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Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company behind more than 100,000 license plate readers installed across the country, is cutting about 18% of its staff as the public backlash to the mass surveillance system continues to gain traction. Some 270 employees will be leaving the company at the end of October following a voluntary buyout program, Reuters reported Friday, according to TechCrunch's account of the story.
"Flock recently offered current employees a generous Voluntary Separation Program as part of our efforts to position the company for its next phase of growth," spokesperson Paris Lewbel told TechCrunch in a statement on Friday. "This was a voluntary program, not a layoff, and reflects our continued focus on building a strong, sustainable business for the future." The company would not say whether CEO Garrett Langley or other executives took a pay cut as part of the program.
WIRED first reported on the voluntary separation package in a September 19 story. According to an internal email shared with the publication, Flock was offering what it called its most generous separation package ever, roughly double its earlier severance offers. Some packages will include tens of thousands of dollars, as well as health care for several months, and stock options that can be exercised for up to two years. People familiar with the plan told WIRED that without the buyouts, Flock almost certainly would have had to lay off staff, because a number of its contracts have been dropped or not extended this year. WIRED also reported that a wave of vandalism against the company's cameras has unexpectedly raised its costs.
The cuts come after cities and counties across the country have walked away from Flock at a record pace. WIRED, citing an advocacy group's count, reported that 93 city and county governments cut ties with the company in August alone, and that about three times as many local governments have dropped Flock in 2026 as in the previous five years combined. TechCrunch reported in July that even the Los Angeles Police Department, the third largest police force in the country, let its three-year Flock contract expire over "serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues." Florida and Texas have also said they will stop using the system, according to TechCrunch.
The company is also facing increasing legal pressure. TechCrunch reported last week that a federal judge in Oklahoma, Sara Hill, ruled that a search of a woman's license plate number in a Flock Safety database by a Tulsa sheriff's deputy violated her Fourth Amendment rights. The search was made without a warrant, and the judge described Flock's system as "a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance" that "collects information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times, and it serves up the information to law enforcement on demand." The ruling is not binding precedent, TechCrunch noted, but it is one of the first times a federal judge has ruled that a Flock search was unconstitutional. Separately, Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Block Flock Act on Oct. 2, which would bar federal agencies from using automated license plate readers like Flock's.
WIRED has long covered Flock Safety in Georgia, where one police officer used the system to track two other cops, as well as his ex and her friend. In a suburb of Atlanta, the city shared license-plate data from Flock with over 2,000 organizations. As at police departments around the country, dozens of officers have been arrested, fired or forced to resign for abusing access to automated license-plate readers to search for people, sometimes to stalk them, without a warrant or proper permission, TechCrunch reported. Drivers have been stopped, held at gunpoint or even jailed because of errors with their license plates, and a reporter for The Drive was tracked for days after his review vehicle's plate was mistakenly flagged as stolen by a Flock camera.
In his All-In podcast interview last month, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said that "the biggest damage" from the backlash against his surveillance network had been to "internal morale," according to WIRED. He asked why people were so angry when, he said, Flock had been doing the same thing for nine years. The company has raised about $1.2 billion in venture capital to date and was valued at more than $8 billion in a funding round that closed in April, and some people familiar with the matter told WIRED they believe Flock may end up selling off parts of the company or all of it.
Flock is facing pressure from a number of different angles. While it is hard to tell whether the staff cuts signal the end of Flock as we know it, or a reboot of the company, cities and counties across the country are increasingly wary of the company's license plate readers. And as for the Georgians living under thousands of the cameras? They're wondering when the system will be curtailed, not if.
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