Big Brother Is Now Big Tech | Check Your Premises Ep.4

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]What if I told you that you are being followed when you drop the kids off at school, when you drive to work, when you stop at a grocery store on the way back home. This has been your routine forever, but something subtle has changed over the past few years. And it's not the emergence of cyber trucks or driverless taxis on the road. A network of solar powered cameras has begun to track your every move across town. They record you in high definition and then all upload to a shared cloud searchable by law enforcement who now have access to the inner workings of your daily life. No warrant required.

[00:00:37]You're not committing a crime, but you are being followed and pretty soon the inside of your car will begin spying on you as well. Welcome to the private public surveillance state.

[00:01:02]My name is Maggie and this is Check Your Premises, a show about truth in a disoriented world. Cars are a representation of freedom and individuality. You can move rapidly from point A to point B without permission from anyone else or going through a TSA line. and you are in the driver's seat, literally. But this very American symbol is being turned on its head in the postcoid world and becoming yet another way to monitor and control us. Later this year, a federal mandate will be phased in, forcing AI spyware into our cars. This software will monitor your eye movement, pupil dilation, and drowsiness levels to determine whether or not you're allowed to drive. The car will stop if it senses something wrong.

[00:01:44]You are no longer in control. false positives and leaving people stranded in dangerous areas with no way to get home.

[00:01:52]This intrusion is undergurtded by technology enabled safety which will ask us to give up our privacy and independence for a world without imperfection and unlike social media phones and those user agreements no one reads. This surveillance is being done without our permission and for many without our knowledge. Flock safety is behind the solar powered AI enhanced cameras watching our every move. A network of 80,000 of these high-tech automated license plate readers survey the roadways and parking lots of towns and cities across America. They are taking note of your license plate, the make and model of your car, and any other defining features like bumps and scratches and excessive sticker displays. And all of that data gets communicated into the mystical cloud owned by your local law enforcement. And what is the purpose of all of this?

[00:02:44]Flock CEO Garrett Langley with his network of ALPRs and newly released drones has an ambitious goal of eliminating all crime in America.

[00:02:53]Langley says he's talked to plenty of activists who think crime is just the cost of modern society, but he disagrees. I think we can have a crimefree city and civil liberties. We can have it all. Well, sign me up, Garrett. I like the sound of that, but not so fast. Garrett Langley is bundling something you value like safety with something you're losing your freedom and calling the net result a gift. Iran called this the package deal fallacy.

[00:03:22]And if you like me have a healthy skepticism of government officials and are concerned that the world is moving towards a surveillance and control state like the one outlined by George Orwell in 1984, then maybe you have questions, too. Flock safety cameras have been popping up all around my area. In fact, Dunwy, Georgia, where I live for another 3 weeks, was the focus of a recent piece by George Chitty at the Guardian.

[00:03:47]Because flock safety is in our backyard.

[00:03:50]In my town, there is growing concern about what local law enforcement is actually doing with all the data it is collecting on us. At a recent city council meeting, one resident, Joe Hirs, complained of untrustworthy officials.

[00:04:03]When it comes to the city voting on the newer Flock cameras, it doesn't matter what the city says because you have a serious credibility problem. Nothing you say or tell us about Flock should be taken as honest. I know that flock can be useful, but it can also be a serious violation of our privacy. Unfortunately, we know whatever safeguards or rules the city claims would be in place to protect privacy are worthless. I heard just the other day that a Dunwhaty police officer was disciplined for misusing flock data in spite of the rules already in place that should have prevented that from happening.

[00:04:37]>> Flock safety representatives repeatedly address privacy concerns by saying that flock safety doesn't own the data. The customer does. The customer being law enforcement. And while I am grateful and admire law enforcement in most situations, they are humans too and without warrant can access my whereabouts and yours at any time and hand over access to others because they own the data. So Garrett, this doesn't sound like protecting civil liberties to me. Flock safety came under fire last year for running a secretive pilot program with US Border Patrol, granting them access to local data, sometimes in violation of state law. In Illinois, the Trust Act prohibits local law enforcement from collaborating with federal agencies without a warrant, but Flock provided immigration enforcement backdoor access. An audit found that Flock lacked appropriate safeguards around data sharing and that the company's executive leadership was not fully aware of the pilot program. I don't know about you, but this instills great confidence in me about my own data. Flock has since apologized and implemented stricter policies around sharing data with federal agencies. But once trust is lost, it is hard to earn back. Communities around the country are ending their relationships with Flock and taking down the cameras, but others are ramping up as privacy concerns multiply. One YouTuber, Ben Jordan, was able to hack a Flock safety camera in under 30 seconds. It was so painfully easy that nearly anyone could get their hands on the data and manipulate it however they saw fit.

[00:06:15]>> You can clone or decompile the apps. You could send the video stream data to a remote server. You could use it as a botnet client for malware. You could have it capture Wi-Fi handshake credentials and do middleman or honeypot attacks or replace or modify captured footage or images. And if that is the case, this could bring into question the integrity of the data being used as admissible evidence in court. People often treat flock safety like a startup.

[00:06:38]And startups get leeway. You're supposed to move fast and break things as you innovate. But Flock is a 7.5 billion dollar business with some very high-profile investors and they are making these mistakes with our incredibly sensitive data. I am not giving them a pass. Einran famously observed that civilization is the progress towards a society of privacy.

[00:07:01]That progress has taken a detour, if not a U-turn. Flock Safety is a private company building a surveillance system for law enforcement. It is yet another input into a vast surveillance state that has access to us everywhere except for our dreams. And I'm sure they're working on that next. This is not a conspiracy theory. These are very real capabilities being enabled by private companies and weaponized by the government. The bigger question is, do you even care? How much have we allowed surveillance into our private lives already? Do we even have an expectation of privacy anymore? My generation grew up assuming we have an FBI agent in our phones placing us on watch list based on the memes we share in group chats. We assume we're being filmed every time we're in public. And look at us. We're self-obsessed and neurotic and don't want to drink because we don't want to lose control. We are like frogs boiling in a pot, but we were dropped in when the water was still cold. It's time we take a step back and think about what kind of future we are enabling with our complacency. What the government can see, they can control. A life without freedom is one without self-actualization.

[00:08:11]It's great if violent criminals are taken off our streets and can no longer generate chaos and destruction in society. But I don't want to live under Big Brother's watchful eye. And you shouldn't either.

[00:08:22]Thank you so much for watching this video. If you liked it, go ahead and give a like, subscribe, and leave me a comment. And I will see you all next time. Ciao.