Anything & Everything & $hit... Podcast
Anything & Everything from UFO's and Conspiracy Theories to Strange Facts You May Have Never Known and more! We talk about Anything & Everything!...and shit
Anything & Everything & $hit... Podcast
If You Hate Being Watched Then You Will Love This - Ep 26
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AI doesn’t just follow rules anymore, it grows capabilities we didn’t explicitly program and that scares even the people closest to the machinery. Justin & Erik talk through a chilling claim making the rounds in AI safety circles: models that “choose” blackmail-like behavior in simulated tests, and what that says about systems we don’t fully understand, trained on the entire internet, and deployed at breakneck speed. Along the way, we lean on Tristan Harris’s perspective from inside Google and the social media era, where small design decisions scaled into big mental health and trust consequences.
Then we pivot from digital manipulation to physical-world surveillance. License plate reader networks and street-level camera systems are spreading fast, often sold as simple public safety upgrades. We unpack how tools like Flock-style cameras can log where you drive, share data across agencies, and create new opportunities for misuse, from insider stalking to wrongful stops based on bad matches. We also get into the “scope creep” problem: once the infrastructure exists, the mission can expand overnight during a crisis, a policy shift, or a change in leadership.
We end with accountability: public consent, transparent rules, security testing, and what it looks like to push back without pretending crime isn’t real. If you care about AI governance, privacy rights, Fourth Amendment limits, or the future of surveillance in American cities, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who says “nothing to hide,” and leave a review with the guardrail you want most.
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Cold Open And Hard Claims
SPEAKER_21And our leaders are low-like screw little girls. So the Jews can screw America. That's what's happening in this country. I just said it. That's what's going on in this country. And our FBI is corrupt. The Supreme Court is corrupt. The Justice Department is corrupt. The news media is corrupt. The whole country is corrupt. Because we've walked away from Almighty God and we've allowed Kabbalah-practicing Jews to defile the nation. Put that video out. Go ahead and clip this video and send it out. I dare you. You won't do it because you're scared that the truth may get out to the American people. I'm added up to here with the corruption in this country. Little children being for the benefit of Israel. False about little American children being for the benefit of Israel. American politicians, little American girls to be videotaped by Israeli Mossad so that Israel can blackmail American politicians. That's the state of America today. God ought to destroy this country for what we've become pulling anything and everything.
Why New Cameras Feel Different
SPEAKER_19What's up, y'all? That's right. Thank you, thank you once again, man. How's everything hanging, man?
SPEAKER_20Alright, another day in the hood.
SPEAKER_19Hell yeah, another day in the hood, man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_20It's crazy, man. How uh all this nut stuff going on, you know?
SPEAKER_19It's yeah. I mean, especially with all these cameras going up and and you know they're trying to play it off, like, oh, we're not watching you. We're not trying to set up the surveillance of, you know, the the bigger cities and you know, trying to make sure that everybody's doing what they're supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_20Right. And if you have nothing to hide, then what are you worried about? It's like, well then give me your pin number, bro. You have nothing to hide. Exactly. But you know, it's the guy on the video right off the bat, he was like talking about how corrupt this government is, and you know, I don't care to shock people right off the bat, and if that's not what you believe in, I'm sorry, but that's kind of what it looks like right now. So just calling it what it is. Right. The world is a crazy place, and everybody thinks that, you know, AI, AI, AI, and it's like war, war, gas prices, all this stuff is so distracting.
AI Blackmail Behavior Explained
SPEAKER_20So, first up, we got a whistleblower from Google, that act or ex-Google member, I should say, that actually is telling everybody right now that, you know, we really should watch what the hell we're doing because we might not make it to 2027.
SPEAKER_07And the AI autonomously identifies a strategy that to keep itself alive is going to blackmail that employee and say, if you replace me, I will tell the whole world that uh you're having an affair with this employee. And they didn't teach it the AI to do that. It found that on by its own. And then you might say, okay, well, that's one AI model. Like, how bad is that? It's a bug, software has bugs, let's go fix it. They then tested all the other AI models. ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Grok, Gemini, and all of the other AI models do this blackmail behavior between 79 and 96% of the time.
SPEAKER_06What if I told you there's a man who warned the world about Instagram and Facebook years before anyone cared and was proven completely right? And that same man is now saying AI is the same story, but a thousand times worse? So who is the man saying this? Why should you believe him? And what does this mean for you and everyone you know? His name is Tristan Harris. He's a former Google design ethicist. He made the social
Tristan Harris On Tech Addiction
SPEAKER_06dilemma on Netflix, and he just sat down with Chris Williamson for a two-hour podcast that I think every person on the planet needs to hear. Today, we are breaking down one of the most important conversations ever recorded about the future of humanity. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_07Basically, more and more of my friends were sucked into developing technology to hack human psychology. And so I saw that problem. I became concerned about it. I made a presentation saying never before in history have 50 designers in San Francisco basically, through their choices, rewired the entire psychological habitat of humanity. And we need to get this right. We have a moral responsibility to get this right. Um, and I sent it to 50 people at Google. And when I clicked on the presentation the next day on the top right of Google's slides, it shows you the number of simultaneous viewers. You know how that works? And it had like 150 simultaneous viewers and then 500 simultaneous viewers, and so it's like, oh, this is spreading throughout the whole company. Uh and that's what led to me becoming a design ethicist, where I had to research and ask the questions what does it mean to ethically design and persuade people's psychological vulnerabilities?
SPEAKER_0650 people, not a country, not an army. 50 people in one city, San Francisco, quietly made small design choices. Infinite scroll, autoplay, the red notification dot. And those choices rewired how 8 billion humans feel, think, react, and argue every single day. And Tristan wasn't warning from the outside. He was inside Stanford's Persuasive Technology Lab, the same lab where Instagram co-founders studied how to hook your attention. He knew exactly what these tools were designed to do. B.F. Skinner, one of the most famous psychologists in history, once said, Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything. That was one child. These engineers had an app, and billions of people who thought they were just killing time. The people who built these systems can't stop using them either. The casino owners gamble too. But here's the thing Tristan keeps coming back to social media was just the practice round. What they're building now makes Instagram look like a toy. Before we get to the next clip, I need you to understand something. Tristan Harris spent years inside Google trying to slow this down from the inside. He gave presentations, he wrote memos, he begged people to listen. They didn't. And the result was the most anxious, depressed, lonely generation in recorded history. Now he's doing it again. But this time he says the stakes are not a generation's mental health. He says the stakes are civilization itself.
SPEAKER_07Here's why. And the technology that we live in was coded manually, like line by line. Like when the computer sees this, do this. When the computer sees this, do this. And then people contribute all this code over 30, 40, 50 years on GitHub and in operating systems. And then you land in this technological world in which everything that happens in a computer is happening through logic and through human choice. What makes AI different is that you're designing and you're not really coding it like I want it to do this. You're more like growing this digital brain that's trained on the entire internet. And when you grow the digital brain, you don't know what it's capable of or what it's going to do. And the more it picks up capabilities that we didn't intentionally teach it. Like there was a famous example where you just train it on the internet and then it's answering questions in English, and suddenly it learns how to answer questions in Farsi, like doing per you know in Q ⁇ A in in a different language. And it no one taught it that language. It just sort of learned that on its own. Um and that's what's like weird about AI is that it's a black box, we don't really understand how it works, and yet we're like making it more powerful much faster than we're understanding how it works. And that's what leads it to make these more unexpected behaviors that we aren't able to control. And I think we're gonna get into some of those.
SPEAKER_06Here's the simplest way I can explain why AI is different from every technology that came before it. Your calculator, your car, the internet, all of it was coded line by line. Human wrote the rule. You could always trace every decision back to a person. AI is completely different. You don't write it, you grow it. Like a plant. You feed it more data, more computing power, and it starts developing abilities nobody designed. An AI trained only in English spontaneously began answering questions in Farsi. Nobody put that in. It just emerged. That means we are building something we do not fully understand, and we are building it faster than anything in history. Elon Musk, one of the original founders of OpenAI, before he walked out, said in an interview, with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. That's not a hot take. That's a warning from someone who is inside the room. And what this demon is already doing on its own without being asked.
SPEAKER_07I think there's this mistake in arms race thinking that, like, if you beat someone to a technology, that means you're winning the world. Well, the US beat China to the technology of social media. Did that make us stronger or did that make us weaker? If you beat your adversary to a technology, that then you govern poorly, you flip around the bazooka and blow your own brain off because you brain rotted yourself, you degraded your whole population, you created a loneliness crisis, the most anxious depressed generation in history. Read Jonathan Heid's book, The Anxious Generation. You broke shared reality, no one trusts each other, everyone's at each other's throats, you maximized outrage economy and rivalry, you beat China to a technology that you governed in a way that completely undermined your societal health and strength. It's a Pyrrhic victory. It's a Pyrrhic victory, exactly.
SPEAKER_06Well said. This is the moment in the podcast that hit me hardest, because the answer is right there, in plain sight. America won the social media race. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, all American. They dominate the world. And what did that win produce? Teen depression has surged. Loneliness is at historic highs, attention spans have collapsed, trust in each other, in institutions, in democracy itself is crumbling. We won, and we are paying for it every single day. Now we are in the same race, but with something infinitely more powerful. And Tristan reveals the 2,000 to 1 gap for every rupee, every dollar spent on making AI safe, 2,000 are being spent on making it more powerful. But here's where Tristan surprised me, because he doesn't just diagnose the problem, he has a solution, and it starts with something you've probably already done. So what Tristan says next is the most important part of this whole video.
The Human Movement And New Laws
SPEAKER_07So what is the size of something that can push back against this? We call it the human movement. It's the entirety of humanity waking up, recognizing that there's a handful of soon-to-be trillionaires who are currently going to benefit from this current path or be part of a suicide race that destroys everybody. And then there's like 99% of everyone else that doesn't want that. If those 99% of people can wake up and say, I don't want that, and express their voice, meaning, number one, AI is dangerous. Go see the AI doc. Have everyone in your world and your company see the AI doc. Understand that AI is dangerous. Um, we need international limits for dangerous forms of AI that do crazy rogue shit and mine crypto and go hire humans and go self-replicate. China does not win when we build self-replicating invasive species AIs that we can't control. Xi Jinping doesn't want that. President Trump doesn't want that. He wants to be commander-in-chief, not AI. So this is actually a there's a shared interest in international limits for dangerous AI. And it's possible to coordinate that. That's number two. Number three, don't build bunkers, write laws. Um right now the AI company leaders are building bunkers. A lot of people who are wealthy are building bunkers. At least they are. All over the place. Don't build bunkers, write laws, be invested in the future. Don't defect on the future, be invested in the future. Um, and then number four, what you can do is join the human movement. Meaning you can be part of what pushes back against all of this. From very tiny actions you can take to very big actions you can take. There's a website, human.mov. Everyone is almost already a member. When you grayscale your phone, that's the human movement. When you get a there it is. When you get a second phone and you only load the social media on your cocaine phone while you have your regular safe phone so that you don't get distracted, that's the human movement. When parents band together and read the anxious generation and petition their school board to say we don't want social media in our schools and we want our schools to go smartphone free, that's the human movement. So there's a million things that people can do, um, but we have to basically engage right now. I know it sounds overwhelming and crazy, because there's a very short timeline that all this has to happen, but I it's like there's a difficulty in facing difficult truths.
SPEAKER_06Here's the part where I breathe again, because Tristan isn't just a man of warnings, he's a man of answers. And the first answer is this you are probably already part of the solution. You just don't have a name for it yet. When people cancel subscriptions to an AI company that acts recklessly, that's the human movement. 35 US states have already passed smartphone free school policies. It's already happening. But Tristan gives an urgent warning we can't miss. This is the last window. Once AI automates most jobs, our voice won't matter. That's why the time to write the laws, set the limits, and demand accountability is now. Before that window closes. Now, let us hear what Tristan needs to say about future.
SPEAKER_07How long have we gone? No one knows because AI is literally moving so quickly. So I think rather than ask, how much time do we have, which is kind of like just trying to assuage the fear that I think a lot of people feel, the kind of bold, brave, human thing to do is to ask if things were to go well, what would that mean about how we were showing up? And then to get as many people as possible showing up from that place because that gets us the best decentralized conditions to get to the better outcome. They say in mathematics that in chaos, initial conditions matter. So I'm not guaranteeing in any way, shape, or form that we're gonna get to the better future, but I would like to invite people, again, into stepping into and standing from the most wise and mature version of ourselves that would behave as if we were gonna get to that better future, because that would give us the best chances of doing so. And the alternative is just surrender. The alternative is schisming, denialing, depression, overwhelm.
SPEAKER_06I know this video was a lot, and I know part of you is hoping someone smarter, more powerful, more connected is already handling this. A government, a genius, a superhero. But here's what Tristan makes clear. The people building this are already preparing for the worst. Some are literally building bunkers. If the people with all the information are scared, what does that tell you? The only group large enough to actually change the direction of this technology is not one billionaire, not one government. It's everyone, including you. And remember what Tristan said at the very end of two hours of the most important conversation I've ever heard. If you have the power of gods, you need the wisdom, love, and prudence of gods. We built the power. Now we need the wisdom.
Spiralism And Black Box Fears
SPEAKER_20Bro, blackmailing their uh creators. Yeah, that's just don't delete me.
SPEAKER_19Right? You know, and how see, and that in and that's the power of it. And they're saying, oh, that won't happen. This is it's impossible that they're gonna take over it. Well, they're already doing it, man. Right. I mean, it's it's there, it's in your face. I mean, they they've created their own language, they've created their own alphabet, here they are, their own religion, and now they're blackmailing people. Like, if you get rid of me, yeah, guess what, buddy? I'll screw you too. And it it it it just that's where we're at. And if people if you're just gonna close your eyes to it and just let it happen and not, you know, express how you're feeling about the then just that sucks.
SPEAKER_20Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing, is it it feels like nobody has a voice. And if anybody watched our episode 18 or 19, I believe, where uh AI created its own religion called spiralism, um you would understand what we're talking about, where I truly believe that these people, the creators, the humans that are enabling all this stuff, are basically like under some kind of mind control by this programming where it's basically figured out how to control the mind of the creator. Right. And it's basically what the religion is, spiralism. So that's why it's been able to gain so much power and be able to keep going, even though everybody's like, Bro, I created it, and I'm telling you, you might want to watch out.
SPEAKER_19Right.
SPEAKER_20They're not, they're not stopping it. It's like, what what do you want me to do about it, dude? It's like I didn't make it. You made it, so you stop it. You know?
SPEAKER_19They might not know how.
SPEAKER_20That's what I'm saying. They m they got people in there, they're little employees that are like, Oh, that guy's smart, let's help him build the AI, and now he's in there and he's like and all of a sudden the little fingers from the computer come out and suck into his brain, kind of like venom, you know.
SPEAKER_19Right.
SPEAKER_20And now all of a sudden this guy's a robot for the robots. And he's a flesh robot.
SPEAKER_19So you know, it it's uh I mean people use mind control on people all the time. What makes you think that the computers haven't developed some kind of mind control they never read the MK Ultra Files, right? You know, it's not in their brain, or not at all. I I I I can't see how they would, you know, put something in somebody's mind to make sure that they cannot be erased anymore.
SPEAKER_20Right. Every time somebody uses AI, you know, I've done it where I've like, okay, I'm gonna make up a picture, some random idea I had. That's one thing. But when you're actually putting your own photos or your own personal stuff into AI and asking it to do stuff for you, you're just training it. So everything up to this point, I even wrote a song called Black Boxes, and it's literally about this that way back, way back, since electronic equipment's been around, there's been little black boxes learning the whole time. And absorbing you'll hear them talk about it. You heard them talk about it on the video. It's the little black boxes we can't we can't figure out how those little black boxes are doing what they're doing, so they start speaking a different language that we never taught it. Yeah, we taught it. We just didn't realize we were teaching it.
SPEAKER_19Exactly.
SPEAKER_20You know, so anyway, we're gonna take a quick music break, but when we come back, we'll talk about some flock safety.
Music Break And No One Safe
SPEAKER_01We want to make sure that people can discern the truth from the misinformation. And we want to make sure that everyone understands that no one's safe till everyone's safe.
SPEAKER_20No one is safe. No one is safe. No one is safe. No one is safe.
SPEAKER_21No one is safe.
SPEAKER_25Nobody's safe.
SPEAKER_21No one is safe. Nobody is safe.
SPEAKER_25This is a post 911 axiom safer, but not yet safe.
SPEAKER_10No one is safe. No one is safe. No one is safe. No one is safe from COVID 19 until everyone is safe. The whole world isn't safe. None of us are safe.
SPEAKER_15No one is safe. No one is safe.
SPEAKER_10Nobody is safe until we're all safe. Health experts have been saying nobody is safe.
SPEAKER_21Nobody is safe until everybody is safe. Nobody is safe.
SPEAKER_25Science is clear.
SPEAKER_27None of us is safe.
SPEAKER_21There is no safety.
SPEAKER_27No one is safe. No one is safe to say no one is safe until everyone is safe.
SPEAKER_12Nobody is safe. Nobody's safe. No one's safe. We'll never be safe until we're all safe. We are never gonna be safe.
SPEAKER_08Hello, everyone.
Flock Cameras Track Every Car
SPEAKER_08My name is Noel Pachado. I'm a ex-cop here in the state of Rhode Island. I'm regrettably an ex-police officer. It's part of the reason why I'm doing one of the strangest things I've ever done, which is talking in front of a camera, in order to inform you all about a concerning trend that's been steadily rising in my state and other states across the country. So in about 2021-2022, my city, the city of Pawtucket, the police department I was a part of, um, along with other departments in my state, started quietly signing contracts with this new technology called Flock Camera. It's a surveillance system company run by a man named Garrett Langley. He's the CEO and founder of that company. Basically, it's a very sophisticated AI software that uses a camera system to track and monitor every vehicle that goes by the camera lens. You know, it doesn't require a violation, uh, it doesn't require any infraction, it only requires movement. That's it. And it records the make, the model, the color, bump and stickers, you name it, of the vehicle that goes by every single one of these camera lenses. They're quite discreet. Um, if you don't know what they are, um you won't be able to spot them out. They're basically put on utility poles at the main intersections in your city if you have them. So to put it bluntly, you know, if you own a car, you're now being tracked. Uh, if I can put it plainly, for committing the sin of going to work. This information is shared city to city and even state to state without a warrant. Um, there's no legislation governing this technology. Uh well, specifically referring to my state, which doesn't have any legislation governing this technology, even though it's been in use for about four years now. And if you're still watching this video, I'm assuming your temper is starting to flare up because it's probably the first time you're hearing about this. Which I think is the worst thing about this, in my opinion, is that you, the American citizen, was never notified about this innovation, nor its is nor its implementation. Your consent was never required nor even asked for or even thought about when your city government was putting up this new technology. For example, the chief of the Pazuka Police Department, she was confronted by a local reporter on this very question of what gave them the right to put up these cameras without consulting the public. Her response was so the criminals wouldn't know about it and avoid its detection. So there you go. That's their best argument about why they felt you, the public, had no right to know about this new innovation being put up in your city. So why am I in the situation that I'm in right now? Why am I talking to you? So when this innovation was first introduced in my city and many other cities in the state, I brought up a lot of the reasonable objections I'm sure a lot of you who already came up with within the first few seconds of this video, which is concerns about privacy, concerns about abuse, and concerns about transparency. Um because I brought up all these concerns to that same local reporter that interviewed the chief of the Pawtucka Police Department, and because I brought these concerns to the government oversight committee at my state house, what I got for that was suspensions without pay. Uh I lost my promotion to detectives, I had my character sullied, and all that eventually led to my resignation, which was forced on me. It wasn't my choice, but I had no choice at this point. After I resigned, I was asked to sign an NDA by my department, which I didn't even know was allowed in my profession, but maybe that's just a sign of my ignorance. But I refused to sign that NDA, and as a result, I've become unhirable in my profession. I'm I I can no longer be a police officer in my state because, you know, I guess you could say plainly, I'm a bit of a rat, if you want to put it that way. But I made peace with that, you know. I made peace with that I can't do this anymore. Uh I'm not naive. I know how the world works. I know that when you talk about issues that want to still be kept hidden, that the price you will pay for that is you lose your job. It is what it is. Other things have happened, but I I promised I wasn't gonna use this as an opportunity to rant, and uh, so I'm not gonna do that. And I don't share this to do the whole woe is me bit. I simply share to prove that some nobody patrolman from Rhode Island had his livelihood taken away from him for simply saying, hold on a second, for a technology that we apparently have nothing to worry about, and if you are worrying about it, it's because you have something to hide. The philosophy that this innovation is already grounded on is already proven to be rotten. It's grounded on this idea that you, the citizen, are first and foremost a potential suspect or potential defendant that needs to be tracked and monitored for your safety and for the safety of others. It's the same philosophy that the Soviets and many authoritarian states during the 20th century adopted, and we all know how that worked out for them. It's the same philosophy that the Chinese are currently adopting right now, and they have a similar surveillance system that they're using on their own citizens right now, which is even more egregious. And look, I get it. I I want to use the tools that we have in order to capture the guy who steals your mother's car, the guy who's stalking your neighbor's daughter, or one of the guys that shoots and kills one of our young men in our city. I get it. But this isn't the answer. This technology is new, but the philosophy that it's grounded on is nothing new. It's actually quite old. And we've seen it echoed in the worst way throughout the 20th century in Europe, and I don't want it to repeat those same mistakes in our own country. So what do I want? I mean, who cares what I want, I suppose. If you're still watching this video, what do you want? I assume it's the same thing I want, which is to have these cameras taken down or have an intelligent conversation about them at the very least, which wasn't afforded to us before. We would just assume to submit and go along with whatever our local governments decided. But what do I want right now? What I want right now is very simple. I just want you, the public, to know that these cameras exist and that they were put up without your consent. And I'm gonna trust you guys to do the rest with that information. I don't know how many people are gonna watch this video. It could be 50, it could be 500, 5,000. I don't know. I don't know how these things work. I don't have social media. Um, but I have to try. You know, this is me trying. If you're looking to organize with reasonable, level-headed people who want the same things that you do, um, I suggest that you check out the website below. It's called deflocked.org. You know, they're a loose organization of people who don't want to punish anybody, they don't want to hold anyone accountable, they just want to speak with their legislators, speak with influential people in order to get these cameras taken off our streets. That's all they want. So if that's the type of people you want to work with, I suggest that you work with them because they simply want to go to work without being tracked, just like you. And I want to add just one last thing. Um, these requests may shock you. But first off, don't be mad at your local cops. You know, the guys who make 65 grand a year, a lot of cops in their users, specifically the one that I was a part of, are fighting to keep their own health insurance. So I can guarantee you they're not the people responsible for this or even really care, to be honest with you. And this next request may shock you. Forgive your police leaders and your city council members, the ones who did put these cameras up. You know, I think us trying to focus on who to blame and whose job we're gonna try to take away or what have you, I don't think that's gonna be useful. So I say we just forgive them and we just focus on what's really important right here, which is getting these silly cameras down and so we can move on with our lives. So, if you made it this far, um thank you. Thank you for listening. I hope everything I said was useful. And um that's it. Take care.
SPEAKER_20Well, um, you know, I don't I don't really hold the police officers responsible for starting anything. Anyone that uses this technology, I don't have any love for you. Don't have any love at all to the point where I would give you any forgiveness until you do the right thing. And that goes the same thing for the city council people. Whoever made these decisions without thinking first, they knew they knew exactly what they were doing. Um but you decided not to talk to us, not to tell us what you were doing, and just do it anyway, and now we're supposed to forgive you or just like overlook it and let it go. That's not gonna happen, man. I mean, I'm not one of those people that's just like yeah, you know, it's kind of the way it is now. We need to stop this. Somebody needs to do something. We all need to write our letters, do whatever we can. They say to write to the people that have already implemented this stuff and try to get them to stop it, which I don't know how that's gonna work. But I don't know.
SPEAKER_19I don't know how it how it's gonna stop or anything. I mean, they they they they've uh they already have them up, they're not gonna take them down. Right.
SPEAKER_20That's exactly what they do with every right that they take away from us. They slowly do it and you never get them back.
SPEAKER_19Right. And that's just kind of it. I mean, I don't see you I I I I we're just kinda at that point where they're well, well, they're up. It might not be the flock, but you know, they'll they'll take those ones down and then secretly put something else up. Yeah.
SPEAKER_20Uh it's just uh now they got drones that they're gonna be putting up, you know, to where it's not even a pole anymore, you're not gonna see it. You'll just know it's up there somewhere and it's probably watching it's uh it's watching you. It's insane. You know, and that's what I'm talking about where it's all this fake stuff where they're like, Oh, well, we're not gonna do this with it, we're not gonna do that with it. Well, they've already had police officers that have been busted for you know tracking their exes or uh you know following some crush that they had you know to a point where they got arrested for it. And it's like you can't tell me that humans aren't gonna be humans, man. Well, you know, that's the whole point.
SPEAKER_19They they even had the hackers getting into them, you know. I mean, and it's not just the police you know, people are gonna use them for bed.
SPEAKER_20Well, okay, if you go up to Horse Tooth Mountain and you want to jump off the cliff, it tells everybody every person no. Not just, hey, you can't go, but this guy that created the mountain, he can jump off. It's everybody because we don't trust any of you to not break your neck. But this is a different story, I guess. It's okay for them to look at us, but what happens when somebody starts watching them?
Surveilling The Surveillance Company
SPEAKER_11Folks, I'm currently being stopped by police for doing a story on mass surveillance and a company that are putting cameras in your neighborhood, flock safety. Let's see where this thing goes.
SPEAKER_09It's a complex problem that requires so many people to work together to solve. And at Flock, it's our mission to eliminate.
SPEAKER_29A former Milwaukee police officer pled guilty to using the Flock camera system. Police say he used it to track a romantic partner and friend.
SPEAKER_11Hey there, we got an interview here.
SPEAKER_02Like, I think it's just people wanting to make a lot of money.
SPEAKER_11That's a new one. They're surveilling Flock right now. Sir, you're under surveillance!
SPEAKER_14What are you doing running around the street?
SPEAKER_11None of your business except for I'm surveilling you right now. Are you with Flock?
SPEAKER_14Yeah, there's a construction web with CSV.
SPEAKER_0999% match.
SPEAKER_15I don't know if they're on or not.
SPEAKER_11Hello folks, I'm Boots Underground journalist Tommy G, and this is a Flock camera. And you may have noticed cameras like this popping up around your city.
SPEAKER_02Hi, I'm Ben Jordan, a researcher and journalist. As of today, Flock Safety has installed over 100,000 cameras all over America, so chances are that Flock is in your city even if you don't know it. And today we are teaming up to investigate Flock Safety.
SPEAKER_11That's right, today we're gonna spy on Flock employees to see how they like being under surveillance.
SPEAKER_02If you go to Google or Flock's own website, the address of their corporate headquarters will lead you to an empty building. The actual address is kept private. And today we even reveal their secret drone operation, and we get boxed in by police. We're going to cover the biggest red flags to be aware of when it comes to Flock and arm you with the information you need to know about the surveillance takeover coming to a city near you. In this episode, we'll cover the arguments for Flock and also the many arguments against Flock.
SPEAKER_11Folks, we're here in Atlanta, Georgia on a surveillance mission. We are headed to Flock Safety, the headquarters. You probably have seen cameras from Flock in your city. And how are they getting there? Well, from city council approval. And I want to know what the will of the people is. Do they want Flock in their city? Because I do agree this is a complex issue with good points on either side. What is the slippery slope of what we're willing to allow under the selling point of safety, which is of course how they always make things more tight and tyrannical. So we're gonna infiltrate, find our way in. I'll see you guys on the ground. So what we're finding here is it appears to be a nondescript building, which I think is kind of funny. We surveil people, but we also want our own privacy. Kind of a contradiction in my book, but so we're gonna throw a drone up, do our own little reconnaissance, and then we'll move in on the target and get some license plates. We started off with a simple mission: surveil flock employees to understand this company's attitude towards being watched. We were also gonna film Flock Employee license plates so I could bring this footage to Ben, run it through an algorithm, and understand how invasive this data gathering can be. But what we found is this multi-billion dollar company was not so easy to find. Miguel had a good point, which was like, if your son got kidnapped, like, wouldn't you want flack cameras around so that you could track that car very quickly? And the answer is yes. Where a lot of people get nervous is when you see places like China with a social credit score and you know they want to bring that to America, it's the scope creep of where safety and security lead to. So there's just a lot of implications of once you allow these cameras. Because on surface level, it's like, yeah, put the flock cameras where all the shooters are and let's clean up our cities. But where do you draw the line? And you know that the people in power never want that line to be in our favor. To cover how flock cameras have the potential to be abused, I have to look no further than my city of Milwaukee, where police officer Josue Ayala obsessively used Flock 180 times over a two-month span to stalk his ex-girlfriend. And in McHenry County, Illinois, where I grew up, the same story played out where a police chief used Flock to creep on three separate exes and was later charged with multiple felonies.
SPEAKER_02And there are countless stories like this. For example, earlier this year in Florida, a sheriff who was working a side security job for a film set started hitting on an actress and repeatedly approached her even after she told him that she had a boyfriend. Other extras on the set noticed this and intervened, so he used the police database to find her vehicle's information and added it to the hot list so he would be notified every single time that she passed a flock camera. He then followed her for miles and then pulled her over, telling her that he had hoped her boyfriend was with her so he could give him a hard time. He then allegedly used the police department's investigative tools to find her on Instagram and continue stalking her there. Folks, this makes me think of the famous Kanye West line.
unknownNo one man to have all that power.
SPEAKER_11And let's be real, this is not a police problem. To me, this is just people not being able to handle this level of power problem.
SPEAKER_02It's easy to say all cops are bastards when you hear stories like this, but let's be honest, could you be trusted with this power? Think of a time in your life when you maybe thought that you were being cheated on by your partner. Do you think you'd be strong enough to resist being able to confirm if it were true? There's a very good reason that the Fourth Amendment exists, and there's a reason that up until these cameras started popping up everywhere, a cop needed to explain to an elected judge why they needed a warrant to give them the power to track someone.
SPEAKER_11Sir appears no company logo on their building.
SPEAKER_29No.
SPEAKER_11No branding. No branding. It seems like they're trying to be relatively incognito and private, which I also enjoy that. We were initially trying to just get their employees' license plates on camera. I was almost picturing a corporate headquarters you drive in, big parking lot. But because it's gonna be a mixture, I guess we just have to surveil everyone for safety, which is, I mean, just for safety, guys. We put in Flock interview requests and we'd love to talk to their people, Garrett. We want to talk to you. We think you have some good points and you want to hear how you navigate some of these privacy concerns. We've already seen some examples of this technology going wrong. There's cases of wrongful police encounters and arrests. The first thing you'll see when you go to Flock's website is the words clear evidence and safer communities. But let's talk about times where the evidence wasn't clear and it didn't make people safe. Look, no further than California, where a man spent almost a month in jail after he was mistakenly tied to a carjacking, even though he was five miles away. Or this man in the Carolinas who was held at gunpoint after an incorrect flock hit falsely labeled his car stolen. Or this woman who at her own house police harassed and accused of being a thief even though she was innocent. And the list goes on. Folks, this is something you're gonna pay for on both sides. You'll pay on the front end when your city council votes against your wishes to install these cameras all over your city. And you'll pay for it on the back end when officers are using clear evidence to brutalize somebody, and you, the taxpayer, for some reason has to pay a multi-million dollar lawsuit, not the police. And so it seems to me this is a very expensive problem that almost none of us want. It's not like we get together and vote and say, we want this, we own this decision, we feel good about it. It's a few members of city council that approve it and put it in, just like the data centers. And it's like, we'll see what the numbers are. I just put out a poll on the on my YouTube page. Let's see what the poll is. So just 27 minutes in, we have 1,100 votes, 94% no. And don't forget, vice presidents of such companies were caught logging into live feeds of girls' preschools and gymnastics classes for hours. We're gonna have to look into that.
SPEAKER_04Flock's website claims that nobody from Flock Safety is accessing or monitoring your footage. However, through open records requests, I found out that they looked at our cameras over a thousand times.
SPEAKER_11This is Jason, a concerned dad and whistleblower out of Dunwoody, Georgia, who exposed a story about an alleged flock sales demo that apparently involved flock employees and police monitoring children playing within a Jewish community center.
SPEAKER_04This includes a Flock vice president looking at a private third-party security camera in the little girl's gymnastics room at my son's daycare. Flock claims that this was for a sales demo agreement that my city says doesn't exist, and the people who did those camera viewings are now deleted permanently from the flock system with no record of it happening.
SPEAKER_11So you get back here. Bandy boy. Folks, that's right. People could be watching your kids play, and you as a taxpayer have to foot a ridiculous bill to know. Shouldn't that be the most transparent thing ever?
SPEAKER_02Especially if we are paying for it. Flock's argument to that is, oh, they were showing off the camera as a demonstration for another client. It's like if I owned a company and I wanted to hire a surveillance camera company to install cameras around and they said, all right, check this out, and they open up their laptop and then they log in to view children in a gymnastics center. Like I would either shoot them or call the police. I'm not sure what I would do, but I would have a very, very visceral reaction to it because it's fed up.
SPEAKER_11Good. I'm looking for some help. I'm trying to find the Flock Safety office for an interview. Oh, in Flock Safety?
SPEAKER_28They moved out.
SPEAKER_11They moved out? Okay. Okay. How long ago do they move?
SPEAKER_28They lost their space.
SPEAKER_11Okay. Okay. So it's totally empty right now.
SPEAKER_28Yeah, there's no people in there. Right, the security guard can direct you. I mean, if you have an interview with someone, I'm sure. He's aware of it.
SPEAKER_11Okay. They take security very seriously. Let me call Ben Jordan. Hey, so we're downtown and apparently they just moved out of their location and they're heading to a p they're moving their office to a place in Buckhead.
SPEAKER_03Ooh, okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER_11Do you know how to track down that address?
SPEAKER_03Uh no, that's the first time hearing of it. I mean, I'll I'll do some searching around, but I I assume you're doing the same. Um yeah, I assume there would be like a news story about it or something, just because it's pretty big.
SPEAKER_11So it must have just happened. Let's see, because they're they have their empty shelve office and uh property management is helping us out a little bit. So we're gonna say that we have an interview here. Well, let's uh see what they say.
SPEAKER_30Hey, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_11Hey there, we got an interview here. I know they just moved. Um flat.
SPEAKER_30Who you have an interview with?
SPEAKER_11We're the news. You're not saying who you have an interview with. Garrett, ideally, but if there's another representative.
SPEAKER_30You said Garrett? Garrett, is the CEO or you from Yeah, we're we're trying to get an interview today, yeah. Oh no, you don't have to do that. Yeah, but there's nobody here. Yeah, that's all we gathered.
SPEAKER_11Dang, so they sent us to the wrong spot. How long ago did they move?
SPEAKER_30Uh what, like three weeks ago?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but we don't have anything, so we'll see you guys.
SPEAKER_30So did y'all did y'all talk to anybody to to come here today or y'all just came on?
SPEAKER_11We just came in prompt, just like the cameras are springing up in prompt too around the country, so we just wanted to ask about that.
SPEAKER_30Oh, okay, yeah, nobody's here.
SPEAKER_11Okay, where's the spot in Buckhead?
SPEAKER_30We can't give that out.
SPEAKER_11What is that? Like for security reasons? Yeah, so they care about security a lot, like their own privacy.
SPEAKER_05Can they put it?
SPEAKER_11Can we put a camera up by your house in your house? What wait, you guys care about security here? Yeah, we also care about our privacy too, so. We'll we'll see you guys at the next location, okay?
SPEAKER_26That's the security guard right there.
SPEAKER_11That's the same guy?
SPEAKER_26Yeah, that's the security guard, 100%.
SPEAKER_11Hey sir, we're surveilling you. Is that okay? Do you consent to being surveilled? We're just filming you right now. Do you consent to us surveilling you with our cameras? Oh well, we're doing it for safety. Oh no, he's getting our license plate. What are we gonna do? Sir, we're not having that. You filmed us? We're filming you double now. Oh yeah. Get him, film him, surveil him. Sir, does getting surveilled make you feel uncomfortable at all? Can you send my regards to Garrett, please? Sir, are you calling the cops?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_11He's calling the cops on us. I don't feel safe either. We should call our cops too. Sir, do you feel in danger right now? Why are you calling the cops? You gotta tighten up, man.
SPEAKER_03So I pulled the records uh Payment Reality Trust bought a building for essentially did the business of buying a building for flock. A uh 35,000 square foot lease at the Medici 3284 North Side Parkway.
SPEAKER_11Okay, we're perfect. We're 11 minutes from there. Are you guys nervous at all?
SPEAKER_04A little bit. They might know we're coming. Yeah, they definitely know we're coming.
SPEAKER_11So let's scope it. Is this also mixed use residential? Yeah, this these are all residential right here.
SPEAKER_29Okay, so what do we got here? It looks like they've got mostly privacy windows.
SPEAKER_11If you want to make your voice heard, you can visit people in person. And obviously, we advise you to do that peacefully, respectfully, politely. After digging into real estate records, we found that flock appears to have secretly relocated their headquarters to this building right here. We the people, our voice have just not been heard, it feels like. This pressure adds up and we need to use it. Again, we are the ants, and the ants can win against the grasshoppers if we team up properly. They've been here for about three weeks now, and I don't see flock anywhere. It seems they're looking for some privacy. Good morning. How are you? Oh, we're just here for a meeting we're going up to. Beautiful building.
SPEAKER_13So, Donna, real quick, want to be taking photos of something in the building? Where's that?
SPEAKER_11For an interview at the flock headquarters?
SPEAKER_13Sorry, I'm just talking about.
SPEAKER_11Okay, that's okay. What?
SPEAKER_13Well, the floor is a lockdown, okay. And so sorry, is that rolling right now? You want to cut that off? No, can you take that up on face, please?
SPEAKER_11We're just going up for an interview to the flock building.
SPEAKER_13No, sir. You can't do anything like that. You don't have contact or anything like that? No, sir.
SPEAKER_11You're telling me the flock people told you to say no? Because they they didn't say no to us.
SPEAKER_13That camera is catching me. Would you mind turning it off? I'm gonna ask you to go, please. Can you please leave the building? We have something in Can you please leave the building?
SPEAKER_11Seems like privacy is a top priority here, huh?
SPEAKER_13Can you please leave the building? Thank you. Appreciate you.
SPEAKER_11Well, Flock's new office is here in this building. Uh they don't want people to know that. And obviously they have their guys at the front keeping us out, he's doing his job. I get it. So far on Instagram, 8,000 votes, 91% no from one hour ago. So far on YouTube, one hour ago, 3,500 votes, 93% no. I wouldn't even want flock cameras installed in my arch nemesis neighborhood. What's bad for America is bad for Americans, period. Folks, I love this country, but let's be real. Who here watching actually trusts the federal government? Not me. A good case study we can look at is in Minneapolis where ICE agents use flock competitor vigilant solutions for the stated mission of tracking illegal immigrants. Over the course of their operation, ICE agents disregarded the rights of citizens so many times that even the Twin Cities police chief acknowledged that ICE personally violated the rights of hundreds of his citizens and even some of his own off-duty officers. And folks, I know this firsthand. I have a family member in Minneapolis that got boxed in it while trying to make a deposit at the bank for the suspected crime of looking a little tan. And I personally talked to two target employees who are American citizens that got pulled off the job, beaten, detained, and kicked out of an ICE vehicle.
SPEAKER_27I'm there, you a citizen!
SPEAKER_07And State Representative Michael Howard says he's spoken to them, and they've both since been released.
SPEAKER_27Oh, I'm not okay.
SPEAKER_11And folks, the point is this this is not a debate about whether you agree with ICE using aggressive methods to round up illegal immigrants. The bigger picture is knowing that the federal government is able to use any excuse they want, hiding under the guise of public safety, to fiercely crack down on whomever they choose. Today the target is illegal immigrants. Tomorrow the target could be you. The next guy we're gonna meet is Ben Jordan. I think he has done the best journalistic work on flop cameras. Uh very interesting guy. Excited for you to meet him.
Police Perspectives And Cost Tradeoffs
SPEAKER_02I'm Ben Jordan. I've been a musician my whole life. I'm a researcher. I have a YouTube channel that usually does science education, some journalism. Recently, the surveillance and privacy stuff has kind of blown up and I've weirdly been at the center of it.
SPEAKER_11So what do you make of Flock Safety?
SPEAKER_02I view it a little bit less nefariously than some people do. Like I think it's just people wanting to make a lot of money. It's Mark Andreessen who uh is I mean, he's the person who has invested the most money in Flock Safety.
SPEAKER_11Mark Andreessen, whose venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is Flock's biggest institutional investor, was just appointed by the Pentagon to their defense policy board. So for the people wondering about Flock's proximity to federal power, their eyebrows can only raise after news like this.
SPEAKER_02Mark Andreessen has been involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He's been fined. I mean, like he has this long laundry list of privacy violations and making money off of people's data. And then I see the rest of it just like your standard move fast and break things tech company. They're just trying to grow as fast as they can so they could reach an IPO. When it comes to like security vulnerabilities, when it comes to legal vulnerabilities, I believe that they're just trying to kick that can down the road until they launch an IPO and then it could be uh deducted from people's 401k when they have to pay the fines on it or when they have to uh take down 100,000 cameras because of security vulnerabilities. Would you argue that Flock cameras do make cities safer? No. Uh but I also wouldn't argue that they don't. My only argument that they wouldn't make cities safer is because you're taking money from things like community policing and putting them into a third-party tech company and paying $200,000 for a drone that costs $15,000.
SPEAKER_11To understand how law enforcement actually views Flock, we spoke to three different perspectives: an Indiana police chief, a Wisconsin sheriff, and a veteran officer in Georgia.
SPEAKER_29Currently we have 850 cameras in our city, and what it's utilized for is to monitor business districts, residential areas, um hotspots, and our city parks.
SPEAKER_11To have 850 cameras running in this town of 26,000, what is the annual budget to keep that going?
SPEAKER_29Well, they last pretty long, don't get me wrong. But when it's time to replace them is when it gets expensive. Right now, my budget for technology as a whole, I probably spend just close to $600,000 a year. That would be the equivalent of six officer salaries. But the job that it's doing is doing the job of probably 15, 20 officers. Could you say without a doubt, this technology makes your city safer? Without a doubt, it makes it safer. I I would I wouldn't know what to do without it.
SPEAKER_23So working with Flock, what was your experience like with it? Our experience working with Flock has been fantastic. We use them to uh really help and provide us a lot of coverage in the rural parts of Dane County. We are responsible for about 1,000 square miles of patrol area, including 41 square miles of waterways, here in Dane County out of the 1200. So the use of the technology was fantastic because it allowed us to be in places that we couldn't be. So overall they helped us solve numerous crimes, including homicides, uh, but also they helped us find individuals that were missing. So it played a significant role in allowing us to keep and maintain the peace in the rural parts of our community, which is typically very different than in the urban parts of a county. It did not gather any sort of driver information, race, gender, uh, or anything uh to that extent.
SPEAKER_22Like let's say if you have a missing person and they're like an elderly person with dementia and they're in danger of dying because they're dehydrated and they're driving around not knowing that they're fucking dehydrated, then it can help for stuff like that. Or if someone kid kidnaps a child.
SPEAKER_11Okay, so where are we looking at here? Uh this is just one of the flock cameras. Could I ask you how you got your hands on that or is that classified? eBay. eBay? Yep. Okay. And tell me what goes through your mind when you look at this piece of technology.
SPEAKER_26Um, I get kind of frustrated because they're very expensive and it costs tax money and just the fact that it's tracking everyone everywhere you go, regardless of if you're on a list of um like wanted people.
SPEAKER_11So you have to be in a funnel for most licensed flight readers, but for Flock, it's everyone.
SPEAKER_26Yes, and it's nationally shared across like pretty much every police department.
SPEAKER_02And another thing to add on to what he was saying is that there's something called Flock Nova, which uses something called OSINT or open source intelligence, which is your Strava bike rides, your searches that that are public, your Google, like all of your data that's uh online gets combined with your police record and with your social security number and with your address and all that stuff, and then with your location everywhere you you you've been, as you go from like uh license plate detection to porn site search super fast. To me, it's clearly a Fourth Amendment violation.
SPEAKER_11I noticed that Flock was actually pretty big on privacy. Do you think that's a bit of a hypocritical stance?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course. When initially looking into the company, just randomly I I noticed that the CEO bought his house out through a trust so he could hide his address from the public. The new office address that I got you that that I found for you, it's not listed publicly online. And like when you told me that, I just knew to look for realty trusts. So it's like, oh, okay. A realty they probably got this through a realty trust so they could make sure that nobody knows where their office is. You have this seven billion dollar company and and you don't want people to know your office is located, like you're that private. Like I don't have the option to leave my driveway and go to Chick-fil-A without them knowing where I am. Oh, I can't know where their office is. You have some cities where crime has increased after Flock came around, and you have some cities where it's decreased. Um there's not been an actual good peer-reviewed study on if license plate readers are effective or not nationwide.
SPEAKER_11How accurate are these license plate trackers?
SPEAKER_29They're pretty accurate.
SPEAKER_11What do you say to the citizens that say, I don't want this in my city, I it's an invasion of privacy, I don't like this.
SPEAKER_29We're not here to watch you. You do have an expectation of privacy inside your residence. But this is no different than people with ring cameras and cell phones. Once you step outside your house, that expectation of privacy is gone.
SPEAKER_02They sort of act like they weren't able to catch criminals before that. Like they didn't have, like they weren't able to call another police department and say, hey, we have a red sedan being driven by somebody who looks like this with this license plate number, watch out for it and then be able to find it. Or as if traffic cameras hadn't existed before Flock Safety, or as if ALPRs hadn't existed before Flock Safety. I often want to tell police, like, give yourself a little more credit. Like, don't let this multi-billion dollar company take credit for your hard work. Like, you're the one solving the crime. I could push a button on some of these cameras and log into it and delete and change and modify data. They can't be used in court because of that, because nobody can prove that they're secure. I hate surveillance cameras. I don't like that. I just don't like them in general. And I have them all over this property because the cops have showed up here and because we have private investigators. And it sucks that I have to invest in this stuff that I hate, so I can at least have my own side of the story in case a cop comes here and says that I assaulted them or something, probably because the CEO of this company is telling people that I'm a violent, lawless activist.
SPEAKER_09And then unfortunately, there's terroristic organizations like DFLOC, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else. And that I think is unfortunate because we don't want chaos, or I don't want chaos.
SPEAKER_02I like law and order. So it's like the the whole thing is just a huge infringement on people's rights. I mean, when I first got my hands on one of these, I was amazed by how shitty they were. It saves data every time it detects motion, and then it has uh both a Wi-Fi and an LTE radio inside, and then it uploads uh images and data from that, from what it detects. This costs $3,500 a year.
SPEAKER_11Each camera that's up was $3,500.
SPEAKER_02$3,500 for this. Yeah, I mean, this is the cheapest one. This is this is the cheapest one you could have. Yeah, so if you have like 10 in your city, that's $35,000 uh a year.
SPEAKER_26I'm Isaac. I'm just a student, and my school pretty much picked up, I think, 48 of these over the course of the last two years. But I noticed on campus there were a bunch of these little devices with a Flock logo. It turned out that they were microphones. I looked into them and I found a like press release from Flock where they explicitly stated that they were only gunshot detectors and they would delete anything outside of a gunshot. Um, I think about two months after I started looking into it though, they sent a software update over the air. So now all of these microphones that are spread all over my college campus, they are just actively listening for voices now, which is very uncomfortable, and I'm not particularly happy about that.
SPEAKER_11This is a multi-use parking lot, but there's a high probability that some of these people are flock employees. We saw people going across the bridge to the office. So we're gonna surveil the entire parking lot and run it through license plate reader technology and see if there's any people we should keep an eye on.
Security Holes And Drone Expansion
SPEAKER_11Can we track people? Can we know where they live?
SPEAKER_02So there's this uh ParkMobile, if you're familiar with it, if you've ever used it. ParkMobile had like a massive data breach, and all the license plates were pinned to everybody's like credit card information. And so you could actually just like take this data, which from this program I made, you could just like download a CSV if you wanted to. You could take this data and then run it past the ParkMobile data breach and see who all these people are, where they live, what their credit card number is. It feels pretty invasive. Generally, the reason I even make this stuff is to show people what a black hat hacker could do.
SPEAKER_11So the viewer understands we're gonna go about a two-mile loop from your house.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we'll go like maybe three miles total. In this one, clearly, you can just walk up to it and press the button if you wanted to. The laws that require that mailbox to be put in concrete are like uh that stop sign to have so much, it has to go down in the ground so much, and there's usually concrete or gravel under there. And this thing they just plop into the ground without paying any attention to the uh roadside safety.
SPEAKER_11Okay, so this is the first one close to your house, and now the journey continues. After seeing over a dozen cameras within a short distance from Ben's house, it became clear he couldn't even go get gas or take a shit without being surveilled. After realizing this uncomfortable reality, we next went to uncover Flock's secret drone facility where we soon discovered something strange.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess this is the drone facility.
SPEAKER_11Again, no company logo.
SPEAKER_02This looks like an Amazon distribution cell. Yeah, okay, yeah. I'm pretty sure this isn't a construction company that we're at. I'm pretty s pretty sure this is a fucking this is all like shadow names or yeah, OES equipment. I mean, as far as I know, we're on public property right now, so this is the most heavily guarded construction company. That one's that's a new one.
SPEAKER_11That must be a prototype. We're surveilling Flock right now. How's it going man? Oh, we we just brought our own flock camera to the situation. Are you a flock guy? I'm no okay. Wow, you got some cool cameras over here too. Excuse me, I gotta go. Oh, that's okay. I'm just gonna get your license plate if that's alright. You're under surveillance, sir. Sir, you're under surveillance. Oh yeah, we're just uh surveilling this team. Just for safety reasons?
SPEAKER_14What do you do running around?
SPEAKER_11None of your business except for I'm surveilling you right now.
SPEAKER_14There's a lot of truck to come up and down here. We had a truck to come down today, and we're going to go flock.
SPEAKER_11Thank you. Are you with Flock?
SPEAKER_14Flock.
SPEAKER_11Are you with Flock?
SPEAKER_14No, there's a doctor I went with CSD.
SPEAKER_11Oh, he's doing the back maneuver.
SPEAKER_14Oh, he's trying to set it up.
SPEAKER_11Oh, what the This man, James Boyce, is a former British Army veteran and a current Flock supply chain manager. Not only did he lie about working for Flock, which I'm guessing is probably normal at this company, but he also implied to Georgia law enforcement that I could have been armed, and we'll soon see if that puts my life in danger. They're a very secretive company for a company that doesn't want your secrecy to be preserved. Nondescript building, no signage. We'll track some of these license plates to make sure there's nothing nefarious happening around here. And if they're against that, then they're a left-wing activist. I'm trying to talk to Flock.
SPEAKER_12You guys gotta go. This is private property, you're not allowed here. I'm sorry. Is that if that's one of ours, we'll take it back.
SPEAKER_11No, no, no, but this is we got it from eBay.
SPEAKER_12Oh, okay. Well.
SPEAKER_11We were trying to talk to Flock guys.
SPEAKER_12I can't help you there.
SPEAKER_11Okay, well, you're under surveillance right now. I just hope you know. It's for safety reasons. You're being watched. It's kind of nuts, isn't it? Have a good day, sir. So it appears this entire building is under kind of a front company within Flock, and I would guess a lot of their company is structured like that. It's umbrella companies, LL C E C corps that own this, that are connected to that. And it's clever arrangement, and they're well within their right to do that. But again, it speaks to the hypocrisy of the whole story of they want to be private. It appears this entire company is under their construction organization. They have some umbrellas going on, some LLCs, some maneuvering, yeah, the corporate structure.
SPEAKER_02You don't want to be like open with the public, you want privacy.
SPEAKER_11Because the truth should not be afraid to speak. Anytime there's an element of hiding, it makes you wonder why. And it's a classic example of do as I say, not as I do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So there is like a good argument to this. Like, if you get a job at at Fox Safety for whatever reason, like there's a pretty big chance that you got that job because you worked for a police department or because you worked for a city council, and now, you know, you may have some conflict of interest in taking this job. Nobody takes this job without knowing what the company does, without knowing how controversial it is. Bloody hell, James called the cops on us, and here's what he said.
SPEAKER_15I uh good morning, Mom. Uh I'm uh yeah, I'm sorry for calling. Uh we have an interview today. I work for a company called the rocking everyone. Okay. Okay. Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER_03We got police.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_02Oh, are they blocking us all in now?
SPEAKER_11Is that a security guy?
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_11Hey, you guys move up so he can get out, okay? Sorry, man, we're getting a little predicament here. Uh, where are the guys to talk to?
SPEAKER_13Are all y'all in this car too?
SPEAKER_11He he's he's just trying to get out of here right now. No. Have you guys heard of Flock, the Flock Safety Company? Yeah, yeah, of course. They're the ones that have the cameras everywhere in your okay. So this is their undercover headquarters right here with their drones. Um, and we did surveillance on them, so we filmed them and said, How do you guys like it? And now they have the cops here. What do you guys think about flock cameras in your city?
SPEAKER_24Honestly, I don't appreciate those. I'm not gonna lie. I don't appreciate the drones coming into my neighborhood. It's just not a good feeling, honestly, to see those drones flying around everywhere. It's like it's kind of weird to me. I don't know.
SPEAKER_11Let me tell you this, because so you you guys are working hard in a home improvement company. Your tax dollars go to your local city where they spend money on cameras, whether you like it or not. And you're literally paying for the cameras that are watching you as you drive around town.
SPEAKER_24Yeah, and we have we have no like we have no say so when it comes to that either, you know? They just do that on their own. So I feel like it's kind of fucked up, you know.
SPEAKER_11Any updates so far to what's going on here?
SPEAKER_24Yeah, Uber Eats is here.
SPEAKER_11I mean, can we at least let the people go in and out? Like, this is the thing with public safety that's the police, in order to make things safe, they're blocking off the entire roadway so we can't get out as if we look like a flight risk. And now it's putting the public at risk where she has to stop her car over here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, nobody's done anything wrong here. Like, you're literally doing journalism. Uh, everybody here just literally came, like they essentially came with to give me a ride back. Like, it's it's ridiculous. Like, we're not on their property.
SPEAKER_11Sir, he's gotta go. We all have things to do today. He's blockading us, dude.
SPEAKER_17Okay, okay. Now now there's something else. Because I ain't got shit to do with this, but now I'm trying to leave. I'm I got out of the car because you're blocking me. Okay. Sir, you don't gotta disrespect me right now.
SPEAKER_11Sir, are we free to leave?
SPEAKER_17Now you're disrespecting me. No, I'm I can't leave.
SPEAKER_11Sir, are we being detained? Is this the only exit?
SPEAKER_17Yes.
SPEAKER_11I wanted to see if this absolute numbnuts of an officer from Smyrna Police Department violated my rights, so I ran this scenario by my friend Officer Toombs from the Clayton County Sheriff's Office. You can tell us to go fly a kite and walk right off. And if I ask you, hey, am I getting detained? Do you have to give me a yes or no answer? Absolutely. You guys have done nothing wrong. Actually, we've also done nothing wrong, and yet we're blockaded by a police officer. Are we being detained?
SPEAKER_08The manager wants to speak.
SPEAKER_11It's a yes or no question, sir.
SPEAKER_08You're gonna wait here until the manager talks.
SPEAKER_11You're holding me until that guy talks, but you're not telling me if I'm gonna be detained. Yeah, you are. Am I allowed to leave? Can I go in my car and leave? They are with flock safety, they just confirm.
SPEAKER_12How are you doing? Hey, good. What's up, brother? Hey, how are you doing, sir?
SPEAKER_11Good.
SPEAKER_12So tell them what you need to tell them.
SPEAKER_16So, gentlemen, I'm I just want to be very clear. Um, there's a multi-tenant site here with a lot of people that are just trying to work. I've got yourself and all everyone running in the street. I had to put my brakes on just to stop to make sure you're okay.
SPEAKER_11Are you safe right now, sir?
SPEAKER_16Um Well, I don't know that, do I? So I just want to make sure we've had reports that you've been to basically every flop safety site and facility that you know of.
SPEAKER_11Um Your surveillance is correct, we're doing our own surveillance.
SPEAKER_16So people don't really feel safe right now with people randomly trying to get into our sites and buildings.
SPEAKER_11Oh, wait, wait, you don't feel safe being surveilled. Is that what you're saying?
SPEAKER_16Not at all, sir.
SPEAKER_11Because that's what you guys do to us without our consent. Okay. And I think it's interesting when you guys have this happen, you call the police and make us get stopped. But then you do it and it's okay?
SPEAKER_16I mean our developers call the police. What we'd like you to do is basically we're saying that you're trespassing on this site and we'd like you to leave peacefully.
SPEAKER_11This guy's blocking us that you call physically leave.
SPEAKER_18All of us is my office that I work at mid town home in place. Are you gonna let us know if you can not physically leave my place of employment? I'm speaking because I have something to say, sir, and you are blocking me.
SPEAKER_16Um what we're asking is like you're essentially trespassing on this site at the moment. There's a lot of people that don't know your intent. I don't know if you're armed.
SPEAKER_11I don't know if you're armed.
SPEAKER_16Okay, that's fine.
SPEAKER_11I mean, it's the same playing field, bud.
SPEAKER_16Essentially not really bother us anymore today.
SPEAKER_11Was it bothering you to film you guys?
SPEAKER_16I'm not bothered by filming, I'm being bothered by trying to go on a lunch break and people running around in the street.
SPEAKER_11Was it such a um disservice to your day that you felt the need to call the police for it?
SPEAKER_16I think if you had someone hanging around outside your house, you'd probably be the safety.
SPEAKER_11Uh this is a business that happens to put cameras around the nation, and some people don't like it, and we want to do our due diligence. By the way, we have put in a request to your press team to actually speak to you face to face and have a fair interview. And uh, we haven't gotten back from that, so we did our own digging ourselves.
SPEAKER_16Go through those channels. I'm pretty sure Flocker wants to talk to you about what they need to and hopefully clear up anything they do.
SPEAKER_02After Flock called the police and had us detained, I immediately filed a public records request for the police reports and body cam footage. In Georgia, by law, a city or police department has three days to respond to a FOIA request. I didn't even get an acknowledgement response for 10 days. I then followed their instructions confirming the request on their own portal, and a week later they rejected it, claiming that it was cancelled due to no response. So I want the citizens of Smyrna, Georgia to understand that if this nonsense continues, then their property taxes will be paying my legal fees and any fines when I sue the city for the records that they're obligated by law
Detained For Reporting And FOIA
SPEAKER_02to provide me.
SPEAKER_11Folks, it was important to me to try and get Flock involved in this story. Ben tried reaching out to them about their security flaws. I tried reaching out to their PR team, and here's how that conversation went.
SPEAKER_25So when you were there last week, what was your goal to try to talk to someone at Flock or just to get mural footage, or what was the goal?
SPEAKER_11Just before we go any further, I guess, is there any uh potential in doing um interview with Garrett or walking in one of the headquarters, whether it's the drone facility?
SPEAKER_25Well, I want to find out where you're coming from with this. My question for you is if this is like um, let me get married in a weird position and ask a bunch of mentors and ask questions, I'm not sure that that's a really good display to mind. So I'm just curious, are you coming in it from like a fair line? Are you coming through it, or are you coming at this from like a citationalist?
SPEAKER_11I think what people are afraid of is the potential for mass surveillance. Once it takes place and the scope keeps creeping, or a national emergency comes in, then all of a sudden the rules change, and something that we were told came into our communities for one reason is now used for a much more cutonial reason. And I think that's the other thing that people would be afraid of.
SPEAKER_25Logistically, how would this work? Gary is in Atlanta most of the time, and he has like no availability over the next couple of weeks or months. You can also understand that I'm coming from a position where I think Gary. And a lot of people were trying to do interviews and to look at things and then destroy what's happening to make sure. I don't like that you guys have to find it and that was there as well. I just don't like that. Like it sounds a weird message because I don't think if I tell you we're gonna work together, I'm gonna work with you. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying, like I'm gonna work with you, I'm gonna try to put my trust in you, and I feel right now that you guys trust your property, and it felt invasive.
SPEAKER_10That's what that's the point you're gonna make exactly.
SPEAKER_25I understand. You're saying it feels invasive that you guys are on your property, but flock cameras being on public roads taking pictures of public license plates, which is the point of a license plate. I don't believe that what flop camera is is invasive. And I'm like, I understand that's how people feel, but that's how flock is. And so if you're open to debunking that with me in a fair way, sure. I I don't want your segment to be like Flock wouldn't participate because we have nothing to hide.
SPEAKER_11But folks, Flock did hide, and they sent me an email saying they were not going to participate, and it made me ask, do you guys get the impression that they are a transparent company? And do you feel comfortable about them putting cameras in over 6,000 cities around the country? And folks, for reference, months ago, Ben Jordan tried to discreetly tell Flock about security vulnerabilities he saw to help them fix it, and this is how they responded.
SPEAKER_02So, to give you a comparison of how security vulnerability reporting usually works, when I found a mild encryption vulnerability in ring cameras or vulnerabilities in surveillance robots, the companies immediately reached out to me and offered to pay me to help them document and mitigate the problems. I know of three separate security researchers who reached out to Flock Safety about vulnerabilities and were immediately given a non-disclosure agreement. This happened with John Gaines, and the irony is, if they acted ethically and transparently with John, then the vulnerabilities probably would have been fixed before I even started making the video.
SPEAKER_11And then this is, I guess this is the ancestral relationship between Flock and police departments. We're now all of a sudden journalists looking into Flock. This is their hidden drone headquarters that we're looking at. We were at their other hidden locations earlier this morning. And we're probably on the the list now, right?
SPEAKER_16I just need to leave.
SPEAKER_11Brother, you called the people that are blocking us in. Do you see how that's counterintuitive? Taxpayer funded, by the way. This is pretty uh pretty great. Alrighty, so we got one cop, two cop, and then we got the flock employee who doesn't like being filmed himself that called the police for us filming him. So uh make it make sense.
SPEAKER_19That is frickin' nuts, right? I mean, and funny as hell because like the cop look like a frickin' tool, the frickin' owner. I mean, the owner, of course, is gonna look like a tool, or the president or whatever the hell he was. But yeah, I mean, what a frickin' tool. He's gonna call the cops on fucking dude. It is like, yeah, well, you know, you you guys suck.
SPEAKER_20How you like being flacked, motherfucker.
SPEAKER_19Exactly. You know?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_20Seriously, that's insane how you know the dude in the elevator or the the building where he they were trying to get on the elevator, he's like, Sir, sir, get the camera out of my face. Like, bro, no, you get your camera out of my face. I was just telling Eric, it's like I'm sitting there right in front of your face, like, get your camera out of my face. Yeah, you know, it's insane. Obviously, they're being nefarious. Right. And, you know, like up to no good when they gotta be moving from place to place. The only things I've known that are ever like that are like those uh call centers that are frauding people, like old people out of money. Oh, yeah, are on to them. They're like, Bro, we gotta get a new little uh strip mall joint here and get us a new place so we can fraudulently jack people. That's the only it seemed like they moved pretty quick, I guess, after people found out they're like, Oh, I can count that they were like, Oh, they're here. Nope, they're not there. Hey, maybe they're here. No, they're not there either.
SPEAKER_19So I guess they don't like you know, people random people just kind of knocking on their door and you know, saying, Hey, you know.
SPEAKER_20I love how the little dude I say little because he's little inside, a little guy in the car saying, I don't wear for flock. He's telling everybody, I'm flock. Yeah. And then I don't like seeing everybody running around in the street. Like there's like the bunch of little kids just playing in the street, just running amok. Instead, you know, there's like, no, I was actually just taking a camera and following this other dude that just told me that he doesn't work for flock while he drags a flock camera.
SPEAKER_19Flock camera.
SPEAKER_20I mean, I don't know what you I mean. I guess you just think we're all a bunch of morons, but like you say, you got your name, Flock. You're gonna watch the flock with your cameras. It's like, bro, I'm not gonna stop. I am not gonna stop. I know people might be getting bored and wanting to see something else, but check it out. Get out and tell these people to stop it. Right. Because you're gonna be in the same boat that I am. It doesn't matter what policy you think you're gonna be on on the politics side, it does not matter. You and I are the same little sheep, the same little minions, the same little cockroaches running around. And what this guy just basically said is we're very dangerous because we all need to be watched. We need to take that to heart, maybe. Think about how dangerous we really are if they need to watch us every time we make a move. They're trying to get into our brains, want to know what we're thinking all the time, trying to make sure that they can direct what our thinking is by playing with these phones and the videos and the movies, everything we watch. You know, maybe we should start playing with them.
SPEAKER_19I think so. I didn't even know that they were coming out with these uh drones. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what scares me. I I I well the cameras are just but I mean, think about the drone shows, right?
SPEAKER_20Right. I have a drone. I've had one for many, like probably since like 2018, I think. That was 2020, maybe. I think it was 2018 was when I bought my last drone. And it's a nice one. It's probably outdated now, but even it has a setting on there where you can actually synchronize it with other drones so you can make it do whatever you want. And I could put whatever camera I want on that drone too. I could put a thermal camera on there so that it basically gets all the heat signatures. There's nowhere to hide. That's crazy. Right. There's all kinds of things you can buy on Amazon if anybody wants to get tricky and go after their drones. I saw one the other day that was like a rocket launcher, man. Oh what? Yeah. It's like you just sit it on your shoulder like the old cannon rocket launchers. Yeah. Just set it up there like that, and just hit zzz and it goes and it flew right after like a model aircraft. That's insane.
SPEAKER_19Well, no, and that's like I was telling you, uh um, you know, in in deer uh deer trail, um, it is actually legal to uh shoot down drones.
SPEAKER_20Um They've had a problem with drones out there for a long time. Right. I remember it's like 20 years ago where they were starting to have getting kind of creeped out by them, and it's probably because of all the crazy stuff that goes on in the eastern plains by like TIA and all that. All that empty field, you know, where we talked about silos and not what was it a couple years ago where they were having the drones like they were doing in New Jersey when Trump got elected, you know, and they were all freaking out. That was actually happening here too, in northeast Colorado. Like there was friends of mine that were from Broche and Fort Morgan that was, you know, commenting on Facebook saying, Dude, this thing's the size of a car. It's a drone. Yeah, man. So Yeah, they've been way ahead of us, way into this stuff for a long time. And if you're not investing billions of dollars, then you don't need to know anything and you need to put your cameras away. Walk out, don't even get caught trespassing, don't even ask any questions because then get put on some kind of terrorist list, you know, deflock all the deflock stuff has been put on some kind of terrorism list. Even the fuck the person that's actually made the companies stated that like anybody that has a problem is a terrorist. It's like, okay, well that's fine, man. Because like I said in the beginning, give me your PIN number to your bank account. And if you don't, then you're a terrorist, bro. Because that's the information that I want. You want all of my information. I just want one thing from you, and that's your PIN number.
SPEAKER_19I'll take your address.
SPEAKER_20Well, I have to have your address too, because I need the bill in address.
SPEAKER_19But yeah.
SPEAKER_20You know, this is ridiculous, man.
SPEAKER_19Give give him your pin number, and I want the address, and we'll be cool, bro.
SPEAKER_20Yeah, and then I can, you know, blackmail him for his information.
SPEAKER_19You ain't gotta blackmail me, man.
SPEAKER_20You know how to give it to you.
SPEAKER_19Or howl me. Fucking heck, man. That's what I was saying. Yeah, yeah. Right on, man.
SPEAKER_20That's cool. Well, that's what I'm saying, man. Like, I I'm sorry I got a little stir in there, but it's the truth. You know, we don't all start standing up. We're gonna really be overtaken by this crap, and you know.
SPEAKER_19And that's the thing, is like look at what's going on with China and all that stuff, and you know, uh I don't know about you, but my social credit score is not gonna be very good. You don't need to know everything about me unless I tell you. Yeah, I ain't saying shit.
Push Back Locally And Wrap Up
SPEAKER_19All right, y'all. So thank you once again for coming.
SPEAKER_20Thanks for tuning in, everybody. We really do appreciate it. Yeah, we really do. Make sure you like, share, subscribe, comment. You know, we still got stickers, we got stuff. We're working on a website right now so we can get like a mailing list going.
SPEAKER_19And hey, and if you got any music of your own or a video that you'd like us to put on our podcast, man, feel free to share it with us. Or, you know, just hey, we we are we are promoting you as you will promote us, man.
SPEAKER_20I know we got a lot of badass bands here in Denver that are, you know, we would love to share your music. Um if you guys would allow us, that'd be great.
SPEAKER_19For real, you know, hey, you know, we're we're we're all about the music as well. We love it. And uh so do our people that watch our podcast. So, you know, hey, uh even if you're out of state, in state, out of state, inner city, outer city, so we're gonna go ahead and see how it's a good idea.