Benn Jordan on Flock: contract cancellations, a Senate hearing and 18% layoffs
The Verge AI · rss · 2026-10-15
The Verge's Decoder talks to musician-turned-investigative-journalist Benn Jordan about his campaign against Flock Safety's automatic license plate readers.
- Jordan recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, the culmination of months of bipartisan backlash
- Fallout: hundreds of cities and counties canceling contracts, a Sen. Josh Hawley investigation, and a reported 18% workforce cut
- Jordan doesn't hate Flock itself—he sees its PR failures as making it low-hanging fruit while Axon and Motorola quietly build similar networks; he now reports security vulnerabilities directly to Flock's CEO
- His core argument: the real problem is the interlocking secrecy between private industry, government and law enforcement—surveillance you never voted for and can't opt out of
- He sees his YouTube investigations and collaborations with civil rights groups as an accountability function that is working
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