>Flock's problem is they've done the big power transfer without providing the corresponding payoff, and too quickly.

Their problem is they believed their own bullshit and thought they were offering people a good deal that basically amounted to "the government 1984s you more than they already do but your package thief gets arrested for it".

Ignoring the fact that that deal is not necessarily good, if they had been slightly scummier, not given two shits about actually reducing petty crimes against the people and instead set out to help municipalities collect civil fines they probably could have gotten away without scrutiny for a very long time and gotten their systems deeply entrenched. The useful idiots would've eaten it right up with the flimsiest of pretexts so long as each segment of useful idiots was peddled to individually.