Technology

Flock CEO Faces Costumed Protesters Backed By Socialists, Raging Grannies

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Activists in costume took their fight against a police surveillance company to the doorstep of a major tech conference.

Dozens of anti-Flock demonstrators gathered outside TechCrunch Disrupt at Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, on Wednesday while Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley spoke inside, Fight for the Future campaign director Reem Suleiman told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The rally, organized by nine groups including the Wolves, the Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Raging Grannies of the Peninsula, demanded an end to the automated license plate readers (ALPR) technology Flock sells to police departments nationwide.

“I think it’s very important for the community to take back essentially the soul of our city by making it very clear what our values are,” Suleiman told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “You can’t say that you’re protecting immigrant communities and then open the door to a surveillance vendor that has ties to ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and to out-of-state police agencies using it to crack down on abortions.”

Some protesters wore cardboard Flock cameras on their heads and outfits from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” while others held anti-Flock signs that read “Flock = ICE” and “Flock Off,” TechCrunch reported. As footage from “1984” blared in the street, Langley spoke inside the venue. 

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, defended the technology, saying opposition to it began as “a far left, pro criminal movement.”

“ALPR is not surveillance, it does not violate the constitutional rights of Americans, and it has been around for more than 25 years with more than 50 court cases authorizing the still photograph of a vehicle’s license plate on a roadway,” Bianco, a known supporter of the cameras, told the DCNF. “We are solving murders, kidnappings, child molestations, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and thefts, not only in our jurisdictions but others.”

“If [ALPR] technology is taken away from law enforcement only criminals win,” Bianco added.

Flock’s online press center maintains that stationary license plate cameras have survived Fourth Amendment challenges in upward of 40 court decisions. The company also states it “does not have a contract or partnership with [ICE]..”

Flock credits its cameras with helping find over 10,000 missing people over the course of 2025, according to a May 21 blog post. The company views abuses of the technology as “unacceptable,” Flock’s public relations manager Paris Lewbell told USA Today.

“If a customer knowingly broke the law, we would fire them immediately. That’s very easy,” Langley said at the conference, TechCrunch reported. “Most of the debate is nuanced into ‘what if two officers out of fifty were caught?’ Today, we haven’t fired any customers, but it’s not off the table in the case of some pretty drastic law-abiding issue.”

Ashley Ortiz, an organizer with the Wolves, pulled the rally together and recruited its co-sponsors, Wolves founder Scott Herscher told the DCNF.

“Flock’s mass surveillance network statistically has not increased safety,” Ortiz said in the press release. “Instead, it has been abused by local police departments to track down women fleeing domestic violence and falsely accuse others of crimes elsewhere.”

Herscher said the Wolves chose the conference specifically because Langley was speaking there.

“If Garrett Langley wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have been there either,” said Herscher, who did not personally attend the protest. “We live at the intersection of joy and rage. … So we do a lot of street protests, and we try and have as much fun as we can.”

The Wolves describe themselves on their website as “dedicated to protecting democracy by organizing and/or participating public protests against fascism, corruption and capitalism.”

Herscher, who said he has discussed ALPRs with police in his community, argued that officers overlook the technology’s downsides.

“They seem to want to do the right thing, but they just miss what I think is just sort of inescapably true,” Herscher said of police to the DCNF. “They only see the benefit [of license plate readers]. They are absolutely blind to the cost.”

In April, the San Jose Police Department terminated an officer who tapped into its Flock network from his own phone to help a relative accused of domestic violence track down the alleged victim, Mercury News reported.

TechCrunch did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

The Raging Grannies describe themselves on their website as “an international disorganization of women over a certain age who use satirical song and street theater as a tool for political education.”

“Our autonomous gaggles across North America don flowered hats and show up to sing pointed songs about what the powerful would rather keep quiet. We care about peace and justice and human rights and this battered planet, and use a well-aimed song to open ears,” the website adds.