Flock CEO defends surveillance know-how amid nationwide backlash: ‘We should not pause progress’

Flock’s founder and CEO Garrett Langley doesn’t assume the dangers of introducing surveillance know-how at scale outweigh the rewards.

“If we need to stay in a society the place, when you commit a criminal offense, you might have the next chance of being held accountable, we shouldn’t pause progress,” Langley mentioned, talking on stage throughout a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco on Wednesday.

During the interview, the controversial founding father of the surveillance maker of license plate cameras and different recording gadgets deflected arduous questions in regards to the criticism Flock now faces — which has since led to cancelled contracts and even layoffs. Instead, Langley tended to reply to questions with anecdotes from conversations with police chiefs and metropolis leaders throughout the United States, and tales of the supposed quite a few crimes Flock has solved, moderately than supply tangible options to individuals’s considerations.

In doing so, Langley positioned Flock as an advance in know-how that was considerably inevitable. He pressured that if individuals needed to stay in a greater society — that’s, one with lowered crime — they must supply up their privateness in return.

An identical argument in regards to the trade-offs and rewards may very well be made for AI, which is marketed to the general public as vastly bettering our lives, automating tedious duties, and making issues extra handy. The flip facet is the price of sharing every part about ourselves with the makers of the AI brokers themselves — and the potential for the destruction of humanity, based on some.

It’s no shock that the AI backlash shares some overlap with Flock. Much like AI, Flock is a know-how that some really feel has been compelled upon the general public with out their consent.

For Langley, that is simply the character of progress, he defined.

“Technology, at its core, in its definition, is simply doing issues higher. It’s not doing issues good,” he mentioned. “Driverless vehicles, I believe, is a good analogy. Driverless vehicles, I believe, are definitively safer than human drivers. And when there’s one accident, I don’t assume the reply is to close down driverless vehicles. The reply is to say, ‘Hey, let’s discuss how we forestall extra accidents sooner or later’.”

But driverless automobile makers don’t shrug their shoulders at crashes; the businesses pause their fleets and apply fixes. Flock, in the meantime, appears to wrestle as an organization with understanding when it’s the corporate’s accountability to intervene. From Langley’s solutions, it’s clear that the ethics round how Flock must be used is a choice he would a lot moderately depart as much as others.

“We don’t need to inform metropolis leaders methods to do their job,” he famous. “We will present suggestions, we’ll present defaults, however we’re going to reduce the variety of mandated options, capabilities, and insurance policies,” he mentioned.

CEO: ‘Flock is way from good’

Among the various rebuttals to his critics that Langley raised in the course of the interview was the concept that misinformation about Flock had led to a few of its clients’ cancellations. For occasion, he referenced a time when a buyer ended their contract as a result of they believed the gadgets carried out facial recognition. While Flock cameras wouldn’t have facial recognition, they do have the ability to detect and track people.

Langley additionally spent a good period of time admonishing those that assume his know-how, or any know-how, must be good, attributing the quote to some unnamed group chief.

“He was describing that, too usually as a society we decide know-how not on the way it compares to the previous, however the way it compares to good. And Flock is way from good; I’m removed from good — I’ve made loads of errors,” Langley mentioned.

Another space of pushback was in positioning Flock as a more practical type of policing, and one which allowed police departments to do extra with lowered employees.

“If you take a look at the place policing has gone over the past decade, however notably post-COVID, legislation enforcement employment is declining quickly. I take into consideration a spot like San Francisco, and there’s lots of of open positions. They will most likely by no means be stuffed,” he mentioned, positioning Flock because the tech that may fill in these gaps.

But pressed about abuse and the invasiveness of his firm’s surveillance know-how, Langley had no substantive solutions.

“I believe if the concept is to curb abuse, I believe there’s a means to try this that doesn’t disrupt the authorized system, that doesn’t disrupt the efficacy and move of a police division,” Langley mentioned, with out spelling out what these concepts have been.

For Langley, these appear to be issues of secondary significance, as a result of his perception in Flock as a public good is so sturdy.

“I believe one of many unlucky penalties of constructing a consequential firm is that is the value you pay, and I believe it’s value it as a result of there’s hundreds of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people that have a greater life immediately as a result of [of] Flock,” he mentioned. “And clearly we’ve made our fair proportion of errors, and there’s some people who disagree with what we do, nevertheless it’s value it as a result of sooner or later they could be a sufferer,” Langley added.