> Private citizens filming in public and police forces setting up arrays of surveillance cameras in public somehow don’t seem equivalent.

The reason these strategies (for the same goal) don't seem equivalent is due to the nature of oversight. Flock as a centralized private company governed by a procedural system, can be corrupted and abused more easily than a distributed network. Flock's systems have already been abused and will continue to be.

Re Title: Flock doesn't "want" anything in particular, other than to sell more contracts and make more money.