Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley has called for a national “compromise” between privacy and public safety as the company faces growing criticism over reported misuse of its automated license plate recognition network.
During an interview with Fox News, Langley argued that treating privacy and safety as competing absolutes misses the central question: how surveillance tools can support legitimate investigations without giving users unchecked access to people’s location data.
Why Flock Safety Is Facing Scrutiny
Flock Safety provides automated license plate readers and other surveillance technologies to law-enforcement agencies and private organizations. Its cameras capture vehicle information that can help investigators identify vehicles connected to reported crimes.
The same capabilities have raised concerns about oversight and misuse. The Washington Post documented 46 cases in which officers were accused of using Flock systems for unauthorized purposes, including searches connected to current or former partners.
Langley later apologized after hearing from one of the people affected. At the same time, he argued that the technology did not create police misconduct and said Flock’s auditing tools can help agencies detect improper searches.
New Retention and Accountability Rules
Flock has announced several changes intended to reduce unnecessary data collection and identify suspicious activity more quickly:
- Seven-day default retention: The company is reducing its recommended default retention period for automated license plate reader data from 30 days to seven days.
- Required case codes: Law-enforcement users will be required to connect searches to a case code.
- Audit Assistance: Flock plans to require agencies to use a system that identifies unusual search activity for administrative review.
- Automatic lockouts: Accounts showing patterns associated with possible misuse can be temporarily suspended until an administrator reviews the activity.
- Offense filtering: Agencies can limit the types of investigations for which outside departments may search their data.
Some of these safeguards are scheduled to become mandatory by the end of 2026 rather than taking effect immediately for every customer.
How Evidence Mode Works
The seven-day default does not mean that every record is permanently deleted after exactly one week. Flock’s Evidence Mode allows specific data connected to an active investigation to be preserved for longer.
Evidence Mode is different from the emergency exception to the case-code requirement. According to the company’s announcement, emergency searches can proceed without the normal case code, but those searches are supposed to be flagged automatically for review.
Privacy advocates argue that the effectiveness of the policy will depend on how narrowly Evidence Mode is used, who can authorize longer retention, and whether the public can review meaningful audit records.
Political Pressure From Both Parties
Criticism of automated surveillance has come from different sides of the political spectrum. Senator Bernie Sanders has called for an end to what he describes as AI mass surveillance. Republican lawmakers have also introduced legislation intended to restrict federal purchases of automated surveillance systems using technologies such as facial recognition and license plate readers.
The proposals differ in scope, and their introduction does not guarantee that they will become law. They nevertheless show that oversight of automated surveillance is no longer limited to one political party.
What Residents Can Ask Local Agencies
Residents can ask their city or police department several practical questions about the local use of Flock technology:
- How long is license plate data normally retained?
- Who can place records into Evidence Mode?
- Are emergency searches reviewed automatically?
- Can outside agencies search the local database?
- Are audit logs available through public-records requests?
- What disciplinary process applies when an officer performs an unauthorized search?
Flock’s new defaults add controls that were previously optional or less restrictive. However, their value will ultimately depend on agency implementation, independent oversight, and whether misuse produces meaningful consequences.
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