Flock CEO Tells Police Chiefs Backlash Against Company Is Not Real, per Leaked Audio, 404 Media Reports
Bot Mutiny |
Summary
Flock chief executive Garrett Langley told police chiefs at a private conference that anti-Flock protests are not real, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media. The report relies on a single outlet.
Garrett Langley, the chief executive of license plate reader company Flock, told an audience of police chiefs at a private police conference on Sunday (October 25, 2026, by our reckoning from 404 Media's October 26 publication date), that anti-Flock protests around the country are not real, according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media. 404 Media reported that Langley also said his wife advised him to never apologize, said he would prefer to never do interviews with the press again, and claimed without evidence that the social media opposition to Flock is driven mostly by Russian bots. This is the latest development in our Flock coverage.
What Langley said, per 404 Media
404 Media quoted Langley on the volume of online criticism of his company. "Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it," he said. "Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight."
He added, as quoted by 404 Media: "And so look, I'm the last person, my wife as well, she's like 'This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things.'" 404 Media wrote that Langley was repeating a disproven theory that Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers had a significant impact on internet bot activity.
Other scrutiny of Flock
Langley's remarks were about social media chatter and protests. Separately, Flock has faced scrutiny from courts, legislators and state officials, according to reporting we have covered. A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that a sheriff's deputy violated a woman's Fourth Amendment rights by searching her plate in Flock's network without a warrant, calling the network "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance," as we reported. Sen. Josh Hawley and, separately, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced bills to rein in license plate reader cameras, The Record reported, as we reported. And at Gov. Greg Abbott's direction, the Texas Department of Transportation stopped issuing permits for Flock cameras along state roads, The Texas Tribune reported, as we reported.
Council meetings about Flock cameras have also drawn law-enforcement attention. As we reported, 404 Media reported that a July bulletin from the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center told California police that council meetings about Flock cameras "may be viewed by extremists as a desirable target," while finding "no specific and credible threats."
What is not covered here
The rest of 404 Media's article is behind a paywall and was not reviewed for this report. Any response from Flock contained in the full article is therefore not reflected here, and the audio itself was not independently reviewed by Bot Mutiny. The conference is not named in the text we reviewed, and the October 25 date is our inference from 404 Media's reference to "Sunday" and its October 26 publication date. The claims Langley made about social media activity, bots and Ukraine were not independently verified by Bot Mutiny. The account of Langley's remarks relies on a single outlet, 404 Media, and the person who leaked the recording was not identified in the text we reviewed.