----------------------------------------
STORY: "Flock Is Quietly Selling Powerful Drones That Scan License Plates From the Sky," by Victor Tangermann," published by Futurism, on August 21, 2026. (I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.)
GIST: "Flock Safety is seriously struggling to beat the allegations of enabling a dystopian surveillance state."
The company has been reeling from a growing PR crisis, with a growing number of Americans vandalizing its flawed license plate-reading cameras. It’s been losing dozens of contracts with cities across the country as the controversy grows, undermining its value to police.
And now, while simultaneously promising to address glaring privacy concerns with milquetoast software updates, Flock is doubling down by selling “Drone as First Responder” (DFR) tech, in the form of drones that are equipped with powerful cameras that can inspect license plate numbers from up to 2,000 feet away, as Techspot reports.
During a Monday podcast appearance, Flock CEO Garrett Langley fleshed out the company’s latest foray into airborne camera-equipped drones, purportedly the company’s “fastest growing business unit right now.” Drones stationed on the roofs of police stations or fire departments launch to respond to 911 calls much quicker, he said, by traveling as the crow flies.
“Normally what would happen… is like one cop would have heard that, flip on the blue lights, race down there… and someone’s about to die,” Langley explained, describing a case in which a woman called 911 on a man, who later turned out to be holding a lighter, not a gun, as initially suspected. “Instead, they launch the drone.”
Langley claimed that “we have thousands and thousands of stories like that where communities are safer now with our drones. They’re safer with our cameras.”
The specs of the surveillance drones are terrifying. According to Langley, they can fly at 400 feet and reach 60 mph.
A spokesperson told Techspot that Flock has already amassed 200 customers for its DFR program, including police departments and private companies.
The program is part of a much bigger trend, with digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation warning in a July statement that “police departments across the country are lining up to launch DFR programs” and that “hundreds have cleared a necessary hurdle toward making deployment a reality.”
According to the group, over 1,000 public safety agencies have received Federal Aviation Administration waivers to automate drone operations as of February of this year.
The EFF also warned that the drones can easily “capture footage from areas typically inaccessible to a casual patrol officer — backyards, roofs, through windows — at distances that leave subjects of surveillance completely unaware of the spy in the sky.”
More on Flock: Flock’s Network Is Losing Value to Cops as More and More of Its Cameras Go Offline
The entire story can be read at:
STORY: "Flock Is Quietly Selling Powerful Drones That Scan License Plates From the Sky," by Victor Tangermann," published by Futurism, on August 21, 2026. (I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.)
SUB-HEADING: "It's the company's "fastest growing business unit."
GIST: "Flock Safety is seriously struggling to beat the allegations of enabling a dystopian surveillance state."
The company has been reeling from a growing PR crisis, with a growing number of Americans vandalizing its flawed license plate-reading cameras. It’s been losing dozens of contracts with cities across the country as the controversy grows, undermining its value to police.
And now, while simultaneously promising to address glaring privacy concerns with milquetoast software updates, Flock is doubling down by selling “Drone as First Responder” (DFR) tech, in the form of drones that are equipped with powerful cameras that can inspect license plate numbers from up to 2,000 feet away, as Techspot reports.
During a Monday podcast appearance, Flock CEO Garrett Langley fleshed out the company’s latest foray into airborne camera-equipped drones, purportedly the company’s “fastest growing business unit right now.” Drones stationed on the roofs of police stations or fire departments launch to respond to 911 calls much quicker, he said, by traveling as the crow flies.
“Normally what would happen… is like one cop would have heard that, flip on the blue lights, race down there… and someone’s about to die,” Langley explained, describing a case in which a woman called 911 on a man, who later turned out to be holding a lighter, not a gun, as initially suspected. “Instead, they launch the drone.”
Langley claimed that “we have thousands and thousands of stories like that where communities are safer now with our drones. They’re safer with our cameras.”
The specs of the surveillance drones are terrifying. According to Langley, they can fly at 400 feet and reach 60 mph.
A spokesperson told Techspot that Flock has already amassed 200 customers for its DFR program, including police departments and private companies.
The program is part of a much bigger trend, with digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation warning in a July statement that “police departments across the country are lining up to launch DFR programs” and that “hundreds have cleared a necessary hurdle toward making deployment a reality.”
According to the group, over 1,000 public safety agencies have received Federal Aviation Administration waivers to automate drone operations as of February of this year.
The EFF also warned that the drones can easily “capture footage from areas typically inaccessible to a casual patrol officer — backyards, roofs, through windows — at distances that leave subjects of surveillance completely unaware of the spy in the sky.”
More on Flock: Flock’s Network Is Losing Value to Cops as More and More of Its Cameras Go Offline
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true
