There's a real distinction worth making here between surveillance infrastructure and investigative tools. Flock is mass passive collection -- camera on every corner, running 24/7, feeding a database law enforcement queries at will. What people are actually hungry for is the opposite: targeted, on-demand tools that regular people control. The same instinct that has people pulling down cameras is what's driving grassroots OSINT communities -- they want to be able to find things themselves without being watched by someone else's system. ghostcatchers.net

I personally wouldn't want police to have access to Flock's data unless they have a warrant to follow the movements of a specific individual. If private organizations and citizens had at-will access to this kind of data it would be worse than a panopticon. It'd be a prison where every inmate is under constant surveillance, not just by guards, but by other inmates. There would be criminals using this data to track down and harass judges. Burglers using it to find empty homes. Rapists using it to track down victims. You name it.

Surveillance systems are, normally, a trade-off between privacy and safety. You lose one but gain the other. The reason Flock cameras are being torn down now is because they take away privacy while simultaneously reducing safety.