Flock Safety pivots to drones amid camera backlash

Civil liberties advocates have raised alarms about police drones. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, wrote in a March white paper that "drones can watch us, sometimes closely enough to see the pores on our skin." He added that people on the ground have little way of knowing what information a drone is collecting.

Flock's core business has also drawn criticism over mistaken alerts. Business Insider reported that in Roseville, California, the company's automated license plate readers misread plates in 71% of alerts reviewed. In early August, The Washington Post reported that at least 50 law enforcement officials had been accused or charged with misusing license-plate reading tech nationally. Flock cameras were used in 46 of those cases, the paper said.

Several communities have canceled, paused, or reconsidered Flock contracts as the backlash mounted. A company spokesperson said departures remain small relative to expansion, adding that Flock's growth rate is seven times its churn rate.

On Thursday, Flock updated its privacy and security protocols. The default retention period for license plate data dropped from one month to one week. Existing customers can keep their current retention periods if they were democratically approved, the company said. In a video sent to Business Insider, Langley said Flock is "finding bad cops and holding them accountable." He also voiced hope for broader regulatory changes.