Flock offers employees a ‘most generous’ voluntary exit package as the $8 billion surveillance company weathers nationwide backlash

Flock didn’t respond to Moneywise’s request for comment, but Wired reports that the $8 billion company, which has faced both business and PR backlash over its 120,000 traffic surveillance cameras in around 6,000 communities, said the severance offers workers “transparency, respect and choice.”

The severance offer also comes roughly a month after Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a podcast interview that “the business is in good shape. We raised more money at the beginning of the year. The company’s still growing.”

But a tracker established by California-based nonprofit Secure Justice found that 391 Flock contracts have either been terminated, suspended or not renewed in U.S. communities since 2024, in many cases due to privacy, community and law enforcement abuse concerns. Some opponents of Flock cameras have also taken to vandalizing them.

All of which could make the reported details of the Flock severance package more attractive to employees eyeing a way out.

Flock offers severance options as cancellations mount

Wired reported that Flock’s exit package includes “several months of health care coverage and the ability to exercise stock options within two years after separation,” while stating some employee offers ranged into the “tens of thousands of dollars.”

The outlet also mentioned rumors that Flock “might resort to selling off parts or all of its business to stay afloat,” and that employees who accept the severance would wrap up with the company around the end of October.

The severance talk, meanwhile, comes as the company, which was founded in 2017, deals with cancellations of their services across the country.

While Flock’s website touts that its automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras “supported more than one million investigations, helped solve about 20% of reported crime in jurisdictions where Flock is operational, and helped locate more than 10,000 missing people” in 2025 alone, the company has become synonymous in some communities with privacy and surveillance overreach.

Fortune called Flock “the most pervasive surveillance network in American history — one that is increasingly drawing loud pushback from advocates worried about what’s been collected and who has access to the data.” And in August, the Washington Post counted “at least 50 law-enforcement officers” that were accused of, or charged with “using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent.”

The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, puts the known tally of U.S. law enforcement ALPR abuse at 244 incidents, including a Georgia police chief who “tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times” and a Texas sheriff’s deputy who “used 83,000 Flock ALPRs to find a woman who had allegedly had a medication abortion, at the behest of her abusive partner.”

The blowback, meanwhile, is bipartisan, with both Democratic and Republican leaders pushing back on the technology.

Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union told The Guardian that, “On the left, there’s a historical memory of law enforcement spying on and interfering with advocates for social change … On the right, there’s a long tradition of ‘don’t tread on me’ — keep the government out of my life, keep it from looking over my shoulder.”

And Secure Justice’s Brian Hofer told Ars Technica that the rate of cancellations could be concerning for Flock because “at that speed, if it goes another year, we’re talking serious money. That number is going to get huge, fast.”