On Thursday, Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley took ownership of police abuse of Flock’s services and said “I’m sorry the system has failed you.“ Flock called out the situation involving myself and my wife, where we were surrounded by police who thought I performed grand theft auto with a $155k Range Rover due to the LA Sheriff’s department inputting a partial plate into the National Criminal Information Center database and being flagged by Flock cameras, in a press release. “A recent story described a wrongful traffic stop involving an auto journalist. The central point is simple: an alert is a lead, not a conclusion, which should be confirmed by an officer,” said in the release with the emphasis being theirs, not ours. While skirting responsibility and shifting it to the police Langley announced sweeping changes. Langley said Flock will institute new mandatory audit monitoring that will detect unusual activity and repeated queries. Additionally, searches using Flock’s system will now require search justification by requiring case codes for all law enforcement searches with an exemption for emergency searches, which will still be reviewed. Unusual searches, which seem to include repeated patterns, will result in a user being locked out of the system pending an administrator review, according to Flock. Additionally, Flock will be reducing default data retention period to seven days, which to date has ranged state-by-state to follow local laws. Some states only allowed for 7 or 21 days worth of data retention, while others might have allowed 30 or up to 100 days worth of data to be stored. Notably, the new 7-day data retention period is the default recommendation. “Existing customers will keep their current, democratically approved retention periods,” Flock said. Langley said “Historically, my point of view as a chief executive of a private company was, I don’t know if I should be making these decisions. I don’t know if it’s my job to say how long data should be retained.” The BBC reported, “He added that he has come to agree with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation that police should need an active case number to search Flock’s data.” and quoted Langley as following with “They’re right. I think it should be required.” Langley told CNN, “What’s changed for me is realizing that we have a responsibility, maybe an obligation even, to the communities we serve to set the standard.” Flock said it will also introduce a new Offense Filtering feature that enables cities to choose which type of offense is permissible for other agencies to access their cameras. Langley said, “We are not perfect, so we will keep listening, improving, and building a better standard for public safety technology together.” These changes will roll out in the weeks and months ahead, the CEO said.
