NEW YORK — Flock Safety Chief Executive Garrett Langley has become the target of an online pile-on that started with his public call for Americans to accept a "compromise" between privacy and public safety and has since turned into a personal campaign involving an unverified home address, a Street View blur and a Google Maps prank. This article does not publish or describe the location of any home, because the address circulating online has not been verified and publishing it could put people at risk.

The episode began in mid-August, when Langley appeared on Fox News' "Saturday in America" and argued that focusing on privacy alone "prioritizes the wrong thing," with the answer being "compromise," according to reports by Gadget Review and Neowin. A clip of the interview spread on X. Newsweek reported on August 27 that critics of the company had begun circulating an address they said belonged to Langley, and that some users shared what they said was a blurred image of the home on Google Street View. One X user wrote that the "compromise apparently doesn't apply to him," Newsweek reported. Newsweek said it had not verified the address and was not publishing or linking to it, and that it had asked Langley for comment through Flock. Primetimer reported that neither Langley nor his representative had confirmed or denied whether the address belongs to him.

The controversy flared again over the weekend. A post on X on September 26 claimed users had marked the CEO's lawn as a "public toilet" on Google Maps after it was revealed that images of the house were blurred, and Primetimer reported that users then marked the residence as a public toilet and said Langley and his........

© International Business Times