Fixing Flock’s Blind Spot

Yeah, this summer has been open season on Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers sold by Flock Safety to police departments and private companies nationwide.

Over 120,000 cameras in thousands of cities and neighborhoods from coast to coast, mounted on poles and buildings in every state but Alaska, scanning plates, tracking, and logging movements.

Critics call it mass surveillance, alleging Flock cameras have been used for unnecessary traffic stops, warrantless searches by police, and other abuses we'll get to in a moment.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union launched a campaign called Get the Flock Out.

Then in early August, John Oliver devoted a long segment of his HBO show to fight against Flock and other cameras.

The same day, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell investigative piece, reporting some 50 police officers in 12 states have been accused of misusing Flock systems, and many of them to track wives, girlfriends, and exes.

Along with the scrutiny this year has been a spike in cancellations or suspensions of Flock contracts.

More than 50 cities and counties switched off their cameras since January, including the LAPD, the nation's third-largest police force, who walked away in July.

In one case, an officer in Milwaukee used Flock to track his romantic partner 124 times, and then the detective assigned to investigate him was also arrested for Flock misuse.

Now, Flock markets its products the way a lot of companies do, case studies, success stories, featuring customers on its website, showing how police departments are using their technology to solve crimes and keep communities safe.

The problem, as the Post revealed, a bunch of police departments Flock chose to feature in its marketing are now under investigation for abusing the very system Flock sold them.

For more than a year, Flock PR has been playing Whac-A-Mole without much success, citing legal technicalities to defend the use of their products, and sometimes pushing back aggressively on critics.

CEO Garrett Langley once called anti-Flock activists terrorists.

But the backlash against his cameras kept growing, and Langley eventually apologized this summer, saying those comments were a mistake.

But the damage was done, the battle lines already drawn, and that was before the Post and John Oliver got involved.

Fast-forward to last week, a much less combative-sounding Langley appeared in a company video announcing new policies intended to prevent abuse of the Flock system: more transparency, shorter data retention periods, mandatory audit logs, and tighter controls on searches.

And Langley says Flock won't sell license plate data, won't add facial recognition, and won't weaponize their drones.

Then he took his case to the press, including an interview with Bloomberg News, the headline, quote, "We're not Big Brother." And he hit the TV news circuit with something of an apology tour, interviews on CBS Mornings, Bloomberg TV, and CNN.

He struck a conciliatory tone but made it clear where he thinks the blame lies.