Flock wants privacy to meet surveillance halfway

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley says the United States needs a “compromise” between privacy and public safety.

It’s a neat phrase, except I don’t like to see “compromise” and “privacy” that close together.

“When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise.”

Langley call for compromise comes as the company faces intensifying resistance to its automated license plate reader (ALPR) network. The opposition has begun to affect Flock commercially and operationally, with agencies disabling cameras or canceling contracts.

The problem is that the public has already been doing the compromising: People’s movements have been routinely captured, stored, searched, and, in some cases, shared far beyond the communities that installed the cameras.

Flock’s ALPRs collect detailed records of where vehicles travel, then make that data available to law enforcement for investigations. Langley now says the company wants more regulation and accountability. Flock says it’s reducing its recommended default retention period to seven days and will require case codes for law enforcement and an audit tool designed to flag suspicious access by the end of the year.

Those are welcome concessions, but they do not resolve the underlying concern: A rapidly expanding, privately operated surveillance network can turn ordinary travel into searchable historical data.

The opposition has not faded; it has intensified. NPR reports that cameras have been vandalized in at least 36 states. Vandalism is neither a productive nor lawful answer, but its spread offers a useful measure of how profoundly many people feel excluded from decisions about surveillance in their communities.

A genuine compromise would not start with the assumption that widespread collection is inevitable and then negotiate the retention period. It would begin with democratic consent, strict limits on how the data can be used, independently enforceable access controls, public reporting, meaningful opt-outs where possible, and a clear requirement that surveillance be necessary and proportionate.

Calls to meet halfway are also harder to take seriously when the CEO has been accused by 404 Media of misleading police about the outlet’s reporting on an abortion-related case. According to 404 Media, his account is contradicted by court records and police reports. That accusation makes his public calls for compromise much harder to accept.

Flock is right about one thing: There needs to be accountability. But calling for “compromise” after the cameras are already up sharply limits the choices left to communities. Privacy is not a bargaining chip to be surrendered whenever surveillance vendors promise safety.

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