Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley pushed back against critics of his company’s AI-powered surveillance cameras in a recent interview with Fox News, arguing that privacy and safety concerns must be weighed together rather than against each other.
Fox News reports that Flock, which makes automated license plate readers, surveillance cameras and drones used by police departments across the country, has drawn criticism from multiple directions in recent months. Breitbart News recently reported that the “Have I Been Flocked” website has been launched to allow citizens to check if they’ve been targeted by police searches due to concerns about inappropriate usage of the AI-powered technology.
“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. He framed the challenge facing his company and the country plainly: “How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?”
Langley addressed that reporting in a separate interview with CBS News, after listening to an account from one of the alleged victims of stalking. “I apologize. It kills me that she went through that,” he said. But he rejected the idea that Flock bears responsibility for how officers misuse the tools. “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,” he said.
On Capitol Hill, three House Republicans recently introduced a bill that would bar the federal government from purchasing automated surveillance systems that rely on facial recognition, biometric identification or license plate recognition. The bill specifically calls out Flock, referencing systems “including a Flock Safety camera.”
Facing that pressure, Flock has announced several changes to how its technology handles data. The company cut its default data retention period from 30 days to seven, and it now requires officers to enter a case code before accessing stored data. Both changes, however, can be overridden through a setting called Evidence Mode, which allows longer-term data storage.
The ACLU offered a cautious response to the changes. “While Flock has not shortened the default retention period to the ACLU’s recommended 48 hours, its proposal may be a step in the right direction,” the organization said. “Whether this is a real change or just another Flock PR move, however, will depend on how its ‘Evidence Mode’ operates.”
Langley has also called for state-level action against misuse of the technology, saying regulators should “pass bills that make [the illegal use of Flock data] a criminal offense.” He argued that the absence of clear rules is the deeper problem facing his industry. “Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there’s no regulation. There’s no accountability, and we think that’s wrong,” he said.
Read more at Fox News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.