Mass Surveillance, Police Misuse, and Who Controls Your Flock Cameras with Flock CEO, Garret Langley

Summary

Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock Safety, discusses the company's license plate reader cameras, privacy and safety tradeoffs, retention defaults, and recent public backlash. He explains new accountability tools that caught abusive officers, why Flock is cautious with AI and drones, and how some cities are reversing decisions to remove cameras. The conversation focuses on Flock's business health, churn, and the broader debate over surveillance technology.

• Flock Safety operates in roughly 6,000 cities and reports solving over 1 million crimes.
• Default data retention was lowered from 30 days to 7 days, with about 90% of crimes solvable in that window.
• Camera vandalism and privacy protests created a PR crisis and targeted Flock cameras.
• Flock built mandatory audit assistance tools that identified abusive law enforcement searches, including nine fired Georgia officers.
• Langley says Flock does not do facial recognition and wants human-in-the-loop AI rather than predictive policing.
• Drones are Flock's fastest-growing business unit, used to assess 911 calls before officers respond.
• About 20 cities that removed Flock cameras have turned them back on after seeing crime impacts.
• Despite churn of roughly 1%, Flock raised money and the company remains in good shape.