Flock Safety launches mandatory accountability tools after surveillance backlash — and arrests are coming

Speaker 1: Although this one may go viral. I don't know. Anyway, we have our next guest, Garret Langley from Fox Safety. He's the founder and CEO. He's been on the show before, and we're very excited to talk to him about the latest news. Garret, how are you doing? He's back.

Speaker 5: Good. How are you guys?

Speaker 1: We're good. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining. I

Speaker 2: been saw happening since the last time you came on the show?

Speaker 1: I saw pretty

Speaker 5: chill. Chill.

Speaker 1: I imagine. Well, let's kick it off with the with the report in the journal. FLOC ads, privacy guardrails after surveillance backlash. What happened? What are you actually implementing? What is the story?

Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, there's there's two big buckets. Right? You've kind of privacy and then accountability. And I can start with accountability because I think that's the I think that's the bigger topic, or I think it's the the bigger topic, is low and behold, law enforcement abuses their power at times. And that's horrible, right? Mean, it's really bad. And we built a tool about four months ago as a test to kind of scan the audit logs that we've always had to look for abnormal behavior. You know, we solved a million crimes last year. We know what good investigations look like. We built this tool, and the headlines over the last few weeks show you that we're pretty good at finding abuse. And I thought this was maybe just an isolated to us. But what I found out is like when law enforcement searches DMV, they search criminal records, there's no audit logs there. There's accountability. So we launched that. And I think you're going to see over the coming weeks, you know, more headlines of officers being arrested for abusing their position of power. That's the that's

Speaker 1: that's the big that actual where does the oversight board live? Is this a separate product that's sold to, like, district attorney effectively? Or, like because if if if the person's like, yeah, I checked the audit logs. I was behaving poorly. That doesn't really do anything to stop the process. Right?

Speaker 5: No. No. Yeah. So so it it's a free product

Speaker 7: Okay.

Speaker 5: That all of our customers are now required to use.

Speaker 1: Oh, okay.

Speaker 5: Which we're the only company that I'm aware of in this industry that requires their customers to actually hold themselves accountable.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 5: For most of our cities we work with, there's a a police administrator and then a city manager that is reviewing the audit log. Yeah. So in the hopefully unlikely event that the police chief himself is the one committing a crime, the city manager is still there as the double check.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So the the business has grown a ton and obviously, Flock products are deployed all over The United States. I'm interested in the the the backlash that has grown. You see a lot of videos with a lot of social media attention negative towards flock. Is this actually showing up in your financials at this point? Like, because I imagine you have to replace any camera that is destroyed, but I can't tell if there's just one camera that's destroyed and then million people view it and like it.

Speaker 5: Yeah. No. Vandalism real. It's always been real though. Okay. Just like weather has been a problem. You know, we deploy these products in Florida and there's hurricanes. I mean, in California, there's earthquakes. And so we're used to that. I mean, if you looked at the data, you'd be hard pressed to say, when did this TikTok trend blow up?

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 5: You know, I'd say the sad part to me is you've got these influencers on TikTok and Instagram pushing this, and they're convincing these 16, 18, 20 year old guys

Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.

Speaker 5: To go do it. Yeah. And they're committing felonies. Yeah. And so I saw this guy that got arrested in New Mexico, and he's gonna face five to nine years in jail.

Speaker 1: Wow.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And I'm like, that's that's horrible. This guy's life is over. He's got a felony on his record.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: He's going to jail

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: To cut a camera down. Yeah. It just seems really crazy.

Speaker 1: One thing that I've been identifying is it feels like there is a gap particularly between liking a post on TikTok or engaging with anti flock or the deflock campaign and maybe even going out in the world and chopping one down versus at least trying to go to your city council meeting. Because I I just have to imagine, I I've been to social city council meetings. If if there's 50 people there that are all taking the the the podium and saying, look, I I am a citizen and I don't want flock in my city. City council will usually respond to that. Is that is is that disconnect real? Like, what is going on there?

Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, look, I I I it's surprising to me too because city councils are normally pretty boring meetings. Yeah. And there's really only two topics that are being debated right now, which is data centers and flock.

Speaker 7: Interesting. And

Speaker 5: you guys probably have better tools than I do. You can look at social media traffic, and they're fully correlated.

Speaker 7: Okay.

Speaker 5: Which makes me wonder, like, why? Like, why? Because I've I've been asked this question, why now? And I'm like, don't know. We've been in business for almost a decade. Yeah. You know, we went to thousands of city council meetings every year, you know, over like 10,000 last year. We're not hiding anything. Yeah. But no

Speaker 2: Yeah. Mean, It's just To to be honest, think, like

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: When you they like, I I think a large part of it is, well, everyone's been talked to about AI safety one way or another. Right? It might have been a a viral clip of Sam Altman talking about AI in 2015 that gets resurfaced in like an Instagram reel today and people assume that it was said today or and the clip was out of context. And then but but you have to look at like I think I think people are like very scared of of of the technology overall, which I think is fair because they've been told to be scared

Speaker 5: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: In a variety of different ways.

Speaker 5: Mhmm.

Speaker 2: And then they're using AI in their in their life or in their work and and that's cool. But like data centers present something that's like, you know, a data center in your backyard doesn't necessarily give you an immediate benefit. Mhmm. And it could give it could have some real downsides. Right? Like noise or potential, you know, the the it it it there's all these sort of like possible negative externalities and then flock, it's like when you when, you know, Dario's talked talked a lot earlier this year about AI getting getting so good at looking over sort of like vast quantities of data and maybe maybe the law is not sort of like staying, know, moving quickly enough to respond to that. And so like Flock is like a very I I can see exactly why people are fixated on that because the product is clearly very very good at fighting crime but then also if you are a bad actor it's like the dream like basically tool set. Right? It's literally like in a video game like God mode. Right? And so I think like there's like very real I I I can see why there's like a correlation but I I I don't know if this is where you're going but I don't necessarily think it's like some organized nefarious group that is like, we want to shut down we want to shut down these these two technologies. Mhmm. And I I so anyways. Mhmm.

Speaker 5: No. I think I think there's some truth. I think the other thing that that I think is true is is I I was I asking someone, aren't you like afraid of all the data brokers that buy your location data and sell it? Yeah. And they're like, well, I can't see it. I can see your camera. And I think it's like a valid point, is you drive by a flock camera and you say, well, I see it and I say, I I feel a lot safer.

Speaker 1: And some

Speaker 5: people might say, oh, I I feel like, you know, this is this is Big Brother. And I go, it's like, but Big Brother wouldn't have an audit log and wouldn't have transparency and wouldn't do these things. I do think a lot of the feedback is fair, you know, which is like how long should this be stored? And I think the thing we got wrong was expecting local government and state government to follow along fast enough. And I just I don't think they are. And this accountability measure, like, no states require this. They all should. And like, we dropped our data retention recommendation from thirty days to seven days, which means the majority of our customers will just simply accept the default. Sure. And state regulators have moved to twenty one days. But like we've done the analysis, and we think we'll have a, you know, 10% reduction in efficacy with that reduction. But I think it's a fair trade off. And look, if the government wants to say like in New Jersey, it's a mandate five years of data retention. Mhmm. That's up to the state of New Jersey to decide. We'll push for what we think's right. Mhmm. But I I might agree with Dario there in that case, like regulation is a good thing for this type of technology and it needs to move faster, not slower.

Speaker 1: Yeah. It seems like the speed of regulation is a huge issue here because the technology moves much faster and I think folks on the left feel like they could be attacked by people on the right and vice versa. And so if there's a if there's a new technology that rolls out like mid cycle, all of a sudden you're grappling with it and and your worst fears on the on sort of like the extremes of the political spectrum are that the they will be used by the opposing side aggressively against you. Even if Yeah. You are innocent. And I think that's where a lot of this is coming from. What do you think?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Know. I I think that's true. Think the other thing, and I don't know who gets credit for saying this. As a technology industry, we still feel like we're this bubble. Yeah. This small part of the economy. Yeah. And the reality, technology is the economy now. Mhmm. Yeah. And I don't think as founders and CEOs, we've like fully grappled with what that means. Mhmm. And I think about someone like, you know, like Jamie Dimon. I'm like, he he like has so much influence over our fiscal systems.

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 5: And I think he probably understands that responsibility because banking has always had this, like, this kind of austere posture of their responsibility in the world. And I think as technologists, we're catching up, and I think I'm in that same boat of, you know, we helped a million crimes last year. Last month, we did 1,025 missing peoples.

Speaker 7: Mhmm.

Speaker 5: That's real human life.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 5: There's a real responsibility with that impact, and I'm glad we're catching up. We're not done. Like, we still have a lot of work to do. But I think if I look around the table of my other peers, in public safety, I think we all have a lot of work to do.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think yeah. The the the the there's been a very real positive impact to the product, and I think, people have every reason to also be concerned because even with these guardrails in place and audits you have even if you assume like a very even a half a percent of police officers in The US are corrupt in some way or or not or shouldn't be in these organizations, that's still thousands of of of bad actors that are in the system. And so I think one of the challenges that that I see is like I feel like this is like too much of an too big of an issue for just you and the flock exec team to be Interesting. To be in charge of. Right? Like Mhmm. I think you're you're very smart. I think this company was started for for all the right reasons. I think it is having a positive impact in in many ways like you said but at the same time like this is a national issue right now. You know, you're not elected. It's not your job to decide you know Americans like privacy and so I think like my question is like what is happening at the national level? Obviously counties and cities and states are trying to figure this out but I feel like this issue is like beyond I don't feel like this issue should be decided by you, I think it should be decided by our lawmakers because it comes down to our fundamental rights as American citizens. So I actually, I want this the issue is just blown up on social media but I think it's time to like have a much more of a national kind of conversation about this and then ultimately probably new laws put into place to make sure it's something that you can point to and just say like, look, like we are abiding by the law in our country and our our lawmakers who were

Speaker 1: And the correct path to push back on flock is through the democratic process.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Yes. Call your representative. That that that does feel like the correct outcome. That that

Speaker 5: that feels very self obvious. It it is interesting, you know, I was getting saw someone push on x, like, you should require a warrant to use your product. And the response I wanted to to make was, yes. When when it when it is the law Yeah. To need a warrant. Yeah. We will happily follow the law. Sure. But 40 courts in the last few years have all deemed this isn't, you know, a violation of the constitution. Interesting. And this is tricky though because

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Every state, every city has like a very different point of view on what safety looks like.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: I mean, look at you guys, you know, hometown of San Francisco, San Francisco's own version of safety has also changed a lot in the last decade.

Speaker 7: Totally.

Speaker 5: And I think it's a better version today than it was five years ago, but it's still changed, and it'll probably change again. And so it is a pretty tricky situation from a setting the right laws because I I struggle to see how the federal government could establish a law that matches everyone's goals. And so my hope is like states we had nine state bills get passed this year. I'd love to see 20 or 30 next year Mhmm. That at least start to move this in the right direction. Because I I do worry, like, any federal regulation will just make half the country mad and other

Speaker 7: other half country other half the

Speaker 3: country just

Speaker 1: as bad. In in theory, like, city even city by city, like there is a like I I think people might misunderstand that like flock doesn't put up the cameras. They sell them to Yeah. Police departments. Yeah. But the cameras in those police departments have, you know, heads that are elected in many cases. Right? There's like a sheriff that gets elected in

Speaker 5: People who get to pick.

Speaker 1: Vote for. But at the same time I'm sympathetic to someone that basically thinks you put them up because it is an opaque process. Many Americans cannot tell you the names of everyone on their city council and who the mayor is and all these things or when the election is and how how solidified that particular mayor is and whether or not they can actually apply pressure around this issue. It can take years to actually facilitate change in a community. And if you're in the minority, that might never happen for that particular community. But

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I was referencing earlier was like more like friction. Mhmm. Like, we there's historically been security cameras around in a lot of places Yeah. Private. Could get access to the footage but there was a lot of friction to doing that.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Which is which is good and bad. Right? Yeah. It's good in that a bad actor is gonna have a tougher time like putting together footage to in order to understand someone's movement. But again

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's everyone's comfortable with like there was an assassination attempt on the president. We should look at all the CCTV cameras.

Speaker 5: We should get that

Speaker 1: first. But then all of a sudden when it's like, okay, like now there's going to be an AI agent that's watching you, Jordy. If you speed at any point during your commute, you're going to get, you know, a point on your license. It just feels like an annoying society that a lot of people don't want to live in and then there's a whole continuum there. And and and and we're grappling with the potential for way, way a way higher level of enforcement and way less of a gray area around our our rule set and our laws, which is something that the laws might need to change or might need to adapt to. I don't know.

Speaker 5: No, agree. And I think I think to to your to your point, like Yeah. The I I have a lot of sympathy for our elected officials at the local level because they now need to become experts in AI, public safety, data centers, water. Like it's like and most of these times these are part time unpaid positions. Yeah. They're normally lawyers, doctors, real estate agents in their communities. And so, I mean they sign up for the job, but it is it's not straightforward. And, you know, we're we're we like the way the system works today where every one of our contracts goes to city council for vote. Mhmm. That makes the job harder, but makes it transparent. Like I saw the other day, you know, was able to find the video from six years ago when we did our first ever city council meeting and how nervous we were because we'd never been to city council. Like, what would that be like? And I've never been to city council, and now it's kind of just a part of our regular day.

Speaker 2: Yeah. What's next? Because Yeah. These updates are good but I don't think they solve I I don't think millions of Americans are are still gonna have are basically probably not gonna read the updates and are still gonna have an issue. So what I mean, what's on the road map? What more are you doing to try to find a solution to the to the concerns and and the issues?

Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, don't think we'll ever be done, because I think this balance of privacy and safety is is a bit of a moving target. Someone asked me the other day, you know, wouldn't it just be better just to turn off all the cameras? And I said, maybe thirty years ago when every single police department was fully staffed, maybe even overstaffed in today's standards. But today, more than 80% of police departments are understaffed. So I don't I don't think, you know, of a draconian no more technology is a viable solution. But I do think as a technologist, we have an opportunity to make better products that deliver on that kind of combined goal. And so for us, like, we're excited to get these these tools out there into the wild. I, you know, I anxiously await potential headlines of more arrests in the coming days. I think that'll happen, and that'll be tough because I think a lot of trust in communities will be broken.

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 5: I think that trust was broken many years ago, and now the light's being shined on it. But I think for us, we're gonna continue building tools that allow law enforcement to both do their job and build trust with the community at the same time. So we got a lot of stuff coming up. A few more announcements coming up in the in the in the coming months, and, we'd love to come back and share those when they're ready.

Speaker 1: Yeah. That'd be great. Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us.

Speaker 2: Yeah. The entire

Speaker 1: Don't that possible take is being enumerated. It's a

Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a very interesting

Speaker 5: want to search jobs?

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think any any anyone in technology envies envies your job right now. But

Speaker 5: The consequence of being consequential is what I tell the team.