Lots of people—dare we say most people—hate Flock. And lately, they’ve been going to increasingly creative lengths to make it known.
Privately held Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based surveillance technology company that operates a nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of passing vehicles every day.
Police claim that the tech is an important crime-fighting tool. Recently, though, it’s also become emblematic of citizen’s concerns about the ramifications of mass surveillance.
Flock is by no means the only company operating large-scale surveillance tools across the U.S. In fact, competitors like Axon, Vigilant Solutions (a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions), Genetec, and Jenoptik have all been cited by the ACLU as other installers of “creepy” license plate-reading cameras.
But Flock and its vocal founder and CEO Garrett Langley have become the undisputed center of a broader public outcry against mass surveillance—and the “Flocklash” is reaching a creative fever pitch.
Flock bottom?
Right now, Flock is facing mounting pressure from local governments, citizens, and artists to reconsider the ubiquity of its cameras.
As Fast Company reported earlier this month, more than 50 agencies or jurisdictions have canceled, suspended, or rejected Flock contracts, or deactivated the cameras since the start of 2026 amid concerns that the data can be accessed for immigration enforcement or used in unauthorized tracking.
The pushback has been so intense that, on August 13, the company announced a flurry of new guardrails on its operations.
According to an NPR review published on August 21, Flock cameras have become the target of widespread vandalism. In at least 36 states, NPR found records of the cameras being stolen, sawed down, covered in paint, and even shot at with guns.
Meanwhile, some community members are opting to use art, protest, and social media to amplify the anti-Flock message as widely as possible.
Earlier this month, photographer Brendan North began posting videos of himself creating protest art at his local Flock camera sites, which have collectively amassed several million views.
These demonstrations include pointing a mirror at a Flock camera with the phrase “Go Flock yourself,” having a toddler hold a bunch of red balloons next to a camera to frame “the innocence of a child against the heavy-handed overreach of the surveillance state,” and blindfolding a camera with the American flag.
“Surveil the rebel scum”
On August 20, an unidentified man showed up to a San Diego public safety committee meeting dressed as Darth Vader, where he proceeded to espouse his support of Flock.
“We must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the Rebel scum,” he said. One video of the meeting now has nearly 500,000 likes on Instagram.
Producer and data scientist Benn Jordan has been speaking out about Flock and other surveillance companies of its ilk for months.
On August 21, he posted a video claiming that Flock blocked him from attending its annual conference, Flock Forward, and shared that, in retaliation, he set up a spy-movie-esque van outside the conference center full of its own surveillance equipment, which he used to watch and record data from the conference.
That video now has more than 700,000 likes.
Watching the watchers
Most recently, on August 23, a group of protestors from the climate action group Sunrise Movement staged a demonstration outside the home of Chris Larsen, a cryptocurrency billionaire and a cofounder of Ripple Labs.
Larsen has worked to install private cameras across San Francisco in recent years, including by reportedly financially supporting the San Francisco Police Department’s Real-Time Investigation Center, which uses Flock technology.
At the protest, activists hoisted signs with phrases like “Does this make you feel safer, Chris?” and built their own paper surveillance cameras to “watch” the outside of Larsen’s property.
“Billionaires like Chris Larsen think they can fund the end of privacy and think they won’t be watched for it,” Sunrise Movement campaign director Kidus Girma told Fast Company in an email. “Young people are showing that this isn’t true. Young people are getting creative and using their First Amendment rights to bring surveillance to millionaires and billionaires.”
Flock did not have an immediate comment on the recent backlash against the company.
In an interview with Fox News over the weekend, Flock CEO Langley called for a national “compromise” between promoting privacy and safety.
