Flock Safety went from one camera for an Atlanta police department to more than 120,000 users across more than 5,000 jurisdictions in nine years, and the cameras talk to each other. Speed cameras only photograph you when you break a law; Catherina Gioino says these record everyone, all day, and build a map of where each car has been.
"This is tracking you through the use of AI within the cameras."
Gioino is Fortune's news editor and has been covering the company since February, has interviewed its chief executive Garrett Langley, and reported the cases in which police officers used the system on people they knew.
I listened to the full segment so you can skip it.
Here are the 10 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guest: Catherina Gioino, news editor at Fortune, who has covered Flock Safety since February and has interviewed the company's chief executive
🎙️ Host: Ellie Austin, who presents Fortune Daily from New York
📰 Published: 31 August 2026 on YouTube (Fortune)
🔴 YouTube | ⏱️ 19 min
Key Takeaways
The company reached over 120,000 users in over 5,000 jurisdictions in nine years
Police departments, private businesses and homeowners' associations, which were the first customer
A speed camera needs you to break a law; this does not
The cameras are networked, so an ordinary day becomes a mapped route
Flock's position is that the customer owns the data and Flock only controls access
Gioino's counter is that the company owns the AI and the software that makes the data searchable
The software can find a car by its bumper sticker, its gun rack or a scratch on the rim
Which is why gun owners are among the groups objecting, and why the fight is bipartisan
She questions whether the cameras cut crime at all, or arrived while crime was already falling
The misuse is documented and one officer is in jail for it
He used his department's access more than 700 times to find an estranged wife
The 7-day retention limit is a recommendation, not a default
Local governments are cancelling contracts and residents are destroying the cameras
Two Arizona towns of opposite politics terminated on the same day, two hours apart
The constitutional objection is the Fourth Amendment: this replaces a warrant with a contract
Flock says it has no contract with ICE, which is not the same as ICE having no access
1. What Flock Actually Is
Austin opened by saying she had not heard of the company until the past few weeks, and asked what it does.
"It's an automatic license plate reader company." Gioino gave the industry abbreviation as ALPRs
It started as one police department's camera system. She said the chief executive, Garrett Langley, built it nine years ago for the local police department in his neighborhood in Atlanta
"From there, it exploded into over 120,000 users in over 5,000 jurisdictions."
The customer list is wider than policing. "And their customers are your local police department." She added private entities such as Home Depot, and homeowners' associations, which were the first primary customer
2. Why It Isn't CCTV
Austin put the obvious objection — surveillance cameras are everywhere already — and Gioino answered it with the difference in what triggers a record.
Enforcement cameras require an offense. She said you have to be speeding, or running the red light, for a traffic camera to fire
A shop's camera captures a moment, not a route. Walking past a bodega's camera catches you at that point in time and nowhere else
"This is tracking you through the use of AI within the cameras."
"You could just be a person randomly going about their day."
The network is what turns sightings into a life. Passing one street in an hour and another street in the same hour records the movement between them, and she described that continuing through a day, and through years
What it infers goes past location. "And usually we can figure out what the color of your hair is to what car you use to get from point A to point B to point C." It also registers who you visited
3. Who Owns the Data
Austin summarized the controversy as personal data being handed to a company unknowingly, and Gioino set out the company's answer.
Flock's position is that its customers own it. She said the company is adamant that the police departments, the homeowners' associations and the private entities holding contracts own the data, and that "our customers do" is one of its catchphrases
"They say we merely control how you access the data."
Her objection is about the layer above the data. "So, there's a question as to sure maybe they don't own the data, but they do own the AI and they do own the software behind accessing that data."
4. Searching by Bumper Sticker
The concrete demonstration was what the software lets someone search for.
A car does not need a readable plate to be findable. Her example was a vehicle with an invisible license plate but a visible gun rack
"Anything that remotely is a tattoo essentially on a car they can find." She listed gun racks, bike racks, a Trump bumper sticker, a Kamala bumper sticker
Damage counts too. A small dent, or a scratch on a rim from hitting a curb, is enough for the system to pick up
That is why the opposition crosses party lines. "It's not a right or left issue. It's a bipartisan issue if you really think about it." Gun owners, she said, are one of the biggest groups objecting
5. Is It Even Cutting Crime?
Gioino's own reporting question is whether the product does what it claims.
The timing is the problem. She noted that crime has fallen over the past three decades and fell further after the pandemic, and that the company was founded nine years ago
"Is it actually stopping crime or is it riding a wave of we are becoming a less crime-ridden society"
One officer is serving a sentence for using it. She said Christopher Goodson, a police officer in Florida, is in jail for six months after accessing his department's camera system more than 700 times to find an estranged wife
A second case reaches interstate travel and reproductive law. "There are cases in Texas where they found a woman who the cameras picked up as again this is AI inference here." "The cameras have thought she self-induced an abortion."
She said the search crossed several jurisdictions rather than one, and the woman had crossed state lines
A third case shows how thin the trigger can be. "There's a case in Wisconsin, for example, of a man who drove across state lines and the AI picked up his car because he crossed the state line multiple times." She noted that phrase was a verbatim quotation from the record
6. The 7-Day Recommendation
The company's response to the retention question is where Gioino was most insistent.
"They made a recommendation, but again it's a recommendation, not actually a default thing to only allow this camera to hold your data for 7 days."
She said the change was made in the previous week or two
The decision still sits with the department. Retention is up to the customer, and she stressed twice that this is a recommendation rather than a rule
It also sits oddly with the ownership claim. If Flock does not own the data, she said, then what happens to it after seven days is not Flock's to decide — which is why a recommendation is all it can be
7. Chainsaws and City Councils
The backlash has two forms, and Gioino described both.
Jurisdictions are terminating contracts. Los Angeles is the biggest example; more recently Tempe, Arizona, which she described as left-leaning, and Cave Creek, which she described as right-leaning — the same day, two hours apart
Residents are destroying the cameras. "By ramming his giant truck into the pole and knocking it to look at the sky." That was how one person, interviewed by another outlet, changed a camera's direction
"Other people are taking chainsaws, they're putting various liquids on top of these cameras."
The rest of the opposition is procedural. She described people raising it at city council meetings and community board meetings
The chief executive's answer, as she relayed it, is a ranking. Langley's position is that privacy is necessary but comes second: "Yes, it's so necessary for your life but it comes second to the public safety to the public security aspect of life."
On why now, she does not credit a single event. Her own argument is aggressive sales tactics and the scale they produced, plus more actors using the system in ways that should have been anticipated
8. Sanders and Hawley Agree
Austin noted that Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley have both spoken against the company, and asked how it became a bipartisan target.
Gioino's answer is constitutional rather than political. She traced it to the Fourth Amendment and the warrant requirement: to track someone's car across a state line, a judge would have to sign a warrant
"This is now a bigger issue when it comes down to the Fourth Amendment because usually police officers need to get a warrant."
The contract is what replaces the warrant. "Now they're just paying their way through a contract"
She framed the stakes at the level of citizenship. In a way, she said, it strikes at the core of what it means to be American according to the Constitution
There is no external regulator. "Well, this is the thing. It's all self-regulation, right?" She said none of it would have surfaced without journalists and without victims noticing something was wrong — a camera pointed at a children's gymnasium, or someone following them
9. The ICE Question
Austin asked whether reporting supports the rumors that Flock works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The company's denial is direct and Gioino has it on the record. She said that when she first covered Flock in February, the company's spokesperson said point blank that it has no contract with ICE
"Now, that isn't to say that ICE cannot access these cameras."
The route in is another jurisdiction's contract. Her example: ICE may have no contract with the Los Angeles Police Department but may hold one with a different jurisdiction inside Los Angeles, and access follows from that
"Flock again says we don't we don't allow any kind of ICE contracts, but it's not stopping ICE from accessing these kind of cameras."
The open question she leaves is governance. Who controls the contracts, and who controls the jurisdictions
10. Mamdani's Pied-à-Terre Tax
In a second segment, Austin turned Gioino to the rollout of New York's pied-à-terre tax, announced in April.
The threshold is a second home above a value line. "First of all, anyone who owns a second residence that's valued at over a million dollars for co-ops and condos or over $5 million for towns."
The city's first pass caught the wrong people. "So, the city rolled out all these letters around 50,000 letters to homeowners who they thought were going to be subject to the tax, right?"
The triggers she listed were filing taxes out of state, filing the 2025 return late, or holding a car registration in another state
The city then told about 1,200 of them they are exempt after all
The count of people actually subject to it is about 25,000. She put the city's own measure at around 15,800, with a further 10,000 letters sent to people the city believes are liable
The trap is that the workaround is already illegal. Someone living in New York full-time but registered in Florida for the income tax, or in Pennsylvania for cheaper car insurance, is committing fraud — "And as a result, that's committing fraud, believe it or not."
The choice she described is paying the pied-à-terre tax or moving residency to New York and paying New York income tax
The mayor followed the announcement with a tour of the people it hits. She said Mamdani went to the city's largest private equity and venture funds and to bank presidents after announcing the tax on 15 April. "He met with Jamie Dimon, for example."
The governor's objection is to the rollout, not the tax. "So she said publicly she doesn't like how the roll out happened" — letters sent without 2025 returns, and what she considered a media circus
"It was a joint announcement of the pied-à-terre tax and also we can't forget the fact that Governor Hochul is going up for re-election this November."
Gioino's structural point is that the governor controls whether a city tax goes up at all, and that unlike Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo before him, this mayor and this governor remain in close contact
Bonus Insights
The programme opened on Tim Cook's last day at Apple. Austin said the fifteen-year run took the company from the uncertainty of the post-Jobs era to one of the most valuable companies in history, on supply-chain discipline, the iPhone and services, with the stock up more than 2,000% and a brief $5 trillion market value this summer
Her framing of the succession was that John Ternus faces a different problem from his predecessor's: whether Apple's next era can be defined by AI the way Cook's was defined by the iPhone
Anyone can buy the cameras if they will sign the contract. Asked whether an individual could, Gioino said yes — for thousands of dollars — and traced the customer base from homeowners' associations pointing cameras at their own gates to Home Depot, police departments and malls
Gioino's bottom line is that Flock has built a nationwide movement-tracking system on private contracts rather than public authority, that the Fourth Amendment protection it routes around is what unites its critics across party lines, and that nothing regulates it except the company's own recommendations.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Flock Safety (The subject: an automatic license plate reader company founded nine years ago by Garrett Langley, now over 120,000 users across more than 5,000 jurisdictions)
Home Depot (Her example of the private-business customers the network expanded into beyond police departments and homeowners' associations)
Apple (The programme's opening story: Tim Cook's final day, John Ternus taking over, and whether AI defines the next era)
JPMorgan (Jamie Dimon was among the finance executives Mamdani met after announcing the pied-à-terre tax)
Fortune (Gioino's own publication, and the source of the Flock reporting the segment is built on)
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