Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of license plate camera maker Flock Safety, used a stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco this week to push back against criticism of his company’s surveillance cameras, even as Flock faces canceled contracts and layoffs across the country.
Speaking during a panel interview reported by TechCrunch, Langley argued that imperfections in a technology shouldn’t be a reason to stop deploying it. “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 illustrate his point, Langley compared Flock’s cameras to driverless cars. “Technology, at its core, in its definition, is just doing things better. It’s not doing things perfect,” he said. He added that a single crash involving a self-driving vehicle shouldn’t lead to pulling the technology altogether. “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.'”
On working with police departments
Langley said Flock tries to avoid dictating how cities and police departments use its technology. “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 whether the cameras could be misused, Langley said oversight and police efficiency aren’t mutually exclusive. “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 work flawlessly, Langley recalled 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.
Pointing to police staffing shortages
Langley defended the company’s role by citing staffing shortages in law enforcement that he said have worsened since the 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 strain of running a company at the center of national controversy but said he believes it’s worth it. “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.”
