Flock CEO Defends Surveillance Tech Amid National Backlash: "We Shouldn't Stop Progress"
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Flock CEO Garrett Langley defended his company's surveillance technology despite growing privacy concerns, arguing that its crime-fighting benefits outweigh the risk of misuse.
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Flock founder and CEO Gareth Langley doesn't think the risks of introducing surveillance technology at scale outweigh the rewards.
"If we're going to live in a society where you're more likely to be held accountable if you commit a crime, we shouldn't stop progress," said Langley, speaking on stage at a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on Wednesday.
During the interview, the controversial founder of the maker of surveillance license plate cameras and other recording devices deflected tough questions about the criticism he now faces — which has since led to contract cancellations and even layoffs. Instead of offering concrete solutions to people's concerns, Langley tended to answer questions with anecdotes from conversations with police chiefs and city leaders across the United States, and stories of the many possible crimes the herd has solved.
In doing so, Langley presented Flock as a technological advance that was somewhat inevitable. He emphasized that if people want to live in a better society - that is, one with less crime - they must give up their privacy in exchange.
A similar argument about trade-offs and rewards can be made for artificial intelligence, which is marketed to the public as vastly improving our lives, automating tedious tasks, and making things easier. The flip side is the cost of sharing everything about ourselves with our AI agents' creators — and, some say, the possibility of humanity's demise.
It's no surprise that AI interactions overlap with Flock. Like AI, Flock is a technology that some feel has been forced upon people without their consent.
For Langley, it's just the nature of progress, he explained.
"Technology at its core, by its very definition, is just doing things better. It's not doing things perfectly," he said. I think driverless cars are a fair analogy. I think driverless cars are definitely safer than human drivers. And when an accident happens, I don't think the answer is to turn off driverless cars. The answer is to say, "Hey, let's talk about how to prevent more accidents in the future."
But the manufacturers of driverless cars do not shrug their shoulders in accidents. Companies are decommissioning their fleets and implementing reforms. Meanwhile, Flock as a company seems to be struggling with understanding when it's the company's responsibility to intervene. From Langley's answers, it's clear that the ethics of how to use Flock is a decision he prefers to leave to others.
He pointed out: We don't want to tell city managers how to do their work. "We will provide recommendations, we will provide defaults, but we will minimize the number of features, functions and mandatory policies," he said.
Among the many objections Langley raised during the interview was the idea that misinformation about Flock had led to some customers canceling. As an example, he cited a time a customer terminated his contract because he believed the devices were performing facial recognition. While Flock cameras do not have facial recognition, they do have the ability to recognize and track people.
Langley also spent a lot of time admonishing those who thought his or any technology should be perfect, attributing this quote to an anonymous community leader.
"He described how often as a society we judge technology not by comparing it to the past, but by comparing it to perfection. And Flack is far from perfect; I'm far from perfect—I've made a lot of mistakes," Langley says.
Another area of pushback was positioning the herd as a more effective form of policing, allowing police departments to do more with reduced staffing.
"If you look at where policing has gone in the last decade, especially post-Covid, police recruitment is declining rapidly. I think of a place like San Francisco, and there are hundreds of open positions. They will probably never be filled," he said.
But when pressed about the abuse and invasiveness of his company's surveillance technology, Langley had no substantive answer.
"I think if the goal is to curb abuse, I think there's a way to do it that doesn't disrupt the legal system, doesn't disrupt the efficiency and flow of a police department," Langley said, without elaborating on what those ideas are.
For Langley, these issues seem to be of secondary importance, as his belief in the herd as a public good is so strong.
"I think one of the unfortunate consequences of building a profitable company is that it's a price you pay, and I think it's worth it, because there are millions and millions of people who have better lives today because [of] Flack," he said. "And obviously we've made our mistakes, and there are people who disagree with what we're doing, but it's worth it because one day they might be the victims," Langley added.
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