Flock CEO Apologizes for Calling Activists Terrorists Amid Surveillance Backlash
Flock CEO Apologizes for Calling Activists 'Terrorists'
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley regrets labeling DeFlock activists as terrorists, admitting his comments were a mistake. Facing intense public scrutiny over ICE data access and privacy concerns, Langley now seeks a balance between safety and privacy. Despite the controversy, the company's revenue continues to grow, even as activists organize nationwide protests against its expanding surveillance network.
There's a lot of organizations doing really good work, even if it's critical of what I'm doing.
- HardwareLust
Oh he still thinks they're terrorists, he's just sorry he got caught saying the quiet part out loud.
- toddmorey
"We believe in a world where we can have safety and privacy."
- Flock camera feeds were set up public-facing, giving anyone on the internet access to live high-resolution feeds
- Flock's AI does more than just read license plates. It catalogs vehicle color, make, model, bumper stickers, dents, and roof racks.
- Police officers nationwide have abused their access to the Flock network to inappropriately track romantic partners, neighbors, and personal acquaintances
- local police departments share Flock-captured license plate data with federal immigration agencies like ICE and CBP
- Flock cameras have been used to track lawful citizens attending political demonstrations
- Flock also expanded into audio surveillance (!!) before public outrage made them back down a bit
- infecto
I think it’s important to highlight that the timing of this article comes right after Tucker Carlsons monologue and podcast “Flock Cameras and the Coming Slave State”. Would wager a bet this is a paid piece for Forbes for PR damage control.
Garrett probably thought by making those statements a year ago he could get political support from the current administration and population. Looks like that was a bad bet.
I actually think the service Flock provides could be interesting but the complete lack of guardrails makes it a no go.
- exabrial
I have a new idea:
No cameras on us.
24/7 Body Cameras on politicians, w/ audio.
- cornholio
Assuming the necessary laws banning this crap are not put in place, what is the endgame here?
Activists destroy visible surveillance cameras, so they hide them and make them hard to recognize. Activists trace the camera locations from the public data, so Flock kills those feeds and sells only to vetted buyers.
The value of mass surveillance is high enough and the power imbalance so strongly against the citizenry, that someone will setup these hidden cameras, as long as it's legal.
Imagine what you can do with this data, face recognition and GPT-5 class agents. Not only do you have the realtime location of your victims, but now you can see who they talk to, what they wear, what mood they are in, what they bought, are they drinking or visiting a brothel, what car they go into - and it's no longer an ephemeral cookie id, it's the face that person will have forever, on their id documents, in any interview or loan application they will ever do.
This data is worth trillions in the long run if sufficiently oppressive structures are put in place to leverage it.