Flock CEO talks progress, gunshots and firing rogue police departments

Flock CEO Garrett Langley opened up a can of privacy worms on Wednesday, sharing his views on everything from where society is headed to its controversial Gunshot Detection feature, and even how he will handle police who abuse the AI surveillance systems.

Langley made the comments during a 30-minute onstage interview at this year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference taking place in San Francisco this week.

The session, titled "AI, Surveillance, and the Future of Public Safety," grilled Langley for about 30 minutes, all while Flock protesters raised signs outside the Moscone convention center in downtown San Francisco.

Flock CEO: "We shouldn't pause progress"

Reem Suleiman, a campaign director at Fight For the Future, organizers of Wednesday's anti-Flock rally, issued a statement about what they referred to as a 'multi-layered resistance.'

"Like gentrification, surveillance (read: Flock) is yet another manifestation of tech oligarchs swooping in to make the city inhospitable to those who call it home," Suleiman said.

To note, Flock Safety and Langley both reside in Atlanta, Georgia.

Meanwhile, Langley, who has previously declared that he wants to install Flock Safety cameras in every city across America, doubled down on the idea that public safety Trumps privacy. (See what I did there?)

“If we want to live in a society where, if you commit a crime, you have a higher probability of being held accountable, we shouldn’t pause progress,” Langley said.

Using self-driving autonomous vehicles as an unwarranted comparison to automated license plate readers (ALPRs), the CEO went on, pointing out that “Technology, at its core, in its definition, is just doing things better. It’s not doing things perfect.”

Driverless cars, I think, is a fair analogy. Driverless cars, I think, are definitively safer than human drivers. And when there’s one accident, I don’t think the answer is to shut down driverless cars,

said Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley about the camera surveillance technology.

"The answer is to say, ‘Hey, let’s talk about how we prevent more accidents in the future,’” the CEO said.

Flock CEO insists: "It's just gunshots"

Langley was a bit more obscure when it came to defending the company's new Gunshot Detection feature, actually requiring some clarification from Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel.

Langley spoke about why they built the feature, claiming the idea itself came from Floick's own customers – and also because, well, “most people don’t call 911 when they hear a gunshot.”

Apparently, pro-Flock customers who already had the cameras installed in their parking lots suggested, “It would be great if we could get alerted if someone was being abducted, if someone was being harmed.”

And I guess the rest is history.

“There’s only a couple customers that were prototyping it with us, and we said, ‘OK, great, it’s just going to do gunshots, plain and simple.’ If a gun goes off, we’ll notify, and if not, that’s all it’s going to listen to,” said Langley, insisting that “It’s just gunshots” Flock is listening for.

In comes Lewbel, who made clear that although “Flock’s gunshot detection technology is primarily used to detect gunfire” it is also capable of “detecting fireworks, sideshows, and potential car crashes,” which is in line with the wording on the company's website.

The spokesperson, it seems, was also forced to explain that Langley’s remarks were “intended to emphasize that Flock’s Audio Detection technology is not designed to monitor conversations or analyze speech and does not currently detect human screaming or distress.”

Flock vows to fire lawbreaking police departments

Finally, when asked to comment on the multitude of accusations against police officers misusing the surveillance for personal gain, Langley said “If a customer knowingly broke the law, we would fire them immediately. That’s very easy.”

The 120,000 connected cameras that make up the Flock ALPR system capture every car that comes into view, recording license plates, timestamps, locations, and direction of travel, then compare that information against data from law enforcement agencies.

Still, Langley also admitted that to this day, no police department or agency has been officially reprimanded by the company (or him). “Most of the debate is nuanced into ‘What if two officers out of fifty were caught?’" he said.

Today, we haven’t fired any customers, but it’s not off the table in the case of some pretty drastic law-abiding issue.

Flock CEO Garrett Langley said.

To that answer, Ashley Ortiz, an organizer with The Wolves, another anti-Flock advocacy group attending Wednesdays rally argued that “Flock’s mass surveillance network statistically has not increased safety.”

“Instead, it has been abused by local police departments to track down women fleeing domestic violence and falsely accuse others of crimes elsewhere,” Ortiz said.

And Ortiz has a point, at least 50 police officers in the US over the past few months alone have been arrested for allegedly misusing Flock surveillance cameras to stalk wives, ex-girlfriends, and the like.