June 24, 2026 • 57 mins
How much personal privacy would you be willing to sacrifice for the Greater Good of stopping crime? The breakout surveillance company Flock Safety claims their nationally-intergated monitoring network can eventually stop all crime. And investors are listening. In the second chapter of this special two-part series, Ben, Matt and Noel fly further into the strange saga of Flock -- and ask whether there's an ulterior motive at play.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Welcome back. This is
a two chapter series for us. This is our second
episode on flock Safety or flock Cameras and guys. I
(00:52):
think one thing that astonished all of us when we
were digging into the research is that this company is
not even a decade old. They were formed in twenty seventeen,
and over less than ten years they have had the
kind of explosive growth that every startup dreams about.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
They're disruptors. We love a disruptor.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well, and when you look at the technology, it does
seem to be basically ring cameras with license plate readers
on them, plus the shot spotter technology we talked about,
all rolled up into one thing.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I guess that's the thing right, Like they didn't exactly
reinvent the wheel. They just kind of combined the wheel
with some other stuff that already existed and did it
in a little bit more of an elegant and efficient
way that was scalable. Like I don't know what their
bottom line is, but I was telling you guys off air,
I noticed my first flock camera yesterday. And I know
(01:49):
that we hear Aalleanah are kind of at ground zero
for this stuff because it's sort of been the biggest
proving ground for the technology. And I never really saw
one before, or never really seen one before, but I
guess it's that beta Minehoff thing where since we were
talking about it now, is maybe a little more subconsciously
looking for it. And it is kind of low profile.
It's just this camera on a pole with a big
old sideways facing solar array at the top.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Can you talk about where you found it?
Speaker 4 (02:13):
It was in my neighborhood, There wasn't I mean, I
wasn't like I was actually biking because I've I've got
an electric bike and I've been biking around a lot,
and maybe that's why I noticed it, because I wasn't
going quite as fast and it just kind of it
was on my mind. So it was somewhere in the
part of town I live in to cater East Lake adjacent,
which is not far from Atlanta proper but sort of
(02:35):
its own little community.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
But yeah, and this is I love your point there
about maybe going a bit more slowly and then you
know you're able to take in more of the environment
surrounding you. We know that it. Once you know what
to look for, you're going to see flot cameras everywhere
in a city near you. There are tens of thousands
of them, permeating all kinds of towns, municipalities, and course
(03:00):
big cities. And then step with this explosive growth, Flock's
controversy also grows. So please, please, please, folks, check out
chapter one of Flock before you continue to this one
and segue speaking of seeing everyone, we'd love to see
you on Virgin voyages.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Virgin Voyages.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
There's lots of cameras on that ship.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Wait a minute, that's not this, that's not the selling
point of this, but.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
They're not slack shafety.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Well, well, what I'm saying is, we would love to
see you on Virgin Voyages, folks, because we are going
on a cruise that we're very excited about from October
tewod to the seventh with our other Stuff colleagues, like
some real real heavy hitters headliners Josh and Chuck stuff
you should know, and of course Annie and Sam from
(03:51):
stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
I know, we've been hitting this hard, but we're super
excited about it and we really would love to hang
out with y'all. So uh do check out Virgin Voie
dot com and search for these what is it called
stuff at c Stuff at se Yeah, when ticket and
on the back end of it coming back into New
York City, it is Comic Con time, so you can
always double up and make make a little comic Con
(04:13):
trip out of.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It too, and you might see us there as well.
So we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors.
Give everybody a second to check out Stuff at Sea
and we'll be right back. Here are the facts, guys.
I'm so excited that we made this a two chapter
series because when we last left you, perhaps without a
(04:38):
dope beat the step two, we were discussing some of
Flock's specific capabilities, in particular of course the alp R stuff,
the automated license plate, reader technology, the increasingly acrimonious court
cases that we're going to dive into in chapter two,
and of course the misuse of this technology. And one
(04:59):
thing I think that we were all very fair about
is that the founders of Flock, who are fellow Georgia
tech folks, they are not Peter Teel level jerks. They
genuinely seem to have noble intent. If you have spent
time in the Georgia Tech area of Atlanta, you already
know crime was and is a serious issue. So their
(05:22):
classic Georgia tech type solution was to look at all
the other existing surveillance technology out there and figure out
how to combine it, to aggregate it into a massive,
fully integrated system of audio and visual surveillance. It wouldn't
just help law enforcement close cases. Potentially, it could help
(05:45):
stop the bad guys before a crime occurred. And this
leads us to something I think we'd all love to
spend a little bit more time on the grand dilemma
of the greater good? How much liberty should we sacrifice
in pursuit of security?
Speaker 4 (06:00):
I mean, you can certainly see this quandary pondered in
a lot of science fiction like Minority Report, is a
good example where you've got this whole concept of pre
crime and you know all of the moral and ethical
dilemmas that go along with that greater good question, because
at a certain point it just becomes like the panopticon
(06:22):
of it all, the surveillance state of it all, Like
is that actually liberty? Like are you able to live
freely if you are constantly being monitored and people are
taking advantage of that ability. It's tough one because you
want to live in a safe community, you want to
be able to feel safe. But I've never felt patently
(06:45):
unsafe to the point where I feel like this stuff
is fully justified.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Well, it's tough, It's really tough.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And I think about schools often because schools are another
place where flock safety ends up going into and getting
pretty big contracts. And when you think about places that
have potential danger, if you think about the incidents that
have occurred over the last fifteen years, twenty years, especially
(07:12):
at schools and places where we gather a lot malls,
home improvement stores, big box arts, protests, you imagine there's
a looming potential fear in all of those places, but
it isn't necessarily justified.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
If you look at the statistics, however, there is a
well we did that story about the Brownies and a
non detect level of laxatives in the Brownies. There is
a somewhat detect level of mass shootings and terrible things
that occur around us in this country. So the thought
of the need for something like this, or maybe even
(07:49):
the desire from a public to have something like this exists.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
This is not going to stop mass shootings.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
It might help you catch the shooter, yes, but it's
not going to stop mass shooting. There's a whole, yeah,
a whole other thing that needs to be I mean,
I'm not going to be mister like you know, draconian
gun control here, but like something needs to happen in
that department if we are going to expect any kind
of downtick in these mass shootings and you know, school shootings.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Your point, but I.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Think it is so right to say it's a response,
like it is a response to that terrible thing, right,
and it's an enterprising opportunity. Now you can protect these
areas theoretically, right with real time cameras and mics that
will pick up everything and even scan the license plates
of everybody who comes in and out of an area.
(08:39):
So like the offer there I think is just so
valid for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Can we also just point out that, like, how often
do they not catch the shooter in mass shooting situations?
I don't. I can't think of an example where the
shooter has gotten away or you know, on a you know,
taken there.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
On it's the DC sniper, the d SEE sniper. If so,
just if you imagine your head if this technology existed
in Virginia, Maryland, the Washington DC area such an high
I know, I know, but I agree, But it's the
kind of thing that get that can be pointed to
as a valid point. If this stuff was there and
license plates were being read at each one of these shootings,
(09:20):
the vehicle that was being used in those shootings would
have been caught the second time that it.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Happened, right And also you know, eventually the DC snipers
were apprehended, as we know. We also I love the
point we're making here, the points we're making, but we
have to point out folks, all of us understand that
statistics are one thing and personal experience is another. So
(09:46):
if you lost a loved one in a mass shooting,
or a spree killing. Then it doesn't necessarily make your
life better to know that it doesn't happen that often
because you have lost something irreplaceable. And that's why there's
such a dilemma about security versus liberty and privacy in
America's founding fathers. As imperfect as they were, they spent
(10:10):
so much time arguing about this, both in public and
with one another. Like Benjamin Franklin, by the way, probably
not a serial killer, but check out our episode. He
was fond of saying, they who can give up essential
liberty to attain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety. And the famous Thomas Payne rode with him
(10:31):
on that. He said, the greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated
in the name of the noblest causes. It's kind of
like how years ago, I can't remember it was episode
or strange news. We were talking about how various governments,
the UK in particular, wanted to de anonymize, excuse me,
de anonymize the Internet and they were often using the
(10:54):
sheep's bull of protect the children to hide this, Orwellian
wolf of a surveiller and state beneath because the same stuff.
The exact same technology you use to protect innocent people
can be used to persecute people that you don't like,
even if they are innocent as well. It's just so
crazy that way back in the seventeen hundreds, these people
(11:18):
had zero knowledge of the Internet, av technology, prepy algorithms, drones,
even machine guns, and even they were like, this stuff
is going to be terrifying.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Dude, just speaking of how far we've come, right two
hundred and fifty years. Did you guys check out UFC
two fifty Freedom two fifty last night?
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Did not? I saw the highlights and I said, think
it rained out?
Speaker 5 (11:42):
No, no, no, no, there was a delay.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
There was a delay that one guy got in trouble
for just showing up.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Uh maybe I don't know. I just know the spectacle
of it all. To see it happen on the White
House lawn, you guys to watch the live cameras track
Dana White and the President of the United States saunter
slowly out from one of the wings out to the
little balcony like we've seen kings and popes come out
(12:12):
on the balcony when.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
We're in the bread and circuses phase of this particular
collapse of empire. And I saw a really good quote
in some of the coverage that I was seeing this morning.
I hadn't heard this before, but I think it's quite good.
It says, when a clown moves into the palace, he
doesn't become a king. The palace just becomes a circus.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I like that. And we've also got to point out
to that bread and circus's note. People are increasingly unable
to afford bread, right, So I was gonna say more
of a circus economy.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Well, well, that quote, Ben, as you know, is give them
bread and circuses and they'll never revolt. We've got plenty
of circus, but it doesn't appear to be enough bread,
so we may be looking at a revolt.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I think you're right. I just want to make some
kind of parallel here, guys, between that display of because
it was mostly attended by If you looked at the
shots that they would give you in the pre show
before the fight started, it was mostly military members that
were in the audience, so a ton of people in
uniform that were there attending that they're showing to you
(13:14):
on television. They the national anthem is sung by a
country star, and I don't even know how many jets
flew over right as they climax that song. The thing
is sponsored by Trump coin and by Ram trucks.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Where they the batting platform and Monster energy drank. The
idiocracy of it all.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Oh and the military members had to pay, by the way.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, But the whole point that I'm trying to get
to you guys, is that it is a display of
military might, of the American liberty spirit of freedom, but
of might associated with that freedom of danger and like
will we will destroy anyone that comes near us, and
we will fight all the bad guys. It was this
real bravado thing, right, which is you would just associate
(14:04):
with the combat sport like that. But it was also
America's birthday celebration as well as the President's birthday celebration,
and to see all of that on display reminded me
of kind of what Flock safety can represent. That like
the theoretical unstoppable force. If you want to come and
(14:24):
do crime in this area, we are going to stop
you because we have this technology.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, And I think the to that point, Matt, I
think the founding fathers would have honestly despised Flock even
though we've been very fair in chapter one and endeavor
to be fair in today's episode. Because the Founding Fathers,
their closest analog was probably the infamous panopticon of Jeremy
Bentham's philosophy, and they didn't dig that concept either, so
(14:53):
they hated this kind of idea. They were so concerned
about it. We should say that they eventually enshrin this
caution into the Bill of Rights, most notably the Fourth Amendment,
which I think we could casually refer to as the
mind your Business Law. It basically says, we gave you
the quote in chapter one, but it basically says you
(15:15):
have to have a reason or probable cause to go
into someone's home to apprehend them, to go through their
papers or now their computers and their online activity. You
have to describe what you're looking for and why you're
looking for it. And it's funny because as an illegal,
Beagles in the crowd know the Constitution and the Bill
(15:37):
of Rights. They both have this confounding habit of being
either incredibly specific, like explicit all men are created equal,
but then they also become cartoonishly vague bear pretty much
any weapon, forget about it, you know, would they have
written the right to bear arms into the into the
(16:00):
founding documents. If they had known Ak forty seven's and
Kalishnikov's would be this easy to purchase, I mean there
was method to the madness though.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Well, I think they still would have though, because isn't
the point to stop anyone that would try and take
the system over?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Right, like government overreach?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yes, so like you would, whatever weapon that is at
anyone's disposal would be in there, because the concept is
to prevent this thing from being corrupted to the extent
which you I would argue, and I think we might
all argue as being corrupted and has been corrupted for
a long time. But what do you do against that
(16:40):
kind of thing? And if you imagine all of the
ways working within the system to change the system that
have been attempted over a century and a half two
centuries now, attempting to fix things to be a little
more meaningful for everyone andunctional for everyone, it don't seem
(17:01):
to be working. So like they put that in there
because I'm assumed. Look, I don't know, you know, it's
hard to know exactly what they were thinking, but I
do imagine the argument would be whatever means you have
protect this thing.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
That makes sense. Yeah, I mean they doubtlessly knew something
we've been saying on the show for years. Technology would
inevitably outpace legislation, and they were genuinely prescient about so
many things, so it's pretty clever that they would keep
stuff loose enough to allow for innovation, which not every
country is done. They wanted to get everyone on the
(17:36):
same page. They wanted to, most importantly, to your point,
allow future generations to update those fundamental axioms as time
went on. And yeah, flock is inarguably saving lives, It
is inarguably, in many cases stopping crimes. So of course
law enforcement adores it. Not all departments though, as we'll see,
(17:59):
and with getting in your business, fellow conspiracy realist, it
is statistically nigh certain that one of us in the
crowd tonight had or will have a crime solved, a
name cleared, or a criminal caught in your area due
to this technology. But we can't help but wonder what
(18:19):
these Panopticon haters would have thought about flock. And since
our Weejah boards keep getting a missed call every time
we hit up the founding fathers, let's get back to
flock in the present day. What do you guys say,
take a little ad break for our sponsors. I wonder
if one of them's flock.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
I hope not.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I actually hope not either years where it gets crazy,
all right, We talked about the license plate reading tech.
That was one of the big things we hit toward
the end of our first episode. Again, as we said,
it's not by any means original, but the true innovation
(18:58):
here is in integration, integration with other systems, and that
includes the systems of their bigger competitor, Axon. Right, we
mentioned Axon in the past. It can integrate into pre
crime predictive policing networks like Palentier. Do we check out
our very strange episodes on Peter Tiel.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
You mentioned a thing we always brush up against with
stuff like this, the idea of technology outpacing legislation. But
it seems like in this case, through you know, the
current administration and a lot of the rollbacks of certain
protections and oversights that they have been responsible for, we're
almost getting to a place where the legislation is kind
of a moot point, right, because we remember when it
(19:43):
was such a hubbub and such a kerfuffle when we
found out that all this metadata about our you know,
telephone calls and things were being you know, observed by
the NSA, et cetera. I mean, that was a huge
bad PR moment for the Obama administration and they had
some explaining to do, and Americans were really up in
(20:06):
arms about it. But now it's like, I guess, through
this rollback and through the just the change and attitude
and kind of this realization that maybe the legislation was
just a matter of people behaving themselves and kind of
exercising good judgment and decorum and saying, no, we need
this to be legislated in order to you know, to
spend the appropriate amount of time on it to make
(20:26):
sure that we know how to protect ourselves from this
kind of stuff. But now it's just kind of like,
I don't know, it just seems like there's nobody cares anymore,
and and we're just kind of going down this surveillance
rabbit hole and there's really no looking back.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
People do care. But when I say people, you know what,
they're not getting the headlines. It's almost like the mass
media is downplaying some of the concerns.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I wonder if I could share a quick local news
story about integration before we get into it, and like
why it is bigger and scarier than you may think.
This comes to us from WRAL News posted on June eighth,
twenty twenty six.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
I'll just put it this way.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
This is from the article as North Carolina rolled out
a license plate reader pilot program with multiple law enforcement
agencies across the state. So this is the license plate
readers only and it is being used across the state
of North Carolina with multiple agencies. Okay. The North Carolina
State Bureau of Investigation also gained access to flock safety
(21:34):
cameras from Lowe's Home improvement stores in the entire state,
as well as the entire state of South Carolina, as
well as the entire state of Virginia. Which is crazy
to think about a state's Bureau of Investigation an FBI,
but on the state level, gained access to the flock
(21:55):
safety cameras at Low's home improvement stores from three states. Now,
think about how many lows there are out there right,
Think about just the number of cameras out there in
the middle. You guys have probably seen these before. The
mobile security stations that kind of sit in a parking lot.
(22:16):
They look like a tiny i don't know, just a
almost like a tiny little vehicle that has these big
poles that go up with the exactly as you described earlier, Noel,
it was.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
A mini version of that. I know exactly what you're
talking about. We see them in a parking lot near
our where offices are, where there's that place that does
those auctions. You go up the stairs there and there's
one right there. It's got like tires and like kind
of like it almost looks like a trailer, and then
it's got this big old pole and a solar array
and then clearly kind of like a you know, camera array.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
It's there's supposed to be deterrens anywhere like that. Construction
sites warehouse is a place of business. They have an
AI technology that detects all kinds of different things, basically
movement after a certain time period when the business is
closed and when they want to have that alert system
set up. And it has twenty four hour video and
(23:10):
license plate readers in the same way. So just imagining
that all of these lows are already in there, and
the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is also attempting
to get access to these same cameras in home depots
across all these states. And it's literally email exchanges, guys,
between the SBI and a big corporate person like LOWS
(23:33):
or Home Depot and then negotiating access to these cameras.
And when we're talking about integration and potential dangers here,
we're talking about ice, right, because we know for sure
in the past flock safety cameras have been used in
ice operations as well as other things. And we know
home depot and LOWS are two of the biggest places
where where folks go to gather to get work. You
(23:56):
can see all of that stuff coming together and then
realizing that it's not just local law enforcement, it's the
big boys in every state.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about that, guys.
So we're talking in specific about something called flock Nova.
This is their lookup tool. They've been hard at work
on what they will alternately call a public safety data
platform or a search engine built for police. It supplements
(24:27):
the ALPRs with information from public public records, right like
who about a house? Win, all the kind of stuff
you could normally look up as a civilian or request
as a member of the public about somebody else. They
also were going to They originally were going to take
information from data breaches as well as I think we
(24:49):
can all catch this phrase commercially available data in order
to track these specific individuals without a warrant ever necessarily
coming into play. That's a lot of linguistic parcour so
to unpack it, what do we mean by data breaches?
We mean that flock was originally going to use data
(25:10):
pulled from the dark web, the kind of sites that
will ransomware somebody's financials or their sensitive information. Luckily, they
clocked how untenable that position would be and they pulled
out of that before running into any legal firestorms. But
another one of the ones that worries me, I think
(25:32):
it worries all of us, I hope so, is the
phrase commercially available data. That means all the stuff that
your government and your favorite private companies are not explicitly
prohibited from selling. And there are relatively few things in
the US now that private companies are explicitly prohibited from
(25:54):
selling about you. And for example, here in the States,
we have this thing called hipA. You probably heard the acronym,
but we often you know, we just hear the acronym
our eyes glaze over and we don't talk much about it.
It's short for Health Insurance, Portability and Accountability Act of
nineteen ninety six. It's a very soft toothed attempt to
(26:18):
uphold the concerns of those founding fathers. All it does
really is give you certain rights to privacy regarding your
personal health. And yes, spoiler, private insurance companies hate it.
But everything else, by guys, everything else, bros. It's up
for grabs. Boom boom boom unless you opt out. You
(26:40):
should assume that every private institution with which you engage,
financial institutions and telecoms especially, they consider your activity and interactions.
It's own separate revenue stream. And I wasn't aware of
this until far later than I should have been. But
did you guys know when you sign up we're a
(27:00):
credit card, you have the option to opt out of
selling your data, and if you don't opt out, just
like organ donation experiments, if you don't opt out, then
it's again it's another way for them to make money.
And it's actually it's kind of hard to find that
opt out option.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yeah, but I've had the same credit card for years now,
before all of this was much of a conversation. So
do I get grandfathered in? Do I have to opt out?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
After the fact, I'm actually looking at that as well, Nol,
and I'm hoping that I'm hoping I could come back
with a good answer. But if you're a financial boffin,
let us know and we going to work with this.
We've got to get to this point because it was you, Matt,
pointing out the interactions, the interstate, state to state interactions.
(27:51):
This gets so complicated when we look at discrepancies between
federal versus state level policies. Because some states have way
better privacy protection laws than other states. The top three
with the best laws are going to be California, Maine,
and Nevada, just in alphabetical order. But according to places
like security dot org, which is a great source on this,
(28:15):
the other forty seven states have weak or nonexistent consumer
data privacy laws. Like how does this apply to flock system?
They're everywhere except for Alaska for now. So is it
possible for another version of our hypothetical example here? Is
it possible that the info gathered on an individual is
(28:38):
legal in South Dakota, but the same info about the
same person is illegal in California. This is a legal minefield.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, there's a story coming out of Stockton, California as
they expanded their flock to include these first responder drones
and spend three million extra do on the system. There's
a little piece in here from Stocktonia on June eighth,
and it's talking about the national look Up feature that
(29:11):
Flock has and how that feature has been disabled for
California agencies back in March of twenty twenty five. And
they also block federal agencies from discovering or requesting sharing
relationships with any California agencies. So theoretically, some of the
Flock information that is captured in California won't be shareable
(29:35):
to let's say, the FEDS or other agencies that even
want to look at it because of these laws you're
talking about here, Ben.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah, and we're going to run into even more of
that as we continue. But there's an important point we
got to hit there in relation to the story you
just shared. The way that the flock Nova program works,
the way the search engine works is that you interact
with approved partners like other members of law enforcement. But
(30:04):
your price for interaction isn't just financial. In order to
participate in the network, you also have to give up
all of your data to the system, So with every
new partner, it grows and grows and grows. That's how
NOVA coordinates across what they call approved agencies. So if
you're looking for a specific individual or a specific vehicle,
(30:27):
Nova can connect law enforcement across the United States into
the search. So flock, if you go to their own
website for Nova, they specifically cite success in arresting twenty
six suspects and success in recovering seventy victims of human trafficking,
which is honestly awesome, and Flock's been in use since
(30:49):
May of last year. Here's the weird thing. Okay, if
we're the local cops now and we're running a search, right,
I'm Noel Brown. I'm a local cop. I don't just
get the license plate of Johnny red lat blue jeans.
I get everything about the car is driving. I get
a ton of personal information about his life, even if
(31:11):
he never actually pushes that red light, if he just
drives through the intersection, and I want to see what
pops up on Nova about him. This can happen anywhere
he happens to drive by any area where FLOCK is
deployed with those very few flimsy privacy protections, So how
(31:31):
can we as Americans successfully walk the line and tow
the tight rope of public safety versus privacy overreach. That's
where we get to, of course, you know the flock Raven,
the gunshot detector we mentioned. I think that we have
all seen these, especially in the area of Atlanta where
(31:51):
I reside. They look similar to the shot spotter thing.
They're solar powered like the cameras, so they don't depend
on the utility rid and they use AI also integrated
with these other flock systems to take five second incremental
sound clips and play the old fireworks or firearms game.
(32:14):
And when a gunshot is detected and confirmed by their system,
the device estimates its location, it alerts police, and in
some cases the police can send that first responder drop
which could help save the lives of officers as well.
I don't know, it's a lot of stuff. INSA obviously
tapped smartphones and landlines way before, and you can't hide
(32:37):
your Internet activity from them. But we all raise such
a fuss when we learned about PRISM from Snowden, So
why pretend it's okay when it's a private company.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You know, I'm looking through here, Ben trying to understand
the difference between flock Nova and flock Freeform, because I've
seen Freeform cited more than Nova. So I'm going to
re from their website so I understand and we can
all understand Freeform. According to their own website on flocksafety
dot com, you can search existing video and LPR systems
(33:12):
using natural language. Freeform helps teams quickly find relevant footage
without complex queries. Then Nova, I think, is the is
the more targeted complex version. It says flock Nova search
across existing agency systems to support investigations and operations. It
brings case context, dashboards, and maps together so teams can
(33:35):
coordinate and work faster. Okay, hmm, so I guess, like
maybe on an in I don't know, I don't I see,
I don't understand the like full difference between the scenarios.
You would need one or the other or just use
one as your standard version.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
I think we we could probably think of freeform as
and correct me if I'm off base here, folks, freeform
as sort of the earlier version or free form as
the less complex version maybe like it's the duplo to
the lego that is Nova, Like Nova seems to be
the next step in evolution here. Okay, but I think
(34:15):
they still use them concurrently because it's again, it's a
private company, so all their clients are going to have
their own mix and match of systems in which they participate.
And it's still you know, it's it's not just confusing
to us, it's confusing to lawyers. It's going to be
confusing to the Supreme Court at some point. I think
(34:36):
we can make that prediction because it is so easily misused,
you know, just like law enforcement. Some members of law enforcement,
some few members have been caught with their hands in
the surveillance cookie jar of other databases for non work reasons. Right,
I'm a jilted lover, I'm stalking an ex. I'm a
(35:00):
cop who has a crush. I want to learn more
about this beautiful so and so I pulled over on
a routine stop. And this happens a lot open secret.
It could be guys doing a favor unofficially for a buddy,
either as a friend or in some cases taking a
little money on the side and under the table where
(35:21):
you could you could be pursuing vengeance you think someone
has wronged you or does someone you just don't like
for some reason. You can use the power of surveillance
to learn a lot about stuff to compromise these people.
I mean, I think we loosely mentioned it in chapter one.
(35:42):
There's a quintessential case of this and the problem with Flock.
It's taking place in Milwaukee. There's a police officer named
Jose Ayala. Just earlier this year he got charged with
misusing the FLOCK database one hundred and seventy nine times
(36:03):
for personal reasons and he knew better. He's an eight
year veteran of the department. He got convicted of what
they call misdemeanor attempted misconduct in public office, which doesn't
sound that serious, but it's a very very serious charge.
So at least he encountered consequences. But again, how many people,
(36:26):
how many officers or agents get away with doing that
every day? And how like, if we don't know what
we're trying to stop, then how can we stop them
block has per their reports. They have a rubric in place, right,
so you have to be approved to use NOVA or
(36:47):
similar systems to access the cameras. You have to work
with approved partners. But honestly, guys, it kind of reminds
me of people going to like an adult through graphic
website and you get the little pop up that says
you have to be over eighteen click yes or no.
How many people admit that they're not eighteen, Like it's
(37:11):
it's self regulation ultimately.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, if you go to the Institute of Justice, they
found eighteen documented cases since twenty twenty four of an
officer or someone had access to Flock Safety doing some
form of personal use stalking essentially. There's another guy named
JaMarcus Brown that ran his girlfriend's plate sixty nine times
and her mother's twenty four times, and her brother's fifteen times,
(37:35):
and you know, including an air tag in the wallet
kind of thing. So it's, you know, in pretty standard
form of stalking. He got probation for doing those things.
There is some stuff you can do which is pretty interesting.
We found this website called have been flocked dot Com
like fl ocked dot com that pulls all the public
(37:57):
records that exist out there to see if your plate
has been searched and when and all, you know, as
much information as publicly available so at least if you
if you're worried that maybe something like this is happening
to you, or you've got someone in your life maybe
that's an l EO that there's some bad blood there
or something, or maybe you're just nervous about it, we
would recommend checking out that site.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
And this is this is a great segue toward our
next question to flock or not to flock feedback and activism.
So why do we take a quick break for word
from our sponsors and we'll get back into the people
who are pushing back against flock. We're back, Okay, dozens
(38:41):
of cities across the nation have already taken a stand
and they've canceled their Flock contracts or they've attempted to.
I believe it was on Strange News recently we had
a story about a local municipality that had canceled their
Flock subscription or the contract, but Flock kept the cameras
(39:03):
going and didn't take them down, and so eventually the
local law the sheriff's department went around and put garbage bags,
like translucent garbage bags over the cameras because they kept
bagging Flock to take them down.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
And we found out why Flock hasn't taken those cameras
down because theoretically a client who has been a part
of Flock and had a subscription fee and paid all
of there are individual line item expenses for having a
single poll installed in a camera installed. There's also a
five hundred dollars termination fee to quote retrieve a camera
(39:43):
for every camera. So you're talking twelve times five hundred
and I'm assuming the local municipality there that we were
speaking of would have to put that, like, pay that
money in order to get those cameras taken down.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
So there are a lot of examples of local city
council's doing stuff like this, as well as more grassroots
direct actions. So to add to our previously mentioned have
you Been Flocked website, you can learn more at outfits
like Fight for the Futures, flock Out Initiative. And if
(40:15):
you are against Flock and it is in your neck
of the Global Woods, we do recommend partnering up with
other like minded people in your community, and please do
so in a legal way because remember, committing a crime
against this company and its clients will put a target
on your back. These folks are very good at aiming, which, yeah,
(40:38):
I wish it didn't sound hyperbolic, because it's absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, there is positive stuff though. You can search around
and find stories coming out of places like Minneapols, a
suburb in Minneapolis called Columbia Heights where again twelve cameras,
twelve flock cameras, license plate readers. But there was a
any council meeting and there was enough of a pushback
(41:03):
from the public at that meeting to have the decision
be made that the flock cameras will no longer be
in use and they're going to cancel the contract. So
just you know, theoretically from a local government standpoint, because
you are dealing with suburbs, you're dealing with individual neighborhoods,
maybe an entire city maybe sometimes you know, just a
store somewhere. That's the kind of stuff you're dealing with.
(41:25):
And if you push back enough, maybe there's change that
can be made. If you're nervous about these things or
you think they're wrong for whatever reason, if you want
to get them in your town and you're excited about
the tech, you're just going to need you know, deep
deep pockets or some kind of grant like a lot
of the local law enforcement agencies are doing getting specific
(41:46):
human trafficking grants or other forms of federal or state
money like that to be able to even afford these things.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Absolutely, and we know, you know, for every positive anti
flock movement, there are even at local government levels, there
are examples of the authorities shutting down overwhelming public outcry
against flock. So there's a dark side of this too.
I'd love to recommend four h four media dot co.
(42:13):
They've been doing some great work on flock. There's an
article by a guy named Jason Koubler over that came
out on June twelfth, twenty twenty six. I'm just I'm
reading it here. A county commissioner refuses to let residents
opposing flock speak at meeting. And this comes to us
from North Carolina, where the county commissioner of Madison County,
(42:37):
a guy named Michael Garrison, said, how many people are
here for public comment dealing with license plate readers aka flock? Everybody,
pretty much everybody raised their hands and he said, look,
you guys could talk with each other, but you're we're
going to only let one person speak at the meeting.
(43:00):
So we're going to shut you down, which is, by
the way, not how those meetings are supposed to work.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
No, none at all. But according to the San Francisco standard,
this movement is happening. You can read Berkeley, the first
US sanctuary city reconsiders surveillance expansion with Flock. It was
published May eleventh, twenty twenty six, and in this they
describe between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty six, eighty
two FLOCK contracts have been terminated in twenty eight different
(43:27):
states over that time. So there is a pushback against
this kind of thing, and you can see it happening,
So you know, I guess, I guess, Ben. Just My
only point is that there is some positivity here. I
think no matter how much the big pushback is, you know,
from people who are trying to stop the pushback, I
think it's working at least to some extent.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Yeah, Like I always say, I think there's I mean, we
have to acknowledge the dark side, or what I see
as the dark side, but we also we can practice
at least nihilistic optimism, which is my favorite brand of philosophy.
Because current legislation is at a crossroads. It's not just
grassroots activity, though, I think that is tremendous and powerful
(44:08):
and must go forward. In July of last year, Flock
announced that it was restricting access to its national lookup tools,
effectively blocking agencies from searching cameras in California, Illinois, and Virginia.
And this came about as a direct reaction to this
debate about privacy, state sovereignity, and the ethical boundaries of
(44:32):
Morewellian surveillance. I mean, this is why state level folks
are so concerned. Even champions of Flock will readily admit
it has been used in dodgy activities tracking individuals involved
in abortion cases in states where abortion is effectively illegal. Right,
(44:53):
We've got to go to one website that I love
for this captain compliance great name cap the site situation
where a Texas officer used the Flock system to search
for a woman who self administered an abortion. And in
this search, this officer scanned more than eighty three thousand
(45:14):
Flock cameras across states where the abortion procedure remains legal today.
So he was looking for a person who, depending upon
the laws of a state, didn't commit a crime. And then,
of course, you know we mentioned ice has been leveraging
local police lookups for immigration enforcement, which means they're targeting
(45:37):
people who may or may not be here legally. And
most importantly, there are people who probably would not have
popped on ICE's radar without this system in place. This
even creeped out some police departments. Police departments are shutting
down their network access when they learned that their data
was being used by ICE. It's a messy bull of spaghetti.
Speaker 5 (46:02):
You guys, Did you guys know there's a safe list
you can get on?
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Is that like the do not Call list?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Talking kind of but it well, it's it's for specific
flock safety systems. But I'm assuming if you get in
on a safe list on a local level, right your
local police departments flock safety system they use a free
form with and NOVA and all that stuff. If you
get in there, I'm assuming it might work for a
lot of the other ones where your vehicle will essentially
be ignored. Like it's so that flock doesn't have to
(46:31):
keep track of so many different vehicles all the time.
And the perfect plan for any enterprising criminal would be
get on the safety list and now your vehicle is
essentially invisible to the license plate readers.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
Wait, but doesn't that go against the whole concept? Like
is this like getting pre check at the TSA. I mean,
I don't understand. You don't have to have any qualifications
to get on this list, like a like a like
a clean you know, criminal track record or lack thereof.
So let's question.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Let's go to the uh flocksafety dot com website. In short,
the safe list allows images capture of your vehicle to
be marked as resident. This way, if a crime happens
in your neighborhood. Oh, this is just for hoa's I guess,
and your HOA or trusted neighbor needs to look through
flock images, they can filter out all known residents in
their search. This keeps your vehicle out of the search.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
So it's it's limited then, as what we're saying, Yeah,
if you're if your HOA is in Hilted Head and
they're using flock, your Rolls Royce I imagine, can be put
on the safety list, but your Rolls Royce can still
be tracked in Baltimore or Savannah.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Oh yeah, dude, yeah, you just you There's a form
that you get you enter your street address, license plate
number for your vehicle. You can even register more than
one vehicle from the same form.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, because you might vehicles.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah, and you can check quote remove my vehicles from footage.
I wonder if that actually like takes that out, or
if it's still there they just pretend like it's not there.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Or they just don't do any they don't aggregate any
more stuff. It's it would be interesting to get under
the hood of their day to day operations and see
if they have a metric like cost per individual or
cost per car.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
You know, I'm still sorry, guys, I'm just continuing to
read on their website. The last quote from here. When
you register your vehicle on Flock's safet list, you footage
of your vehicle won't be removed completely unless you check
this remove my vehicle from footage box. This will ensure
your vehicle will not turn up in any search.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Okay, so they're expunging the record. Kind of sick if
you haven't done anything. Also, there's that case where you
know what, say, you enter the safety list, as one
of us said earlier in Enterprising Criminal, but they were
already looking for you. I wonder it's an interesting question
(49:03):
if the local law that's already been searching for you
gets an alert that says, hey, this person tried to
enter this safety list and they provided their current home address.
Speaker 5 (49:14):
Oh there's a safe list, baddies.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, exactly right. Is putting yourself on the list of
safe people putting you in a bracket of suspicion. Also,
as we said, flock will tell you they don't practice
facial recognition. I I am of the mind that that
is very much a voluntary choice, and it would be
relatively trivial given the beautiful way their system is built,
(49:42):
it'd be relatively trivial to add that.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
They also claim that like everything's deleted after a certain
amount of time, which I think we all are skeptical about,
even with as regards like TSA, you know, photos and
all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Anybody who's had a ring camera system or a home
security system may be familiar with the thirty days concept.
Footage will stick around for thirty days and a lot
of these sometimes you can get up to ninety depending
on who you're using, but at some point it goes
away because there's only so much cloud storage, you know,
for these pretty massive sometimes four K videos, two K
(50:17):
videos don't.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Some services allow you to specify stuff that you can
save for longer.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah, well, on almost in two different ones that I've used,
and then others that I've seen in use, you can
download individual videos and you just have them forever. But
if you don't download them in a certain amount of
like a window again, let's say thirty days, then they
would just disappear.
Speaker 5 (50:39):
They go away.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
And I'm imagining that's only functional for the amount of
data storage that would be necessary.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
And some of this stuff may actually some of Flock's
actions may end up being ruled illegal by certain states.
I remember reading in Illinois, the Secretary of State just
last year an investigation into whether police were violating Illinois
law by sharing data with out of state agencies, particularly
(51:10):
in immigration related searches. I mean, guys, there's no two
ways about it. This situation is untenable. Predicts are right
when they say this could violate some of the most
sacred rights of people in the United States.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, I want to go back quickly just to what
we were talking about with facial recognition. Imagine you have
a tiny, little suburban neighborhood that you live in, and
it was decided that by the HOA that flock safety
needed to be in there, so they they splurged for
a flock safety sparrow bundle, which is two cameras for
an entrance and exit of a little neighborhood. Okay, you
(51:47):
splurge four seven fifty dollars for these two cameras. That's
a lot for an HOA. Well, depending on where you live,
I guess from my huge HOA, that would be a
huge amount of money, a big choice. Now, imagine that
doesn't have facial recognition on it right now, that's just
to get the two cameras. You also have to pay
money to get access to the whole servers right in
(52:09):
the free form and all of that where you actually
get to look things up if you need to. Now
imagine you've already sunk all that cost in there, and
now there's facial recognition becomes available and it's actually pretty
cheap to get the facial recognition software to get a
little license for that. You have to imagine would you
(52:30):
go for it or not? And you've already sunk all
this money into it to keep your neighborhood safe. You
got enough of the people in the HOA or the
members to say yes to the things thus far. Now
you can fully protect everyone by knowing each individual human
being that enters your neighborhood. It's that Awelian thing where
(52:50):
I can imagine several people if I think about my
neighborhood that would want.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
That Flock also already, just for the record, folks, we're
aware flock can clock people's clothing, which can be very
near the same thing, you know what I mean. Like
if they want to find the guy with a blue
jacket at a protest, they can find everybody wearing a
blue jacket pretty quickly.
Speaker 5 (53:11):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
And again, facial recognition is not happening. They keep saying
that Flock over and over again. We don't do racial recognition.
But it would not take much to integrate that because
it would be a software update, right, You wouldn't have
to actually do anything to the cameras.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
Yeah. Again, it's it's a trivial coding improvement or addition.
And we I'm in such a dilemma here, guys. It's
such a bag of badgers because the critics of flock
are objectively correct, right, But the proponents of flock are
also They have a lot of validity to their claims
(53:50):
because Flock has yet to officially turn a profit, but
it has it arguably prevented crime. It saved lives, including
those of officers and civilians. I mean, in twenty twenty five,
the current CEO and one of the three co founders, Langley,
he said flox cameras helped solve a million crimes of
(54:13):
some sort per year and in less than ten years,
he predicted, and keep in mind this is the CEO
of a for profit company. In less than ten years,
he predicts that flocks cameras, the airborne and the fixed
ones will eradicate quote almost all crime in the United States.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
That is some hyperbolic right jazz. Right there has some
free jazz. I mean, because then you start thinking about, like, well,
what that's as it stands, There's no way because as
we said, this is reactive, right, so there has to
be an escalation. Where do the drones then, Like have
you know guns built onto them or you know some
(54:51):
sort of stun gun or taser, Like there has to
be an escalation for it to quote unquote remove all
threat of crime.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
That's just not realistic and it's also not legal the
way the system works now, you know, I mean, we'll
have to wait and see, but we would love to
hear your thoughts. Or is this being blown out of
proportion by the critics? Does the good outweigh the negative?
I mean, how does flock come into play when, say,
something weird happens on Pennsylvania Avenue and the government cracks
(55:25):
down on a protest or a riot? You know what
I mean? How does how does warrantless search work in
that situation? What are the expectations of privacy in this
brave new world? And you know how much does flock
already know about you? You specifically you Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, yeah, in the home depots so many times, that's
so funny. Oh my gosh, I just looked at Sandy
Springs on the dflock map. You guys, Holy crap.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Everything.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
That's like the most concentration in an area I've ever.
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Seen a flock.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
And unless you are paying flock, the information they have
about you, that's the stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you
enjoyed this series, folks. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Please find us on the lines, call us on the phone.
You can always send us an email.
Speaker 4 (56:19):
If you want to find us all over the lines.
You can do so by reaching out of the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social
media platform you prefer.
Speaker 5 (56:29):
Do you want to call us?
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Our number is one eight to three three std W
y TK. Why don't you give us a call while
being actively viewed by a flock camera? That would be fun.
Speaker 4 (56:44):
No, I'm just kidding. Give us a being outside.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah, yeah, what do you think about this? Do you
have any ideas for future episodes? Give us a call,
Give yourself a cool nickname, and let us know if
we can use your name and message on one of
our listener mail episodes that show up in the audio feed. Hey,
do you want to send us an email? You can
do that.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
rights back, So hit us up with a random fact.
You'll get one in return. We'll see you out here
in the dark or on flock conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Welcome back. This is
a two chapter series for us. This is our second
episode on flock Safety or flock Cameras and guys. I
(00:52):
think one thing that astonished all of us when we
were digging into the research is that this company is
not even a decade old. They were formed in twenty seventeen,
and over less than ten years they have had the
kind of explosive growth that every startup dreams about.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
They're disruptors. We love a disruptor.
Speaker 5 (01:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well, and when you look at the technology, it does
seem to be basically ring cameras with license plate readers
on them, plus the shot spotter technology we talked about,
all rolled up into one thing.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I guess that's the thing right, Like they didn't exactly
reinvent the wheel. They just kind of combined the wheel
with some other stuff that already existed and did it
in a little bit more of an elegant and efficient
way that was scalable. Like I don't know what their
bottom line is, but I was telling you guys off air,
I noticed my first flock camera yesterday. And I know
(01:49):
that we hear Aalleanah are kind of at ground zero
for this stuff because it's sort of been the biggest
proving ground for the technology. And I never really saw
one before, or never really seen one before, but I
guess it's that beta Minehoff thing where since we were
talking about it now, is maybe a little more subconsciously
looking for it. And it is kind of low profile.
It's just this camera on a pole with a big
old sideways facing solar array at the top.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Can you talk about where you found it?
Speaker 4 (02:13):
It was in my neighborhood, There wasn't I mean, I
wasn't like I was actually biking because I've I've got
an electric bike and I've been biking around a lot,
and maybe that's why I noticed it, because I wasn't
going quite as fast and it just kind of it
was on my mind. So it was somewhere in the
part of town I live in to cater East Lake adjacent,
which is not far from Atlanta proper but sort of
(02:35):
its own little community.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
But yeah, and this is I love your point there
about maybe going a bit more slowly and then you
know you're able to take in more of the environment
surrounding you. We know that it. Once you know what
to look for, you're going to see flot cameras everywhere
in a city near you. There are tens of thousands
of them, permeating all kinds of towns, municipalities, and course
(03:00):
big cities. And then step with this explosive growth, Flock's
controversy also grows. So please, please, please, folks, check out
chapter one of Flock before you continue to this one
and segue speaking of seeing everyone, we'd love to see
you on Virgin voyages.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Virgin Voyages.
Speaker 5 (03:21):
There's lots of cameras on that ship.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Wait a minute, that's not this, that's not the selling
point of this, but.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
They're not slack shafety.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Well, well, what I'm saying is, we would love to
see you on Virgin Voyages, folks, because we are going
on a cruise that we're very excited about from October
tewod to the seventh with our other Stuff colleagues, like
some real real heavy hitters headliners Josh and Chuck stuff
you should know, and of course Annie and Sam from
(03:51):
stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
I know, we've been hitting this hard, but we're super
excited about it and we really would love to hang
out with y'all. So uh do check out Virgin Voie
dot com and search for these what is it called
stuff at c Stuff at se Yeah, when ticket and
on the back end of it coming back into New
York City, it is Comic Con time, so you can
always double up and make make a little comic Con
(04:13):
trip out of.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
It too, and you might see us there as well.
So we're going to pause for a word from our sponsors.
Give everybody a second to check out Stuff at Sea
and we'll be right back. Here are the facts, guys.
I'm so excited that we made this a two chapter
series because when we last left you, perhaps without a
(04:38):
dope beat the step two, we were discussing some of
Flock's specific capabilities, in particular of course the alp R stuff,
the automated license plate, reader technology, the increasingly acrimonious court
cases that we're going to dive into in chapter two,
and of course the misuse of this technology. And one
(04:59):
thing I think that we were all very fair about
is that the founders of Flock, who are fellow Georgia
tech folks, they are not Peter Teel level jerks. They
genuinely seem to have noble intent. If you have spent
time in the Georgia Tech area of Atlanta, you already
know crime was and is a serious issue. So their
(05:22):
classic Georgia tech type solution was to look at all
the other existing surveillance technology out there and figure out
how to combine it, to aggregate it into a massive,
fully integrated system of audio and visual surveillance. It wouldn't
just help law enforcement close cases. Potentially, it could help
(05:45):
stop the bad guys before a crime occurred. And this
leads us to something I think we'd all love to
spend a little bit more time on the grand dilemma
of the greater good? How much liberty should we sacrifice
in pursuit of security?
Speaker 4 (06:00):
I mean, you can certainly see this quandary pondered in
a lot of science fiction like Minority Report, is a
good example where you've got this whole concept of pre
crime and you know all of the moral and ethical
dilemmas that go along with that greater good question, because
at a certain point it just becomes like the panopticon
(06:22):
of it all, the surveillance state of it all, Like
is that actually liberty? Like are you able to live
freely if you are constantly being monitored and people are
taking advantage of that ability. It's tough one because you
want to live in a safe community, you want to
be able to feel safe. But I've never felt patently
(06:45):
unsafe to the point where I feel like this stuff
is fully justified.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
Well, it's tough, It's really tough.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
And I think about schools often because schools are another
place where flock safety ends up going into and getting
pretty big contracts. And when you think about places that
have potential danger, if you think about the incidents that
have occurred over the last fifteen years, twenty years, especially
(07:12):
at schools and places where we gather a lot malls,
home improvement stores, big box arts, protests, you imagine there's
a looming potential fear in all of those places, but
it isn't necessarily justified.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
If you look at the statistics, however, there is a
well we did that story about the Brownies and a
non detect level of laxatives in the Brownies. There is
a somewhat detect level of mass shootings and terrible things
that occur around us in this country. So the thought
of the need for something like this, or maybe even
(07:49):
the desire from a public to have something like this exists.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
This is not going to stop mass shootings.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
It might help you catch the shooter, yes, but it's
not going to stop mass shooting. There's a whole, yeah,
a whole other thing that needs to be I mean,
I'm not going to be mister like you know, draconian
gun control here, but like something needs to happen in
that department if we are going to expect any kind
of downtick in these mass shootings and you know, school shootings.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Your point, but I.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Think it is so right to say it's a response,
like it is a response to that terrible thing, right,
and it's an enterprising opportunity. Now you can protect these
areas theoretically, right with real time cameras and mics that
will pick up everything and even scan the license plates
of everybody who comes in and out of an area.
(08:39):
So like the offer there I think is just so
valid for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Can we also just point out that, like, how often
do they not catch the shooter in mass shooting situations?
I don't. I can't think of an example where the
shooter has gotten away or you know, on a you know,
taken there.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
On it's the DC sniper, the d SEE sniper. If so,
just if you imagine your head if this technology existed
in Virginia, Maryland, the Washington DC area such an high
I know, I know, but I agree, But it's the
kind of thing that get that can be pointed to
as a valid point. If this stuff was there and
license plates were being read at each one of these shootings,
(09:20):
the vehicle that was being used in those shootings would
have been caught the second time that it.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Happened, right And also you know, eventually the DC snipers
were apprehended, as we know. We also I love the
point we're making here, the points we're making, but we
have to point out folks, all of us understand that
statistics are one thing and personal experience is another. So
(09:46):
if you lost a loved one in a mass shooting,
or a spree killing. Then it doesn't necessarily make your
life better to know that it doesn't happen that often
because you have lost something irreplaceable. And that's why there's
such a dilemma about security versus liberty and privacy in
America's founding fathers. As imperfect as they were, they spent
(10:10):
so much time arguing about this, both in public and
with one another. Like Benjamin Franklin, by the way, probably
not a serial killer, but check out our episode. He
was fond of saying, they who can give up essential
liberty to attain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety. And the famous Thomas Payne rode with him
(10:31):
on that. He said, the greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated
in the name of the noblest causes. It's kind of
like how years ago, I can't remember it was episode
or strange news. We were talking about how various governments,
the UK in particular, wanted to de anonymize, excuse me,
de anonymize the Internet and they were often using the
(10:54):
sheep's bull of protect the children to hide this, Orwellian
wolf of a surveiller and state beneath because the same stuff.
The exact same technology you use to protect innocent people
can be used to persecute people that you don't like,
even if they are innocent as well. It's just so
crazy that way back in the seventeen hundreds, these people
(11:18):
had zero knowledge of the Internet, av technology, prepy algorithms, drones,
even machine guns, and even they were like, this stuff
is going to be terrifying.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Dude, just speaking of how far we've come, right two
hundred and fifty years. Did you guys check out UFC
two fifty Freedom two fifty last night?
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Did not? I saw the highlights and I said, think
it rained out?
Speaker 5 (11:42):
No, no, no, no, there was a delay.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
There was a delay that one guy got in trouble
for just showing up.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Uh maybe I don't know. I just know the spectacle
of it all. To see it happen on the White
House lawn, you guys to watch the live cameras track
Dana White and the President of the United States saunter
slowly out from one of the wings out to the
little balcony like we've seen kings and popes come out
(12:12):
on the balcony when.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
We're in the bread and circuses phase of this particular
collapse of empire. And I saw a really good quote
in some of the coverage that I was seeing this morning.
I hadn't heard this before, but I think it's quite good.
It says, when a clown moves into the palace, he
doesn't become a king. The palace just becomes a circus.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I like that. And we've also got to point out
to that bread and circus's note. People are increasingly unable
to afford bread, right, So I was gonna say more
of a circus economy.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Well, well, that quote, Ben, as you know, is give them
bread and circuses and they'll never revolt. We've got plenty
of circus, but it doesn't appear to be enough bread,
so we may be looking at a revolt.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
I think you're right. I just want to make some
kind of parallel here, guys, between that display of because
it was mostly attended by If you looked at the
shots that they would give you in the pre show
before the fight started, it was mostly military members that
were in the audience, so a ton of people in
uniform that were there attending that they're showing to you
(13:14):
on television. They the national anthem is sung by a
country star, and I don't even know how many jets
flew over right as they climax that song. The thing
is sponsored by Trump coin and by Ram trucks.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Where they the batting platform and Monster energy drank. The
idiocracy of it all.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Oh and the military members had to pay, by the way.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, But the whole point that I'm trying to get
to you guys, is that it is a display of
military might, of the American liberty spirit of freedom, but
of might associated with that freedom of danger and like
will we will destroy anyone that comes near us, and
we will fight all the bad guys. It was this
real bravado thing, right, which is you would just associate
(14:04):
with the combat sport like that. But it was also
America's birthday celebration as well as the President's birthday celebration,
and to see all of that on display reminded me
of kind of what Flock safety can represent. That like
the theoretical unstoppable force. If you want to come and
(14:24):
do crime in this area, we are going to stop
you because we have this technology.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Yeah, And I think the to that point, Matt, I
think the founding fathers would have honestly despised Flock even
though we've been very fair in chapter one and endeavor
to be fair in today's episode. Because the Founding Fathers,
their closest analog was probably the infamous panopticon of Jeremy
Bentham's philosophy, and they didn't dig that concept either, so
(14:53):
they hated this kind of idea. They were so concerned
about it. We should say that they eventually enshrin this
caution into the Bill of Rights, most notably the Fourth Amendment,
which I think we could casually refer to as the
mind your Business Law. It basically says, we gave you
the quote in chapter one, but it basically says you
(15:15):
have to have a reason or probable cause to go
into someone's home to apprehend them, to go through their
papers or now their computers and their online activity. You
have to describe what you're looking for and why you're
looking for it. And it's funny because as an illegal,
Beagles in the crowd know the Constitution and the Bill
(15:37):
of Rights. They both have this confounding habit of being
either incredibly specific, like explicit all men are created equal,
but then they also become cartoonishly vague bear pretty much
any weapon, forget about it, you know, would they have
written the right to bear arms into the into the
(16:00):
founding documents. If they had known Ak forty seven's and
Kalishnikov's would be this easy to purchase, I mean there
was method to the madness though.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Well, I think they still would have though, because isn't
the point to stop anyone that would try and take
the system over?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
Right, like government overreach?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yes, so like you would, whatever weapon that is at
anyone's disposal would be in there, because the concept is
to prevent this thing from being corrupted to the extent
which you I would argue, and I think we might
all argue as being corrupted and has been corrupted for
a long time. But what do you do against that
(16:40):
kind of thing? And if you imagine all of the
ways working within the system to change the system that
have been attempted over a century and a half two
centuries now, attempting to fix things to be a little
more meaningful for everyone andunctional for everyone, it don't seem
(17:01):
to be working. So like they put that in there
because I'm assumed. Look, I don't know, you know, it's
hard to know exactly what they were thinking, but I
do imagine the argument would be whatever means you have
protect this thing.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
That makes sense. Yeah, I mean they doubtlessly knew something
we've been saying on the show for years. Technology would
inevitably outpace legislation, and they were genuinely prescient about so
many things, so it's pretty clever that they would keep
stuff loose enough to allow for innovation, which not every
country is done. They wanted to get everyone on the
(17:36):
same page. They wanted to, most importantly, to your point,
allow future generations to update those fundamental axioms as time
went on. And yeah, flock is inarguably saving lives, It
is inarguably, in many cases stopping crimes. So of course
law enforcement adores it. Not all departments though, as we'll see,
(17:59):
and with getting in your business, fellow conspiracy realist, it
is statistically nigh certain that one of us in the
crowd tonight had or will have a crime solved, a
name cleared, or a criminal caught in your area due
to this technology. But we can't help but wonder what
(18:19):
these Panopticon haters would have thought about flock. And since
our Weejah boards keep getting a missed call every time
we hit up the founding fathers, let's get back to
flock in the present day. What do you guys say,
take a little ad break for our sponsors. I wonder
if one of them's flock.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
I hope not.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
I actually hope not either years where it gets crazy,
all right, We talked about the license plate reading tech.
That was one of the big things we hit toward
the end of our first episode. Again, as we said,
it's not by any means original, but the true innovation
(18:58):
here is in integration, integration with other systems, and that
includes the systems of their bigger competitor, Axon. Right, we
mentioned Axon in the past. It can integrate into pre
crime predictive policing networks like Palentier. Do we check out
our very strange episodes on Peter Tiel.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
You mentioned a thing we always brush up against with
stuff like this, the idea of technology outpacing legislation. But
it seems like in this case, through you know, the
current administration and a lot of the rollbacks of certain
protections and oversights that they have been responsible for, we're
almost getting to a place where the legislation is kind
of a moot point, right, because we remember when it
(19:43):
was such a hubbub and such a kerfuffle when we
found out that all this metadata about our you know,
telephone calls and things were being you know, observed by
the NSA, et cetera. I mean, that was a huge
bad PR moment for the Obama administration and they had
some explaining to do, and Americans were really up in
(20:06):
arms about it. But now it's like, I guess, through
this rollback and through the just the change and attitude
and kind of this realization that maybe the legislation was
just a matter of people behaving themselves and kind of
exercising good judgment and decorum and saying, no, we need
this to be legislated in order to you know, to
spend the appropriate amount of time on it to make
(20:26):
sure that we know how to protect ourselves from this
kind of stuff. But now it's just kind of like,
I don't know, it just seems like there's nobody cares anymore,
and and we're just kind of going down this surveillance
rabbit hole and there's really no looking back.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
People do care. But when I say people, you know what,
they're not getting the headlines. It's almost like the mass
media is downplaying some of the concerns.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I wonder if I could share a quick local news
story about integration before we get into it, and like
why it is bigger and scarier than you may think.
This comes to us from WRAL News posted on June eighth,
twenty twenty six.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
I'll just put it this way.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
This is from the article as North Carolina rolled out
a license plate reader pilot program with multiple law enforcement
agencies across the state. So this is the license plate
readers only and it is being used across the state
of North Carolina with multiple agencies. Okay. The North Carolina
State Bureau of Investigation also gained access to flock safety
(21:34):
cameras from Lowe's Home improvement stores in the entire state,
as well as the entire state of South Carolina, as
well as the entire state of Virginia. Which is crazy
to think about a state's Bureau of Investigation an FBI,
but on the state level, gained access to the flock
(21:55):
safety cameras at Low's home improvement stores from three states. Now,
think about how many lows there are out there right,
Think about just the number of cameras out there in
the middle. You guys have probably seen these before. The
mobile security stations that kind of sit in a parking lot.
(22:16):
They look like a tiny i don't know, just a
almost like a tiny little vehicle that has these big
poles that go up with the exactly as you described earlier, Noel,
it was.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
A mini version of that. I know exactly what you're
talking about. We see them in a parking lot near
our where offices are, where there's that place that does
those auctions. You go up the stairs there and there's
one right there. It's got like tires and like kind
of like it almost looks like a trailer, and then
it's got this big old pole and a solar array
and then clearly kind of like a you know, camera array.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
It's there's supposed to be deterrens anywhere like that. Construction
sites warehouse is a place of business. They have an
AI technology that detects all kinds of different things, basically
movement after a certain time period when the business is
closed and when they want to have that alert system
set up. And it has twenty four hour video and
(23:10):
license plate readers in the same way. So just imagining
that all of these lows are already in there, and
the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is also attempting
to get access to these same cameras in home depots
across all these states. And it's literally email exchanges, guys,
between the SBI and a big corporate person like LOWS
(23:33):
or Home Depot and then negotiating access to these cameras.
And when we're talking about integration and potential dangers here,
we're talking about ice, right, because we know for sure
in the past flock safety cameras have been used in
ice operations as well as other things. And we know
home depot and LOWS are two of the biggest places
where where folks go to gather to get work. You
(23:56):
can see all of that stuff coming together and then
realizing that it's not just local law enforcement, it's the
big boys in every state.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about that, guys.
So we're talking in specific about something called flock Nova.
This is their lookup tool. They've been hard at work
on what they will alternately call a public safety data
platform or a search engine built for police. It supplements
(24:27):
the ALPRs with information from public public records, right like
who about a house? Win, all the kind of stuff
you could normally look up as a civilian or request
as a member of the public about somebody else. They
also were going to They originally were going to take
information from data breaches as well as I think we
(24:49):
can all catch this phrase commercially available data in order
to track these specific individuals without a warrant ever necessarily
coming into play. That's a lot of linguistic parcour so
to unpack it, what do we mean by data breaches?
We mean that flock was originally going to use data
(25:10):
pulled from the dark web, the kind of sites that
will ransomware somebody's financials or their sensitive information. Luckily, they
clocked how untenable that position would be and they pulled
out of that before running into any legal firestorms. But
another one of the ones that worries me, I think
(25:32):
it worries all of us, I hope so, is the
phrase commercially available data. That means all the stuff that
your government and your favorite private companies are not explicitly
prohibited from selling. And there are relatively few things in
the US now that private companies are explicitly prohibited from
(25:54):
selling about you. And for example, here in the States,
we have this thing called hipA. You probably heard the acronym,
but we often you know, we just hear the acronym
our eyes glaze over and we don't talk much about it.
It's short for Health Insurance, Portability and Accountability Act of
nineteen ninety six. It's a very soft toothed attempt to
(26:18):
uphold the concerns of those founding fathers. All it does
really is give you certain rights to privacy regarding your
personal health. And yes, spoiler, private insurance companies hate it.
But everything else, by guys, everything else, bros. It's up
for grabs. Boom boom boom unless you opt out. You
(26:40):
should assume that every private institution with which you engage,
financial institutions and telecoms especially, they consider your activity and interactions.
It's own separate revenue stream. And I wasn't aware of
this until far later than I should have been. But
did you guys know when you sign up we're a
(27:00):
credit card, you have the option to opt out of
selling your data, and if you don't opt out, just
like organ donation experiments, if you don't opt out, then
it's again it's another way for them to make money.
And it's actually it's kind of hard to find that
opt out option.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
Yeah, but I've had the same credit card for years now,
before all of this was much of a conversation. So
do I get grandfathered in? Do I have to opt out?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
After the fact, I'm actually looking at that as well, Nol,
and I'm hoping that I'm hoping I could come back
with a good answer. But if you're a financial boffin,
let us know and we going to work with this.
We've got to get to this point because it was you, Matt,
pointing out the interactions, the interstate, state to state interactions.
(27:51):
This gets so complicated when we look at discrepancies between
federal versus state level policies. Because some states have way
better privacy protection laws than other states. The top three
with the best laws are going to be California, Maine,
and Nevada, just in alphabetical order. But according to places
like security dot org, which is a great source on this,
(28:15):
the other forty seven states have weak or nonexistent consumer
data privacy laws. Like how does this apply to flock system?
They're everywhere except for Alaska for now. So is it
possible for another version of our hypothetical example here? Is
it possible that the info gathered on an individual is
(28:38):
legal in South Dakota, but the same info about the
same person is illegal in California. This is a legal minefield.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, there's a story coming out of Stockton, California as
they expanded their flock to include these first responder drones
and spend three million extra do on the system. There's
a little piece in here from Stocktonia on June eighth,
and it's talking about the national look Up feature that
(29:11):
Flock has and how that feature has been disabled for
California agencies back in March of twenty twenty five. And
they also block federal agencies from discovering or requesting sharing
relationships with any California agencies. So theoretically, some of the
Flock information that is captured in California won't be shareable
(29:35):
to let's say, the FEDS or other agencies that even
want to look at it because of these laws you're
talking about here, Ben.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah, and we're going to run into even more of
that as we continue. But there's an important point we
got to hit there in relation to the story you
just shared. The way that the flock Nova program works,
the way the search engine works is that you interact
with approved partners like other members of law enforcement. But
(30:04):
your price for interaction isn't just financial. In order to
participate in the network, you also have to give up
all of your data to the system, So with every
new partner, it grows and grows and grows. That's how
NOVA coordinates across what they call approved agencies. So if
you're looking for a specific individual or a specific vehicle,
(30:27):
Nova can connect law enforcement across the United States into
the search. So flock, if you go to their own
website for Nova, they specifically cite success in arresting twenty
six suspects and success in recovering seventy victims of human trafficking,
which is honestly awesome, and Flock's been in use since
(30:49):
May of last year. Here's the weird thing. Okay, if
we're the local cops now and we're running a search, right,
I'm Noel Brown. I'm a local cop. I don't just
get the license plate of Johnny red lat blue jeans.
I get everything about the car is driving. I get
a ton of personal information about his life, even if
(31:11):
he never actually pushes that red light, if he just
drives through the intersection, and I want to see what
pops up on Nova about him. This can happen anywhere
he happens to drive by any area where FLOCK is
deployed with those very few flimsy privacy protections, So how
(31:31):
can we as Americans successfully walk the line and tow
the tight rope of public safety versus privacy overreach. That's
where we get to, of course, you know the flock Raven,
the gunshot detector we mentioned. I think that we have
all seen these, especially in the area of Atlanta where
(31:51):
I reside. They look similar to the shot spotter thing.
They're solar powered like the cameras, so they don't depend
on the utility rid and they use AI also integrated
with these other flock systems to take five second incremental
sound clips and play the old fireworks or firearms game.
(32:14):
And when a gunshot is detected and confirmed by their system,
the device estimates its location, it alerts police, and in
some cases the police can send that first responder drop
which could help save the lives of officers as well.
I don't know, it's a lot of stuff. INSA obviously
tapped smartphones and landlines way before, and you can't hide
(32:37):
your Internet activity from them. But we all raise such
a fuss when we learned about PRISM from Snowden, So
why pretend it's okay when it's a private company.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You know, I'm looking through here, Ben trying to understand
the difference between flock Nova and flock Freeform, because I've
seen Freeform cited more than Nova. So I'm going to
re from their website so I understand and we can
all understand Freeform. According to their own website on flocksafety
dot com, you can search existing video and LPR systems
(33:12):
using natural language. Freeform helps teams quickly find relevant footage
without complex queries. Then Nova, I think, is the is
the more targeted complex version. It says flock Nova search
across existing agency systems to support investigations and operations. It
brings case context, dashboards, and maps together so teams can
(33:35):
coordinate and work faster. Okay, hmm, so I guess, like
maybe on an in I don't know, I don't I see,
I don't understand the like full difference between the scenarios.
You would need one or the other or just use
one as your standard version.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
I think we we could probably think of freeform as
and correct me if I'm off base here, folks, freeform
as sort of the earlier version or free form as
the less complex version maybe like it's the duplo to
the lego that is Nova, Like Nova seems to be
the next step in evolution here. Okay, but I think
(34:15):
they still use them concurrently because it's again, it's a
private company, so all their clients are going to have
their own mix and match of systems in which they participate.
And it's still you know, it's it's not just confusing
to us, it's confusing to lawyers. It's going to be
confusing to the Supreme Court at some point. I think
(34:36):
we can make that prediction because it is so easily misused,
you know, just like law enforcement. Some members of law enforcement,
some few members have been caught with their hands in
the surveillance cookie jar of other databases for non work reasons. Right,
I'm a jilted lover, I'm stalking an ex. I'm a
(35:00):
cop who has a crush. I want to learn more
about this beautiful so and so I pulled over on
a routine stop. And this happens a lot open secret.
It could be guys doing a favor unofficially for a buddy,
either as a friend or in some cases taking a
little money on the side and under the table where
(35:21):
you could you could be pursuing vengeance you think someone
has wronged you or does someone you just don't like
for some reason. You can use the power of surveillance
to learn a lot about stuff to compromise these people.
I mean, I think we loosely mentioned it in chapter one.
(35:42):
There's a quintessential case of this and the problem with Flock.
It's taking place in Milwaukee. There's a police officer named
Jose Ayala. Just earlier this year he got charged with
misusing the FLOCK database one hundred and seventy nine times
(36:03):
for personal reasons and he knew better. He's an eight
year veteran of the department. He got convicted of what
they call misdemeanor attempted misconduct in public office, which doesn't
sound that serious, but it's a very very serious charge.
So at least he encountered consequences. But again, how many people,
(36:26):
how many officers or agents get away with doing that
every day? And how like, if we don't know what
we're trying to stop, then how can we stop them
block has per their reports. They have a rubric in place, right,
so you have to be approved to use NOVA or
(36:47):
similar systems to access the cameras. You have to work
with approved partners. But honestly, guys, it kind of reminds
me of people going to like an adult through graphic
website and you get the little pop up that says
you have to be over eighteen click yes or no.
How many people admit that they're not eighteen, Like it's
(37:11):
it's self regulation ultimately.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah, if you go to the Institute of Justice, they
found eighteen documented cases since twenty twenty four of an
officer or someone had access to Flock Safety doing some
form of personal use stalking essentially. There's another guy named
JaMarcus Brown that ran his girlfriend's plate sixty nine times
and her mother's twenty four times, and her brother's fifteen times,
(37:35):
and you know, including an air tag in the wallet
kind of thing. So it's, you know, in pretty standard
form of stalking. He got probation for doing those things.
There is some stuff you can do which is pretty interesting.
We found this website called have been flocked dot Com
like fl ocked dot com that pulls all the public
(37:57):
records that exist out there to see if your plate
has been searched and when and all, you know, as
much information as publicly available so at least if you
if you're worried that maybe something like this is happening
to you, or you've got someone in your life maybe
that's an l EO that there's some bad blood there
or something, or maybe you're just nervous about it, we
would recommend checking out that site.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
And this is this is a great segue toward our
next question to flock or not to flock feedback and activism.
So why do we take a quick break for word
from our sponsors and we'll get back into the people
who are pushing back against flock. We're back, Okay, dozens
(38:41):
of cities across the nation have already taken a stand
and they've canceled their Flock contracts or they've attempted to.
I believe it was on Strange News recently we had
a story about a local municipality that had canceled their
Flock subscription or the contract, but Flock kept the cameras
(39:03):
going and didn't take them down, and so eventually the
local law the sheriff's department went around and put garbage bags,
like translucent garbage bags over the cameras because they kept
bagging Flock to take them down.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
And we found out why Flock hasn't taken those cameras
down because theoretically a client who has been a part
of Flock and had a subscription fee and paid all
of there are individual line item expenses for having a
single poll installed in a camera installed. There's also a
five hundred dollars termination fee to quote retrieve a camera
(39:43):
for every camera. So you're talking twelve times five hundred
and I'm assuming the local municipality there that we were
speaking of would have to put that, like, pay that
money in order to get those cameras taken down.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
So there are a lot of examples of local city
council's doing stuff like this, as well as more grassroots
direct actions. So to add to our previously mentioned have
you Been Flocked website, you can learn more at outfits
like Fight for the Futures, flock Out Initiative. And if
(40:15):
you are against Flock and it is in your neck
of the Global Woods, we do recommend partnering up with
other like minded people in your community, and please do
so in a legal way because remember, committing a crime
against this company and its clients will put a target
on your back. These folks are very good at aiming, which, yeah,
(40:38):
I wish it didn't sound hyperbolic, because it's absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah, there is positive stuff though. You can search around
and find stories coming out of places like Minneapols, a
suburb in Minneapolis called Columbia Heights where again twelve cameras,
twelve flock cameras, license plate readers. But there was a
any council meeting and there was enough of a pushback
(41:03):
from the public at that meeting to have the decision
be made that the flock cameras will no longer be
in use and they're going to cancel the contract. So
just you know, theoretically from a local government standpoint, because
you are dealing with suburbs, you're dealing with individual neighborhoods,
maybe an entire city maybe sometimes you know, just a
store somewhere. That's the kind of stuff you're dealing with.
(41:25):
And if you push back enough, maybe there's change that
can be made. If you're nervous about these things or
you think they're wrong for whatever reason, if you want
to get them in your town and you're excited about
the tech, you're just going to need you know, deep
deep pockets or some kind of grant like a lot
of the local law enforcement agencies are doing getting specific
(41:46):
human trafficking grants or other forms of federal or state
money like that to be able to even afford these things.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Absolutely, and we know, you know, for every positive anti
flock movement, there are even at local government levels, there
are examples of the authorities shutting down overwhelming public outcry
against flock. So there's a dark side of this too.
I'd love to recommend four h four media dot co.
(42:13):
They've been doing some great work on flock. There's an
article by a guy named Jason Koubler over that came
out on June twelfth, twenty twenty six. I'm just I'm
reading it here. A county commissioner refuses to let residents
opposing flock speak at meeting. And this comes to us
from North Carolina, where the county commissioner of Madison County,
(42:37):
a guy named Michael Garrison, said, how many people are
here for public comment dealing with license plate readers aka flock? Everybody,
pretty much everybody raised their hands and he said, look,
you guys could talk with each other, but you're we're
going to only let one person speak at the meeting.
(43:00):
So we're going to shut you down, which is, by
the way, not how those meetings are supposed to work.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
No, none at all. But according to the San Francisco standard,
this movement is happening. You can read Berkeley, the first
US sanctuary city reconsiders surveillance expansion with Flock. It was
published May eleventh, twenty twenty six, and in this they
describe between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty six, eighty
two FLOCK contracts have been terminated in twenty eight different
(43:27):
states over that time. So there is a pushback against
this kind of thing, and you can see it happening,
So you know, I guess, I guess, Ben. Just My
only point is that there is some positivity here. I
think no matter how much the big pushback is, you know,
from people who are trying to stop the pushback, I
think it's working at least to some extent.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Yeah, Like I always say, I think there's I mean, we
have to acknowledge the dark side, or what I see
as the dark side, but we also we can practice
at least nihilistic optimism, which is my favorite brand of philosophy.
Because current legislation is at a crossroads. It's not just
grassroots activity, though, I think that is tremendous and powerful
(44:08):
and must go forward. In July of last year, Flock
announced that it was restricting access to its national lookup tools,
effectively blocking agencies from searching cameras in California, Illinois, and Virginia.
And this came about as a direct reaction to this
debate about privacy, state sovereignity, and the ethical boundaries of
(44:32):
Morewellian surveillance. I mean, this is why state level folks
are so concerned. Even champions of Flock will readily admit
it has been used in dodgy activities tracking individuals involved
in abortion cases in states where abortion is effectively illegal. Right,
(44:53):
We've got to go to one website that I love
for this captain compliance great name cap the site situation
where a Texas officer used the Flock system to search
for a woman who self administered an abortion. And in
this search, this officer scanned more than eighty three thousand
(45:14):
Flock cameras across states where the abortion procedure remains legal today.
So he was looking for a person who, depending upon
the laws of a state, didn't commit a crime. And then,
of course, you know we mentioned ice has been leveraging
local police lookups for immigration enforcement, which means they're targeting
(45:37):
people who may or may not be here legally. And
most importantly, there are people who probably would not have
popped on ICE's radar without this system in place. This
even creeped out some police departments. Police departments are shutting
down their network access when they learned that their data
was being used by ICE. It's a messy bull of spaghetti.
Speaker 5 (46:02):
You guys, Did you guys know there's a safe list
you can get on?
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Is that like the do not Call list?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Talking kind of but it well, it's it's for specific
flock safety systems. But I'm assuming if you get in
on a safe list on a local level, right your
local police departments flock safety system they use a free
form with and NOVA and all that stuff. If you
get in there, I'm assuming it might work for a
lot of the other ones where your vehicle will essentially
be ignored. Like it's so that flock doesn't have to
(46:31):
keep track of so many different vehicles all the time.
And the perfect plan for any enterprising criminal would be
get on the safety list and now your vehicle is
essentially invisible to the license plate readers.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
Wait, but doesn't that go against the whole concept? Like
is this like getting pre check at the TSA. I mean,
I don't understand. You don't have to have any qualifications
to get on this list, like a like a like
a clean you know, criminal track record or lack thereof.
So let's question.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Let's go to the uh flocksafety dot com website. In short,
the safe list allows images capture of your vehicle to
be marked as resident. This way, if a crime happens
in your neighborhood. Oh, this is just for hoa's I guess,
and your HOA or trusted neighbor needs to look through
flock images, they can filter out all known residents in
their search. This keeps your vehicle out of the search.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
So it's it's limited then, as what we're saying, Yeah,
if you're if your HOA is in Hilted Head and
they're using flock, your Rolls Royce I imagine, can be put
on the safety list, but your Rolls Royce can still
be tracked in Baltimore or Savannah.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Oh yeah, dude, yeah, you just you There's a form
that you get you enter your street address, license plate
number for your vehicle. You can even register more than
one vehicle from the same form.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
Yeah, because you might vehicles.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Yeah, and you can check quote remove my vehicles from footage.
I wonder if that actually like takes that out, or
if it's still there they just pretend like it's not there.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
Or they just don't do any they don't aggregate any
more stuff. It's it would be interesting to get under
the hood of their day to day operations and see
if they have a metric like cost per individual or
cost per car.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
You know, I'm still sorry, guys, I'm just continuing to
read on their website. The last quote from here. When
you register your vehicle on Flock's safet list, you footage
of your vehicle won't be removed completely unless you check
this remove my vehicle from footage box. This will ensure
your vehicle will not turn up in any search.
Speaker 3 (48:43):
Okay, so they're expunging the record. Kind of sick if
you haven't done anything. Also, there's that case where you
know what, say, you enter the safety list, as one
of us said earlier in Enterprising Criminal, but they were
already looking for you. I wonder it's an interesting question
(49:03):
if the local law that's already been searching for you
gets an alert that says, hey, this person tried to
enter this safety list and they provided their current home address.
Speaker 5 (49:14):
Oh there's a safe list, baddies.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah, exactly right. Is putting yourself on the list of
safe people putting you in a bracket of suspicion. Also,
as we said, flock will tell you they don't practice
facial recognition. I I am of the mind that that
is very much a voluntary choice, and it would be
relatively trivial given the beautiful way their system is built,
(49:42):
it'd be relatively trivial to add that.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
They also claim that like everything's deleted after a certain
amount of time, which I think we all are skeptical about,
even with as regards like TSA, you know, photos and
all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Anybody who's had a ring camera system or a home
security system may be familiar with the thirty days concept.
Footage will stick around for thirty days and a lot
of these sometimes you can get up to ninety depending
on who you're using, but at some point it goes
away because there's only so much cloud storage, you know,
for these pretty massive sometimes four K videos, two K
(50:17):
videos don't.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Some services allow you to specify stuff that you can
save for longer.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah, well, on almost in two different ones that I've used,
and then others that I've seen in use, you can
download individual videos and you just have them forever. But
if you don't download them in a certain amount of
like a window again, let's say thirty days, then they
would just disappear.
Speaker 5 (50:39):
They go away.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
And I'm imagining that's only functional for the amount of
data storage that would be necessary.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
And some of this stuff may actually some of Flock's
actions may end up being ruled illegal by certain states.
I remember reading in Illinois, the Secretary of State just
last year an investigation into whether police were violating Illinois
law by sharing data with out of state agencies, particularly
(51:10):
in immigration related searches. I mean, guys, there's no two
ways about it. This situation is untenable. Predicts are right
when they say this could violate some of the most
sacred rights of people in the United States.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, I want to go back quickly just to what
we were talking about with facial recognition. Imagine you have
a tiny, little suburban neighborhood that you live in, and
it was decided that by the HOA that flock safety
needed to be in there, so they they splurged for
a flock safety sparrow bundle, which is two cameras for
an entrance and exit of a little neighborhood. Okay, you
(51:47):
splurge four seven fifty dollars for these two cameras. That's
a lot for an HOA. Well, depending on where you live,
I guess from my huge HOA, that would be a
huge amount of money, a big choice. Now, imagine that
doesn't have facial recognition on it right now, that's just
to get the two cameras. You also have to pay
money to get access to the whole servers right in
(52:09):
the free form and all of that where you actually
get to look things up if you need to. Now
imagine you've already sunk all that cost in there, and
now there's facial recognition becomes available and it's actually pretty
cheap to get the facial recognition software to get a
little license for that. You have to imagine would you
(52:30):
go for it or not? And you've already sunk all
this money into it to keep your neighborhood safe. You
got enough of the people in the HOA or the
members to say yes to the things thus far. Now
you can fully protect everyone by knowing each individual human
being that enters your neighborhood. It's that Awelian thing where
(52:50):
I can imagine several people if I think about my
neighborhood that would want.
Speaker 3 (52:55):
That Flock also already, just for the record, folks, we're
aware flock can clock people's clothing, which can be very
near the same thing, you know what I mean. Like
if they want to find the guy with a blue
jacket at a protest, they can find everybody wearing a
blue jacket pretty quickly.
Speaker 5 (53:11):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
And again, facial recognition is not happening. They keep saying
that Flock over and over again. We don't do racial recognition.
But it would not take much to integrate that because
it would be a software update, right, You wouldn't have
to actually do anything to the cameras.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
Yeah. Again, it's it's a trivial coding improvement or addition.
And we I'm in such a dilemma here, guys. It's
such a bag of badgers because the critics of flock
are objectively correct, right, But the proponents of flock are
also They have a lot of validity to their claims
(53:50):
because Flock has yet to officially turn a profit, but
it has it arguably prevented crime. It saved lives, including
those of officers and civilians. I mean, in twenty twenty five,
the current CEO and one of the three co founders, Langley,
he said flox cameras helped solve a million crimes of
(54:13):
some sort per year and in less than ten years,
he predicted, and keep in mind this is the CEO
of a for profit company. In less than ten years,
he predicts that flocks cameras, the airborne and the fixed
ones will eradicate quote almost all crime in the United States.
Speaker 4 (54:30):
That is some hyperbolic right jazz. Right there has some
free jazz. I mean, because then you start thinking about, like, well,
what that's as it stands, There's no way because as
we said, this is reactive, right, so there has to
be an escalation. Where do the drones then, Like have
you know guns built onto them or you know some
(54:51):
sort of stun gun or taser, Like there has to
be an escalation for it to quote unquote remove all
threat of crime.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
That's just not realistic and it's also not legal the
way the system works now, you know, I mean, we'll
have to wait and see, but we would love to
hear your thoughts. Or is this being blown out of
proportion by the critics? Does the good outweigh the negative?
I mean, how does flock come into play when, say,
something weird happens on Pennsylvania Avenue and the government cracks
(55:25):
down on a protest or a riot? You know what
I mean? How does how does warrantless search work in
that situation? What are the expectations of privacy in this
brave new world? And you know how much does flock
already know about you? You specifically you Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, yeah, in the home depots so many times, that's
so funny. Oh my gosh, I just looked at Sandy
Springs on the dflock map. You guys, Holy crap.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Everything.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
That's like the most concentration in an area I've ever.
Speaker 4 (56:01):
Seen a flock.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
And unless you are paying flock, the information they have
about you, that's the stuff they don't want you to know.
Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you
enjoyed this series, folks. We'd love to hear your thoughts.
Please find us on the lines, call us on the phone.
You can always send us an email.
Speaker 4 (56:19):
If you want to find us all over the lines.
You can do so by reaching out of the handle
Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on which social
media platform you prefer.
Speaker 5 (56:29):
Do you want to call us?
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Our number is one eight to three three std W
y TK. Why don't you give us a call while
being actively viewed by a flock camera? That would be fun.
Speaker 4 (56:44):
No, I'm just kidding. Give us a being outside.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah, yeah, what do you think about this? Do you
have any ideas for future episodes? Give us a call,
Give yourself a cool nickname, and let us know if
we can use your name and message on one of
our listener mail episodes that show up in the audio feed. Hey,
do you want to send us an email? You can
do that.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
rights back, So hit us up with a random fact.
You'll get one in return. We'll see you out here
in the dark or on flock conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
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Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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