They want crimes covered up. We just want to be left alone
Page A3From§Eachthe noon edition — 3 September 2026
Flock teaches police to watch protesters; its CEO called the people mapping its cameras 'terroristic,' then apologized.
As it ran on the front
Look, let's start with what the webinar actually was, because the headline makes it sound sinister and it wasn't. Flock's director of market management, Caity Peak, gave a presentation called "Prepared for Anything: How Cities Prepare for Planned and Unplanned Events." Planned and unplanned events. Fireworks on the Fourth of July, parades, bike races, Mardi Gras. And, yes, in the same list, the No Kings protest. That's a calendar. A real-time crime center has a lot of days to cover, and the point she made was a staffing point: "If I'm somebody assigned a traffic post that's working this No Kings Protest, I really don't have time to go in [and] look at all these places." So the software looks for you. Plate readers, drones, gunshot detectors, cameras, all in what the company calls a single pane of glass. Over 4,800 cities use it. That's a product with market share.
Now, the Arkansas thing. A young couple with a baby in the car, held at gunpoint because a plate reader flagged the car by mistake. I've seen the body camera footage described. Okay. That's a hard clip. But the reader didn't draw a weapon, an officer did, and I'd call that a training issue, and the company has already moved on the policy side, which is the part that doesn't get covered: new customers now default to seven days of retention instead of thirty, officers have to enter a case code for a non-emergency search, and departments have to turn on the feature that flags abnormal officer activity. Marco Island keeps its plate data for three years, by the way. Did I just say the product ships with a default the city can change? I mean, the default exists.…
…(cont) And the "terroristic" thing. Yes, last year the chief executive, Garrett Langley, described DeFlock, the volunteers who map where the cameras are, as a "terroristic organization." He apologized in July. People say things. He also told police departments that the 404 Media story about officers using the system to track someone after an abortion was "entirely false," and 404 Media stood by its reporting, and I'm not going to litigate that here, I'm going to note that the company's new messaging, in the Washington Examiner's own headline, is privacy savior.
Which brings us to the bipartisan part, and I want to be careful, because it isn't bipartisan the way they say. St. Paul is taking down two cameras. Two. Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri, is asking about twenty billion vehicle scans a month, and asking is fine. And the governor of Texas told every state agency on a Thursday evening to stop paying for the cameras, while the Texas Tribune was preparing an investigation. So that's a Democratic city, a Republican senator and a Republican governor, which is, okay, that is what the word means.
Let me put it plainly. The apology for the word was in July, and the retention default dropped to seven days in August; the webinar on watching a protest from a traffic post was reported this morning. Those dates are the messaging. I'm going to need to look at my talking points again.
“A camera misread a plate and a couple with a baby got a gun pointed at them, and this week 404 Media published the company's seminar teaching cops how to point the same network at a protest. Follow the memo, not the marketing: the CEO's word for the volunteers mapping his cameras was 'terroristic organization,' the apology came in July, and the seminar is on tape this week. That's not a company that changed, that's a company that changed the deck.”
“These are public safety tools, plain and simple. License plate readers find cars, that's just data working for you. Okay, the data also put an infant at gunpoint in Arkansas, but that's a training issue, not a technology issue, and the company's already committed to a privacy-first rebrand. They didn't, wait, did the chief executive actually call the people mapping the cameras a 'terroristic organization'? He apologized. In July. That's, I'm going to need to look at the messaging deck again.”
The receipts
Will Freeman wasn’t looking to start a national movement when he launched DeFlock after noticing Flock Safety’s automatic license plate readers along the side of the road. The software engineer was driving across the country in 2024 when…
Garrett Langley, Flock’s CEO, told cops that a 404 Media story about cops using Flock to track someone who self-administered an abortion was "entirely false." He's lying.
Automated license plate readers — high-speed cameras that capture the license plate information of each passing vehicle — are making headlines for all the wrong reasons. In Arkansas, recently released body camera footage shows a young couple with a small baby in the car being detained at gunpoint after an ALPR mistakenly flagged their…
St. Paul police will lose access to their two Flock Safety license plate reader cameras after residents pushed back on the surveillance technology at a city meeting.
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…
Texas cities are cutting ties with Flock Safety over data privacy concerns as Sen. Josh Hawley probes the company's 20 billion monthly vehicle scans.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) ordered all state agencies this week to halt funding for Flock cameras amid growing concerns nationwide about the misuse of the roadside camera network. The decision, which was communicated to state agencies on…
A Flock webinar teaches police how to surveil protests, fireworks shows, parades, bike races, and more.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.