Flock Safety CEO Apologizes 10 Months After Terrorist Remark

Our Take

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for catching this one: Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley finally walked back his comment calling DeFlock a "terroristic organization" — ten months after he said it, and only after a Forbes reporter asked him point-blank. That's not an apology born of reflection. That's an apology born of getting caught on the record by a national outlet.

Words matter here. When the head of a company that runs a nationwide network of license plate cameras calls a volunteer mapping project "terroristic," he's not just being thin-skinned — he's trying to delegitimize the very idea that citizens should be able to see where surveillance infrastructure is pointed at them. That rhetoric has consequences. It's the kind of framing that gets used to justify harassment of researchers, pressure on hosting platforms, or worse. Walking it back quietly, long after the damage is done, doesn't undo the chilling effect.

The bigger story isn't the apology — it's why a surveillance company felt threatened by a map in the first place. If you want to see what Flock and similar vendors would rather you not look at too closely, check our camera map, and if you want to push back on ALPR deployment in your own town, see take action.