# Flock Safety CEO, Garrett Langley, addresses concerns around the company's cameras with Kevin Dietz
# 760 WJR — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF_bMRndpc0

All right, welcome back to All Talk. I'm
Kevin Deetsz. Automated license plate
readers, cameras, they are becoming one
of the most powerful and controversial
tools in modern policing. Flock safety's
nationwide network of more than 120,000
cameras is credited by law enforcement
with helping recover stolen vehicles,
locate missing people, and solve violent
crimes. But critics argue the technology
creates an unprecedented level of
government surveillance, and raises
serious privacy concerns. Across the
country, the debate has intensified with
lawsuits, proposed legislation, public
protests, and even vandalism targeting
the cameras. Joining us now is Garrett
Langley, CEO of Flock Safety. Thanks for
coming in. We appreciate it
having me.
Yeah, absolutely. I I I'm a friend of
law enforcement and I have a lot of
friends in law enforcement, and they
tell me how great these things are, and
there's
hundreds and hundreds of real life uh
examples of of why that is. But I also
understand the privacy issues that
people are bringing up and I think that
there there there needs to be some sort
of um you know public safety and
personal privacy balance. Um but to let
people get to know what we're talking
about, talk about what these cameras
are, what they do, what they capture,
how they work.
Yeah, it's it's pretty straightforward.
So we put cameras up um in cities and
counties in a place like Michigan. I
think about a third of the state uses
Flock today. And when you drive by one
of these cameras, it takes a picture of
your car. Um, it's not doing facial
recognition. It's not scanning anything
else. Takes a picture of your car, reads
the license plate. If that license plate
is associated with a felony warrant, a
missing child, a silver alert, it
immediately notifies the nearest
authority uh in their vehicle. And then
for anywhere from 7 days to 30 days, uh,
that picture is stored. Um, and if it's
never involved in a criminal
investigation, it's permanently deleted.
So, if my daughter gets kidnapped, what
happens?
Yeah. I mean, one, let's hope that never
happened, but let's talk about like
July, July of this, like it's last month
in Michigan, we detected about 56
missing people. That's in July in
Michigan alone. So, what happens is as
soon as you call 911, that's going to
get put into a state database of missing
people. Um, and given that it would be
your daughter, I don't know how old she
is, but assuming she's a child, it'd be
on the Amber Alert as well, which we're
integrated into. And now every single
one of those flock cameras across the
country is looking for the the your
daughter.
So that plate will pop up and we'll say,
"Hey, it was just seen going through
whatever down Big Beaver Road."
Yep. That's exactly right. And that's
it. Yeah.
Yeah. So obviously that's wildly
valuable, right?
Well, I would say actually it was
interesting. You know, I started this
company nine years ago just wanted to
live in a safer neighborhood. I I live
in Atlanta and I didn't understand why
this would be so valuable. I didn't
realize that 70% of crime starts with a
car, ends with a car. And to your point,
law enforcement said if you build this
thing and you can make it cost
effective, which we do, it will have a
dramatic impact. And to to your point,
you know, we helped solve just over a
million crimes last year and helped
return over 10,000 missing people. And
that's everything from Amber Alerts to
silver alerts.
Yeah, we talked earlier in the show
about a community in Ohio where car
theft went down 80% where flock cameras
were. So, I I get that. I think people
get that it helps solve crimes. What
What about the problem? What What do
people What are they upset? Are they
worried? Am I worried that I'm driving
and I'm going to be at someone's house
I'm not supposed to be at? My wife's
going to find out. What are we What are
we worried about?
Yeah. No, I think the the the criticisms
are real, right? The there's a real
questions of how do we protect our
privacy in in this current kind of
technological focused society. And so I
was actually just in a town just north
of Detroit, you know, under 100,000
people. And I was having this
conversation with the with the mayor of
like, look, as a reminder, you can
control how long the data is stored. And
it's a balance. To your point, if we
stored this data forever, we'd solve
more crime. But I think we all feel that
feels wrong. We probably shouldn't store
where people go where they drive by
forever. So we said 30 days is a pretty
good op pretty good thing. Now what we
believe is like I shouldn't make that
decision. State regulators should. And
so in nine states this year, they've
made decisions that roughly 21 days is a
better balance of both efficacy and
privacy. And I know like right now in W
in Michigan, we're having this debate.
Uh I say we the state is having this
debate of what's the right balance. But
if we stored this for a day, it would
still be valuable. It just would be less
effective. And that I think is the most
important trade-off.
It's not being used to hand out parking
tickets and tickets, things like that.
It's the we don't want to happen, right?
It's the things we want our kids to not
have to think about.
Yeah. Um so we know that some law
enforcement officials are using this
improperly. they're tracking their
girlfriends or spouses or whatever
they're doing. There's ways to deal with
that.
Yeah. No. And and I I actually I think
this is a problem in law enforcement
that has been a problem for a long time.
Far before flock started.
Yeah. The lean system, they used to run
the lean system all the time in
property.
Yes. And even the DMV system gets
abused. The difference is what we've did
is we built our system with
accountability in mind. And so as soon
as we uh detect abnormal behavior, it
gets flagged to an administrator, those
individuals can get locked out
immediately. And so what you'll see in
the headlines is people get arrested.
And I think for me, you know, I wish
that the penalties were more severe. And
I hope that in at least in Michigan that
in the bill that's being debated, that's
a part of it, which is if you have
power, which law enforcement does, you
should be held accountable if you abuse
that power.
Are there things the company can do to
address privacy on on your end?
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, one of
the reasons why I was happy to come on
your show today is to make sure people
hear the facts. Um, unfortunately, we
live in a world where anyone can say
anything about anyone online and it can
get a million views. Um, and so I've
seen some crazy things about us, you
know, that we sell this data to
Palunteer and then it eventually makes
its way to Jeffrey Epstein. And I'm
thinking, wait, what? Read our
contracts. you know, we got 7,000 cities
under contract and they all say the same
thing. You know, our customers own the
data. Customers can control it, but we
got to do a better job explaining how
this system works. Um, I was showing
this mayor how the product worked. And
he was like, oh, that this isn't as
sophisticated as I was hoping and I was
like, yeah, it's it's actually pretty
basic. Car drives by, read license
plate, store that for 30 days. If
nothing happens, delete it. But it
works. Um, but it is simple. So, we got
to do a better job telling our story.
But we all do cons are concerned about
data being collected on us and this
collects a lot of data on us where we
are all day every day potentially. Um h
how do we know that doesn't get sold to
somebody?
Yeah. I mean one I think one of the
benefits of living in America is that
our contracts have real teeth like we
live in a in a in a society where law
law-abiding citizens have contracts. We
have contracts as a business with other
businesses. And so you can just go read
our contract. They're all publicly
available. You can just do a foyer
request to Detroit and see the details
of our contract with the police
department and it pretty clearly
articulates we don't own the data. We
don't have a right to sell it. We don't
have a right to look at it. Uh we we
build the cameras, we install the
cameras and then the Detroit Police
Department has total control over that
information.
Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock Safety,
thanks for coming in and talking about
it.
Thanks for having me.
All right, it's all talk. I've given
these