After months of growing public outcry over documented misuse of its surveillance technology by law enforcement officers across the United States, American surveillance company Flock has introduced sweeping new privacy and security safeguards — a change its founder and chief executive Garrett Langley acknowledges should have been implemented far earlier.
Flock’s network of tens of thousands of license plate reading cameras, fixed surveillance devices and drones have been widely deployed by police departments nationwide. While the tool has proven useful for legitimate law enforcement tasks including recovering stolen vehicles and locating missing people, multiple high-profile cases have exposed dangerous abuse: officers have used Flock’s technology to stalk current and former romantic partners, track innocent civilians unrelated to any criminal investigation, and even monitor a woman who received an abortion. Multiple officers across the country have resigned or been terminated after being caught misusing the platform, and an Indiana man recently confirmed via a public records request that local police had placed an alert on his vehicle despite him never being suspected of any crime.
The scandal has sparked significant public and political pushback: at least 50 US cities have cut ties with Flock so far this year. Still, Langley told the BBC that business remains largely stable, noting that 16 cities that previously ended their contracts have reversed course and resumed their partnership with the firm in the last three months. He added that the company currently maintains a 7:1 ratio of new customers to customers that terminate services.
Looking back, Langley admitted that he was slow to recognize the growing public concern and the need for stronger oversight. Six months ago, during a board meeting, he questioned why Flock was drawing increasing public scrutiny — a moment that came shortly after smart doorbell manufacturer Amazon Ring scrapped a planned partnership with Flock following public outrage over a Super Bowl advertisement that amplified fears of mass unregulated surveillance.
“Historically, my point of view as a chief executive of a private company was, I don’t know if I should be making these decisions. I don’t know if it’s my job to say how long data should be retained,” Langley explained in his interview with the BBC. He has since reversed that position, now aligning with civil liberties groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the core demand that police must be required to link any search of Flock data to an active open case number. “They’re right. I think it should be required,” he said.
Langley acknowledged that employees and community members have repeatedly called on Flock to take a firmer stance as the technology’s creator and industry expert, a responsibility he previously resisted. Now he has embraced that accountability, pairing the rollout of new safeguards with his continued argument that Flock’s tools are critical to reducing crime and improving public safety in American communities. He even claimed that cities that choose not to use Flock’s technology are intentionally making their communities less safe.
Despite this defense of his product, Langley does not deny the widespread abuse that has occurred. He noted that Flock’s prominently placed cameras in neighborhoods across the country have made the company a convenient target for growing public anxiety about mass surveillance and unregulated data collection, a concern that is amplified by the complete lack of comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the US governing how personal data can be collected, used or sold. “Because you can see our cameras, it’s easier to get mad,” he said.
The push for new safeguards grew directly out of community and law enforcement conversations, Langley explained. He recalled meeting a woman in Cleveland who fiercely opposed Flock’s deployment in her neighborhood, telling him she saw the technology as a tool for police to abuse their power. What surprised him, he said, was that many rank-and-file officers shared that concern: during conversations with police, officers often told him they knew some colleagues were misusing access to surveillance tools, but had no formal mechanism to flag or document that behavior.
That feedback led Flock to roll out a voluntary audit feature earlier this year, which automatically logs every search of the company’s database and automatically flags unusual activity that may indicate misuse. The vast majority of police departments enabled the tool as soon as it was available, and the data it captured confirmed just how rampant misuse had become — prompting Langley to make the feature a mandatory standard for all customers.
Langley emphasized that officers who abuse their access to surveillance tools are unfit for service and should face consequences harsher than termination alone. “If anyone is going to be the one that spearheads getting rid of abusive cops? Sign me up,” he said. “We trust these individuals with deadly weapons. I think a camera is very far from a deadly weapon, but I would say it’s a very powerful tool. We should hold it incredibly accountable.”
The key new policy changes also include cutting the default retention period for most user data collected by Flock from 30 days to just seven days, a change designed to reduce the risk of inappropriate access to historical personal location data.