Flock CEO Apologizes for Calling Activists 'Terrorists'

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/07/17/flock-ceo-sorry-for-labelling-activists-terrorists/

by chaps • 5 days ago

76 35 5 days ago

Oh he still thinks they're terrorists, he's just sorry he got caught saying the quiet part out loud.

wrs2• 5 days ago

To be precise, he thinks they're anti-authoritarian, for which "terrorist" is the long-established authoritarian code word.

stevenwoo2• 5 days ago

Has it? My impression is in the USA the start was the normalization of "on our side or the enemy" polarization started with Newt Gingrich into ordinary sedate (for the time period) political debate and was weaponized in the aftermath of 9/11 when any criticism of Bush/Cheney actions was reframed as what side is one questions in the 'war on terrorism' with the implied positioning of any opposition as pro terrorism.

I had to look this up, the word doesn't have a very long history claims this bit https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/history-of-the-word... . The first authoritarian regime that might come to mind to most after the French Revolution, the Nazis, didn't use this word commonly for their opposition, either, AFAIK.

x13• 5 days ago

Garrett Langley wants to watch everyone; kids, parents, everyone. He puts the "sir" in surveillance state.

hobonation• 5 days ago

Activists are not Terrorists.

However, this is a clear case that points to the idea that in damage control, you never apologize. It just creates more news about the situation.

krapp• 5 days ago

Activists are terrorists if they're leftist, not white, or not Christian.

Otherwise they're patriots.

josefritzishere2• 5 days ago

American's don't want to live under constant surveillance, inside an open air prison. That idea should not be hard to understand.

quantified• 5 days ago

They want to surveil widely though. Witness Ring and Amazon. Little Brothers more than Big Brother.

Beware the Ellisons, they're on record for Big Brother.

robotnikman• 5 days ago

I'm glad to see this is a bipartisan issue that both sides agree on. As a country we need to start focusing more on the issues we have in common and work towards solutions to them.

JoshTriplett• 5 days ago

Many people want surveillance on other people that they're afraid of, or have been told to be afraid of. Some openly want to try to establish that asymmetry. Others are willing to unthinkingly submit to surveillance themselves as long as it surveils their perceived enemies.

josefritzishere2• 5 days ago

Sure, but we're all "other people" to someone. Right?

Freedom2• 5 days ago

Do you happen to have any evidence of this? I've spoken to a few people in mid-west US and they are strongly opposed to any surveillance of their communities of any kind.

newaccountman22• 5 days ago

American's don't want to live under constant surveillance, inside an open air prison.

A lot of Americans do if it "owns the libs" or makes the lives immigrants worse.

exabrial• 5 days ago

I have a new idea:

No cameras on us.

24/7 Body Cameras on politicians, w/ audio.

munk-a• 5 days ago

The fact that body cameras can be turned off is insane to me. Most office workers need to suffer the same "constantly surveilled during work" and the stakes of their mistakes is so much drastically less than law enforcement officers.

Releasing full unredacted body camera footage continuously is a bad idea - but prosecutors and defense attorneys have been trusted with equivalently sensitive information in the past. I don't know how we lost the battle on this front and allowed them to ever be turned off.

infecto• 5 days ago

I think it’s important to highlight that the timing of this article comes right after Tucker Carlsons monologue and podcast “Flock Cameras and the Coming Slave State”. Would wager a bet this is a paid piece for Forbes for PR damage control.

Garrett probably thought by making those statements a year ago he could get political support from the current administration and population. Looks like that was a bad bet.

I actually think the service Flock provides could be interesting but the complete lack of guardrails makes it a no go.

cornholio2• 5 days ago

In a society that respects and protects privacy rights by law, the service Flock provides could not exist.

There are no 'guardrails' to mass surveillance.

tadfisher• 5 days ago

Sure there are, and we worked this out decades ago with telecommunications. We ought to:

- Require a judicial warrant before recording anything. Recording with a camera network is now considered a 4th amendment search, and scope must be minimized to prevent harm to the public.

- Police must articulate a probable cause for a search, and can only record locations for specified vehicle or individual traits during a specified time window as approved in the warrant.

- No BS with recording everyone and searching the existing database of every public movement whenever you want; this is a "dragnet" and is unconstitutional or highly contested in other contexts (e.g. geolocation).

croes• 5 days ago

If the regret only comes after a backlash you don’t regret your actions you regret facing consequences.

toddmorey• 5 days ago

"We believe in a world where we can have safety and privacy."

  - Flock camera feeds were set up public-facing, giving anyone on the internet access to live high-resolution feeds
  - Flock's AI does more than just read license plates. It catalogs vehicle color, make, model, bumper stickers, dents, and roof racks.
  - Police officers nationwide have abused their access to the Flock network to inappropriately track romantic partners, neighbors, and personal acquaintances
  - local police departments share Flock-captured license plate data with federal immigration agencies like ICE and CBP
  - Flock cameras have been used to track lawful citizens attending political demonstrations
  - Flock also expanded into audio surveillance (!!) before public outrage made them back down a bit

sys_64738• 5 days ago

The Flock CEO is the terrorist here.

chaps3• 5 days ago

As a reminder, Flock is a ycombinator company.

Unrelated, in about a minute this post went from the front page to the third page.

Cider9986• 5 days ago

Flock has a large amount of popular stories here, there's no conspiracy.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

chaps3• 5 days ago

Principle of charity, friend; that's not really what's at-issue here. The post was on the front page one minute and the next it was shoved deep to the back. That aint right.

shrubble• 5 days ago

If it was just recognizing license plates that would be fine. However it fingerprints individuals by running a Bluetooth and WiFi connection to capture your phone or laptop’s Bluetooth MAC and WiFi MAC.

There are Flock cameras placed along running paths where there are no cars, and other places that would never need license plate readers.

Does Flock have a microphone that can record you talking with your friend while watching ducks at the local park?

serf• 5 days ago

If it was just recognizing license plates that would be fine.

not really.

I don't want any private entity to catalogue humans identifiably to a population-scale extent.

if we as a collective whole wanted these things around they (Flock) wouldn't have to buy their positions from the regional municipalities.

michaeljx• 5 days ago

It is insane to me that US allows a private entity to video and catalogue individuals on any pubic space they want. In my country (EU), you are not allowed to point a security camera on a public space, to the point where evidence from such cameras are inadmissible to court

segmondy• 5 days ago

Flock CEO doesn't give a fuck about that, they have been advised by public relations to manage their image since public opinion is against them. If they really cared, they will shut the entire thing down, but you know.

"Fuck you, pay me! If not me, someone else will!, profit must be had, your privacy be damned."

cornholio2• 5 days ago

Assuming the necessary laws banning this crap are not put in place, what is the endgame here?

Activists destroy visible surveillance cameras, so they hide them and make them hard to recognize. Activists trace the camera locations from the public data, so Flock kills those feeds and sells only to vetted buyers.

The value of mass surveillance is high enough and the power imbalance so strongly against the citizenry, that someone will setup these hidden cameras, as long as it's legal.

Imagine what you can do with this data, face recognition and GPT-5 class agents. Not only do you have the realtime location of your victims, but now you can see who they talk to, what they wear, what mood they are in, what they bought, are they drinking or visiting a brothel, what car they go into - and it's no longer an ephemeral cookie id, it's the face that person will have forever, on their id documents, in any interview or loan application they will ever do.

This data is worth trillions in the long run if sufficiently oppressive structures are put in place to leverage it.

zzgo• 5 days ago

I apologize

I apologize is not an apology any more than saying, "I work out" is a workout. The fascist who considers his opposition antifa is in no way contrite. People only say "I apologize" because it's a whole lot easier to say than "I'm sorry."

Flock CEO Apologizes for Calling Activists 'Terrorists'

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