Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley has called for a national compromise between privacy and safety, arguing that focusing solely on one aspect is misguided. "When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise," Langley said during a recent interview with Fox News. "How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?" Langley’s remarks come as the company faces mounting public backlash over concerns that its surveillance technology could be misused. These concerns are not hypothetical, with the Washington Post identifying 46 cases where police officers were accused of using Flock technology for unauthorized purposes, including stalking personal relationships. After listening to an interview with one of the alleged victims, Langley told CBS News, "I apologize. It kills me that she went through that." At the same time, he insisted, "I don’t think that Flock created police abuse. I think we’re the first company to ever shine a light on it and build the tools to find it."

Both Democratic and Republican politicians have begun to take aim at Flock, with Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed accusing his opponent Mike Rogers of supporting the mass proliferation of Flock cameras. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders also posted, "STOP AI MASS SURVEILLANCE. STOP FLOCK." On the right, three House Republicans introduced a bill that would prohibit the federal government from purchasing automated surveillance systems using facial recognition, biometric IDs, or license plate recognition, including Flock Safety cameras. Flock has made some changes in response to the criticism, reducing the default data retention time from 30 days to seven days and requiring a case code to access data. However, these changes can be overridden, for example, by using a setting called Evidence Mode.

In its response to Flock’s changes, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that while the company has not shortened the default retention period to the ACLU’s recommended 48 hours, its proposal may be a step in the right direction. Whether this is a real change or another PR move, however, will depend on how its 'Evidence Mode' operates. For his part, Langley has said that state regulators should pass bills making the illegal use of Flock data a criminal offense. During his Fox News interview, he pointed to the changes the company has already made, while also stating, "Today, it is too often that in Flock and in other technologies, there’s no regulation. There’s no accountability, and we think that’s wrong."

Source: techcrunch