Flock's CEO wants a compromise

Flock Safety told the public for years that its cameras cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals. WIRED reconstructed the code for OS Investigate — a police AI Flock is already testing — and found the opposite: an officer can start with a neighborhood and a time window, get plates that match a driving pattern, then names, addresses, and relatives. The August 13 7-day retention default was damage control. A week later the CEO was on national TV asking the country for a "compromise." The product kept growing.

The cameras were already a national search

Flock logs on the order of 20 billion plate scans a month. The company says more than 5,000 agencies use it; DeFlock puts AI ALPRs on American streets above 130,000. Most customers sit on a national lookup: police in one city can search another's hits. The Washington Post counted 50 officers charged or accused of unauthorized ALPR searches — 46 on Flock — often against wives, girlfriends, and exes. DeFlock now tracks about 100 cities that canceled, paused, or refused cameras; NPR found vandalism in at least 36 states — stolen, sawed down, painted, crashed into, shot at. A DeFlock National Week of Action drew more than 25,000 people registered for protests and teach-ins. The backlash is bipartisan. Flock still says it signs about seven new cities for every dropout. For what an ALPR actually is, see Every car, searchable.

OS Investigate starts without a plate

The software, once Nightshift, ships 69 canned prompts and 45 tools. WIRED found the files on Flock's own login pages. One prompt asks for vehicles most seen in a neighborhood over two weeks, then other tools turn those plates into people. Another maps repeat bank or late-night gas-station visits with no named crime. Associates are cars that share cameras within two minutes. The stack reaches case files, 911 logs, and commercial identity records — Social Security numbers, phones, relatives. Flock calls it a separate product still in development. The public-trust line remains "not for watching people."

The 7-day default is a setting

On August 13, Flock made audits and case codes mandatory by year-end and cut recommended retention from 30 days to 7. MIT Technology Review confirmed the codes are not checked against department records. In OS Investigate, WIRED found a reason field with no minimum and a case-number check that can be three characters. Agencies can still keep ALPR data longer — Evidence Mode preserves hits for active investigations, which is how the shorter clock gets overridden. The ACLU called the seven-day move a possible step, then asked whether Evidence Mode makes it a PR move. Flock also told customers it had no DHS relationship while CBP and HSI ran a pilot — then paused federal programs after the fact. Senator Ron Wyden's line was that abuse looks inevitable.

Compromise is the new pitch

After the Post stories, CEO Garrett Langley apologized on CBS — and said Flock did not create police abuse, it built tools to find it. On Fox he argued the country must prioritize compromise between privacy and safety, and that states should criminalize illegal use of the data. The political map is already there: Bernie Sanders posted "STOP AI MASS SURVEILLANCE. STOP FLOCK." House Republicans introduced a bill that would bar federal purchase of automated surveillance systems "including a Flock Safety camera." Langley's answer is vendor guardrails plus more statute. Critics want the network smaller, not better audited.

The point

License-plate readers used to check passing cars against a list of wanted plates. Flock turned them into a searchable national database, then added an AI tool that lets police search it in plain English. Some cities have cancelled contracts and some residents have damaged cameras; Flock has responded with account lockouts, a shorter 7-day default for keeping data, and calls for a compromise. Those are company settings and messaging, not law, and the product can still search nationally and use Evidence Mode. Related: Ethics, Computer Vision.