Garrett Langley Defends Surveillance Expansion Amid Contract Losses

Facing cancelled contracts and mounting public scrutiny, the Flock founder doubled down on the necessity of his license plate cameras and tracking devices. Langley framed the trade-off as a simple bargain: to secure a safer society with reduced crime, the public must accept a diminished expectation of privacy. He compared the deployment of his monitoring tools to the evolution of driverless cars, arguing that isolated failures should not halt the march of technological innovation.

Despite the pushback, Langley shifted responsibility for ethical oversight onto municipal leaders. He insisted that Flock provides recommendations rather than mandates, preferring to let local jurisdictions define the boundaries of surveillance. When questioned about the potential for abuse or the invasive nature of tracking capabilities—which include detecting and monitoring individuals even without facial recognition—the CEO offered few concrete safeguards. Instead, he characterized the controversy as a misunderstanding of the company’s mission, suggesting that those who criticize the technology are unfairly judging it against a standard of perfection rather than comparing it to the realities of existing, understaffed police departments.