The key facts

  • Flock CEO Garrett Langley defends surveillance cameras at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: 'we should not stop progress'
  • Criticism has led to contract cancellations and layoffs; Langley attributes some cancellations to misinformation
  • Langley offered no concrete solutions to questions about abuses and ethics of use, leaving policy to city governments

A defense amid criticism

Flock founder and CEO Garrett Langley spoke on a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco and said that the risks of widespread adoption of surveillance technologies do not outweigh their benefits. 'If we want to live in a society where someone who commits a crime is more likely to be held accountable, we should not stop progress,' he said. Flock makes cameras for recognizing license plates and other recording devices. According to TechCrunch, the company has faced nationwide criticism that has already led to contract cancellations and layoffs.

Langley's arguments

Instead of directly answering pointed questions, Langley recounted conversations with police chiefs and city leaders across the US, as well as stories of crimes solved with Flock's help. He presented his technology as an inevitable step of progress: in his words, for a society with lower crime rates, people will have to sacrifice some privacy. He drew an analogy with self-driving cars: 'Technology by definition makes things better, but not perfect. Self-driving cars are definitely safer than human drivers, and one crash is not a reason to turn them off.' Langley also admitted: 'Flock is far from perfect; I am far from perfect — I have made plenty of mistakes.'

Misinformation and police staffing

Langley claimed that some contract cancellations were linked to misinformation: one client terminated its agreement believing the cameras perform facial recognition. According to him, Flock has no facial recognition feature, though the cameras can detect and track people. He also positioned Flock as a way to compensate for police staffing shortages: law enforcement employment has been declining rapidly since the pandemic, and, in his words, San Francisco has hundreds of unfilled vacancies that will likely never be filled.

Questions about ethics and abuses

When asked about abuses and the invasiveness of the technology, Langley, in TechCrunch's assessment, gave no substantive answers: 'If the goal is to limit abuses, I think there is a way to do that without disrupting the legal system and the effectiveness of the police department,' he said, without revealing what those ways are. He preferred to leave the ethics of Flock's use to others: 'We do not want to tell city leaders how to do their jobs. We will provide recommendations and default settings, but we minimize the number of mandatory features and policies.' Summing up, Langley called the criticism 'the cost of building a meaningful company': 'Millions of people today live better lives thanks to Flock... one day they themselves may become victims of crimes.'