Flock CEO Has Now Turned Against the Police
ipvm.comI'm not a fan of Langley but this is just whinging about having the slightest of restrictions put on your toys.
This is such a strange piece to me, what was he supposed to do? Take responsibility for people's abusive behavior that don't work for him? His platform was being abused by powerful people he doesn't control, risking major contracts in the process and he's in major damage control mode.
Instead of focusing on the fact that police were caught abusing Flock, the MO of this piece is to focus on the guy calling out the people abusing his platform as if he's in the wrong. Anybody in his position would've done the exact same thing.
Flock's continued existence depends on the idea that those in law enforcement provisioned access to the data platform will use it responsibility. The evidence is robust this will never occur, and therefore the platform simply cannot exist because we cannot trust law enforcement to use it within the bounds of the legal framework, regardless of whatever controls Flock attempts to put in place at the platform level. This would of course be disappointing news to the CEO of such a platform, considering the time and resources invested to date, similar to the public collectively burning your equity lottery ticket. Such is the risk of attempting to speed run a startup in direct conflict with constitutional and privacy rights. Sometimes you win (Airbnb and Uber), sometimes you don't.
'I Saw a Shiny Thing': Cop Explains Why He Used License Plate Reader to Stalk Woman - https://www.404media.co/i-saw-a-shiny-thing-cop-explains-why... - August 19th, 2026
> Body camera footage shows police surveillance abuse is common: "We’ve told them over and over again: 'You see a hot chick, you don’t look them up in a database.'"
> “The most concerning part to me, listen, we’ve had deputies misuse databases, we’ve told them over and over again, ‘That’s not what it’s for. You see a hot chick, you don’t look them up in a database. That’s not what it’s for,’” she says. “The more concerning part to me is we have what’s called license plate readers, LPR system, which is the camera’s positioned up and down the highway, and we use that for law enforcement. We have one highway, so if we’re looking for somebody, it makes it very easy to locate their vehicle. He put your tag in that, so he would be alerted when your vehicle was going one way or another.”
> 404 Media also obtained footage from when Roman was arrested several days later at his home. The footage shows that Roman was allowed to make several phone calls before being arrested as he loiters on the sidewalk. Eventually, he is handcuffed and put in the back of a police SUV. Moeller tells him “Roman, I’m sorry man, it is what it is, we’re here now. But remember what I said. It’s a speed bump, OK? In the scheme of things, you’ll get past this bro. Alright, I wish you the best of luck. Keep your head up man.”
> Roman was eventually charged with counts of stalking and improperly accessing government databases. He avoided jail time as part of a plea deal. As part of his deal, Roman will have to stay out of trouble for two years and have no contact with the woman. He’ll pay ~$1,700 to cover investigative and prosecutorial costs and will have to perform 100 hours of community service and continue psychotherapy.
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2026/08/11/ex-keys-deputy...
What he's supposed to do is admit that the abuses were obviously foreseeable, and build in safeguards to prevent them. Or withdraw the system, if he can't.
The abusers didn't work for him, but he willingly sold his product to them, knowing that it would be used abusively. (Or being incredibly stupid, if he didn't know that.)
I think Flock (and similar systems) are actively harmful to society and Langley (and therefore Flock) specifically is trying to change society into something that is terrifying.
Now, he's trying to distract people from the inherently abusive nature of ubiquitous surveillance by pointing to other people behaving badly. It's just PR bullshit. He's trying to figure out how he can get people docile enough to accept his dystopian vision.
I completely agree with you, but it's not like this piece is any less dystopian. It pretty openly casts police as victims and seems to not want to acknowledge that the police state at its core is very unpopular in the US for some pretty compelling reasons.