The Problem With Flock Cameras

[00:00:00]Please do not do this. Can you stop doing this as well? This is terrible. Uh it looks like someone's used one of them uh looks like one of them Diablo blades.

[00:00:07]Bit of red on it. So yeah, do not use a circular saw with a Diablo blade and do this. And also looks like someone's used a grinder down there as well. So uh yeah, do not do this cuz they will fall over and that will be terrible.

[00:00:18]There is a private company worth billions of dollars that knows where you drove an hour ago and you never agreed to any of it. And now all over the country, people are risking felonies to destroy these cameras. And when you figure out what they actually do, you'll understand why. You might have seen these things in your city before. They have a pole with a little solar panel at the top and these gray cameras that are pointed in your direction. They might seem pretty uninteresting at first, but now there's hundreds of thousands of them on the streets and it's a direct invasion of your privacy. But surprisingly, most regular people have never heard about them. This is a Flock camera, and the company behind them is pretty [ __ ] sinister. The main product of Flock is a small solar-powered camera that's essentially an automated license plate reader. These cameras snap a photo of every car that drives by and runs the images through an AI model to build a fingerprint. They take the make and model of your car, even documenting dents and scratches to build a digital identity. And there's a database where cops can search for a specific vehicle and track exactly where you are. With over a 100,000 active cameras right now, there are billions of images being scanned in every day into their database. And they're being accessed by police, businesses, shopping centers, and even HOAs with timestamps and location data that you don't have access to. This has created a map of every person's life. And now it's a system that knows where you live, where you work, and where you go every time you leave the house. And as scary as this [ __ ] is, so is how expensive our daily lives have become. So, before we get into it, let me tell you about this video sponsor, Upside. Gas prices and groceries keep getting more expensive, and eating out adds up faster than you think. And none of that is changing anytime soon, so you might as well be getting cash back on all of it. Upside is a free app that gives you cash back on gas, groceries, and dining out at places that you're probably already going to. There are over a 100,000 locations on it, and people are pulling in over a million dollars in cash back every single week. I've got it on my phone and I check it before I fill up or grab food as a daily habit now. Just open the app, claim an offer near you, pay with any credit or debit card like you normally would and the cash back hits your account. Unlike most apps, Upside stacks on top of your existing credit card rewards and store loyalty programs. So, everything you're earning already stays the same and Upside just adds on top of it. And independent studies have even shown that Upside users earn way more than they would with a normal rewards program. and you cash out whenever you want straight to your bank account or PayPal or as a gift card. Upside has given back a billion dollars to its users. To find out how much you could earn, download the free Upside app and use promo code Paradigms to get 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas. Thank you upside for sponsoring this video. We never voted or agreed for flock cameras to be put on every intersection in our cities and use our location data as a product to sell. I have a degree in information systems and everything is connected through what is called the internet of things. This is when every device that you own, including your car, your doorbell, and even your smart fridge, are all connected and using your data.

[00:03:23]And having this data readily available creates a map that will tell a cop where you drove. But that same data can also now tell advertisers where you shop or your insurance company how you drive.

[00:03:34]And this creates a profile on how to predict and manipulate your behavior.

[00:03:38]This is literally like Watchd Dogs or Black Mirror happening right now in real life. And the worst part is you're the one paying for it. Yet, they are now being used to send tickets to civilians who have a phone in their lab for over $1,000. All in the name of public safety. We are literally paying for the government to survey us right now. But it gets deeper because license plate tracking is really only the start. Flock has another product called Ravens, which are microphones set up in neighborhoods listening 24/7. The company markets these as a way to protect communities by listening for stuff like fireworks or gunshots. And they also have the Condor product, which is a camera that locks onto humans and follows them, zooming right in on their face. And recently, they just announced that these cameras can be turned into a live video camera with a free software update. And now they're working on building camera drones for their next product. Flock says that these are made to help protect people with law enforcement using it like a tool to find criminals. And you might think, "Hey, I'm not doing anything wrong. I have nothing to worry about." Well, imagine this is you. Here in my home state of Colorado, a woman named Croanna got a random knock on her door from a detective. He shows her printed photos from a flock camera of her truck, accusing her of being a thief in their neighborhood. He says that her truck is the exact same truck caught on the flock cameras and they know that she's been burglarizing houses. She had timestamped dash cam footage of her own truck proving that she was nowhere near the crime, but they didn't even look at it. The cops said that they were 100% certain that it was her and she should take it to court if she didn't like it.

[00:05:13]So, they arrest her right there and she's charged with a crime that she literally didn't commit. She had to spend weeks fighting to finally get someone to see her footage before they finally drop the charges. and they ended up finding out the porch pirate was a completely different person. And when Flock was asked about this, they said that they didn't owe anyone an apology because they were misusing their tools.

[00:05:34]And there have been multiple cases like this with cameras misreading the characters on a license plate and charging innocent people. This man in Ohio was accused of stealing his own truck and then was attacked by a K-9 unit and his head was slammed into the pavement. And then at the hospital, they charged him with resisting arrest. This has gone so far beyond a privacy issue when flot cameras are just spitting out AI enhanced images and the people behind them don't even care to check them. In Minnesota, a guy who reviews cars for a living was raided by police because a flot camera said that his car was stolen. But by the time they found out it wasn't him, he's surrounded with guns pointed at him. Now imagine the same thing happens, but a person panics or just moves in the wrong way. It's an easy way for someone who didn't do anything wrong to get shot. And this network of cameras all talk to each other. So let's say a small town's police department decides to share their feed. Any person who has access can search your street right now. And so now watchd dogs and even regular people have started requesting them because in a lot of states these logs are supposed to be public record. And this is where it gets messy because the FBI and ICE, which are federal agencies, are using these to track illegal immigrants. Because they're federal. Having access to this data is considered illegal. So, what they've been doing is a workaround. So, say a fed calls a local cop and asks them a favor to run a search for a person. Now, they have access to these cameras and their required warrant. Just as simple as that. Block cameras are even being used at protests to track them down and hunt for people. When we look into the search logs of how humans are being tracked, we see cops typing in an ethnicity into the search bar to racially profile people. All of this is disguised behind this great cause of helping to find missing people or track down criminals. But these systems are just set up fundamentally to abuse people's rights, even if you did nothing wrong. There have even been multiple cases now of police officers using the cameras to find their ex-girlfriends or wives with no authorization for the point of just stalking them. And these are just the ones who've been caught.

[00:07:32]This database that has hundreds of thousands or even millions of people's daily lives logged onto a searchable website is being ran on an honor system.

[00:07:40]At this point, we would hope that the companies sitting on all this data would have some sort of standard for privacy.

[00:07:46]So, let's look into it. Flock's actual website is just full of promises. They say that they won't share, sell, or access your data. And they say that nobody who works for Flock is looking at your footage, but that's not the truth.

[00:07:59]People investigating this have been pulling records and found out that Flock employees have been routinely looking at camera data. They even set up outside access for third parties that local police say that they've never approved.

[00:08:11]The employees are even intentionally hiding their accounts so that their searches won't show up in the public audit logs. And they show employees pulling up live cameras, including ones pointed at pools, gyms, and a children's gymnastic room inside a Jewish community center, which one of Flock's own executives apparently pulled up live during a sales demo. the same company that says on their website that no one is looking at your footage is literally live streaming at a kid's gymnasium.

[00:08:36]After this, people found a bunch of Flock cameras open on the public internet for anyone to see. And so, the company rewrote its legal terms and cut out the part covering its own negligence. What this means is that if Flock gets your data leaked, you can't hold them responsible. Which brings us to Deflock, an organization that's been tracking these cameras and has a crowdsourcing map to find every single one of them in the world. So volunteers will photograph the cameras, pull records, and pin what they find. So now you can type in your own city and see exactly where they are. These cameras sit on public polls and roads and are out in the open for every person to see.

[00:09:10]The map just helps people find what's already there. And now we can see exactly where they are. Recently in an interview, the CEO of Flock was asked what he thinks about Dlock, and he called it a terrorist organization whose main goal is chaos. Like dude, the hypocrisy is insane. These are all just regular people and volunteers who help make the map because they value privacy and their Fourth Amendment rights. While their customers of these same cameras are literally using them to profile people by race and stalk their exes. And I feel like labeling people as a terrorist is intentional language by the CEO. Now, if you just throw that word onto a group of people, they stop looking into the product that's being sold and just put the focus onto the group that's now considered an enemy. I look at it as a term that's now being used to criminalize any person who is opposed to their own interests.

[00:09:59]Essentially, it's making people who don't want to be tracked all day to be labeled as a threat. And ironically enough, before that interview, most people didn't even know Dlock existed.

[00:10:09]Now, millions of people have pulled up this exact map. He just advertised the movement who was against them for everyone to see. And what's crazy is that nobody ever really heard of a Flock camera a couple of years ago. Now they're on damn near every single intersection in my city and we never had a ballot to vote against them. The reason is cities don't hold a public vote for them. Flock cameras get put into the police budget as a line item or listed as a continuation of some program that's already been approved. So nobody in the public ever gets a say. By the time anyone notices the pole outside of their own house, they're pretty much the last ones to know about it. And once they're built, they might never get taken down. There are already reports of Flock letting cities keep using their cameras for free even after the contract ends. If we look at where the cameras are actually being pointed, sometimes they're not even on a public street. We see them pointed at the backyard of someone's houses at an angle where you can see into their windows or at the front door of a sporting goods store that sells firearms that can track every person who walks in and out. This no longer has anything to do with public safety or reading a license plate. And as crazy as this has become, there are now other companies using the same logic to sell consumer products, and you've definitely seen them before. These are the Meta Ray-B band smart glasses. They have a camera built into the frame that looks pretty much identical to a normal pair of glasses. And since they've been released, they've sold millions of them.

[00:11:32]The problem is they record people who have no idea that they're being recorded. There's a little light that's supposed to blink when the camera's on, or at least give strangers a heads up.

[00:11:40]But obviously now people have figured out how to turn it off. People buy stickers to cover it or scratch it off or just pay someone to permanently disable them. And so what's happened in the last few years are videos like this on Tik Tok and Instagram. Guys will walk up to women minding their business in public and hit on them while secretly recording on their glasses and then post it to get views. Meanwhile, the women who are being recorded have no idea.

[00:12:03]Some later end up seeing these videos and say they felt violated and humiliated after being posted and made fun of by people on the internet.

[00:12:11]They're being used like props and later seeing people in the comment section rating them based on their looks. There are now even websites and groups online where dudes will upload videos of women that they filmed in public on their glasses and other men will rate them.

[00:12:25]These glasses are also being used for prank videos on Tik Tok. Teenagers will go to a mall to troll random people and even smack them in the back of the head to get some Tik Tok clout. And yes, filming in public isn't illegal, but it's still weird and creepy as [ __ ] It's really just an excuse to get away with messing with random people who are just trying to mind their own business.

[00:12:44]And it gets worse than just some creeps hitting on women. Because now some engineering college students found out that whenever they paired their glasses with facial recognition and public data, they could look at a stranger and pull their name, their address, the phone number, and family members in real time.

[00:12:58]They tested it by walking up to people that they'd never met and greeting them by name like they were old friends. And it actually worked. Luckily, these students never release their software to the public because they realize what they made and how dangerous it could be.

[00:13:10]And whenever you talk to Meta AI on the glasses, the footage goes directly to Meta's servers. Now, imagine if this was hooked up to Flock cameras live and we have a full surveillance state. Flock also has a new product that they just came out with called Nova. And this is where it gets even more [ __ ] up. Nova takes all of the camera footage and stitches it together with your personal info pulled from people's search sites.

[00:13:32]These are the same sites that are used to dox and swap people. So now it's everything about you, including your name and address and location data, all bundled into one profile. And another company that is doing this is Axon.

[00:13:45]They're the ones behind all the standardized police tech like dash cams and body cameras. Since the rioting we saw about 6 or 7 years ago, the stock of Axon has gone through the roof. And now the company is building what they call crime centers that pulls camera footage into one big screen in a room. Axon has even made their own license plate cameras. And at one point, they were connected financially with Flock and plugged right into them, making everything interconnected. Axon knows that to put up new Flock cameras, you need to hire a crew to put up the pole into the ground and wire it up. So, Axon built their own version that just clicks onto a street light that's already built. It runs off of the light's own power socket. So, it's cheaper and takes less time because you just snap it onto a street light. Now, just think about how many street lights are in your city.

[00:14:28]every single one of them could become a camera overnight. Both Axon and Flock also had deals with Amazon Ring doorbells, so police could request video straight from people's porches. I mean, just think about it. Your doorbell, your license plate, your face, your name, your movements, everything is being funneled and accessible to the same network. And at first, it wasn't meant to be an allseeing system like this.

[00:14:50]Each company was built on their own, but now they have pieced together everything to track anyone, anywhere, at any time.

[00:14:56]The way I see it, for all of human history, walking outside just meant that strangers can see you and that was it.

[00:15:01]They didn't know your name or your address or where you slept. You were just kind of a face in the crowd. You could go to a protest or a mall and never be tracked back to your house.

[00:15:10]Under a full surveillance grid, everything you do in public becomes a permanent searchable record. They're owned by companies you never signed anything with or agreed to and can be used for whatever reason they want. And this is why so many people are upset.

[00:15:22]The game has been flipped. We used to be innocent until proven guilty, but now it's the opposite. This is one of the only issues right now that regardless of where you stand politically, most people generally agree with. Some people are going the legal route, like city council meetings, while other people are just grabbing a sawzaw or a chainsaw. There's a movement of flot cameras being cut down, blasted with lasers, and being painted over. Most of these are just normal people who are justifiably pissed off. They're not like professional activists doing this to push some sort of political agenda. And let me say, cutting down flaw cameras is a crime and it's a felony in a lot of places. So, this isn't a suggestion. But when we see people bringing chainsaws and power tools in public to cut down these poles, I feel like it tells us that most people never want this to happen. And so, now that this problem has gotten more attention, cities are starting to pull out of their deals. Even larger cities like Austin and Denver aren't renewing their deals because they said that the city shouldn't be a part of mass surveillance. Dozens of towns have now cancelled and suspended Flock with more turning down new contracts because their citizens are speaking out about it. But some cities got so tangled up in these contracts that whenever they voted to shut the program down, the only thing they could do was physically bag the camera with trash bags. And recently, there was a former cop who was a whistleblower in all of this. He confirmed that these cameras track everything, including the make, model, color, and even bumper stickers on cars.

[00:16:42]They can share around to any city or state with no warrant. And whenever he talked about his concerns about privacy inside his own department, he got suspended without pay. And he even pointed out the exact mindset of people who support these cameras, saying that if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't be worried about them. But this is essentially the same system as the Soviet Union, who had a system that treats people like suspects automatically. It's not the logic of a free country. And with this huge amount of data that's being collected with cameras and trackers, the data has to go somewhere. And that's where the company Palunteer comes in. Palanteer is a data company that capitalized on the war on terror by working with the military to help hunt down terrorists. They're one of the largest defense companies in the world, but they are interconnected with pretty much every major event in the last 20 years. The company is now building predictive policing technology to guess in advance where crimes will happen and who will do it before it happens. And we could dive into this company all day talking about the founder who's directly involved with US politics or the fact that the founder gave Flock $275 million whenever they were first a startup. But the fact is this company is valuable because it takes all of our data including faces, names, patterns, and even our daily traveling. And then it's wired to the government while being run behind the scenes of a billionaire. And this company is public that you can buy stock in right now. They'll tell you that it started as a way to find stolen cars or find missing kids to make the streets safer. Now, if we connect it to everything, each of these products that were sold as a way to protect people have turned into an interconnected profile of an entire population. In the future, if nothing changes, this will be the new dystopian normal. Right now, you have no choice if you're being tracked and monitored anytime you're outside of your house. But your city does have the choice if they decide to keep their contracts with these companies. But it doesn't have to stay this way. So, I'm going to leave some links in the description if you're interested in changing this within your city. And if you like content like this, feel free to check out some of the other videos on my channel that are similar to this one.

[00:18:38]And I'll see you in the next one. Peace.