In Leaked Audio, Flock CEO Tells Cops Backlash to the Company Isn't Real

everdrive

Better not prosecute people who cut down the cameras then, since that's part of the non-real backlash.

CGMthrowaway

As with most antistate issues today, there is a mix of bots/institutional interference (both foreign and domestic), and real people. Both can be true.

rexpop

I'm attending in-person local political organizing meetings and we're all just locals concerned about, among other things, Flock. I would like to personally register my own homegrown, organic, hard-working American backlash.

BoxwoodSeed

Historically it was an easy step going from "these people are not real" to "these people are now dead".

01HNNWZ0MV43FF

"Paid protesters" Every accusation is a confession. Flock pays for support. They have a marketing department and they tell cops what to tell elected officials to think.

derbOac

Clearly a company denying that the public comprises real people with real autonomy should be entrusted with privacy issues.

alexjplant

> “I give my wife a lot of credit. She was, like, you should never apologize,” Langley said. “Sure, people make mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes in the last nine years. I made a lot of mistakes this summer. But we do good work.” So this guy admits he did things that he shouldn't have then contends that he shouldn't have to say sorry for them? Am I reading this right? Isn't the point of an apology to acknowledge the bad outcome and signal to aggrieved parties that the offender will try avoid repeating the negative behavior? If yes and this guy is refusing to do it then what does that say about his world view?

pessimizer

You can't blame Flock. They're making the very safe bet that cops are very, very stupid and have a lot of xenophobic, conspiratorial theories about crime. Meanwhile, Flock is in and of itself a conspiracy. The only way to fight (imagined, arbitrary) conspiracies is (of course) to conspire. They won't fight fair, so you can't either. It's important to mention that mainstream liberals and European radical NATO centrists believe exactly the same thing, just aimed at the people who they're afraid of. Neither side, the social liberal centrists or the anti-social liberal centrists, is going to slow the adoption of Flock at all. Eventually somebody is going to drag out Obama (at significant cost) to defend it in some commencement speech, and he will also blame the Russian Chinese anti-Semitic mullahs, and youthful idealism. To "No Kings" liberals, this will be completely different. It's a false equivalence, they'll say. Somebody taught them that a few years ago. Then they'll say something about "whataboutism," and finish up by explaining how two things can be true at the same time.

rconti

> Langley suggested during the session with Rausch that eventually the opposition to Flock will die down: “Whenever this industry finds a highly effective tool, it has to go through this period of intense debate. But then you get on the other side. I think right now we’re not at the bottom, but we’re real, dang, near close to it and about to come back up on the other side.” So every other law enforcement tool has also been subjected to russian troll farms and eventually the fake furor dies down? Or is he admitting that those of us who don't stand to make billions off of a private surveillance network are actually the real humans here?

Zigurd

The Flock CEO is another example of investor blindness to founder weirdness. It used to be a positive signal if a founder was a bit odd. But compared to current tech industry leaders, what's odd? Garrett Langley scares the normies. That's fine if your audience is just cops. But it doesn't go over well with the public at large. By many accounts Steve Jobs could be a raging asshole, but he never showed that face to the public. But if the people advising you are accelerationists with a thing for the antichrist, you're going to be clueless about what normal people think of you.

api

Why you shouldn't hang out in echo chambers, at least not exclusively. I'm sure in this guy's echo chambers it's all great.

tehlike

The anti-Americanness Langley exhibits boggles my mind.

georgemcbay

As soon as you make vague and unsubstantiated claims that people physically gathering to protest against you (or your company) are paid protestors you immediately lose whatever credibility you had in the first place (though you likely had very little already if this is where you are) in the eyes of anyone with a functional brain.

aftbit

Ah yes, the "all criticism is fake news" strategy.

isoprophlex

Is this "unreal backlash" in the room with us right now?

tastyface

Flock (YC S17)

chuckadams

Yep, Florida ordering you to remove every one of your cameras from state highways didn't happen. Entire states moving to ban your product isn't a thing. And of course there are no tanks in Baghdad.

beart

Most of the comments here are focusing on crimes in urban areas. The town I live in has a population of about 6,000. It also has low crime. But the municipal government has installed several flock cameras. I struggle to understand how these benefit me, as a citizen of the town. They definitely make me feel uncomfortable whenever I drive past, knowing that someone, somewhere is likely tracking and cataloguing my movements.