Flock Safety has not terminated any customer contracts over misuse of its licence plate camera technology, the company's chief executive Garrett Langley told reporters on Wednesday. Langley made the remarks during an on-air conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.

Flock, the Atlanta-based surveillance camera operator with more than 100,000 units deployed across the United States, would terminate its relationship with any client found to be knowingly violating the law, a company representative indicated. The representative added that while no such termination had yet occurred, the option remained available for cases involving clear breaches of legal compliance.

The position comes as separate reporting identified dozens of law enforcement officers who faced arrest, dismissal, or forced resignation after misusing access to the company's national database. Some accounts indicated the platform had been directed toward monitoring individuals who had not agreed to be tracked and were unaware it was occurring.

Legislators in both Florida and Texas have enacted restrictions targeting those cameras. A federal judge determined this month that a single police use of Flock's location-tracking system constituted a form of mass surveillance that ran counter to constitutional protections.

Langley pointed to what he described as false information circulating online as a factor behind the pushback, according to a news outlet. In his remarks, he described social media as having become deeply entangled with the political sphere while also carrying a substantial volume of false and misleading content.

One council member from Illinois, according to the same account, had ended a municipal contract tied to facial recognition technology — a capability Flock does not provide. Langley described that development as an opportunity for Flock to take greater ownership of how its narrative was shaped and communicated.

Flock's audio-monitoring equipment picks up only gunfire, a company representative stated, according to a news outlet. However, according to a statement from Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel to a news outlet, the platform's gunshot detection technology — while built around identifying gunfire — also registers fireworks, sideshows, and potential vehicle collisions, a capability that the company's own published materials confirm.

According to Lewbel, Langley's position was that the platform neither listens to nor processes what people say. Lewbel also noted that the technology lacks the ability to detect human screaming or signs of distress.

Langley later identified Flock's decision to roll out human-distress detection among a restricted group of customers as a misstep by the company. The feature was subsequently withdrawn.

Drawing a parallel to autonomous vehicles, Langley argued that Flock operates along similar lines — technology that, in his view, outperforms human operators on safety. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Langley argued that one isolated incident did not warrant a pause on the technology, adding that communities working toward more consistent accountability for wrongdoing should not abandon that pursuit when obstacles arise, according to one outlet's account of his remarks.

Flock's role, as he described it, would be to offer city officials suggested defaults and guidance while keeping any binding rules or required policies to a minimum. He also stated that during that month, Flock directed clients to shorten how long they retained data, reducing the window from 30 days to seven.

Langley told the audience that Flock's roughly 6,000 US-based clients break down with around 60 percent drawn from law enforcement. He also indicated he did not support any prospect of selling the company.

A published report this month put Flock's planned workforce reduction at around 18 percent. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Langley told attendees that building a company of lasting consequence can require difficult trade-offs, which he described as justified by the scale of people whose lives are affected by what Flock delivers.

Roughly 20 people had gathered in front of the Moscone Center by the time Langley took the stage, with a television news outlet placing the crowd there approximately an hour before the appearance. Protesters dressed in red robes drawn from The Handmaid's Tale, with cardboard surveillance cameras fixed to their heads, voiced the position that no public agreement had been given for the surveillance.

Kara Starkey, a protest attendee, told a broadcaster that the measures constituted broad-based surveillance the public had never agreed to. Ortiz, who organises for the local group known as The Wolves, questioned whether AI-driven mass surveillance offered any genuine grounds for public reassurance.