How Police Are Using Flock Cameras to Track Women and Erase State Lines

Bridget Todd breaks down the proliferation of Flock cameras and how they're used to stalk women and hurt marginalized communities by law enforcement.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny, and I'm hoping to stuff I've
never told you, predicted by hurried you, and today we
are once again thrilled to be joined by the dependable,
delightful Bridget Todd. Welcome Bridget.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I don't think I've ever been called dependable before. I
like it.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
You are dependable one, oh most dependable. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I think I was just trying to find a spot
for me and that's something. But to be fair, I'm
pretty much am. But it was an odd superlative.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
You are very dependable too.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
I agree, that's a that's a fitting superlative. Did you
get us a senior superlative or a yearbook superlative? Except
christ I realized here, Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I like how you had a moment of I was like,
wait a minute.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Computing that, You're like, wait, Noel, let me ask that again. Annie.
Did you have a senior superlative or a yearbook superlative? Uh?
I did?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I I believe the one I got was most likely
to be successful. Oh, but we had a lot of
fun ones. And so a friend of mine got like
most likely to have the best life selling bananas in
South America or something. But I think I got a
boring one. I mean it's good, it's great, but uh, successful,

(01:38):
I think that's what I got.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
I feel that both of these were accurate. Samantha, you
are very dependable. Annie, you are successful.

Speaker 5 (01:47):
What about you? Did you get one?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
I got one? It was freakin' frack? Which it was?

Speaker 4 (01:52):
It was basically, yeah, basically, Oh, these two people who
are always together, you're real freakin' frack. So yeah, me
and my good friend Christina got freakin' freck another Pristia.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I guess people don't know. Yes, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah for listeners, I this is actually a problem that
I've had. The topic you've brought today, Bridget, has related
to something we were just discussing. But we've had a
lot of tech problems today over at sixteenth. In the
application we used to record it, usually I remember to

(02:36):
change my name to Annie because the person's account I
use is not mine, not under my name. And I
learned this lesson because we had Michelle Norris, who's amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Oh my god, my idol, I.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Love her on the show and I realized halfway in
that the name I con under my video was incorrect,
and I was like, this is this poor woman, and
I'm she's a pro, so I'm sure she did research
before coming in. But that was not my name at all.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
So did she call you Christina?

Speaker 1 (03:16):
She did not call me Christina, but I'm pretty sure
there was a moment where she, like I could tell,
she double checked to make sure, like she was looking
on the internet to make sure this is her actual
name is Annie and not Christina.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
What's funny is I called you Annie Christina for a
moment and the re and I've known both of these
ladies for like fifteen years, so I go their name.
But I'm coming out of another podcast recording with three
people that I don't that I'm like meeting for the
first time, and so I trained myself to look at
the name and the pronouns on the screen, and I

(03:51):
truly just had a like a brain rewiring moment, And
wait a minute, this is what are you doing? Where
are you looking at the person's name?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
That to say it? That shows where my brain is
at right now, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Well, you've also got a lot going on, as always, Bridget.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
How have you been? Things aren't good? I as I
think I've shared with the sminty listeners.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
I have an audiobook coming out called Love at First
Prompt comes out on July fourteenth.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
So I have been kind of switching into.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Book promotion high gear, which I know you two have
also experienced. I in some ways it's more complicated than
the process of writing the book itself.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
But yeah, that has been all consuming in all the ways.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
I am so excited for this audiobook. You got to
come back on and talk about it.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh, I anytime.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
I meant to, like my publishing team, I mean, and
I actually curious if this was your experience too.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
They have me doing every podcast known to man. They're like, if.

Speaker 4 (05:03):
Any junior high you know, any like high school newspapers
reach out to you, the answer is yes, no, interview
is too small, do all of them. So was that
was that also your experience in trying to launch a book?

Speaker 1 (05:16):
No, but I'll just say this delicately. They kind of
had a set method that other podcast before us who
had published a book had used, and by the time
they got to us, they just were kind of like,

(05:37):
this is like the bear minimum. This is what we're
going to do. But that did involve going on a
lot of radio shows, and that's I know, we discussed
this with you bridget a while back because we kind
of got a weird guys trying to I guess call
us out about trans women. Yeah, but that was kind

(06:01):
of the extent we did not get asked to go
to like high school podcast.

Speaker 5 (06:07):
That's interesting though, No, I think we got caught up
in the COVID aftermath.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
And this had been in the plannings for a long while,
even with host changes, even with show changes, and then
COVID happened, and then everything kind of just stood still,
and then with the changeovers that happened in all of that,
I think it just became not a chore necessarily, but

(06:33):
a thing to check off the list.

Speaker 5 (06:35):
Yeah, so as much.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
As like Anny and I felt like we put into
it hoping to do some good things with it, you know.
And the honestly, the audio part was a surprise to us.
We didn't realize that was going to be a part
of the mix that wasn't told us, which is a
shouldn't have been surprising, but it was for some reason
to us. And then as it rolled out, it literally

(06:58):
was like, Okay, it's done, moving on to the next one,
because they would think there was another I See project
after us, So not that it wasn't like we were
excited to do it. And of course we're both very nervous,
anxious people, so doing extra things we have to plan ahead.

Speaker 5 (07:13):
So they put us.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
In a like quick turnaround, radio edits or shout outs,
which were all like ten minutes, like not even ten minutes,
I think like five minute segments. And we had a
few specifically one in textas and being like trying to
get a gets you a moment and we were kind
of like, you know nothing about the show, you know
nothing about us, although you know nothing about my personality,

(07:35):
and I'm.

Speaker 5 (07:35):
Gonna scratch back. So that was kind of one of
those moments.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
But yeah, I think our experience was different in general
and how it came out because of all of those
underlying factors.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
I won't move it, but if I were to move
my laptop to pivot to show my living room, your
book lives on my coffee table, So every guest that
comes into my home has a thumb through because it's
it's it has a very prominent I have, like a
I love a coffee table book, and so it's like, yeah,
I have I have the the nice hardcover version of
your book, and so it fits beautifully and it has

(08:11):
a beautiful cover, so it's like, really, you know, it's
an inviting centerpiece of my room and anybody who comes
in is like, oh, what's this and has a thumb through.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, I have to say I often think of the
fact that aren't you on like CNN and you're you
were on some news network and your apartment got ranked.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
Yeah, talk about talk about early days of COVID.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
I can tell you exactly what it was.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
I was on MSNBC and this was in the like
truly in the early days of COVID, and I have
I I have since updated it, but I have this.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
I had this sofa that was such an albatross.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
It made several moves with me, but I didn't have
enough money to upgrade it. It just was one of the
those big, fat, gray, drab sofas that clearly just had
seen better days. And usually I'll throw a throw a
blanket over it. But do you remember Room Raiders? Was
this a count that when you would go on MSNBC
or do a do a virtual hit in COVID, they

(09:15):
would like rank your the background and they tore my
couch apart, and deservedly so can I tell you something else?
A week later, I bought a new couch. The room
raiders got in your head.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yes, I honestly, I'd always I could. I could talk
crap about that couch all day.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
Also, not to not to just go off on this couch,
but it was one of the couches where the the
cushions are embedded within the couch and so there is
no way to unzip the cushion and like want like
launder it, and so the couch is the couch. I
have cats, and so hear me when I say this.

(09:56):
If you have an if you need to buy a
new couch, make sure that you can remove of the
cushions and unzip the case that they're in and wash it.
Otherwise your life will be miserable. I will never make
that mistake again. I don't even think I bought that couch.
I think I inherit it from somebody's like a roommate's
sister who was moving out. You know, those pieces of
furniture in your life.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
We still have some.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
As an adult in my mid forties, we still have some.
I'm not going but partially I will say it is
because my dog is so hairy and it was kind
of like, we don't want to go super nice furniture
right now because of all of that. But at the
same time, I'm like, but I want to keep my
doll for a very long time, so I don't I
don't know what the solution is. Yeah, yeah, I just

(10:42):
feel like some type of way when you starty getting
like the adult furniture, you're like, oh, I'm grown now.
But yeah, that kind of advice, like being able to
remove the cover that is really important, but also realizing
that dryers are not always your friend because sometimes that
will shrink it and you.

Speaker 5 (10:56):
Have a whole other set of troubles.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
Imagine messing up your couch cushion covers so that you
can't put the cushions back in the cover. What would
you even do? I guess order a new that's that's
such a conundrum.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
So ours didn't straight shrink, but it did shrink a little.
We had to like force it in, like we won't
make this. But and if finally stress back out, I've been.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Told there's some like secret place because I have a
couch that you can't remove the cover, and also the cushions.
It's not like a cushion it's just a foam thing
that's that's in the couch. I've been told there's a
secret spot Nikea I can go to and they'll they'll
hook me up. But I don't know if it's true.

(11:44):
But a call us scares, but it is an Ikea couch,
so maybe. But yeah, somebody told me there's like a
place you can go in Ikea and tell them like
it's this model. I need help and they'll give you
they'll hook you up.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Wow, imagine somebody help. Yeah, like, oh, I got a guy.
I don't worry.

Speaker 6 (12:09):
I got a guy at Ikia, don't. I got my
guy out there, don't. But I do think about that
all the time. Bridget that you cut your room got raided.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
It was, Yeah, it was really the kick in the butt.
I needed to get rid of that couch. I hated
that catch so much that when I got a new couch,
if I could have, I would have burned the old one.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
I would have burned it like an ethogy.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
If I could have saved the area just in cases.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Well, So it's interesting because the topic you brought for
us today, we actually were discussing earlier with friend of
the show Eves because we were talking about technology and
how you know, looking back, how things have changed and
looking forward, what are you afraid of? It's Amantha specifically

(13:04):
brought up this topic, so, well, what are we talking
about today, bridget.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Today we are talking about block.

Speaker 4 (13:13):
I know that you two have heard of flock, especially
living in Georgia, because flock is big in Georgia, but.

Speaker 5 (13:19):
The base out of Georgia.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
And I have a couple of like Georgia specific incidents
that happened involving flock. But for folks who don't know,
flock is an automated license plate reader sometimes called an ALPR,
and it's this system of cameras that are all interconnected,
where it's cameras and license plate readers, and so if
you drive by one of their cameras, they capture your car,

(13:43):
they capture your license plate. And importantly, it is an
interconnected network. So law enforcement from one state can use
this interconnected system of cameras and license plate readers to
access information glean from other states.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yes, and just kind of pop up. And Samantha has
experience with that.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Oh my gosh, what has been your experience with flock?

Speaker 5 (14:07):
I have one directly pointed out my house.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
No hush.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
When it came up, it became a whole thing from
my partner and I, who is very very tech aware
and like on top of all the things, have been
watching videos way before it became.

Speaker 5 (14:24):
Really known about who they were and what they were doing.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
So we've definitely been very wary of the situation against
specifically in Georgia, and watching where they're putting them up
and why and who approved them. But yeah, we have
one directly pointed at our house.

Speaker 4 (14:43):
That is I'm sorry to hear that that is upsetting
and no one understands.

Speaker 2 (14:49):
I yeah, it's it's no good.

Speaker 4 (14:52):
And the thing about Flock is that they were sort
of sold to us and sold to cities as this
tool to keep us safe, right, find stolen cars, find
bad guys, find kids who've been kidnapped, or.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Amber alert children.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
And the thing about block is that the tool does
not distinguish between law enforcement genuinely and investigating crime and
law enforcement wondering where's my ex wife tonight, what's she
up to tonight?

Speaker 2 (15:21):
My estranged girlfriend, what she doing tonight?

Speaker 4 (15:24):
And I bet you can probably guess how some law
enforcement male law enforcement agents are using flock it is
to stalk and harass the women in their lives, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
So, yeah, and you know, it's a really clear pattern
across almost every case of this happening, where it's a
male officer using this system to track either a current
or former romantic partner, sometimes that person's family, and just
searches dozens or hundreds of times over months where this

(16:02):
person is going, what they're doing, their whereabouts, And this
kind of abuse is almost entirely caught by accident. I
want to be clear, it's not like the police are
policing themselves or that block is doing a meaningful job
of making sure that this tool is not being a
misused by law enforcement. No, either the victim discovers it

(16:23):
herself or a third party transparency project or a journalist
will find it in public records. So internal department audits
essentially never catch this. It is the people who are
targeted or journalists who are doing the work of sniffing
it out.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Well, okay, so what does that normally? What does this
usually entail? Then?

Speaker 4 (16:47):
Yeah, so four or four media shout out to them
because they've been doing so much reporting on this for
a while. They've really been breaking down what these cases
look like. So there's one case that they've reported on
where Jamarius Brown was an Orange City lorda police officer,
ran his ex girlfriend's license plates through flock at least
sixty nine times over the summer of twenty twenty four.

(17:08):
He also searched her mom's license plate at least twenty
four times and her dad's at least fifteen times. Now,
Brown was not subtle about this, which really tells me
that he, I guess, did not think that he was
going to get caught, or perhaps did not even think
he was doing anything.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Wrong or actionable.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
Another police officer caught him doing it while they were
sitting in their.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Police cars or his cruisers together.

Speaker 4 (17:33):
In an affidavit that four or four media obtained, it
is described that at one point Brown used flock to
catch his ex girlfriend in a lie about her whereabouts,
and then turned to his colleague and asked him if
he wanted to join a quote stakeout to find her car.
According to that affidavit, it wasn't just flock he was using,

(17:54):
you know, Flock was part of it, but that he
had access to as a police officer. But he also
had planted an Apple air tag in her wallet and
controlled aspects of her daily life down to how much
makeup that she wore. And so, you know, it's not
as if Block is the chief way that this is
playing out. But if you're a law enforcement officer and

(18:14):
you have access to this warrantless trove of information about
the real time whereabouts about somebody a woman that you're stalking,
clearly it's a pretty big piece of how that stalking
campaign comes together.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, that's wow. To it just feels so excessive, Oh gosh.
And then to use this technology for it, it's ridiculous
because we already know that like it can happen, cyberstocking

(18:48):
can happen in a lot of different ways. But this
is Yeah, that's really terrifying.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Yeah, this police officer Brown, he admitted doing this to investigators,
telling quote, it was dumb as hell on my end,
emotions flowing, mind going. So that investigation did conclude that
he quote knowingly and intentionally accessed the password productive computer
systems Block and David, which is Florida's DMV database to

(19:16):
run the license plates of vehicles that his ex frequently
drove for his own personal reasons. There was no work related, justifiable.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Reason to do it.

Speaker 4 (19:24):
Now again, this is he has admitted this. The investigation
has confirmed that he did. You know, you might think
law enforcement officer using the tools, the tech tools presented
to him for his own unjustifiable nefarious means gonna have
some a steep punishment, right right, That's probably what.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
You would think. I am so sorry to say.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
He was charged with stocking and hacking related crimes and
served one day in prison and five years of probation
police policing, the police, am I right?

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Oh? One day? Gosh, who how big of a problem

(20:20):
are we talking here?

Speaker 2 (20:22):
So, Ben is a great question.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
According to the Institute for Justice, which is a civil
rights legal group who has been documenting this for a while,
they documented at least eighteen separate cases nationwide of officers
using license plate reading systems like flock to stalk romantic interests,
current partners x, and in one case just a total stranger,
a separate tracker.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
The ALPR Abuse.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
Library documented twenty specific cases that they categorized as stalking
and targeting. Block itself towed four or four media that
it was aware of fifteen incidents of abuse, which the
company says were surfaced because of the transparency and accountability
features deliberately built into the platform. Flock points out that
it has one hundred and forty thousand monthly active users,
so they're really trying to frame this abuse as statistically rare,

(21:08):
which we'll come back to later. But both of the
outlets that I just mentioned, the Institute for Justice and
the ALPR Abuse Library, both agree that the numbers that
they found are almost certainly an undercount because officers can
inter vague or fabricated reasons for a search, like sometimes look,
they'll put tests or investigations. It's not always clear, you know,

(21:31):
It's not like an officer's gonna put like find out
where my check's wife is into the search database. So
they're they're putting in ways, they're putting in words to
intentionally dodge scrutiny.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
It's feels odd because as Flock is saying, see, we
caught these things as it was our transparency, when in actuality,
flock itself has been caught, the company itself has been
caught doing similar things here in Dunwoody in joy made
huge headlines. I don't know, I'm sure you're probably aware,
and we're going to talk about a little more, but
the fact that the vice president of Flock was caught

(22:09):
with file that says gymnastics or gym, which was a
Flock camera pointed into a children's gymnastics building and had
files on it, as well as other locations that were
private companies, which that's a whole different thing that I'm
very creeped out by because we have locations here that
are just in the parking lot, like the Flock cameras
are surrounding the entire parking lot, but not actually towards

(22:30):
the streets.

Speaker 5 (22:31):
So it's a little odd to me.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
But we have situations like that where they have concerning
cases that's within the employees high up doing the similar things,
but in more nefarious ways, it seems.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
So I'm glad you brought that up. Importantly.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
The reason why we know the way that Flock was
being used in Dunwoodie, Georgia, is because of a resident
at a resident named Jason Hunter discovered that Flock was
accessing cameras inside of a children's gymnasium and he did
that through like public open records requests, and so he

(23:09):
basically brought his findings to the city and was like,
what reason would it be for block employees to be
accessing the cameras inside of the you know, gymnastics room
of a rec center, Like what possible reason? And so

(23:31):
he presented all of this information and here's my thing.
The city still re upped their contract with Flock even
after that. We talked about this on my podcast or
owner Bros.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
On the Internet.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
I have a theory about what's going on here, particularly
in the Dunwoody, Georgia case, and this is just my
anecdotal theory.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
I think that there's a dynamic going on where.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
People think, oh, the cameras are to keep you safe
from bad guys.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Bad guys are like strangers, people from out of town.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
Those are the people that you don't want doing mytharious things. Me,
I could have access to the cameras in your daughter's
gymnastics room at the gym because I'm not a bad guy,
which I think there's a dynamic going on where serve
like you're telling people that it is a reasonable trade
to keep you and your family and your kids safe,

(24:28):
even if it involves strangers having access to cameras in
what we would all pretty much understand as places where
it's not necessarily reasonable for there to be cameras like
swimming pools, places that you think of as sort of
like intimate where you might be changing or in various
stages of undressed. I think there's a dynamic happening where
we have been told this is a reasonable exchange to

(24:49):
make if it keeps you safe.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
It is.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
It's an interesting cause, like because no one answered for it,
Like this was brought out, it was made pretty big news,
especially in Georgia because again we are one of the
most beld cities and the cunt in the world and
flock has only become even more.

Speaker 5 (25:08):
Of a problem because of that.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
They also apparently just put up their cameras without a
necessary contract and hope to get a contract after the fact.

Speaker 5 (25:16):
And again that's a whole other thing.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
But this conversation was like, okay, so instead of acknowledging
why and what's happening, And they did pause the voting
allowing it in the council for a minute because it
did incur such criticism, but it really did.

Speaker 5 (25:34):
No one really answered anything. It was odd.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Yeah, I do find that really odd.

Speaker 4 (25:42):
And so you know, after this resident shurtle of this
with the city council, I read that Block's public position
is that their employees only access customer systems for tech support.
But this resident, who found all of this out via
you know, public record searches, points out that the audit
logs never showed how long somebody watches, only when they started,

(26:03):
So there's really no transparency into you know what somebody
accessing a camera saw and for how long, and certainly
not you know why. So that resident his records requests
also suggested that Flock's own auditing really had serious gaps
and so.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Like issues like users who.

Speaker 4 (26:25):
Do not appear in the official logs being able to
access cameras, or the fact that an account just called
quote auto approved that shared Dunwhitty's data with outside agencies
nearly two thousand times with no real human review, or
the fact that multi factor authentication was disabled for users
by Flock employees. So this, this whole thing, the way

(26:47):
this whole thing played out, and Dunwoodie.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Georgia is just clearly a mess for so many reasons.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
It's a mess for transparency, it's a mess for digital
security and hygiene for all these reasons.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
And again, I mean, it.

Speaker 4 (26:59):
Is still not clear to me why you would need
would why you would need cameras in some of these spaces, right.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
And like again we're talking about you know, like.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Rec centers and gyms like like like it's not there.
I'm not a big proponent of this kind of security theater.
I don't think that more cameras makes us safer. But
you might be able to make the argument for some
situations where it's like, Okay, well you want to have
a camera there for security.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
I get it. I don't. It's not my personal bag,
but I get it.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
You're not gonna be able to convince me that a
camera in a gymnastics studio at a rec center is
a is a reasonable thing to have for safety, right.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
And especially because it's not like people are chicking it lies,
you know what I'm saying, Like it's not an immediate
it's it doesn't necessarily deter crime. It might help somewhat,
but as we've seen, I don't feel like the whole
crime in a state of Georgia has gone down at all.

Speaker 5 (27:55):
And and we've got lots of law cameras.

Speaker 4 (27:59):
Yeah, and also just like what about Okay, even if
someone were to tell I have not seen compelling evidence
that block meaningly does deter crime in a real way.

Speaker 2 (28:10):
As you said, I am still not sure that is.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
But even if it did, I'm not sure that I
would then want my kid to have cameras accessible to
god knows who, random flock employee, random retail associate, whatever.
And that's a reasonable exchange. Even if flock cameras were
keeping people safer or solving crumbs or whatever. I'm not
seen compelling evidence to that point. But still it's like, well,
I don't want there to be cameras in my kids

(28:36):
gymnastics studio, Like I don't that anybody can access that
isn't like I'm not like that doesn't seem right to.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Me, right, and honestly, I don't trust the people who
have it now, Like I don't trust why what should
I trust the cops? Why should I trust this company
who doesn't have good faith standing? Like the way they're
putting things up, They don't give any kind of explanation.
They do everything a little as politically is done today,
where everything is about bidding and let me make you

(29:05):
more money. We are a privatized company that can help
make money in a way that also violates human rights
for the humans that we don't care about is what
it seems.

Speaker 5 (29:14):
So in all of that way, why would we want.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
That exactly that?

Speaker 4 (29:17):
And we have You know, I don't think that anybody
should trust a company like Flock. And the reason I
can tell you that is that all of the way
I mentioned earlier, how the women who have been stocked
using Flock technology, they usually find it at themselves. They
get suspicious, they file public records requests, what have you?
The third party watchdog mechanisms that exist for people to

(29:40):
find out whether or not Flock is being used to
target them in this way.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Websites like have I Been Flocked? Block tries to get
those shut.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
Down, and so, in my opinion, if you were a
company that was interested in your technology not being used
in these illegal ways to harm women and other people
and immigrants and women who would need abortions and all
of that, you would not then target the only some
of the only avenues that people have to find out
if this technology is harming them in this way, because

(30:10):
Block is not doing it. We know that the most
of the women who find out that they're being stalked
in this way are finding out themselves, are not finding
out because Flock did some kind of an investigation that's
that's very rare.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
So, yeah, you're right to not trust this company.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yes, And as we've discussed on several episodes, unfortunately this
is not new, like these tech companies using this information
to hurt women in marginalized groups or not curbing at
all behaviors of stalking or ways that women people can

(30:45):
be stalked. They just don't really do anything about it.
So sadly this is like not surprising at all.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Right, No, it's really not surprising.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
And you know, I think that the kind of one
of the main takeaways here is that block was developed,
deployed nationwide with no warrant requirement and really minimal proactive automning.
And so with technology like that, to me, we already
know that it's not going to be a question of
is this going to be used to hurt women and

(31:20):
other marginalized people, it's when will this be used to
harm women and other marginalized people.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Like we've we've seen this movie before.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
It has not taken genius to figure out, oh, police
are going to use this to harm people.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
It's just how it works.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
And I think the fact that the onus is on
you as a citizen moving about or an organization to
realize that this is happening is just such a such

(32:07):
a burden, and you know, we didn't ask for this technology.
It's just here in a lot of cases, and now
it's this big threat and you've kind of discussed but
you know, so it's used to stalk ex girlfriends or

(32:30):
ex wives maybe, but also people who might not even know,
uh like complete strangers.

Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
So the main reason why people find out they've been
targeted in this way is.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
They get suspicious, right, suspicious.

Speaker 4 (32:44):
Women are doing the work of, you know, creating some
sort of institutional accountability. They're using sites like haveibenflocked dot com,
which is a site that compiles flock search records released
through public records requests into one searchable database. There's also
citizen transparency groups that do this kind of work. And
so it's upsetting because it's you know, it's the intimate

(33:09):
partner part of it is upsetting.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
But importantly, sometimes this technology.

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Is used by cops to track women but they barely
know strangers. There was this case in Monroe County, Florida,
where Deputy Lamar Roman allegedly used one of these systems
to track down and eventually pull over a woman that
he met one time while he was doing some moonlighting
security work on a TV set.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
He didn't know this woman.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
He just saw her on this at this TV set
while she was probably doing her job, and was like, oh,
I can use this technology to.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
Pull her over. In his mind, that might have been
a meet cute, right Yep.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Unfortunately, so.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Gosh, and he's just the use of meat cute at
this situation.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
I know, but I.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
Agree with you. I think he might have thought this
is a romantic I went, I guest through the effort
to track you down. There's just that disconnect has always
really unsettled me. Yeah, where because I'm sure she was
probably feeling at the very least extremely uncomfortable, probably scared.

(34:24):
And I think women can connect with this. I mean
I have a lot of friends and myself included. When
you have like maybe somebody comes in to fix your
cable or whatever it is, and now they know where
you live and they've seen inside your house and all
this stuff, and then they'll ask you on a date
after like oh my finish up. And it's like, I

(34:47):
do think they think it's kind of romantic, but it's not.
It's so uncomfortable and now you're introducing like this technology in.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
There right in the world of AI, especially with these images,
like you should be concerned. You should be concern about
what this is recording, what data is taking, who's able
to take it and get access to these images. Because
what we understand right now in the world of fake
images and really bad takes and bad players, that this

(35:19):
is not great because they're not secure. They've obviously shown
that even though they want to matimilate they're secure, They're
not secure.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Yeah, And just one other wrinkle of this, I almost
sort of don't know how to talk about it. The
fact that we're talking about the behavior of law enforcement,
the entity that ostensibly is there to keep us safe.
If you believe that, we're talking about their behavior toward
women using the technology that they have available to them
without a warrant or much scrutiny.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
I'll put it this way. If I had a.

Speaker 4 (35:50):
Good girlfriend or a daughter or somebody like that in
my life and they were telling me about a new
guy they were dating, and that guy worked in law enforcement,
I would be concerned for them, you know, That's I
guess I'll put it that way. I don't like the
idea that these people who have all of these different

(36:12):
tech enabled tools at their disposal to harm us, you know,
maybe to protect and help and serve, but also to
harm are are using all of that technology at their
disposal in this way. And it doesn't surprise me at all.
And Yeah, as I said, if I had a daughter
and she came home and said, oh, I'm dating a cop,

(36:33):
I would be concerned.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
I would be I would have concern for her. I'll
put it that way. Does that sound bad?

Speaker 4 (36:38):
I don't want to make it seem like if you're
you know, I just have heard too many stories and
I know so many people who have experienced that.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
But if that's what I was told, I would have concerns.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
Right, Well, I mean, let's just base it on what
we know, based on their training, what they're taught, what
they are shown in the likelihood of them doing bad
faith things. Cops City alone was built on the idea
of military training for cops who come in and prevent violence,
and instead they're being taught to do more violence and

(37:13):
being able to have accessibility to be able to be
more violent. But they don't have enough training. In general,
they're given mass of weapons in order to stop crime.
When oftentimes the crime is not involving weapons, it doesn't
have to be violent. But based on what they are trained,
they're automatically trained to kill. Like literally, they are told

(37:33):
if you're shooting, if you're pointing a gun, making sure
you're aiming to kill. That's the whole point. So if
you have narratives like that, why wouldn't we think that
the basis of their training and what they're spending money
on right now is not going to be something volatile
like That's why you can't trust that because nothing is
being shown that they're doing anything to help society. They're

(37:54):
just trying to upgrade the ability to defend something and
it's definitely not the people.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yeah, and I really said it.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
We have increasingly militarized police that are also using increasingly
militarized tactics and technology and tools to deal with civilians.
And so I think, you know, the highly militarized tactics
of a place like copsity and what we're seeing with

(38:20):
flock this kind of like deep surveillance technology.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
I think they're one and the same.

Speaker 4 (38:25):
This increased militarization of tools and tactics not aimed at
like military combatants. Aimed at civilians, aimed at protesters, aimed
at regular people, aimed at a woman that you just
saw once, you know, because you liked her.

Speaker 3 (38:42):
Right, and you're taking this narrative that I have to
go forward and make these bold moves because we have
the surveillance and nodges. And that's kind of the thing
with flock is they are setting up a narrative to
give people a playbook kind of whether it's an interior
exterior design of this is what the road looks like here,
this is where they were traveling, and this is what
this parking lot looks like here. This is what the

(39:04):
gym looks like. So these are the accesses that you
can get to. It feels like it's more like, uh,
a way and not necessarily to surveil, to help surveil
to see how you can get away with things. Possibly
that's just how it seems to me, because I definitely
don't feel safe with this block camera pointing to my house. Instead,
I feel like I'm being watched for a reason that

(39:25):
I don't understand. It makes me want to go onto
sites like have I been flogged? And then at the
same time, I'm also a little worried that this is
a trick in order for me.

Speaker 5 (39:34):
To put in my license plate number. I have a
lot of just persons in my head right now with this.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
But like the Flock has not shown any kind of
care in this situation. I feel like instead of actually
addressing these moments, uh, they're just paying more money or
lessening the sweet sweetening the pot for the for the
counties or the states.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
Yeah, that's essentially what Block has done. Four or four
Media spoke to a Flock spokesperson and what they what
Flock has to say about all this is essentially downplaying
the whole thing. They said, oh, we have one hundred
and forty thousand monthly active users of Flock. These instances
of abuse are well, they're obviously wrong and awful. You know,
they throw that in are rare, They said, humans are fallible.

(40:21):
Unlike most tools society provide law enforcement, Block ensures that
the instances what our technology is misused, the evidence used
to hold responsible parties accountable is right there in our system.
So their defense is our system makes misuse provable after
the fact, not our system prevents misuse. And four or
four Media is they're reporting backs up that distinction. Because,

(40:43):
as I said, of the cases that they talked about,
only a very small handful of those cases were caught
by flock's own internal audit tools or things like department review.
The overwhelming majority of them were caught by journalists and
women who looks themselves up and things like that. And interestingly,

(41:03):
this it's gonna it sounds like I'm just talking about
like a handful of cops.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
It's really a much bigger problem.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
There's this study called Grounding the Flock Confronting Police surveillance
of mobilities from the Journal of Mobile Media and Communication
that kind of makes this bigger claim that blocks design
let police in one state reach into states that have
completely different laws, effectively erasing whatever legal protections for women
and immigrants the moment they cross a jurisdiction line, or

(41:34):
even when they don't so in cases like Johnson County
in Texas, where a sheriff used BLOCK to track down
a woman that they believed had had a self induced abortion,
which was against the law in Texas, that search was
not limited to Texas, where that you know, where abortion
is criminalized. Police were able to reach into six eight

(41:56):
hundred and nine block networks and eighty three thousand in
three hundred and forty five different cameras nationwide, including in
places like Illinois or Washington where abortion is perfectly legal.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Right.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
And so the system, this FLOCK system, makes it so
that the jurisdiction, when you cross over to a different jurisdiction,
there is no distinction.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Police can just say like, oh, well, even though you.

Speaker 4 (42:19):
Didn't commit a crime in this state, we're in this
state and we're saying that you did commit a crime.
Like that case of the woman that they suspected of
having a self induced abortion in Texas is really a
case that stuck with me because it has really showed
how how this is a real complex issue that does

(42:41):
not stop at any one state line. Like being in
a state where you've not been accused of breaking any
kind of law is not going to necessarily be protective
with a system like this.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 5 (42:51):
Yeah, no, let's terrifying.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah. Well, and also, if we're going back to the
original premise of that Flock was trying to present, it's
all about safety, then you enter something like this into
the record of basically searching for women who are having
an abortion across state lines, then it just feels I

(43:18):
mean it's obvious that that's not what it's about at all,
which is what we've been talking about. But this is
very clear to me. Oh, okay, you're not worried about safety.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
Yeah. In that case, the police said, listen, they were
just worried about her. Her family was worried about her.
They just wanted to make sure that she was okay.
And the sheriff in Texas said, oh, she was not
being investigated as a suspect in any kind of abortion
related offense. It was just a safety search. If that
account is accurate, the presence of the word abortion in

(43:49):
the search note a flock doesn't necessarily mean that law
enforcement was investigating this woman allegedly, you know, getting reproductive
health care as a crime. But that defense doesn't really
hold up because according to information obtained by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, they found that the sheriff's department actually had

(44:10):
opened a quote death investigation into the termination of a
quote non viable fetus and had actually those sheriffs had
actually consulted prosecutors about potentially charging that woman with a homicide.
So all that song and dance of like, oh, we
were just worried about her safety, We weren't using flock
to track her down because we were trying to charge

(44:30):
her with a crime.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Or arrest her.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
That's clearly bs because EFF has the receipts, and Flock
has still not walked back their original defense, even after
the Electronic Frontier Foundation's records came out indicating that, yeah,
the police had spoke to prosecutors about charging this woman
with an abortion related crime, and so yeah, they're still
laboring under this, this claim that the police were not

(44:54):
using flock to charge her with a crime, when at
this point we know that's not true.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
Right on.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
On top of that, a big contentious part of this
conversation is how FLOCK and ICE have worked together.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Yes, I'm glad that you brought that up, because local
departments across the country have run FLOCK surches on behalf
of ICE agents who did not otherwise have access to
these systems, effectively working as a workaround for federal agents.
And again, as I just said, because flock is this
nationwide connected, interconnected network of license plate readers and cameras

(45:36):
in states like Illinois a what is sometimes called this
a sanctuary state where cooperating with ICE in this way
is illegal without a judicial warrant, Local police reportedly handed
over block log and credentials directly to federal agents, which
just cuts out any kind of intermediary or oversight. Federal
agents separately used a flock pilot program to gain nationwide

(46:00):
camera access and illegally accessed cameras in Colorado, which is
also what is commonly known as a sanctuary state. In California,
police ran searches on people involved in ice protests and
illegally shared the results. And because Block retail partners include
places like lows and home Depot, you know, retail giants
where ice raids have specifically targeted undocumented day labors, the

(46:23):
network's private sector reach then compounds its law enforcement reach, right,
and so you can kind of see how this becomes
this interconnected, complex problem because all of these cameras are
connected across the country.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
That brings us to another question, because, as Samantha has said,
we have so many flock cameras here in Atlanta specifically,
but in Georgia as well. How widespread is this technology?

Speaker 2 (47:01):
Baby Flock is everywhere. It is so common.

Speaker 4 (47:05):
If you are listening to this and I think, certainly
I don't have flock in my neck of the woods
do a little bit of a search because you might
be surprised. Flock is the largest ALPR vendor in the country.
It's got over eighty three thousand cameras, more than five
thousand law enforcement contracts, plus private clients like retailers and
homeowners associations. An independent tracking site called eyes on Flock

(47:29):
estimates close to two hundred and forty eight million vehicles
have been tracked through Flock so far across more than
twenty nine thousand reported cameras. And importantly, the technology does
not just read plates. The company's own promotional materials describe
the quote, vehicle fingerprint technology that can identify a car
by color, dense bumper stickers, or roof racks, and even

(47:52):
allows for you to free tech search for things like
blue SUV with racing stripe even if a licensed plate
is obscured. The company's own patents describe the ability to
identify folks by race, sex, clothing type, weight, and height.
And so none of this jives with flocks public statements

(48:14):
that oh, it's cameras do not and cannot track vehicles,
much less individual people. If that is the case, why
do your patents describe the ability to identify people by race, sex,
and clothing type and hide and weight. You know, why
does your why are your promotional materials describe vehicle fingerprint
as technology that can identify cars by things like bumper stickers.
Like It's that they want to have it both ways.

(48:36):
They want this to be cuddly, non threatening technology to
the public, but then they want to highlight the ways
that it is incredibly.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Draconian to its potential clients and partners.

Speaker 5 (48:48):
I'm giggling at the five that you said cuddly for
this segment.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
Yeah, I mean it sounds silly, but oftentimes when we're talking,
you know, have technology like this, they'll use like a
cuddly like like I think it was ring You remember
that Super Bowl commercial where it had the lost data
and all those and so that, so like one that
was a pretty cuddly commercial that was trying to reframe

(49:13):
pretty scary, a pretty scary network of surveillance as, oh,
you can find your lost pet. They I think they
called it search party, right, And so they do. They
always have these sort of cuddly kind of like non
threatening ways to describe what is increasingly threatening surveillance technology.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, I will say some of the flock cameras actually
can pick up voices, so it can hear conversations and
record in the span out and get actual data of
what conversations are.

Speaker 5 (49:44):
Happening in a in a reach.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
I don't know how closed or how far you can
be away, but I know that's been one new thing
that they've been really excited to feature for a lot
of things that are happening especially like immigration, houselessness and
all of that in the in areas like the Cad
County where it's more of the black community are located
and more immigrant locations. So it's interesting to say it's

(50:10):
not doing all these things when in natuality you are
truly surveilling.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
It's not just cars.

Speaker 4 (50:16):
Yeah, and how that study that I mentioned earlier, how
they describe it is essentially flock allows or helps far
right policing cultures and tactics travel across jurisdiction. So you know,
a restrictive policy in one conservative county kind of functionally
reach into a state where reproductive care or immigrant protections

(50:37):
are legally guaranteed, simply because the camera network does not
recognize state.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Borders the way the law does.

Speaker 4 (50:44):
And so yeah, it's a way to make sure that
that kind of draconian surveillance and policing is everywhere, regardless
of whether or not it is lawful where you live.

Speaker 5 (50:56):
And it's kind of a concern though.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
We have to educate groups of people because they really
do take on the ideas like this is helping us,
this is protecting us, because you know, we're going to
be able to see who's if they try to steal
my car, and we'll be able to catch people who
all these things. And you have to explain because I
have again when those cameras popped up, which was in
the last year and a half, two years again like

(51:19):
having to explain to my elder neighbors what these actually are.
We were having to be like no, no, no, no, no,
this is not for security. It's not what you think
it is. This is actually in order to surveil people
and really bring disruption in a great good, like all
communities have problems, absolutely, but what they're doing is like

(51:40):
a basis of discrimination that they don't understand, and trying
to teach them like these block cameras are not for
your security, because they really were excited, like the way
they talked about it initially, like oh, this is gonna
help this way, and you're like, that's not what you think.

Speaker 4 (51:54):
Oh, I hate that you brought this up, But because
it's true, and it's complicated because I have a lot
of older folks in my life who are just down
for this kind of thing. They are down like when
they hear like, I don't know how big of news
this is nationally, but you know where I live here
in DC, they're talking about things like curfews to curb

(52:17):
like use crime, and I have people in my life
are like, well, that's good. They need more police, they
need curfews, they need cameras, they need surveillance. There are
people who hear this and think that's great, Like I'm
so down for these cameras. I want them to be
in my neck of the woods. But I think when
you start drilling into, okay, well, do you want the

(52:39):
agreed upon laws where you lived essentially be null and
void because of this camera system? Do you want to
have your rights invalidated in this way simply because it's technology? Like, Like,
I agree with you that it does take some really
drilling in to be like, what are you actually saying?

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Right, It's interesting because we've definitely had like the conversations
of like, yeah, you think this is what they're doing,
but the purpose of this is not because of this.
They're just watching what you're doing on a daily thing
in a different way. And if they have you as
a subject, if they have you as a target, things
go downhill. Whether it's like Hoa's, I could only imagine
if they're trying to push certain people out that constantly

(53:19):
watching them, trying to get like violations and rules so
they can uproot them from their home, you know, like
stuff like that, which is already a problem with Hoa's.
So you have flock cameras in this situation and they're
pointed towards your house and talking about well you allowed
your dog to do these you know, like this is
a concern.

Speaker 4 (53:38):
Yeah, I'm glad that you put it that way, because
if I had to sell flock is bad to somebody
who was like I kind of like it.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Think about if you got into.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
A dispute with the lady who were the over zealous
HOA person in your neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Do you want that person to have access.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
To your real time location and whereabouts be a surveillance cameras. No,
of course, not think how much worse your dispute with
your HOA lady would be if that were.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
The case, right.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
And one of the things one of the things that
I my partner I've I talked about since the beginning
with the flock cameras is some of the sites that
are actually pushing back. I'm not saying that I've seen
a few tiktoks where kids have come out and done
things that are not legal in order to try to
get those block cameras out of their neighborhood. But I

(54:26):
have said a few situations where it does feel like
people are understanding, oh, this is not great.

Speaker 4 (54:32):
Yes, I have seen some of those methods that folks
are using to fight back against flock. I won't comment
on that, but I will say that there is pushback
happening within the law. Open source projects like dflock crowdsource
locations of these readers and these cameras nationwide so people
can get a sense of what's watching them. Cities including

(54:54):
Denver and Austin have declined to renew their flock contracts. Lynnwood, Washington,
paused it's program over concerns about unlawful immigration use. Kalamazoo
restricted what data it shares with ice and border protection.
So it does seem like people are pushing back against this,
both in terms of creating projects to help people just

(55:14):
have information and provide some transparency into the whereabouts of
these cameras and how they're being used, and city saying
wait a minute, we're not so sure we want to
partner with flock in this way.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
And one of the things that came to mind when
I was thinking about this topic is that it's not
a new conversation, but I feel like it really started
after September eleventh, where all of these things were put
in place for our safety, for our security, and all
of this stuff, and we've never we never pushed back

(55:48):
against them like they It was just a backside where
everything built up and built up and built up, and
that understanding that we had that you know, maybe one
day the Patriot Act would go and it didn't, and
it became worse than all of this stuff and having
these technologies doing relying on that same thing of this

(56:12):
is for your safety, so you have to accept it.
We're doing this for.

Speaker 4 (56:19):
You, and that is my big So what here is
that how easy it is for harmful technology to be
sold to us by the powers that be if those
powers tell us it's about keeping us safe. Right, These
cameras were sold to us with that promise of delivering
safety to do things like find missing kids or catch

(56:42):
dangerous bad guys. And you know, harmful technology rarely arrives
announcing itself as harmful. They're wrapped up in our fears
and our understandable desires, and our triggers and our blind spots,
and they arrive promising to keep us safe. But exactly
as you said, Annie, once that surveillance system starts, it

(57:03):
rarely goes away, and it rarely stays confined to its
original purpose. The same network that might be helpful in
finding a missing child or recovering a stolen car can
also help a police officer stock his ex girlfriend. That
same tool that is sold to us as a piece
of public safety infrastructure to keep us safe can also
become a way to reach across state lines and undermine

(57:26):
protections for abortion, healthcare, immigration status, or personal privacy right.
And so what stands out to me here is that
none of these cases, again, we're uncovered by safeguards that
were supposed to be built into a system. They're uncovered
by women who get suspicious women who like I feel
like something is off, and you just have ordinary people

(57:49):
who are kind of forced to do the oversight that
these institutions and tech companies have failed to do themselves.
And Yeah, I just keep wondering, like, if all of
these cases were discovered by just ordinary people, or by accident,
or by somebody just looking into it or a journalist,
what does that say about the cases that we don't
know about? You know, because the real test of surveillance

(58:12):
technology is not whether or not it's working when things
are right, it's what happens when a you know, controlling
cop with a ex wife who is trying to get
away from him gets access to it. That's really the
question that we should be asking. And I feel like
it is women and marginalized people who are paying the
price for the institutions and systems that should be keeping

(58:34):
us safe failing to ask that question.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Absolutely, And that's so often the case, unfortunately, which reminds me.
Did you watch the trailer for the Social Reckoning Bridget Girl?
You know?

Speaker 5 (58:54):
I did?

Speaker 2 (58:56):
I'm so.

Speaker 4 (58:57):
I know the trailer was not well received, but I
liked it. I mean, I had some questions about it,
chief among them is that. I feel like it kind
of presented Francis Hogan as which I thought the casting
was a really interesting choice there. It kind of presented
her as like I'm just sort of wide eyed and
I'm gonna do this whistle blowing thing, when in reality,

(59:18):
everybody that I know who is who has talked to
her or knows her, is like, oh no, Francis Hagan
is like an incredibly savvy, you know, wealthy person who
made very intentional and specific moves to protect herself financially, socially, politically,
which is great. Like I'm not, I'm not, but like
the movie, the trailer kind of made it seem like
she was like, I don't know, I whistle blowing, you know, right?

Speaker 2 (59:43):
What did you all think?

Speaker 1 (59:47):
I liked it? I'm I'm intrigued because after I watched
that trailer, I went back and watched the trailer for
the first Social Network, and so I guess, I guess
I just had kind of a moment of this felt
very different to me watching that trailer versus that one
when it first came out, because, as we discussed in

(01:00:09):
our episode about the Social Network, I didn't know much
about the whole situation and now I feel like I do.
So it feels a bit more as a disconnect, and
I'm not not as clear on how it's going to go,
but we'll see.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
I will say I thought that Jeremy Strong sounded just
like Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
He sounded just like him an actor.

Speaker 5 (01:00:38):
An actor, but I did I haven't seen the trailer.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
I've only seen the controversy of the fact that Jesse
Eisenberg refused to be in it again because of like
he's like, oh, this is too much, I don't think
I can do this anymore type of gobb and then
he was in another like biopic resident he like he
was supposed to be put a stop to it because
because the network that bought out Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Are you talking about artificial.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Yeah, this morning, and then they stopped it because they're
doing a whole deal with open Chat Gypt whatever whatnot. Anyway,
But so I just got caught up in that per se.
So I was like, I don't know, I haven't seen it.
I'm like, huh, okay, So I would go in the
line other than the actors.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
I was just listening to the Big Picture of the
Ringer Movie podcast about this, and they made a good
point which is that, Yeah, it's I was looking forward
to seeing artificial and it sucks that like it's not
gonna happen via Amazon. But now they've got this built
in marketing slogan the movie Amazon and Open Ai didn't
want you to see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
I think I could work for them.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
I think I could work for them.

Speaker 5 (01:01:46):
There's so many things happening.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
I feel like, as we're watching society crumble and having
a stupid billionaire and existing trillion trillionaire in existence, things
are things.

Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
Things are interesting, Things.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Are interesting well put.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
They are uh yes, and we always appreciate you bridget
coming on and helping us understand these interesting times. Where
can the good listeners find you.

Speaker 4 (01:02:20):
Well, you can preorder my audio book which is going
to be out on July fourteenth, called Love at First Prompt,
all about intimacy and AI. You can get it at
Love at First Prompt dot AI. You can find me
at my podcast or on our Girls on the Internet
or on Instagram at bridget Ray and DC.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Uh thank you as always for coming on Bridgete. Please listeners,
if you have not already, check out all of the
past episodes Bridgette has done, Yes and her podcast there
are no groups on the internet.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
UH.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
If you would like to contact us, you can. You
can email us at Hello A Stuffnever Told You dot com.
You can find us on Blue Sky at momstof podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I've Never Told You.
We're also on YouTube. We have some merchandise at Common Bureau,
and we have a book you can get where you
get your books.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
It's always to our producers Casey Chandler and Rema and
our executive producer Maya. Thank you, and thanks to you
for listening. Stefan Never Told Me his production by heart Radio.
For more podcast from my heart Radio, you can check
out the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where you
listen to your favorite shows.