Flock CEO's Gunshot Detection Claims Clash With Company Marketing

Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed during a TechCrunch Disrupt appearance that the company's Gunshot Detection microphones detect "just gunshots, plain and simple," as TechCrunch first reported. When asked to reconcile this statement with the company's own marketing materials, Langley repeated, "It's just gunshots."

However, TechCrunch notes that Flock's website and FAQ section describe a wider scope of capabilities. The marketing materials state the systems can identify severe car crashes in real time, detect street takeovers, and provide alerts for fireworks and "sideshows." A company spokesperson, Paris Lewbel, told TechCrunch that while the technology is primarily for gunfire, it is also capable of detecting those other events, asserting that Langley's comments were meant to emphasize that the system is not designed to analyze speech or monitor conversations.

The discrepancy follows a history of shifting claims regarding human audio. TechCrunch reports that Flock initially announced the technology would listen for "screaming," later changing the language to "sounds of human distress" following condemnation from privacy groups. Langley told TechCrunch that the company prototyped the ability to detect if someone was being harmed or abducted based on customer requests, but later pulled that feature.

These contradictions emerge as Flock faces increasing scrutiny from the public and privacy advocates, including the ACLU. TechCrunch reports that Amazon’s Ring has ended its partnership with the company, and the states of Florida and Texas have moved to terminate their relationships with the surveillance vendor.