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Flock faces relentless criticism. The company admits it's being criticized "every single day."
CEO Garrett Langley has called critics "terrorist organizations", claimed opponents want to "normalize lawlessness," and declared his technology would "eliminate crime in America" within a decade. The ACLU has dismissed these claims as "silly marketing hype" while warning that Flock is building "authoritarian tracking infrastructure."
Now Langley has a new pitch: He's selling surveillance to the poor as social justice.
The Pitch
In his LinkedIn post, Langley outlines three models: Tokyo, with 37 million people and "a few dozen murders per year," where "safety is a public good"; Johannesburg, "six times smaller," with "one of the highest murder rates on earth," where "safety is a private good" you purchase; and America, sitting "somewhere in between," where "everyone knows the rich are safer than the poor."
His conclusion: "Flock Safety exists to change that." His vision: "Every American, no matter where they live or how much money they have, should have access to the same sense of security." The message is clear: poor neighborhoods should embrace Flock's cameras because wealthy areas already have private security.
What He's Testing
This appears to be Langley testing a new direction of public appeal. Flock is launching a mass media offensive amid contract cancellations and mounting opposition. Dozens of cities have rejected or removed Flock systems in recent months. The company needs to win public support. Whether Langley believes this framing or simply sees it as tactically useful is unclear, but it is worth examining on the merits.
Comparison Shows Opposite
By comparing Tokyo directly with Johannesburg, Langley accidentally proves the opposite of his point.
Tokyo's safety comes from deep cultural and economic factors, not surveillance. Japan has a Gini coefficient of 32.3, one of the lowest inequality measures among developed nations. It has universal healthcare, strong public education, robust employment protections, and a cohesive society with high institutional trust and social integration. Japan's murder rate is 0.2 per 100,000 people, among the lowest in the world. Crime is low because people have opportunity, stability, and shared cultural norms that discourage violence. The surveillance exists within that context, not as a substitute for it.
Johannesburg's danger stems from cultural and economic breakdown, not lack of cameras. South Africa has a Gini coefficient of 0.63, the highest among all countries with reliable data, per the World Bank. It has unemployment around 31%, youth unemployment near 60%, and the top 10% own 85% of wealth. Apartheid's legacy created entrenched economic segregation, weak state capacity, and deep cultural divisions between communities locked in conflict. The violence reflects decades of institutionalized inequality and social fracture.
South Africa's use of surveillance, given its population size, is vast, with over 600,000 private security guards, more than twice its police and military combined. Langley himself cites this figure. While Japan has about 588,000 private guards, according to Japan's National Police Agency, the country's population of 122.4 million is nearly double South Africa's of 65 million.
Wealthy South Africans live behind walls, electric fences, cameras, and panic buttons. If surveillance created safety, South Africa would be one of the safest places on Earth. Instead, it's one of the most dangerous, proving cameras can't fix poverty, inequality, institutional collapse, or cultural division.
Deploying more cameras in poor American neighborhoods won't replicate Tokyo's results. Civil liberties experts have noted that increasing surveillance in poor areas can result in disproportionate treatment by law enforcement, exacerbating racial and economic disparities. The gap between rich and poor areas reflects differences in economic opportunity, quality schools, healthcare access, institutional trust, and social cohesion. Technology alone can't bridge that divide.
Echo Of Familiar Rhetoric
Flock's pitch echoes familiar tough-on-crime rhetoric: Poor people and minorities suffer most from crime, so more surveillance and policing protect them. The Oakland NAACP's support for Flock cameras illustrates the appeal of this argument.
Yet research shows that decades of intensified enforcement in disadvantaged neighborhoods have produced "little community safety benefit but huge human costs," according to racial justice advocacy group The Sentencing Project. According to the Brookings Institution, studies consistently demonstrate that factors like poverty, poor education, and lack of economic opportunity drive crime more than race itself, yet surveillance expansion continues to target communities of color while failing to address the underlying socioeconomic inequities that fuel criminal activity.
What Surveillance Can and Cannot Do
Flock's technology does catch some criminals. LPR cameras have shown they can help solve certain categories of crime, particularly calculated property crimes where perpetrators use vehicles and don't take countermeasures. This is useful for crimes against people demographically similar to Langley himself, wealthy targets of premeditated acts with planned approaches and escape routes.
But crime isn't a strict economic calculation that responds to surveillance as predictably as a corporate ROI projection. Much of it is driven by desperation, emotion, and opportunity. Crimes of passion, mental health issues, or economic desperation don't stop because of cameras. Criminals can also cover license plates, use stolen vehicles, or avoid cameras entirely, making LPR an imperfect crime-solving tool. The more inequality grows, the more people are pressured by a lack of resources or legitimate opportunities into desperate or criminal acts, and surveillance becomes just another obstacle to work around rather than a deterrent.
South Africa proves this. Despite a massive private security infrastructure, crime remains endemic because the underlying drivers (poverty, unemployment, inequality, cultural division) create constant pressure. Surveillance doesn't reduce that pressure. It is a mechanism for responding to its consequences.
The Irony
Despite claiming to support the social justice-oriented value of fighting inequality, Langley and his investors are part of the problem they claim to solve. Flock has raised $750+ million at a $7.5 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Venture capital concentrates wealth. It extracts value from communities and funnels it to investors seeking 100x returns. The same forces driving inequality (wealth concentration, financialization, erosion of public goods) are now selling cities the tools to manage the consequences.
Langley and his investors extract wealth, then sell cameras to municipalities to manage the fallout.
Surveillance is cheaper than equality, and far more profitable. Tokyo's safety required decades of public investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunity. Flock offers a subscription-based alternative that, at best, addresses symptoms, while at worst, exacerbates the causes.
You can't achieve Tokyo's low crime rate by building Johannesburg.
The technology doesn't reduce inequality. It monetizes it. Cameras can't fix what the rich break.