Flock CEO Garrett Langley said the company has ended no contract over abuse, though dozens of officers were arrested, fired or told to resign. He named knowing lawbreaking as the trigger, so a buyer has to write its own rule for smaller cases.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 17%
- Operator
- Operator 64%
- Investor
- Investor 19%
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence68
Flock's spokesperson confirms its microphones detect fireworks, sideshows and potential crashes
Flock CEO Garrett Langley said its microphones detect "just gunshots," but a company spokesperson says they also detect fireworks and sideshows. Buyers who signed off on the CEO's description should check it against the vendor's own detection list.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 8%
- Operator
- Operator 52%
- Investor
- Investor 40%
Reality
- Evidence78
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+55
- Incentives70
- Confidence74
Flock expects drones to supply nearly half its revenue as cities ban its plate readers
Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley says drones will be nearly half of future revenue, per Fast Company, as cities ban its plate readers. Flock has roughly 175 drone first-responder customers among about 2,000 agencies running such programs.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives70
- Confidence50
buildConfirmed4 publishers Flock Safety plans to cut about 270 jobs, roughly 18% of its workforce, Reuters reported. Two days earlier Henrico County, Virginia, said it would end its contract over protection of data shared across Flock's nationwide network.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 15%
- Operator
- Operator 57%
- Investor
- Investor 28%
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption66
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives55
- Confidence60
Federal judge Sara E. Hill ruled Oct. 1 that a Tulsa County deputy's warrantless search of Flock's cross-state camera network was unconstitutional. The search she faulted was a plate lookup run without probable cause, the query a plate-reader network is built around, so agencies now have to decide how they control it.
Perspective Coverage
9 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 15%
- Operator
- Operator 60%
- Investor
- Investor 25%
Reality
- Evidence78
- Adoption65
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives55
- Confidence72
Bernie Sanders' Ban Flock Act would strip local governments of grants from five federal departments unless they ban license plate readers. For the city officials who sign camera renewals, that turns a police tool into a grant-budget question while Congress waits out the midterms.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 15%
- Operator
- Operator 60%
- Investor
- Investor 25%
Reality
- Evidence72
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives60
- Confidence70
VIDIZMO pitches police on running facial recognition across Flock and Axon footage
VIDIZMO pitched Johnson City, Tennessee police in May on facial recognition across Flock and Axon footage in one platform. Flock's pledge against face recognition covers its own devices; VIDIZMO's route starts with clips an agency exports itself.
Reality
- Evidence72
- Adoption5
- Hype gap+45
- Incentives70
- Confidence62
Hawley's Stop Flock Abuse Act would cap license-plate data retention at 10 days
Sen. Josh Hawley's bill would make agencies permanently delete license-plate reader data within 10 days unless a criminal investigation is open. Police who trace where a car went weeks ago would lose that search in any case not yet opened.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption8
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives55
- Confidence50
buildOne report1 publisher Flock files a trademark claim to remove a map built from its own exposed ArcGIS token
Flock Safety, through the security firm Doppel, filed a trademark complaint to take down Joshua Michael's map of 335,701 devices. The complaint leaves open how, by Michael's account, a Flock website handed an ArcGIS access token to visitors who never logged in.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption65
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
The licence plate reader company is making most of its new safeguards mandatory on 1 January, after its chief executive conceded that optional abuse controls sat unused at two-thirds of agencies.
Perspective Coverage
7 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 32%
- Operator
- Operator 47%
- Investor
- Investor 21%
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption35
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives70
- Confidence65
Flock's letter to the Senate puts the search audit on the agencies that buy its cameras
Flock's chief executive sent a Senate subcommittee a letter instead of testifying. It says customer agencies own and control the search records and set retention, and that Flock does very little oversight of how clients search its network.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption60
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives72
- Confidence55
Hawley says his subcommittee should subpoena the four surveillance CEOs who skipped his hearing
None of the invited chief executives of Flock Safety, Axon, Motorola Solutions and Verkada testified on Wednesday, and the only criminal charges on that day's record were against five Indiana police officers accused of misusing the technology.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption65
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives72
- Confidence58
Flock Safety's severance offer is roughly double what it has paid before, and the company told staff it expects to approve most applicants. Anyone holding a contract with Flock now has a continuity question.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 13%
- Operator
- Operator 45%
- Investor
- Investor 42%
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption58
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives62
- Confidence61
buildOne report1 publisher WIRED traces rising Thai camera shipments into Flock Safety's supply chain
Flock Safety told buyers in 2019 that its license plate cameras were manufactured in the United States. Import records now show growing camera and radar shipments from a Thai supplier. WIRED could not establish where the cameras are assembled today.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption62
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives66
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher Flock Safety's fake police account searched live cameras in Dunwoody and Bryan
Audit logs obtained by a Dunwoody resident show Flock Safety staff running FreeForm queries for masks, signs and religious symbols against production camera networks, with explicit permission on record for one of the jurisdictions involved.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption40
- Hype gap+28
- Incentives70
- Confidence55
Flock dropped the made-in-America line from its camera marketing
For years Flock said its license plate cameras were produced in the United States. WIRED found that claim gone from the newer materials while import records show cameras and radar parts arriving from Primax in Thailand.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption60
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives65
- Confidence58
buildOne report1 publisher Flock's nationwide lookup returned Boston plate reads for three days after the city confirmed sharing was off
Boston ran about 45 Flock cameras for 156 days under a no-cost pilot. The city's surveillance report blames a Flock vendor error for three days of out-of-network access to plate data it had contracted to keep local.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption66
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives58
- Confidence55
Bridgewater bagged its Flock cameras after 7 million searches in a town of 7,000
Local governments from Florida to Washington state are ending their contracts with Flock. The Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney who has read dozens of those municipal agreements says what happens to already-collected data is unresolved.
Reality
- Evidence64
- Adoption58
- Hype gap+14
- Incentives62
- Confidence61
More than a dozen TV stations aired a segment casting Flock's critics as China-backed
The lobbying report making that case rests on one article by a Singham-funded outlet and some socialist party posts, and it argues about who funds Flock's critics rather than about the misuse they documented.
Reality
- Evidence56
- Adoption40
- Hype gap+45
- Incentives80
- Confidence58
Flock's cameras now watch a drawn zone for anyone matching a typed description
Flock's August retention and audit promises sit on top of a suite that can now hunt people by written description, controls WIRED found log an abusive search as it happens rather than stopping it. The risk of a wrong result lands on the officer who typed the words.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption71
- Hype gap+27
- Incentives70
- Confidence57