Flock CEO Garrett Langley to Critics of His Cameras: 'We Shouldn't Pause Progress'

Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of license plate camera maker Flock Safety, defended his company’s surveillance technology onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco this week, even as Flock contends with canceled contracts and layoffs nationwide.

TechCrunch reports that speaking during a panel interview, Langley pushed back on critics who say Flock’s cameras amount to invasive surveillance. He argued that progress shouldn’t stop just because a technology is imperfect. “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,” he said.

To make his case, Langley reached for an analogy: driverless cars. “Technology, at its core, in its definition, is just doing things better. It’s not doing things perfect,” he said. A single crash, he argued, shouldn’t be grounds for pulling the technology entirely. “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. The answer is to say, ‘Hey, let’s talk about how we prevent more accidents in the future.'”

Langley also addressed Flock’s relationship with the cities and police departments that deploy its cameras, saying the company tries not to dictate policy. “We don’t want to tell city leaders how to do their job,” he said. “We will provide recommendations, we’ll provide defaults, but we’re going to minimize the number of mandated features, functions, and policies.”

Asked about concerns that the technology could be abused, Langley said oversight is possible without hampering police work. “I think if the idea is to curb abuse, I think there’s a way to do that that doesn’t disrupt the legal system, that doesn’t disrupt the efficacy and flow of a police department,” he said.

When pressed on expectations that Flock’s technology should be flawless, Langley invoked a comment he attributed to an unnamed community leader. “He was describing that, too often as a society we judge technology not on how it compares to the past, but how it compares to perfect. And Flock is far from perfect; I’m far from perfect, I’ve made plenty of mistakes,” Langley said.

He defended Flock’s role by pointing to staffing shortages in law enforcement, which he said have worsened since the coronavirus pandemic. “If you look at where policing has gone over the last decade, but particularly post-COVID, law enforcement employment is declining rapidly. I think about a place like San Francisco, and there’s hundreds of open positions. They will probably never be filled,” he said.

Langley acknowledged the toll of leading a company at the center of national controversy but said he believes the trade-off is justified. “I think one of the unfortunate consequences of building a consequential company is this is the price you pay, and I think it’s worth it because there’s millions and millions of people who have a better life today because [of] Flock,” he said. “And clearly we’ve made our fair share of mistakes, and there’s some folks who disagree with what we do, but it’s worth it because one day they might be a victim.”