Flock CEO apologizes, outlines changes amid claims its data was misused by police in some cases

Our Take

When the man selling the surveillance dragnet has to go on national television and apologize for how his own product is being used by police, that's not a PR hiccup — that's an admission that the guardrails everyone was promised don't actually exist. Garrett Langley's mea culpa to CBS News, reported by Anna Schecter, confirms what critics of Flock Safety have been saying for years: once thousands of departments get a searchable, nationwide database of everyone's comings and goings, misuse isn't a hypothetical edge case. It's a certainty.

Notice what's driving the "new safety measures" here — not proactive design, but getting caught. That's the pattern with this industry: build first, sell to every small-town PD and HOA you can, and only bolt on oversight after journalists and defense attorneys expose the abuse. An apology is nice. It doesn't un-ring the bell for the people whose plate data was already pulled for reasons that had nothing to do with public safety, and it doesn't change the fact that this network keeps expanding into more communities every week.

Corporate contrition is not accountability, and it's definitely not consent. If you want to know whether these cameras are watching your street, check our map, and if you're ready to push back on your local government's contract with Flock, see what you can do.