Flock CEO Admits Flock Is Used to Stalk People (Public Report)Javascript is disabled. Enable javascript to view IPVM.<br>Contact us at info@ipvm.com for help.

Flock CEO Admits Flock Is Used to Stalk People<br>IT

IPVM Team<br>•Published Aug 18, 2026 18:04 PM

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Privacy critics, politicians and publishers have called Flock a stalking tool. Flock's defense has been that its cameras simply take static pictures of vehicles, not people. In a new podcast interview, CEO Garrett Langley disproved it himself, describing step by step exactly how an officer would use Flock to stalk him.

He Said Stalk

Speaking to Jason Calacanis of the All In Podcast, he mapped out how to do it:

Let's say you're an officer and you're trying to stalk me . You would look for me. You'd say, 'I'm looking for Garrett's car. It's ABC124.' And you'd search for it and kind of figure out where it is. And then the next day, you'd search for me again. And then the next day, you'd search for me again. [emphasis added]

That is exactly what documented cases of officers using Flock to track ex-girlfriends and ex-wives look like. They knew it was stalking. Now Flock's CEO has said so himself.

The Hotlist Proves It Further

Langley framed the above as explaining how Flock catches stalkers. His explanation of what legitimate use looks like proves the system tracks people either way:

If you were truly trying to find me because I committed a crime, you would have put my tag on the hot list so that anyone else in the police department would have been also notified... If you're stalking me , you don't want anyone else to know what's happening. [emphasis added]

The only distinction between stalking and authorized use, in Flock's CEO own telling, is secrecy and intent, not capability. A hotlist ties a plate to a person (he said "my plate"0: a wanted individual, a sex offender, a missing person. Both versions locate a specific individual through their vehicle. Flock tracks people either way.

This is the second time this month Langley has admitted Flock tracks people. Earlier this month, as IPVM reported, he disclosed that Flock alerted on sex offenders, wanted people, and missing persons: human categories, not vehicle categories. Now he has gone further, confirming on camera that Flock can stalk people too.

"It's Just a Camera"

Yet in the same interview, Flock's CEO radically downplayed what the product could do.

We sold a license plate reading camera, which is pretty basic technology. A car drives by. We take a still image of vehicle. We read the license plate.

That framing runs across years of appearances. To ABC7: "A car drives by, we take a picture. It's a static picture of a car... it's pretty simple." To Stripe's podcast: "It's much less sophisticated than they think or dream up. It's just a camera."

Flock's formal marketing matches. Its website states: "Flock LPR cameras capture details on vehicles, not people." Its trust page: "Flock cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals." CCO Josh Thomas in July 2026 stated Flock "does not track people" and is not designed "to track a person."

In the same conversation where Langley called the system "pretty basic technology," he mapped out a step-by-step method for using it to follow a specific person across multiple days, confirming through the hotlist that authorized use does the same thing.

Flock's Stalking Detector

Langley also revealed that Flock built a tool to detect the exact pattern he described: repeated searches on the same plate by the same officer. In his own telling, it is a tool to catch stalkers. What it found in four months, in his words, was "more than I ever would have hoped." A system that truly only captured vehicles would have no need for such a tool, and nothing to find.

Future Lawsuits

That walkthrough will likely prove useful in the lawsuits to come: Flock's CEO, on camera, describing step by step exactly how his system is used to "stalk" specific people. The stalker in his example is a police officer, which is precisely who the documented cases involve.

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