Flock Safety's Cameras Are Everywhere. Now the CEO Wants a "Compromise."
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley used a Fox News interview to call for a national "compromise" between privacy and safety, as his company faces growing backlash from lawmakers, civil liberties groups, and activists who have started physically disabling its cameras.
"When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they're prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise," Langley said on Fox News (TechCrunch, 2026-08-23).
Flock Safety makes cameras that are mounted on poles and street furniture across the United States. The cameras photograph every car that drives by, read the license plate, and store that information so police can search through it later. Because the cameras record ordinary drivers who are not suspected of any crime, privacy advocates have raised concerns about how much data is collected and who can see it.
The Washington Post identified 46 cases in which police officers were accused of using Flock's technology for unauthorized purposes, including stalking wives, girlfriends, and ex-partners (TechCrunch, 2026-08-23). In a CBS News interview on August 14, Langley addressed the abuse directly: "I apologize. It kills me that she went through that." He added, "I don't think that Flock created police abuse. I think we're the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it" (CBS News, 2026-08-14).
Politicians from both major parties have pushed back. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders posted "STOP AI MASS SURVEILLANCE. STOP FLOCK." on social media (X/SenSanders). In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed accused his opponent Mike Rogers of supporting "this mass proliferation of Flock cameras, any and everywhere, watching your every move to collect information without you even noticing" (X/AbdulElSayed). On the Republican side, three House Republicans introduced H.R. 9800, which would prohibit the federal government from purchasing automated surveillance systems using facial recognition, biometric IDs, or license plate recognition, including Flock Safety cameras (Congress.gov).
Flock has also faced physical resistance. NBC News reported that a wave of activist vandalism against the company's nationwide camera network pushed Flock into damage control (NBC News, 2026-08-21).
The company has responded with product changes. Flock reduced its default data retention period, the length of time camera records are kept before automatic deletion, from 30 days to seven days. It now requires a case code to be entered before users can access data (TechCrunch, 2026-08-23). In an interview with the Associated Press, Langley said many of the announced changes will make previously optional guardrails mandatory for users (AP News, 2026-08-13). He also urged state regulators to "pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense" (TechCrunch, 2026-08-23).
The ACLU has pushed back, noting that Flock has not shortened its default retention to the ACLU's recommended 48 hours. The civil liberties group also says the practical impact of the changes will depend on a feature called Evidence Mode, which allows police to override the default retention and save data for longer periods. The ACLU says this could make the new defaults more cosmetic than substantive (ACLU).
The tension here is worth a closer look. Think of it like a phone that locks after five minutes of inactivity, but anyone who knows the password can turn that feature off whenever they want. A seven-day limit with a case-code requirement is a real improvement, but if officers can switch to Evidence Mode at will and keep data indefinitely, the actual retention policy is whatever the officer on duty decides it is. The 46 abuse cases identified by the Post involved exactly the kind of personnel who would have had access to that override. Langley's claim that Flock is "the first company to ever shine a light on" police misuse is a fair point about the company building tools to track who accessed what data. But it also shifts responsibility onto the same police departments whose misuse prompted the changes in the first place.
Langley's call for laws criminalizing data misuse is an unusual move for a tech CEO, effectively asking regulators to constrain how his own customers use his product. Whether state legislatures take up that invitation, and whether Evidence Mode survives whatever legal rules might emerge, will determine whether the announced changes amount to a real shift or just a setting that can be toggled off. The company is caught between police departments that want broad access to data and a growing coalition of legislators and civil liberties advocates who want hard limits. The Fox News "compromise" framing is Langley's attempt to position Flock as a reasonable middle. Whether anyone is still looking for a middle remains an open question.
