Why Communities Want to Stop Flock Cameras w/ Jason Koebler

0:00 Cops in this small town were using it to surveil protesters. Cops in this other small town were using it to uh stalk their ex-girlfriends or their wives with no you know law enforcement use case whatsoever and welcome to Tech Walk and Sales made in partnership with The Nation magazine.

0:34 I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Jason Kepler. We've been doing a lot of episodes recently about data centers through the data vampire series and then a number of kind of dedicated episodes to look at different issues regarding data centers in different parts of the world and you know some of the bigger issues that exist with them, given the recent release of my book, Hyperscale.

0:53 But I want to kind of bridge that debate or that conversation with another issue that has been really taking hold in the United States over the past year or so, I guess. At the same time that we've seen people turning out to their city councils to try to stop data center projects, we have also seen people increasingly trying to stop the rollout of these flock cameras that are being used for all manner of harm in the United States to track people and really just call into question people's privacy.

1:22 You know, we have already seen the expansion of surveillance for, you know, a number of decades now, uh, you know, going back even longer than that, I'm sure. But, you know, particularly when you think of digital and kind of internet-enabled surveillance. And these flock cameras feel like the next version of that, you know, uh obviously trying to bring AI into the mix as well.

1:41 And it's not that surveillance has never seen backlash in the United States and elsewhere, but this does feel like a particularly important moment, right? To understand what is happening here, why people are pushing back. And that's why I think Jason Kepler is a great guest for this. He is a co-founder of 404 Media and also co-host the 404 Media podcast.

2:01 And he has been digging into this issue for quite some time now. He understands what is going on here, and I figured he would be the perfect person to come on the show and explain to us why there's so much backlash about these flock cameras, how they actually work, and where things might be going from here.

2:18 Because one, is this going to be possible to do this in more places? And also, how is the industry going to respond as there is an attempt to shut down their attempts to further increase surveillance and you know gather more data on the public? So I think this is really interesting because it kind of bridges part of the data center discussion with a broader opposition to the kind of infrastructure of digital technologies that these companies have been building out for the past while, right?

2:45 And after a growing frustration, it feels like people are turning against at least the physical manifestations of this infrastructure, if not some of the platforms and digital services as well. So I think you're really going to like this episode with Jason. Obviously, just a reminder that my book, Hyperscale, The Ambition and Excess of Big Text Data Empires Looking at the Data Center Backlash, came out last week, and you can still, of course, get a copy of that, and I'll put a link in the show notes for you to do so.

3:12 Over the past week or so, there have been excerts in the Atlantic, Rest of World, and the Nation. I've done interviews with Wired, MS Now, Democracy Now, The Majority Report, a little bit further back, CNET, and 404 Media, of course, where Jason works, to dig into different parts of the book to better inform people about what is going on with data centers.

3:32 And you can find the links to some of those things in that same link that will be in the show notes where you can buy a copy of the book for yourself. I've already had some really great events as well in New York, in Montreal, and in London, and there will be more of those coming. You can find a link in the show notes to more places where I will be doing events, whether those are in the UK, the US, Canada, and in December, I'll be doing a bit more in Europe and I'll have more to say about those dates soon.

3:57 So stay tuned for that. So if you like this episode, make sure to share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. You can also rate the show five stars on your podcast platform of choice. And if you want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us every single week, so I can keep having these critical in-depth conversations with brilliant people like Jason, my guest this week.

4:15 You can join supporters like Emmet in Winnipeg and Aaron in Toronto by going to patreon.com/slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Jason, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Hey, my favorite show. Very thrilled to be back.

4:32 Thanks so much. Other than yours, of course, you know. Yeah, I can't pick mine. Yeah. Uh which I I also very much enjoy. So it's always great to have you on the podcast because you always do such fantastic work. And like, you know, I feel like six months you're you're in one world, you know, Facebook AI stuff, six months you're in another world.

4:52 It's like you're jumping all around, covering these huge issues as they're developing. Um, and of course, one of those that we have really seen take off, I feel like, is this opposition to Flock, which, you know, I think is really big in the US, maybe not as um, you know, apparent or or people outside the US won't be as familiar with.

5:10 So I was hoping we could start by just having you describe what Flock actually is. Like what is the product that they make um and how pervasive has it actually become?

5:19 Yeah, so Flock is a company, it's it's a pretty expansive surveillance company. I think most people think of it at this point as an automated license plate reader company, but it is a lot more than that, which we'll get into. So Flock is a company that largely makes automated license plate reader cameras, which are these cameras that take photos of cars as they drive by.

5:41 They're supposed to focus directly in on the license plate. And this is a technology that has existed for like 20, 25 years. Uh, but what Flock has done, and they've really only come on the scene the last like five or six years or so, is they've networked these cameras together and created essentially a nationwide AI-powered network of these cameras.

6:05 And what they do is they take, they take photos of cars as they drive by and add it to a database. Uh, so it's basically like the make and model and license plate of a car and then the intersection that it was seen at, the time it was seen at, and the direction it was traveling. And in doing this, cops are able to create maps of where people are driving.

6:28 This technology is seen as potentially very useful, or at least it's pitched as being very useful for recovering stolen vehicles, because like if a car is stolen and then it drives by one of these cameras, you then know where that car is, and the cops can go try to arrest that person. Uh, it's also pitched as being really useful for like amber alerts and missing children, things like this.

6:50 Uh so Flock started pitching this technology like 2021, 2022, and they were in, you know, a couple of dozen towns throughout the United States. And what they told cops was basically like, if you buy our technology, you are putting cameras, you know, in your town. So, like maybe you can control the 10 or 12 or 20 cameras that we're gonna put in your town, but you will also be able to full search our database of local towns, other towns in your state, and other towns across the entire country.

7:29 And so let's say the cops get uh, you know, report of a car that was stolen, uh, the like Prince George's County, Maryland cops can type that license plate in, but they don't just search that county, they search all of the surrounding counties, all the the surrounding state. And in doing this, like the the network is therefore like more effective, but also far more invasive because in the past, it's like individual towns had their own individual systems.

7:58 They could search these cameras that they owned, but they couldn't kind of track people from city to city, state to state.

8:05 Yeah, I think you put it really well there, right? And and really the shift that we've seen. You know, we're we're used to having speed cameras and stuff in the past. You drive too fast and you get a ticket in the mail or something like that. But this is really taking it to a whole other level, kind of in line with the surveillance practices that we have seen accelerating for you know the past couple of decades, I guess, um, at this point.

8:28 And so it's not surprising to see it come here. I guess if we're thinking about speed cameras, we can think about traffic enforcement, something that cities are bringing in, traffic departments, cops. Who is bringing flock cameras into these cities? You know, is it is it cops bringing this in? Is it cities deciding this is what we need to buy?

8:44 Who is kind of making the push here?

8:47 Yeah, so uh these are largely used to like quote unquote fight crime. Uh, they are not used for traffic enforcement. So it's like it's different in that a city might bring in like red light cameras because they want additional revenue or whatever. Whereas uh the drive for flaw cameras is being uh it's almost entirely led by police departments and cops.

9:09 And I've now reported on so many different surveillance companies over the years, and there's this pattern that we've seen over and over and over again with surveillance companies in general, is they will go to a small town and they will find a friendly cop there and say, Hey, do you want to try this technology?

9:29 And very often that tech is then deployed in that town as a pilot project or like an experiment. Uh, a lot of times there are like state and federal grants for things like anti-human trafficking, anti-immigration, anti-drug, like there's these pools of money that cops can use to like buy new technology and try it out.

9:50 And then the cops try it, and then you know, you have like one thing we've learned is that cops really love being seen as being innovative or being forward-looking or being experimental or trying new gadgets, things like this. And so you'll you usually have like a couple of cops that will champion this technology within their own police departments, and then they have these police tech conferences, these police listserves, like this sort of thing.

10:17 And so, what happened with Flock and with like drone companies and other things, but definitely with Flock, is that they were in a few towns, cops really liked it, and they they were seen uh by their departments and by their cities as being like very tech forward. Maybe they have had a few anecdotes of like we were able to recover a stolen car or find a missing child or solve a specific crime, and then they start telling stories about that success at these cop tech conferences and things like that.

10:52 And then that city applies for grant funding or that city does a pilot project. And so Flock has truly exploded in the United States. Uh, it is now in 40% of all jurisdictions that have police departments. Uh, so we're talking tens of like more than 10,000 uh cities, towns, states, uh, a couple federal contracts.

11:15 And, you know, these are obviously deployed in places that have a lot of population, that like they're deployed at the entrances to cities, they're deployed at bridges, they're deployed like on highways, places where there's like a lot of traffic. And so it is not an overstatement to say that it at this point it's very difficult in the United States to drive for any length of time without driving by one of these.

11:41 That's wild. And we know that driving is basically essential to get around in many parts of the United States, right? So everyone is driving, you know, effectively. Um, do you know just briefly, is this just the US thing right now? Do you know if Flock operates internationally?

11:56 So Flock operates only in the United States. Uh automated license plate reader technology is international. Motorola is another company that makes them under a label called Vigilant. Uh, and there's a lot of those in Europe, for example. Uh, Axon also has its own product, which is uh the company that makes tasers and body cameras and that sort of thing.

12:17 And then they're really widely used in like London, in the UK, in China, that sort of thing. But Flock in particular is a US-focused company and and they operate only in the United States at this point. It's also worth mentioning they're funded by A16Z. So it's like a venture capital funded surveillance company.

12:36 And that's one of the reasons that they've blown up so big in the last few years, is that they've added a lot of AI features and a lot of uh like automation to their like it's really easy to use, like if you see the sort of like interface, and it's very interesting because a lot of surveillance companies are really secretive.

12:55 But what Flock has done is they do like constant webinars and YouTube uh tutorials and things for cops that are available to the public. So they're like constantly talking about the capabilities of their technology and showing how it works and all that sort of thing. So they've done like a lot of marketing, I guess, uh, in a way that I think other surveillance companies haven't.

13:17 That's so wild. Yeah. Usually I I guess you would want to hide those sorts of things, but they're just like completely out in the open. This is what we're doing, this is the capabilities we're offering, and we don't really care who who sees that, at least for now. Maybe they'll they'll start pulling back uh in the future.

13:32 But but I did want to ask you, because I I do want to go on to like how we're actually seeing these use, the impacts on people, but I was curious about why we had seen such a large backlash grow. It feels like so quickly, right? You know, over the past year, two years. Um, whereas before, I feel like, you know, what you weren't really hearing about Flock or these automated license plate readers, and then all of a sudden it feels like it's very much in the conversation.

13:58 But is that because they got this influx of funding from A16Z and that sort of thing and really expanded quickly? Or is there something else that that really caused people to pay attention to it in such a concerted way recently?

14:11 I'm gonna use this opportunity to brag a little bit because I do think some of our reporting set this off. There was like this domino effect that happened. And so we've been writing about Flock for a very long time, like four or five years, going back to when I used to work at Vice and that sort of thing.

14:28 But uh, we really started focusing on it in early 2025. And what happened was, and you do not have to hand it to Flock, but basically, because of a quirk in how Flock works, every time the Flock system is queried, meaning every time that a police officer searches Flock, there is a public record that's created, uh like essentially an audit log is what they're called.

14:59 And so these are like huge Excel spreadsheets that say this cop in this city searched the flock system consisting of 500 cameras, 5,000 cameras, 50,000 cameras, for the following reason. And when cops search in the flock system, they have to write the reason that they are searching the flock cameras.

15:23 And so some of our sources who are just like surveillance activists, like anti-surveillance activists, told us that these records are obtainable using public records requests, and they had obtained these huge spreadsheets that showed exactly what the flock system was being used for and how often it was being used and that sort of thing.

15:46 And because of the way that Flock works, where all of these systems are networked together, that meant that like if they were able to obtain records from one random town, they were essentially able to show what cops across the entire country were searching for. Because, like a lot of the early records we got were from Illinois, for example, like small towns in Illinois.

16:10 But these spreadsheets would show searches done by cops in Houston, Texas, in Atlanta, Georgia, cops in California, all this sort of thing, because they were searching the entire nationwide network. And so we were able to see that this system was not only being used for stolen vehicles and specific investigations, but it was also being used to track undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE.

16:38 And that was really our first big story about Flock. Uh, essentially what was happening was all of these local towns were writing ICE or immigration investigation or undocumented immigrant in the little reason box for their searches. And then these searches were being done, you know, across tens of thousands of cameras in the United States.

17:01 And one, this is just like a really crazy use of the system that I think a lot of small towns didn't understand that's what was happening, uh, because a lot of these cities like entered these contracts, and I think a lot of them didn't even understand that other towns could search their cameras. We learned that kind of like during our reporting.

17:22 But then, kind of crucially, searching automated license plate cameras for undocumented immigrants is illegal in Illinois and California. Like they have these specific state laws that say that you can't use it for that purpose. And that was happening. So we did this story, it got a lot of attention. Uh, you know, it was like really kind of harrowing stuff.

17:44 And then the Illinois Secretary of State opened an investigation and found that all of this was illegal and shouldn't have been happening. And so that was kind of the first time that I guess we had a viral story about Flock, and then we had a bunch of follow-ups. But what we learned is that using these public records requests, you could obtain the these documents.

18:07 And so what happened was we had readers and local journalists from across the entire country start filing these records in their towns. And so suddenly, instead of having just like, you know, one or two cities worth of data, there was like hundreds or thousands of people doing the same thing and finding cases of abuse in their own city and town.

18:32 And so I think that's why. I mean, that's a very long story, but basically that then started this wave of local reporting uh of other national outlets kind of like finding these cases of abuse. And then Flock has been in the news really since then. Like that that first story was in May 2025, and it's been uh, you know, just kind of like a drip, drip, drip of well, look, cops in this small town were using it to surveil protesters, cops in this other small town were using it to uh stalk their ex-girlfriends or their wives with no, you know, law enforcement use case whatsoever.

19:13 Another really big story we did was we found that police in Texas searched 80,000 cameras uh for a woman who had an abortion. And that search was sort of done at the behest of her partner at the time who was abusing her. Uh, and so it was like a really bad use and scary use of the system. And that that also like raised lots of uh alarm bells for people.

19:39 Absolutely. And I think very justified for you to tell that story and you know, to to give 404 kudos, you know, in the process of doing that, because you know, this kind of shows how important a lot of the work that you guys are doing actually is, you know, and I think really speaks to why your outlet has become so prominent in the tech reporting space so quickly because of the quality of the work that you do, you know, it really speaks to that.

20:02 What these companies make is an automated license plate reader, but you're talking about tracking people, right? Not just license plates on cars and and what vehicles look like. So, what can this actually be used for if it's not just for license plates as the name suggests?

20:19 Yeah, so Flock has been adding features uh like over the years because it's a tech company. You know, the main thing that it sells is like software. I mean, it sells these cameras, but it's constantly upgrading the software. It's like a subscription product. And so I guess let me talk about the other things that Flock offers.

20:37 Like it has the automated license plate reader cameras, but then it also has a different type of camera called a Condor camera. Like that's that's the brand name of it. And these are video, like high-depth video cameras that are intended for people, not cars. And very often these cameras will be next to an automated license plate reader camera.

20:55 They're called PTZ cameras, which are pan-tilt zoom, and so they can be remotely controlled and like a cop in a command center somewhere can like zoom in on them, they can like click and drag. And then these have object recognition capabilities. Uh, so they don't have facial recognition right now. Flock has said it won't do facial recognition, but basically they have AI in there that will automatically follow people through a parking lot, like down a bike trail, that sort of thing.

21:23 And that it will be recording and cops can go back and like query that system. Uh Flock also sells drones. Uh, they are called drone as first responder drones, which they're automated drones. So basically it's like if there's a 911 call, these drones detect where that 911 call came from and they automatically fly there and start filming.

21:46 And then they like return to their like home base and they they kind of do this over and over again. And then I think very importantly, they sell this thing called Flock OS, which is used in real time crime centers, which is a very fancy term. For basically imagine a stereotypical surveillance center from like a mall or like a science fiction film or something like that, where like there's a person sitting in a chair and in front of them there's like 40 video screens and they're like monitoring all these different cameras and things like that.

22:18 Flock sells the software that uh that runs a system like that. And going into that system can be the automated license plate reader cameras. It can be, you can add any camera that a city controls to it. You can add private cameras as well, like um convenience store cameras, like Home Depot cameras, things like that can be like piped into this.

22:43 The 911 system can be connected to this. And then on top of that, they then add AI. And what I mean by that is like a cop can go in and type woman with hoodie, and then like a time or an intersection or something like that. And the cameras that they have will pull up all of the footage of that, or they can search like gray SUV and they can pull up the automated license plate reader hits from that, but also video footage of that, for example.

23:15 And so, I mean, I would argue, and a lot of people do argue, that the license plate data alone is enough to track people. It's like by definition, you're tracking people, the people who are in the car if you're doing that. But then on top of that, they have these other pieces of software and surveillance equipment that more specifically is just like your run of the mill, not run of the mill, but just like is surveillance of people.

23:44 Yeah, it's it's really concerning to hear that, right? Especially paired with the examples that you were just giving us of how we have seen this used in practice. Um, and I want to come back to some of those to dig into them a little bit more. But my final question on like the products itself, I guess, is do we have an idea of the accuracy of this stuff?

24:03 Like, how how often is it right? How often is it misidentifying people and then putting them potentially in danger or or harm's way by having cops go after them? Do we have an idea of that?

24:14 Yeah, I mean, there's two failure modes here. So there's one where like the software gets something wrong. So it's like the software or the AI or the camera is misreading a license plate. So it's like showing the wrong license plate or it's showing the wrong object. That does happen. Uh, there's been studies that I don't have up right now, and frankly, I think are a bit old that show, you know, sometimes the accuracy is as low as like 70% or something like that.

24:45 But I will say that the tech has gotten a lot better. Like that the image recognition tech and and sort of like the AI around it, that you know, that is a concern still, but it is I mean, I don't know if it's a good thing, but it's like the false positives on like it read a two as an S on a license plate.

25:07 Like that's happening less and less. But the other type of inaccuracy comes from cops searching in the system and having a typo, like the like human error of cops, you know, messing something up, and then they get a hit on the flock system, they pull over a car that flock has detected, but it's the wrong person.

25:30 And the cops go into this scenario thinking that they are going after like a you know, a violent criminal or a suspected violent criminal or a car thief or something like that, and it's just like a random person. And then the other thing that's that happens all the time, and this is the main reason that Los Angeles uh police department ended its flock contract, which the LAPD, I believe, is the largest police department in the country.

25:57 I think it's either NYPD or LAPD, but it's absolutely huge. They ended their contract with Flock because what was happening was cars were being reported stolen. They were being added to the flock system. The cars were then being recovered just because they were found, abandoned somewhere, or they were, you know, like maybe they weren't actually stolen and the person, like the owner, just parked in the wrong place.

26:23 It's like very easy to lose a car in Los Angeles, like park parking garages here and stuff, like you can leave leave a car somewhere and be like, oh, my car was stolen, and then figure out that it was on like the seventh floor of some weird parking garage and you were in the wrong parking garage, which sounds crazy, but like I swear that happens all the time.

26:41 So basically, like you report the car stolen, and then you're like, oh, never mind, I found it. But then because LA is so complicated, there's so many different police jurisdictions, things like that, it would remain in the system as being stolen. And then people were getting hit on the flock system, and the actual owner of the car was getting pulled over.

27:02 And these were like, by definition, really high-risk stops. Cops were like coming out with guns drawn. Sometimes there was like a helicopter involved, like all this sort of thing. And again, you'd be shocked how often this happened. It happened hundreds of times, according to an investigation uh by the office of the inspector general in in LA.

27:22 Um, and so that's like another fail failure model where it's like a car is reported stolen, it's found, but then because this system is so large, it's like reported as recovered in one jurisdiction, but that doesn't talk to the database of the one town over, and then that car is seen, someone's pulled over, and then you know, bad bad things happen.

27:48 Man, that that's wild. And and that feels like it's even on like the lesser side of the you know, potential bad stories that that can come out of this, right? Like again, getting back to some of the things that you were mentioning. And I and I did want to dig into that more, especially on the immigration enforcement piece, right?

28:04 Because obviously Americans, but you know, people beyond the United States too have been gripped with seeing, you know, these images of you know, these th ice thugs going into communities and rounding people up. And of course, it feels like it's become even a bit normalized now, but that is still continuing in the United States.

28:23 How have these cameras been used to aid that? Especially as you mentioned, this should be illegal in some of the places where it was being used.

28:32 Yeah, so uh also complicated, unfortunately, but basically in the United States, we have this uh program called the 287G program, which is uh a system by which local police are allowed to do immigration enforcement. And so this has been wildly expanded by the Trump administration. So I think crucially ICE itself doesn't have a contract with Flock.

29:00 And I think that that is perhaps by design because Flock has gotten so much bad press that they've said, like, oh, we won't work with ICE, we won't we won't sell our tech directly to ICE. But what's happening is ICE is talking to local police who are in this program and saying, Oh, can you search this license plate for us?

29:21 Can you search this area for us? Can you search for this type of car for us? And cops in those programs are searching the system. And so it's like this end around that allows local police to do these searches. They are kind of by definition like police departments that are in areas that are very conservative or wanting to help the Trump administration, like the entirety of Florida, for example, is in this program because Ron DeSantis said, like the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis said, I want everyone to be in this program.

29:54 And so there's like all of these immigration searches being done by the Fish and Wildlife Service in Florida that we reported on. And it's like this is not their, this is not their remit, but they're doing these like uh these searches for ice. And then the the other thing is, and we'll talk about this, but it's like there's no warrant requirement to use the flock system.

30:16 You can use flock to search for anything that you want if you have a subscription, and that's how a lot of cops have ended up in jail because they've stalked people with them, they've stalked like their ex-wives and things like that. Like they're supposed to have a law enforcement purpose, but you know, alongside like stalking charges, that there is, I guess, a limit there.

30:37 But in general, they don't need to get a warrant. And so you very often see cops in there just typing investigation or like question mark, question mark, or leaving the reason field fully blank. And so there's all these cops who are doing these searches for like reasons that we don't know, pulling up, you know, thousands of cameras across the entire country.

30:58 And it could just be them on a lark, or it could be them working on behalf of ICE or another federal agency. There's been various uh cops who have been caught sharing their logins with DHS officials and with ICE officials. And so it's like, hey, just use my password. And then it looks like the search is coming from a local police department, but it's actually being done by ICE.

31:23 Like there's been multiple cases of cops being caught, kind of like sharing logins and things like that. And so the actual like accountability and uh auditing that you would want for a system this powerful, like there's there's ways around it. And uh that is there's just been many, many cases of abuse and and these sorts of things happening.

31:46 It's it's both wild to hear, but also not surprising in some ways when you think about you know dealing with cops and you know, just the state of things in the United States at the moment and how much many of them, I'm sure, would like to be collaborating with immigration enforcement and you know, have share similar ideas with them and that sort of a thing.

32:06 Um, you mentioned earlier also the the tracking of protests, right? And you can think generally about the pressure that protesters and opposition would be under in this moment in the United States, given the political dynamics at play right now. Um, but also obviously seeing the growing opposition to this very system, um, you know, that could be an issue too.

32:26 What are we seeing on that front with how this is being used against protesters and, you know, people who would already kind of be um targets of police when they try to push back on things that the government is doing that they're not okay with, um, and and this being kind of another tool that can be used against them?

32:43 Yeah, so the Electronic Frontier Foundation is sort of the ones who led the charge on this sort of reporting. We've then kind of like picked up their studies and and written articles about it, but they were able to correlate a bunch of flock searches to the No Kings protests, which were anti-uh-Trump protests that have happened multiple times over the last couple of years.

33:02 In some cases, it was like the actual searches were happening like in areas that were known to be no kings protests at the date and time of that. But then in a lot of cases, the actual reason field was like protest or no king's protest or whatever. So there's been like maybe about a hundred searches like that that you know we know of that have happened.

33:24 But then also, like I was mentioning earlier, Flock has all of these webinars all the time where they're like, here's how you can use our system to do XYZ. And we found a webinar from a few months ago where a Flock employee was teaching cops, here is how to monitor the no kings protests. And they were showing like all of the different types of technologies that they could use, including these real-time video cameras, including like uh, you know, their AI and that sort of thing.

33:54 And like up on screen in these webinars, it would just say like no kings protest. Uh, the other thing is there has been a growing backlash to flock. It's kind of broadly known as the deflock movement, which is it's called that because basically there is a guy who started an open source map of flock cameras and he called it D Flock.

34:16 And so it's like a crowdsourced map that people can take photos of flock cameras in their town and upload them to this map so that people know where they're at. And it has just become a shorthand for like anti-flock political movement is deflock. And so there's like deflock Joplin, which is like Joplin, Missouri's activists who are kind of opposing uh flock in that town.

34:42 It's like deflock Houston, D-Flock, you know, Los Angeles. Like there's just all these different kind of decentralized de-flock groups. And we learned, and you know, a few other journalists did stories about this too, uh, that FBI fusion centers, so federal fusion centers, which are like the state, local, federal uh partnerships for surveillance, have been surveilling those protesters and their social media posts, things that they're talking to each other about, that sort of thing.

35:12 And so I don't think that's a case of like flock cameras themselves being used to surveil these protesters, but it's like the broader surveillance apparatus has been turned against people who are opposing this technology. That's not great to hear. You know, it brings to mind a good situation.

35:32 It brings to mind that that report, and I can't remember the specifics of it right now earlier this year that that was talking about how the Trump administration was looking at people who were protesting data centers, protesting other kinds of technology in the tech industry. Do you remember what I'm talking about?

35:46 I I can't remember the the details on it now.

35:49 Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's very it's very similar to that. Um, and I mean a lot of people have, I think that the anti-data center movement in the US and the anti-flock movement, they're not exactly the same, but it is a very related movement in that it's people kind of rejecting big tech, people rejecting AI.

36:11 I mean, flock cameras are very much AI powered. And then also the main vector of protest has been showing up at city council meetings and saying, why do we have this in our town, or why are you trying to bring this to our town, or this is already in our town and we don't like it? And so there's a there's a big kind of like overlap there.

36:32 Absolutely. And and I want to come back to asking a bit more about that backlash in in just a minute. But I wanted to ask you first about other kind of vulnerabilities in the system. You know, I was reading some of your reporting on how Flock uses gig workers in the Philippines to review and classify some of these footage, some of this footage, but also how you know access to the system and the flock cameras has been, you know, people have gotten into it and been able to access these these cameras and the footage and things like that.

37:03 Like what all other vulnerabilities are in this system that potentially leaves all these people who are going to be kind of in the line of sight of these cameras potentially vulnerable?

37:13 Yeah. So a super interesting and fun story for me was uh at the end of last year, we learned that some of these condor cameras, so the video cameras uh that I was talking about earlier, were left exposed to the internet live streaming. And so you didn't need a password, you could just like type the IP address, which was was discovered by some researchers uh through this search engine called Shodan, which is like basically an Internet of Things search engine.

37:42 So you typed flock in there and like all these cameras would pop up. And there were a bunch of these cameras uh in Bakersfield, which is like two hours from me uh in California. And so I drove there, I found these cameras, and then I watched myself like walking around with my dog. We also kind of learned about some of the capabilities of that tech because they sort of like left this portal totally exposed, and then also is like live streaming people on a bike path in suburban Atlanta, uh, and you could see it following like this woman who is walking her dog or like this rollerblader, like that sort of thing.

38:18 So there's like that type of vulnerability. There's the vulnerability of uh, yes, they use a lot of gig workers um to do some some of their like AI uh object recognition type things. Very recently, a hacker took a flock camera down, like they stole a flock camera off of a street, and they were able to dump the contents of it onto a hard drive and like get all the code that runs it, essentially.

38:45 And then there's like been a lot of cases of kind of like misconfigured or not updated flock cameras that uh that people have either hacked or sort of like gotten into. There's not been like a broader hack of flock the company, where it's like, oh, all this data has been stolen from the company. It's been like kind of this misconfigurations or individual police departments doing stuff wrong, like that sort of thing happening.

39:12 But then the other thing that has happened is that in these audit logs that we've been talking about, a lot of the cops have failed to redact really sensitive information from those uh when they release them as public records. And what I mean by that would it's like people's license plates, the specific investigations that were being worked on, like that sort of thing.

39:36 And so what was happening was like you'd have these random cops and cities leaking, not leaking, but releasing through public records requests like millions of flock searches for the entire country with like all of the details about what was being investigated. And so you could see like the Orlando police are doing a murder investigation on this license plate.

40:01 And like a site was created called Have I Been Flocked, which has been proven to be extremely useful, that basically has aggregated all of this information. You can type your own uh license plate in there and see if you've ever been searched. But then the other thing that's happened is uh you can see cops doing searches for the same license plate like over and over and over again, like kind of obsessively searching the same license plate like 50 or 100 or a thousand times over the course of days or weeks.

40:31 And that's how a lot of the abuse has been found, is basically like you'll find a cop and be like, why is this cop searching the same license plate dozens of times with no uh like investigative case number or anything like that? And a lot of those have turned out to be cop stalking people. Uh, and so that's not a vulnerability necessarily in the flock system, but it does speak to like the fact that they've that the cops have networked all of this stuff together and have outsourced everything to this private company has created vulnerabilities for cops in how they do their work.

41:10 And like they know that because as this reporting has been done uh by us and by others, it's like we then see that they that the FBI is like warned cops like, be vague about why you're using this system and all that. So it's a loss for transparency, but it's also like it's just kind of a necessary vulnerability that's built into the way that this system works.

41:35 Yeah, absolutely. It's like, you know, they're they're using it as initially told, and then they're finding that people are finding out everything that they're doing with it, and now they're going to obviously change how they're working so that it's not so clear uh, you know, who they're searching for, what they're doing.

41:49 We talked about the backlash and why we have seen that grown so much a bit earlier. But I was wondering why you think it is Flock in particular that has been the focus of so much of this, right? Because, you know, there are ring cameras all over the place, and that has caused concern at different moments, um, but still, like, you know, individuals are participating in the construction of that surveillance network that Amazon is building.

42:15 And, you know, I know was it earlier this year or or last year, it released that ad where it was like, uh, a ring will help you find your dog. And people were like, wait, that means that you know you can track the dog among many other things through through these cameras. So there has been some, you know, concern about the ring cameras, but it feels like it hasn't reached the the level that we have seen with Flock.

42:35 Why do you think Flock has been the one to really become the focus in this way?

42:40 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of companies doing a lot of really like bad surveillance stuff. Uh Flock is definitely one of them. I think I have a few theories here. One, with ring, I find ring to be incredibly invasive and think that it's like a scary technology that's been really abused. But it's also a consumer product that people buy.

43:01 And then the people who are buying the camera feel like they are deriving some sort of benefit from it. It's like they feel like their packages aren't going to be stolen. They feel like they can like know when their pizza is here, things like this. Like people are people who have ring cameras. I know some people, they're obsessed with them, they're using them all the time.

43:21 They feel like they are deriving some sort of benefit from it.

43:24 I know people who are like on the left who still have their ring camera, you know, even though they would generally be critical of it, right? Exactly.

43:32 And it's like uh, you know, we're surveilled on social media and our phones like all the time, but people feel like uh they're getting some sort of benefit from, you know, being on Instagram or or whatever, or having location services on for different apps and things like that. And I think also it's like you can go tweet at Mark Zuckerberg or complain to Facebook tech support that doesn't exist or whatever.

44:00 Or you can like say you don't like the NSA spying on you, but there's no like place to really vent that frustration in any way that will have a big difference, or at least where it feels like the average person can do something about it. But with Flock, because it is so local, it's like a small town has entered into a contract with this company, and you can go to a city council meeting and yell at the mayor, or you can yell at the city council member that lives three blocks away from you and say, why is this here?

44:36 I think it's become like this thing that people feel like they can make a difference on. And so that so that's happening. I think people don't understand the benefit to them of having this surveillance. I don't think there is one personally, but it's like, unless your car is stolen, it's not clear like what you're deriving from this.

44:56 And then the other thing is that a lot of the backlash has happened uh in rural areas. Uh, you know, it's it's happened across the spectrum, but it's like these things are really conspicuous. Like they have their own poles, they're installed. Uh and if they're installed in like a small town, it's like everyone in the town is gonna see them being installed.

45:15 They're just sitting there, like on these poles. You drive by them all day, every day. And so I think people are like, I don't want this. I I see this, I pass by it every time. Every time I drive by it, I'm reminded that I'm being surveilled. And I think that that is like one of the reasons why this has become like uh sort of the source of so many people's frustration.

45:39 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like in some small towns, there can also be a bit more of like the kind of, you know, libertarian kind of, you know, I'm taking care of myself, you know, we're looking after one another, you know, why do I then need this uh, you know, this foreign surveillance device here to supposedly be doing some of that?

45:58 When cities and towns then are faced with this backlash, right? You know, when there's this reporting that gets people incensed about flock cameras being in their communities, what are we seeing in the reactions there? Are are cities or towns quickly removing those cameras? Are they kind of doubling down and pushing back?

46:16 What's what's the range that we're seeing here?

46:18 Yeah, I mean, it really is a range. And I mean, I more than a hundred towns have canceled their flock contracts. Like this is a real backlash that has a had a real effect. Like that is, I mean, and some of the the towns that have cut their contracts are really big. I uh they're not towns, they're huge cities.

46:36 Like Boston just ended its contract, Denver has ended its contract, Los Angeles has ended its contract, Denver just replaced it with Axon. So that's like something that we're seeing is like a lot of cities that are uh canceling their contracts or just replacing it with another vendor. But in many cases, city councils and mayors are agreeing with their constituents and saying, we made a mistake, we're gonna end our relationship.

47:02 There have been also a lot of cities that have said, no, we're gonna keep them. And even when there has been big backlash, uh, there's like this town called Dunwoody, which is a suburb of Atlanta. And that town, Flock is from Georgia, like the Atlanta suburbs. And so they have a lot of really close partnerships with towns in the Atlanta metro area.

47:27 And Dunwoody is one of them, and they have been doing these like experiments with Dunwoody, where Flock uh has like rolled out features to them early, and then also Flock used Dunwoody as uh sales pitch, essentially. So Flock employees were accessing cameras in that city to show the capabilities of Flock to other cops throughout the country, and this included accessing cameras at like a pool, at uh a children's gymnasium, like really sensitive cameras and cameras video of kids.

48:02 And so, like the people in that town are pissed, like really mad. They've been mad for months and months and months about this. They've showed up at all these city council meetings, and basically the city has ignored them. Flock no longer uses it as a sales pitch, but all those cameras are still up, the contract is still in effect, like that that sort of thing.

48:23 So it's been a bit of a mixed bag. Uh, and then I mean, the other part of this is people have taken matters into their own hands. Uh, they have started cutting flock cameras down, like uh, you know, using a saw to cut the pole down. Uh, there have been cases of flock cameras getting shot with shotguns.

48:42 I saw a video that I haven't, I don't know if it's real, but I think that it is of a person in Florida cutting a flock camera down and throwing it into a pond with an alligator, and an alligator like goes after the flock camera.

48:57 So I mean you said when you said using a shotgun to shoot uh a flock camera, I said, okay, that sounds very American. And then when you said taking one and like throwing it into feeding it to a gator, exactly. I was like, okay, yeah, that's Florida.

49:12 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm pretty sure it's real. I I have been like pulling police reports and requesting police reports of cameras getting destroyed, and I haven't been able to get like a police report for the the gator one, but I'm pretty sure that it's real. It seems like it is. And it it I watched the video so many times, it does not look like AI.

49:31 And I'm like, this is what people are doing. So I I don't I don't have any reason to doubt it. So I mean, this is happening, and this is happening in like dozens of towns as well. You know, we have never and won't ever be like, hey, go cut a flock camera down. Like, I think that the people who are uh, you know, protesting at city council meetings have been really effective, and that's like a that's the way to do it.

49:55 But I will say that a lot of cities have had their cameras shot or cut down, and then the city has said, never mind, like this is not worth it. It's not worth it for us to replace these cameras, to pay to buy new ones, things like that. Like there's this town called Bandera, Texas, that has like a population of like 600 people, and they call themselves like the cowboy capital of the world.

50:21 It's basically like a tourist town, like old West Saloon, things like that. And they put up, I think, four flock cameras and they all got shot by shotguns, and then the city was just like, never mind, like we're done. Um, so some of the some of those types of uh actions have been effective, I guess.

50:41 Definitely. You you can imagine why, right? And I I also read about some cities just like putting bags over the flock camera. Could they not cancel the contract? What was going on there?

50:52 That's been some of the craziest stuff. It's like a lot of cities have canceled their flock contract, or they've realized like that the flock contract says that they have to leave the cameras up, but the city has decided to remove them, but flock won't allow the cities to remove these cameras. Uh, like basically, flock wants to do it with its own contractors, and so there have been several cities that have canceled their contracts, and then there's been like a several month-long gap where the cameras are still up and recording because the these cameras are being operated by Flock.

51:31 They're not being operated by the local jurisdictions, and so they're still recording, they're still like passing information along. And so, what I think like at least four or five cities, maybe more at this point, have done is they've put black trash bags over the the flock cameras, or in some cases they've like 3D printed these like plastic cages and put them over to physically block them.

51:53 And it's pretty crazy that it's gotten to that point in in several of these instances where I don't know, Flock hasn't just been like, okay, we'll take the camera down or we'll turn them off or whatever.

52:05 And so in that case, you know, which is great to see at least the city kind of reacting on that. But how are how are how are the cops reacting to this backlash? Are they just letting the cameras go when you know people are angry enough and the city wants to let them go, or are they trying to keep them, you know, something they can access?

52:25 Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, also a missed mixed bag. There's been a couple of police departments and cops who've been like, you know what, you're correct. I agree with you. We should take them down. But then there's been many cops that have kind of been dragged kicking and screaming, saying, like, well, you're removing them, but like you are helping criminals, you're helping uh, you know, car thieves and child kidnappers and things like that.

52:52 A lot of them have published like these really angry videos on Facebook. Like they film themselves and they're like, you're letting the left win, or you're letting like uh, you know, the communists win, like that sort of thing, which is really crazy because the opposition to Flock has been from across the political spectrum.

53:11 And it's actually probably been more from the right and conservatives who say, you know, this is big brother, this is like government invasion, this is this is not what we want. Well, like, as you were saying earlier, like we're self-sufficient libertarian vibes, and that's where a lot of the backlashes come from.

53:30 But a lot of cops are showing up at city council meetings and they're saying, we really like this tech, please keep it. And a lot of them are like really angry.

53:39 Of course they like it, right? Like, no, no big surprise there. And the industry itself, like, you know, Flock itself. I I read uh some of your reporting again that there was this kind of narrative that this is all Chinese interference turning people against Flock again, a narrative that we've heard about about the data center protests as well.

53:59 What are we seeing kind of seeded by industry to stop this movement that is clearly like, you know, taking hold across the country?

54:08 Yeah, so I think one thing that's happened is the there's so many journalists and like influencers and Instagram people covering Flock and talking about Flock right now. Like it's become a real huge thing in the US. Like the these Instagram videos of people cutting Flock cameras down or like yelling at city council meetings, like many of them have like millions and millions of views.

54:30 So it's like it's broken containment from like privacy and tech nerds to like the general population. That's to say it's a bit hard to like stand out at this point, but I think that this is a very important thing that is not getting so much attention. And I I did an article about it, not that many people read it, but basically, over the last month or so, Flock has really tried to do damage control.

54:58 They have, you know, their their CEO, this guy Garrett Langley, has gone on many, many friendly podcasts and been like, we're not doing what people are saying that we're doing, you know, there's like a disinformation campaign against us, like all of this sort of thing. And then alongside that, all of A16Z, so all of these like Silicon Valley venture capitalists and like just Mark Andreessen types have been defending Flock really vociferously.

55:30 And then there's also been like these kind of right-wing conservative free market think tanks that have been really strongly defending Flock. And I wrote about this uh basically like a think tank that put out this really long, I believe AI generated, like I strongly believe it was AI generated uh report saying that the anti-flock backlash was Chinese propaganda that was like the left that was then like picked up by the left, and then the left was using that to like incept the right to promote its talking points and things like this.

56:11 And it's like I can see why this didn't get so much pickup because it's just like so convoluted. But basically, what's happened is like Flock is in real trouble, they're doing layoffs now, like they are losing all these contracts, and the tech industry is kind of circling around them to do a lot of damage control, to make really very minor reforms that maybe help along the edges, but don't fundamentally change how this technology works.

56:44 And they're really trying to like wait out this backlash to them and paint the opposition to them as being like violent and crazy, essentially. And that's really not the case. Like what I have seen, I've now watched so many of these city council meetings and things like this. It's like the people who are opposing this are very well informed, they really understand the technology and they really don't like it.

57:11 And uh I think that there is a bit of a like without getting too conspiratorial about it, I think the flock defenders are being like really, really loud right now, and the main thing that they're doing is just saying that the opposition to this is not real, that is like Chinese propaganda and that it's like crazy leftists is sort of like what they're saying.

57:36 And that's it's just not the case.

57:38 Yeah, it feels like they need to live in kind of like their own bubble and maybe try to convince some people that's that's the reality when it's very clearly not. And I want to pick up on that to close off our conversation, right? Because we mentioned earlier, you were talking earlier about, you know, the links between and and the differences between as well, the kind of flock opposition and the data center opposition.

57:58 Of course, right now we're also seeing growing opposition to AI, to Meta's smart glasses or pervert glasses, as many people are calling them. What does this kind of growing opposition to so many different aspects of the tech industry tell us about how people are feeling about not just surveillance tech, but digital technology, tech as it's been sold to us for the past couple of decades?

58:21 Um, what does it tell us about how people are feeling about that?

58:24 Yeah, I mean, I think that it is something, I mean, it's been like this for years, but the wonder of tech is gone. And I think that a lot of people are feeling like tech is being imposed upon them uh by rich and powerful people and that they don't have much of a voice. I mean, we're seeing this with AI where it's jammed into everything, and people are saying, like, you have to use it.

58:50 It's going to take your job, it's going to destroy humanity, like all this sort of thing. And it's like, you know, a lot of this technology is very powerful, but it is being wielded by powerful people to subjugate the masses, more or less. And I think people realize that. I think that the resistance to flock is part of that.

59:10 I think the resistance to AI is part of that. And I think that we are told over and over and over again that we just need to trust the rich and powerful and trust Silicon Valley and accept their vision of the world and what they are doing. And that that is the main line that's being used with Flock. It's like the the goal of Flock's CEO is to like prevent crime, is what he says.

59:35 And we know that this technology, yes, it's been used to solve some crimes. It's like, it would be disingenuous to say that Flock has never solved any sort of crime, but it's not clear whether it is leading me to meaningfully less crime. And it's especially not clear whether it's worth the trade-off to our civil liberties and privacy associated with it and all the negative externalities around it and like the change to human behavior that will come from it and all of that.

1:00:05 And I think that all of this has happened largely without the input of the masses. It's happened without people saying, like, having a conversation, like, is this trade-off worth it, or do we want this in our town? And that's kind of what's happening now, like after the fact, is cities are discussing whether they want this tech in particular, whether they want data centers, or like all of this sort of thing.

1:00:30 But now, like the opposition to it is painted as being radical or like anti-progress or whatever, because all this stuff has been already shoved down our throats. And and like that, that's kind of like the state of things now. And I think that it it's like it's all it definitely all is connected. It's like the it's all kind of uh part and parcel of the Silicon Valley way of doing things, of like, we're gonna try something, and if it works even slightly, we're gonna put we're gonna try to not 10x it, we're gonna try to like 10,000 X the scale of this thing.

1:01:04 And then by the time you wake up one day and this is everywhere, and you have like no recourse against it. And I think that one of the things that's happened with data centers, as you know, you've done such excellent reporting on and podcasts, and I can't wait to read your book, um, is with data centers and with Flock, it's like the backlash to it is having a bit of success.

1:01:27 Um, and I think it's a model for resisting some of these other technologies that people don't like either.

1:01:34 Absolutely. You know, it really shows how people turning up to their local city councils and stuff can actually have an effect on, you know, pushing not just local politicians, but over time, state politicians, um, even federal politicians that have to start moving on these issues, right? You know, it does show that people really do have power against these technologies if they figure out the right ways to wield it.

1:01:55 And, you know, if if the tech industry wants us to believe that 75% of Americans, as recent polling suggests, uh on anti-data center stuff are like radicals and leftists and all that kind of stuff. That's uh that's news to me, but but I would certainly welcome it. Um, Jason, it's uh it's always great to talk to you, to get your insights on all this, to talk about the fantastic reporting you and your colleagues are doing over at 404 Media.

1:02:17 Thanks so much for taking the time to chat. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Jason Kebler is a co-founder of 404 Media. Tech Won's Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston. Tech Won's Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry.

1:02:34 You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. You can also pick up a copy of my new book, Hyperscale, at hyperscalebook.com. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week.