Surveillance tech vendor Flock Safety is making some changes to both its policies and messaging following months of backlash over its products — namely, its automatic license plate readers, commonly referred to as ALPRs.
Often presented by proponents as an indispensable crime-fighting tool for 21st-century policing, the devices have long been criticized by groups such as the Institute for Justice and Electronic Frontier Foundation for creating a surveillance network that enables the government to indiscriminately track the movements of drivers over time without a warrant.
More recently, these concerns, as well as questions regarding the accuracy of ALPRs and their potential for abuse, have gone mainstream, spurring negative media coverage, protests, vandalism, and contract terminations.
Last year, Flock CEO Garrett Langley notably referred to DeFlock, a group that attempts to map the locations of ALPRs, as a “terroristic organization.” As late as this June, he tried to dismiss outrage directed toward his company as misplaced anger over the enforcement of federal immigration policy by Flock customers who use the company’s products for that purpose.
Yet, as public discontent over Flock has grown, Langley and his company have abruptly changed their tune. Now Flock’s portraying itself as the privacy-conscious surveillance tech vendor, looking to set the industry standard for striking the right balance between privacy and “safety” (i.e., “surveillance” for those who misplaced their dystopian doublespeak decoder ring). Simultaneously, Langley is presenting himself as something of a kindly older brother, one could even say a kindly Big Brother, who seeks common ground and who listens — but not through Flock’s aborted distress-detection program.
In July, Langley apologized for referring to the proles who don’t like having their movements monitored by his company as “terroristic.” Earlier this month, Flock announced several reforms, such as lowering its default data retention period from 30 days to seven days for new customers, requiring law enforcement to enable a feature said to flag “abnormal” activity by officers, and requiring officers enter a case code for searches that do not pertain to an immediate emergency.
While speaking to the BBC, Langley was even said to present this last reform as putting Flock policy in agreement with the ACLU’s and EFF’s positions on ALPR surveillance — although the EFF was quick to distance themselves from the surveillance tech CEO who now suddenly seems to care about privacy.
In comments to the BBC and on their website, EFF reps emphasized their stance is not that officers simply have a case number to search an ALPR database but that officers, at a minimum, have a judicial warrant. EFF reps also noted the guardrails placed on mass surveillance should not be left to easily reversible or circumnavigated company policies.
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This point, at least in part, is central to the debate over Flock and similar companies peddling variations of the same dystopian future for people. There are real questions regarding the limits of the surveillance state. For years, surveillance tech vendors and their customers have largely treated this as purely a technological and budgetary question. Now, Flock seems to be treating it as a PR matter as well.
But, whether the government should be able to maintain a detailed record of your movements for 30 days, seven days, or not at all really seems like a question too important to be determined by technical feasibility, a local police department’s budget, or what Flock decided was the right balance of privacy and surveillance (or perhaps more accurately profits and the number of angry peasants attacking its cameras). It seems like the kind of thing that should really be determined by the Constitution and our legislators — preferably ones who have read it.
Daniel Nuccio is an independent journalist and a spring 2026 College Fix fellow. He is a regular contributor to the College Fix and the Brownstone Institute. He earned his doctorate in biology in 2025.