Flock CEO defends surveillance technology amid national backlash: ‘We shouldn’t pause progress’
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley appeared at TechCrunch Disrupt to defend his company's license plate reader and surveillance network technology, arguing that its role in fighting crime justifies continued expansion despite rising concerns about privacy and potential misuse.
Why this matters: Flock's pitch is simple: crime goes down, so the tradeoffs are worth it. That argument sounds reasonable until you think about who bears the tradeoffs. Flock's cameras track where cars go, building movement histories on ordinary people who are not suspected of anything. Local governments buy these systems quietly, often with little public debate. Langley's 'don't pause progress' framing is doing real work here — it treats surveillance expansion as the default and privacy protection as the thing that needs to justify itself. That is backwards.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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