert Showen Needs source

    Robert Showen founds the company at SRI International

    Per Wikipedia’s account (cross-referenced against multiple news sources in its own citations, though not independently self-hosted here beyond the encyclopedia excerpt itself), Robert Showen founded the company in 1996 while working at SRI International, testing early prototypes in Redwood City, California — applying acoustic-sensing techniques to detect and locate gunfire. James Beldock became CEO in 2003; in 2005 the company merged with Centurist Systems, a military acoustic sniper-location firm, whose CEO Scott Manderville became chairman. Ralph Clark became CEO in 2010 and led the company through its 2017 IPO. The company rebranded from ShotSpotter, Inc. to SoundThinking in April 2023 while keeping the “ShotSpotter” name on its core product — around the same time it began marketing its own ALPR product, PlateRanger, putting the company in direct competition with Flock, Axon, and Motorola on this site’s core subject.

    Sources & documents (1)
  2. Funding June 7, 2017 — IPO on NASDAQ as ShotSpotter, Inc.

    ShotSpotter goes public, raising $35.4 million

    The company’s own announcement: “ShotSpotter’s common stock commenced trading on the NASDAQ Capital Market on June 7, 2017 under the trading symbol ‘SSTI.’” — ShotSpotter received aggregate proceeds of approximately $35.4 million before fees. Per Wikipedia’s sourcing, gross revenue grew from $40.8 million (2019) to $58.2 million (2021), though the company posted a net loss in 2021 tied partly to contract non-renewals and rising legal costs. Separately, per the same source, ShotSpotter illegally lobbied the city of Oakland, California in 2014 and received a $5,000 fine — an early, small-scale precedent for the accountability problems that would grow much larger later.

    Read the IPO closing press release SoundThinking (company site) — original press release
  3. Controversy July 21, 2022 — Chicago residents sue over false-arrest ShotSpotter alerts

    MacArthur Justice Center sues Chicago over ShotSpotter-driven stops and arrests

    The MacArthur Justice Center, First Defense Legal Aid, and allied counsel filed Ortiz v. City of Chicago (No. 22-cv-3773) on behalf of Chicagoans stopped, frisked, or arrested based on ShotSpotter alerts that turned out not to reflect actual gunfire. The suit came amid a wider pattern of accuracy findings in other cities: a Houston Chronicle investigation found over 80% of ShotSpotter alerts there were false positives or otherwise useless, and New York City’s own Comptroller later audited a sample month and found 82% of alerts couldn’t confirm a shot was fired at all. See the following event for how the Chicago case ended.

    Sources & documents (2)
  4. Controversy August 15, 2025 — Chicago settles; had already cancelled its contract

    Chicago settles the ShotSpotter lawsuit, after already dropping the vendor

    “The City cancelled its contract for ShotSpotter last year and stopped using the system in September 2024.” As part of the settlement, the city agreed a ShotSpotter alert alone doesn’t justify stopping or frisking someone near the alert location. MacArthur Justice Center senior counsel Jonathan Manes: “ShotSpotter generated tens of thousands of unfounded alerts every year, driving aggressive and unwarranted police deployments and prompting many illegal police stops and pat-downs. Today’s settlement confirms that ShotSpotter was never worth the cost.” The lawsuit also alleged racially disparate sensor placement under the Illinois Civil Rights Act. This is the clearest “deflocked”-style ending of any vendor profiled on this site so far — a large city not just declining to renew, but formally settling a civil-rights lawsuit over the technology after dropping it.

    Read the settlement press release MacArthur Justice Center — original press release

Know something we don't?

If you have documents, press coverage, or corrections about ShotSpotter / SoundThinking's history — a founding detail, a funding round, an early customer deal, anything with a source behind it — send it to contact@nosurveillancepledge.com and we'll add it with a citation.