Flock Safety Offers Buyouts to Staff as Cities Drop Camera Contracts
The license-plate-reader company rolls out its largest-ever severance package amid contract losses, vandalism and privacy backlash.
What to know
- Flock Safety, valued above $8 billion, is offering its largest-ever voluntary severance package amid customer losses and vandalism against its cameras.
- Dozens of cities have ended or declined to renew license-plate-reader contracts following reports of privacy abuses and opaque data sharing.
- A significant share of Flock's roughly 1,500 employees may seek to depart; without buyouts the company would likely have had to lay off staff.
- Sources tell WIRED the cash-strapped company could eventually sell off parts or all of its business.
“the biggest damage”
Garrett Langley, Flock Safety CEO · All-In podcast, quoted by WIRED ↗ · Jul 31
Garrett Langley Flock Safety CEOFlock Safety Surveillance/license-plate-reader companyParesh Dave WIRED reporterDhruv Mehrotra WIRED reporter
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
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WIRED reveals scale of expected departures and sale speculation
WIRED reported that a significant share of Flock's roughly 1,500 employees may seek to leave, that most applicants will be approved, and that some employees suspect the cash-strapped company could eventually sell off parts or all of its business.
“When you see enough of the vandalism … you know the writing is the wall…”
— person familiar with Flock's severance plan -
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Flock is shedding employees as people find out about all the data they collect and demand their cities and towns cut off ties with the surveillance system. https://www. wired.com/story/flock-is-offer ing-voluntary-buyouts-to-employees/ # tech # technology # politics # uspol # news
2 more of the top 3 · 60 posts in this stretch
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Flock Turns to Employee Buyouts to Avoid Layoffs Instead of layoffs, Flock is offering voluntary buyouts to cut headcount. It shows a new way for tech startups to handle scaling down.
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Facebook had a good idea for hiring and retention: pay the highest, and that will boost college students' perceptions of how cool you are.Facebook got a lot of mileage out of that, running long after public scandals confirmed the early hints of possible sketchiness, back when Google was an attractive alternative.Though I don't know that's still…
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Flock opens voluntary severance program for employees — Flock began accepting applications Friday for a voluntary separation program, described internally as its most generous severance ever, roughly double prior offers, with employees given until October 2 to apply.
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background
Vandalism wave and contract losses squeeze Flock — Many of Flock's contracts went unrenewed or were dropped this year, threatening revenue targets, while a surge in vandalism against its cameras unexpectedly raised expenses.
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WIRED documents officer misuse and opaque data-sharing — In the preceding month, WIRED reported officers allegedly using Flock to track former romantic partners and colleagues, exposed how widely agencies share access to the system, and detailed how little is known about the devices' manufacturing and data collection.
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Langley says backlash mainly hurt internal morale — On the All-In podcast last month, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said the biggest damage from public backlash against the company was to employee morale rather than the business itself.
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Flock raises funding at $8 billion-plus valuation — Flock closed a funding round in April that valued the surveillance startup at more than $8 billion, even as scrutiny of its license-plate-reader network was building.
Also covered reported alongside — the timeline has no entry for these yet
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first by Slashdot, 5d ago · also HN Frontpage, Beehaw, Wired, Mashable
3 more headlines
- Flock Offers Employees Buyouts as Customers Flee HN Frontpage · 5d ago
- Flock offers workers voluntary buyouts amid backlash Mashable · 4d ago
- Signs of Crisis at Flock as It Offers Employees Buyouts to Quit and Get Off Payroll Mastodon · 2d ago
and 3 smaller pieces
What people are saying 21 voices from 4 sites · best of 60 · verbatim
- Sep 21
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it turns out that it's possible to kill a company. who's next? https:// futurism.com/artificial-intell igence/flock-crisis-employee-buyouts
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I agree. They are a much better option than nearly every republican than I've ever looked into, and I would literally vote for the decaying corpse of a llama over trump... But a lot of dems have a lot of issues that they don't seem keen to be addressing. Especially the fact that they seem to be more worried about their image than they are about…
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if you work for flock then I am judging you as being harmful to information security generally, to national security generally, and to my safety specifically. quitting is the least that they can do. https://www. neowin.net/news/people-hate-fl ock-so-much-that-its-employees-are-now-demoralized-and-thinking-of-quitting/
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No. It should be “leave and leak proprietary information that breaks the business model”. What proprietary information? I'd hate to burst your bubble, but Flock isn't exactly doing anything groundbreaking. Cameras with built-in modems, image recognition/OCR and a centralized database. You can build a proof of concept used for recognizing cats…
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> “Because you go on to X or you go on to Reddit and you go, why are people so mad at us when we've been doing the same thing for nine years?” Langley said. “And why are they so mad at us for things we don't do? And we just want people to be safe.”I can't believe this is being said with a straight face. "We've been dumping chemicals in this river…
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There is also often enough offered in these sorts of jobs in terms of interesting or engaging work that doesn't mean you are directly implementing evil shit. I came across an essay someone in tech wrote that basically was "the problems were interesting and the collaborative work felt rewarding, but this was made to kill people". Unfortunately I…
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Aw. Poor Flock employees. "Flock is reportedly now offering severance packages to employees who want to leave the company through a "voluntary employee separation program," which is expected to be open until October 2nd, with workers receiving feedback on whether their bids got accepted on October 9." "Apparently, morale at the company is so low…
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They need to pay for things like food, rent, health insurance, and childcare. We're way past the scale and technological development where these things need not be a concern on an individual level, but it's the perfect tool of coercion while maintaining a facade of so called freedom.
- Sep 20
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Fuck yeah! We will defeat the surveillance state. All ALPRs, indeed all corporations, need to be shown that they do not actually have impunity for constant lies and lawless behavior. Thank you to everyone who protested, went to city council, or even picked up a hacksaw. https://www. neowin.net/news/people-hate-fl…
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Sources: ⚪ TechCrunch +5 → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/19/flock-reportedly-tries-to-shrink-workforce-with-employee-buyouts/ 🔴 Hacker News -60 →
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Until there’s real civil liabilities around how companies use and share data there will never be an economic reason for any company to respect their consumers. When the data is worth more than the core business, the equilibrium is completely thrown off. It’s the same forces pushing AI companies to effectively give away inference while their…
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This is a good case for making some laws which ensure entities responsible cannot hide from the public by white labeling, changing names, etc.In other words, since surveillance of the public by definition involves the public, the public should have a say in how it is conducted and the companies that attempt to profit from it should have their…
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It's really interesting to me that Flock was the straw that broke the surveillance camel's back, and not, I don't know, the home assistant devices from trillion-dollar advertising and e-commerce companies that listen to everything in your home.
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Ah-ha-ha-hah-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!!! 😄 😂 😆 🤣 Flock Safety announced a voluntary employee separation program on Friday, offering a “generous” severance package to those who want to leave amid growing backlash against the surveillance technology company, according to an internal email shared with WIRED. https://www. wired.com/story/flock-is-offer…
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Are you kidding me? You think stomping on a tiny lug wrench can loosen a lug nut that was overtightened by a machine and then driven for thousands of miles and exposed to elements? You're the reason I've carried four way tire irons my entire life, just for the HOPE that stomping might work.
- Sep 19
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My city right outside Austin scrapped it. Its even split between red and blue voters and support for abandoning flock was overwhelmingly in favor of abandoning. Makes me feel good to see others banding together for positive change in today’s political climate in the USA….even if the motivation comes from self interest (too used to “get your…
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Without buyouts, Flock would "almost certainly" need to lay off staff. https:// techcrunch.com/2026/09/19/floc k-reportedly-tries-to-shrink-workforce-with-employee-buyouts/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon
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How does wearing a camera prevent people from getting attacked? And, even if it did, how much bad behavior not in the best interests of the employees can walmart get away with? Given walmart's historical treatment and concerns over its employee's wellbeing, I think we all know the answer to those questions. One positive outcome does not negate a…
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To add cellphones are voluntary held, we as citizens love and really can’t go without them. Those who want to opt out of the GPS triangulation capabilities have dumb phones and nah, you can’t really get out of the cell tower ping triangulation. But the law protects the government from making use of that. But if you’re buying the data from shitty…
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It would be nice to think this will significantly hamper Flock and its goals and methods in any way, but it will probably just have the effect of selecting for the employees who are either true believers, or are desperate enough that they'll keep their heads down and get good work done just to keep their jobs.Sporadic vandalism, a handful of…
- Sep 18
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"NEW: Flock is offering employees "generous" buyouts as communities across the US push back against the surveillance camera network" Now the trick is to make sure that cities don't turn to less-recognizable surveillance companies doing exactly what Flock does. I am actually hopeful myself. It's not going to be easy, but it's a matter of educating…