Flock CEO at TechCrunch Disrupt: Audio Mic Detects ‘Just Gunshots’

Garrett Langley, co-founder and chief executive of surveillance technology company Flock, stood before a live audience at TechCrunch Disrupt and made a narrow claim about his company’s audio collection product. When asked directly whether Flock’s microphones listen for more than gunfire, he said it is “just gunshots.”

The statement stood in tension with the company’s own website, which describes an Audio Detection system that not only pinpoints gunfire but also identifies street takeovers, severe crashes, fireworks, and sideshows. A spokesperson for Flock subsequently clarified the distinction, saying the technology is primarily used to detect gunfire but is “also capable of detecting fireworks, sideshows, and potential car crashes,” while emphasizing that the system is not designed to monitor conversations or analyze speech.

Langley’s remarks came during a public interview with TechCrunch editor-in-chief Connie Loizos, framed as a defense of his product against what he called misinformation. The exchange unfolded in front of protesters who had gathered outside the venue in San Francisco, reflecting a broader public unease about license plate reading and ambient audio surveillance that has grown in recent months.

The tension between the CEO’s on-stage description and Flock’s published marketing has been building. When the company first announced its Gunshot Detection feature last year, it said the technology would listen for sounds of “screaming.” Privacy advocates condemned that language as evidence the company was listening for human voices, and Flock amended its website to say “sounds of human distress.” The company later said it pulled the distress detection capability from customers who were testing it.

During the interview, Langley acknowledged some missteps while describing how the product evolved. He said certain customers with devices installed in parking lots asked whether the system could alert them if someone was being abducted or harmed. The company prototyped that capability and rolled it out to a handful of customers before encountering significant pushback. He then said the decision was made to restrict the technology to gunshots only.

An FAQ on Flock’s website still states that the Gunshot and Audio Detection systems can detect fireworks, sideshows, and “other disruptive community events,” and notes that the company’s detection library is “continually expanding to include emerging threats that are relevant” to individual customers. That language has become a focal point for critics who argue the company’s capabilities are broader than its leaders publicly describe.

The scrutiny facing Flock extends well beyond the question of what its microphones hear. Privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have pressed the company and its public safety customers on the risks of mass audio surveillance. In some communities, opponents of the technology have gone further, destroying camera equipment in protest.

The pressure appears to be producing concrete business consequences. Texas and Florida have ended their relationships with Flock, and Amazon’s Ring has terminated its partnership with the company. Those departures represent a notable contraction for a firm that has positioned itself as a major player in the automated public safety monitoring space.

On the scale of the hardware itself, Langley said the number of Flock microphones is comparable to ShotSpotter, which Wired reported had roughly 25,000 microphones deployed as of 2024. ShotSpotter has operated in that market for nearly three decades and has faced its own periodic criticism and legal challenges regarding detection accuracy and civil rights implications.

The audio surveillance debate intersects with a patchwork of state wiretapping laws. Several states require two-party consent before any conversation can be recorded, which raises separate legal questions from the company’s stated design goal of not capturing speech. Public safety agencies that deploy these systems must weigh those legal risks alongside the promised benefits of earlier awareness of potential incidents.

As of the conclusion of the TechCrunch event, the company maintained that its Audio Detection technology does not currently detect human screaming or distress and is not designed to monitor conversations. Whether that position holds as the detection library expands remains one of the unresolved questions at the center of the controversy.