Flock Safety founder and CEO Garrett Langley has called for a national 'compromise' between privacy and public safety as his company faces mounting scrutiny over cases in which police officers allegedly used its licence plate camera network to track women for personal reasons.
Speaking on 22 August 2026, Langley defended the Atlanta-based surveillance company while arguing that Americans should not be forced to choose between privacy and security.
The comments follow a review of police and court records that identified at least 50 law enforcement officers accused of misusing automated licence plate reader systems, including 46 cases involving Flock technology.
In 26 cases, investigators or prosecutors said officers used the systems to monitor wives, girlfriends, former partners, their exes' new partners or women they wanted to meet.
The cases have intensified questions about how surveillance tools built for criminal investigations can be turned towards intimate partners and other women.
What Langley Said About Privacy
'When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they're prioritising the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritise as a country is compromise,' Langley said. 'How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?' Flock says its network includes more than 120,000 cameras across the US, with its automated licence plate readers creating searchable records of passing vehicles.
Langley has also apologised after hearing the account of one woman whose movements were allegedly monitored through the technology. 'I apologise. It kills me that she went through that,' he said, while maintaining that Flock did not create police abuse and arguing that its audit tools help expose misconduct. He also acknowledged this month that the company could have moved faster, saying, 'Of course, we could have done more earlier'.
How Officers Used Flock To Track Women
One of the most striking cases involved former Menasha, Wisconsin, police officer Cristian Morales, who used Flock searches to monitor his former girlfriend. An investigating affidavit alleged that Morales checked the system while trying to determine whether she had visited a clinic for a possible abortion, later contacted the clinic seeking medical information and confronted the woman about where she had been.
On 17 August, Morales was convicted of misconduct in public office and sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation, while being barred from working in law enforcement or accessing Flock.
In Georgia, former Braselton police chief Michael Steffman was arrested in November 2025 after authorities alleged that he misused automated licence plate recognition systems to stalk and harass multiple people.
One former girlfriend, Marci Bakely, said Steffman had searched records connected to her and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times, leaving her so concerned about being watched that she checked her vehicle for tracking devices.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation charged Steffman with stalking, harassing communications, violation of oath and multiple counts of licence plate reader misuse.
Flock Adds New Guardrails
Flock announced new safeguards on 13 August, including reducing its recommended default data retention period from 30 days to 7 days. The company is also making its Audit Assistance system mandatory, requiring case codes for searches, introducing proactive lockouts for suspected misuse and giving agencies more control over which offences other departments can investigate through their data.
Flock said the measures are designed to identify abnormal activity earlier while keeping the technology available for legitimate police investigations. However, civil liberties advocates remain unconvinced that the changes resolve the wider privacy concerns.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the shorter retention period 'may be a step in the right direction' but argued that many of Flock's other changes do not go far enough to constrain surveillance and data sharing.
As Langley pushes for a middle ground between privacy and safety, the scrutiny surrounding Flock increasingly centres on who can be watched when access intended for policing is turned towards personal relationships.
