What you're missing is they can get that money without putting the cameras back up. That's what you do when a customer doesn't want your service/product but they still have an active contract.

Yep, paying out the remaining value of the contract is generally the default-court acceptable manner to terminate a contract. And it's probably in there as a clause.

However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.

> However, if Flock was really being evil, they could argue in court they are losing on the value of spying on the American populace.

We don't know they won't say this! All the surveillance they do absolutely has value in being able to sell it to other government agencies and private security. Later on, once they've been around a while each customer is less important, but right now every single one is key so I would not be surprised if they fight to keep the cameras up so they can gather metrics for internal use and marketing/sales. They very well may say, "the contract calls for the surveillance to be active. Removing the cameras reduces our ability to further improve the system, so we're financially harmed by that." They won't win, but they very well may try it.