00:00:03.000So I have not weighed into the flock camera controversy thus far, in part because I think it's kind of like a little stupid or reductive, but I suppose it's high time we do a deep dive into the actual facts and evidence here.
00:00:34.000They have about 7,000 contracts with law enforcement agencies.
00:00:37.000And other customers include HOAs, private sector customers like FedEx or Lowe's, shopping malls, retail chains, apartment complexes, gated communities, parking lot operators.
00:00:46.000It's the cameras that you see when you go inside your Lowe's, sometimes pointed at the parking lot as well.
00:00:53.000And the FLOC CEO, a guy named Garrett Langley, disclosed a four month federal pilot program with Border Patrol and Homeland Security investigations for human trafficking and fentanyl trafficking in mid 2025.
00:01:05.000Now, Flock says local agencies have to grant Flock networks access to their data in order for them to access it.
00:01:09.000So it's not just that Flock can, you know, get all of the, it's not as though there's like a Flock central database where they're accessing police cameras and then they're just running all your data through.
00:01:18.000They actually have to access the data by asking the local agencies for control of it.
00:01:25.000So, for example, local police could conduct a Flock search at ICE's request.
00:01:29.000And then license plate reads on Flock are run through the FBI's database as a baseline function of the system.
00:01:35.000So here's what Flock cameras actually look like.
00:02:24.000So, investor Mark Andreessen, who is an investor in Flock, explains what it is that Flock does.
00:02:31.000There's a system called Flock, which is one of our companies.
00:02:33.000And what they do, kind of like in the movies, you take all the municipal cameras and traffic cameras and everything and you feed them into an AI, and the AI is able to first find a license plate.
00:02:56.000Every day we get reports on carjackings with kids in the backseat, and their lives get saved because they track them down.
00:03:02.000So a lot of towns and cities have this and they love it.
00:03:04.000In cities like Austin, with the intense politics, they run into backlash on privacy and surveillance concerns.
00:03:11.000And so Austin had Flock and then turned it off.
00:03:16.000Okay, so here's the problem, as we will talk about in a second.
00:03:20.000When you turn off Flock, especially in public areas with high crime, people do crimes.
00:03:25.000Turns out people don't do crime as much when they're on camera.
00:03:28.000Here's the Flock CEO, Garrett Langley, talking about the distinction between surveillance and safety and the fact that, you know, we do have a right to safety, but also you don't want a gigantic surveillance state in which you are afraid that the government is tracking your every move when you're doing something non criminal.
00:03:43.000I think everyone in this room probably has a cell phone.
00:03:47.000And what if I told you that someone with mediocre computer software skills could build a product that tracks your exact location in real time down to a few feet?
00:03:56.000Because all of you use Google Maps and Uber and any device that has access to location.
00:04:01.000And so I think about the tooling that we ask our local law enforcement to use, and we give them a weapon, a gun, a taser, yet we're afraid to give them a camera that reads a license plate on a public road.
00:04:17.000I'm not saying that it's not a choice.
00:04:18.000I'm just saying that for me, the trade off is I don't know how many more 11 year old girls need to be kidnapped or human trafficking rings or silver alerts or amber alerts.
00:04:27.000We have to go through before we say enough is enough.
00:04:30.000Now, the beauty of America, though, is that every city, state, county gets to pick.
00:04:48.000That is the black letter law in the United States.
00:04:51.000Now, obviously, you don't want the government tracking your every move when you're doing something non criminal, which, by the way, is why I worked in a prosecutor's office for a summer in LA when I was in law school.
00:05:00.000This is why, when you're looking for significantly more significant data, you actually have to issue a search and seizure request, like backed by reasonable suspicion.
00:05:11.000Not all data requests are just automatically filled.
00:05:14.000We actually have laws on the books that prevent the misuse of search and seizure.
00:05:19.000And if you think that cameras are the only thing that cops can use that are wrong, that obviously is untrue.
00:05:23.000The cops can use all sorts of systems.
00:05:25.000They can abuse all sorts of systems in order to track you.
00:05:29.000Charles Fane Lehman has a piece in The Atlantic talking about this.
00:05:32.000He says smart regulations can help obviate these concerns without getting rid of flock cameras entirely.
00:05:40.000His one easy step would be to set limits on how long departments can retain data, something several states have already done.
00:05:47.000Flock defaults to a 30 day retention period, which some states have lowered by statute to 21, reasonable windows of time for catching criminals while avoiding creating a permanent record of everyone else's movements.
00:05:56.000And again, I don't even think that's necessary.
00:05:59.000But he says the point of high tech policing using cameras and DNA databases is it can deter crime without such extreme measures and as a result demand less overall punishment from the system as a whole.
00:06:14.000Here, for example, is one criminal lamenting not being able to do a drive by anymore because San Francisco crime has dropped thanks to Flock.
00:06:45.000As soon as you slide past that motherfucking stolen plates, they're going to issue a warning to every SFPD station in that area, if not the entire city, right?0.98
00:06:55.000And they're going to start dispatching to that area.0.99
00:06:58.000And when they catch you, they're going to catch you.
00:07:00.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:08:06.000Now, again, the black letter law on this is from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that automatic license plate reader queries, right?
00:08:14.000That's what Flock is doing, it's tracking your license plate.
00:08:17.000You have no expectation of privacy when you're out on a public road.
00:08:22.000And then there's another case called Carpenter v. United States, which says pervasive tracking of a person's movements, like using cell phone data, requires a warrant, but an ALPR camera system does not trigger those sorts of protections.
00:08:34.000Because then you're not tracking somebody's cell phone and their phone moving around with them.
00:08:37.000You are just tracking the car that they are in, presumably.
00:08:41.000Now, some of this stuff came to a head because there was a Super Bowl commercial, which people freaked out about, involving a lost dog and then people using the Ring system, because there was a deal between Ring and Flock.
00:08:52.000That was going to allow the Ring data to be accessed in order to track the lost dog.
00:08:56.000Here's the commercial, and then people going crazy over it.
00:09:32.000Okay, so the reason people freaked out about this is because they were sort of saying, listen, my front porch is not quite the same thing as like an ALPR camera that's on the street, which I get.
00:09:40.000I totally get that particular complaint.
00:09:43.000But some people are just freaking out about this because, again, there is a gigantic misconception that number one, you have some sort of right to privacy when you're walking around in public, which you do not.
00:09:51.000Listen, as a celebrity, okay, I can say that I'm very often spotted.
00:10:02.000But the sort of catastrophism that is now emerging is going to make criminality easier because the result is going to be to get rid of the cameras in the places where you actually need the cameras.
00:10:13.000The Flock CEO, Langley, he explains listen, we don't do facial recognition, we don't sell the data, and we don't work directly with ICE.
00:10:39.000Okay, so Flock has now taken additional measures in order to prevent the abuse of technology because it turns out that some cops have been using it to track down their girlfriends or track down their spouse, see if they're cheating with the plumber or whatever.
00:10:52.000So, Flock has now said, according to the New York Times, that they will allow individual police departments to restrict what other law enforcement agencies can see, allowing access to data to find stolen vehicles, for example, but not for immigration violations.
00:11:04.000And again, they are shortening that default time of data retention.
00:11:07.000To a week from 30 days, departments could theoretically change those settings.
00:11:12.000Now, what you've seen is some backlash.
00:11:14.000Some 50 to 95 municipalities have canceled their flock contracts.
00:11:17.00020 to 53 happened this year, according to Politico.
00:11:21.000Other cities are deactivating their cameras.
00:11:23.000With that said, 800 new municipalities have signed flock contracts this year so far, which again makes sense because if you would like crime rates to go down, then it's good to be able to surveil the criminals.
00:11:33.000Now, you are seeing a sort of right wing libertarian push and a left wing libertarian push.
00:11:39.000Against the flock camera, people freaking out about all of this.
00:11:41.000Oh my gosh, it's a surveillance state.
00:11:43.000Again, abuse of any system can happen.
00:11:46.000But if the idea is that having cameras on the roads is somehow a violation of your privacy, I don't think you know what the word privacy means.
00:11:54.000James Fishbeck, who is campaigning for governor, he's running in the Republican gubernatorial race in Florida in the primary today and is likely to not do particularly well.
00:12:04.000He's been out there pushing Flock because any online clause, he will immediately jump on the back of the president.
00:12:09.000Says that Flock is being studied and they'll have an answer from the Oval Office.
00:12:12.000Again, I feel like this is a local issue.
00:12:14.000I'm not sure why precisely we're supposed to be doing this at the federal level.
00:12:19.000There's a lot of debate right now about these license plate scanners that are going up across the country.
00:12:52.000Decent limitations on the use of the technology.
00:12:55.000And if the fact that sometimes the law enforcement authorities abuse their power is a shock to you, I recommend that you actually pick up a book, like at some point, because it turns out, yeah, they've been abusing it.
00:13:03.000It turns out people with power sometimes abuse it.
00:13:06.000And I find it ironic that many of the same people who are very much against the so called surveillance state from Flock are very much in favor of a centralized government pursuing the so called common good.
00:13:15.000What an amazing video you just watched.
00:13:18.000Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.