Get the FLOCK out of here! America's terrifying surveillance state is here | Redacted

Summary

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Redacted News Podcast Summary

Episode: Get the FLOCK out of here! America's terrifying surveillance state is here
Date: July 21, 2026
Host: Clayton Morris (Redacted.inc)
Guest: Connor Boyack, President of the Libertas Institute

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Episode Overview

This episode of Redacted News explores the rapid and alarming expansion of surveillance technologies in America, focusing on Flock cameras—AI-powered, networked license plate readers now numbering over 100,000 nationwide. Host Clayton Morris and guest Connor Boyack, a legal reform advocate and privacy expert, dissect the constitutional, social, and practical impacts of these technologies. The conversation probes who profits (and who pays), how this data is used (and abused), what the legal landscape looks like, and how citizens can fight back.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What Are Flock Cameras and Why Should You Care?

[02:10 – 05:35]

• Public Awareness: Despite their proliferation, most Americans don’t know what “Flock cameras” are or how widespread they’ve become.
• Guest’s take: "In the past few weeks, I would say this has really penetrated the zeitgeist." – Connor [02:10]
• Scale: Flock cameras now number over 100,000, outstripping even the number of McDonald’s locations in the U.S.
• Comparison: "There’s about 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants... one hundred thousand of these cameras compared to like 13,000 McDonald’s. Do I have those numbers roughly accurate?" – Clayton [03:16]
• Flock is not the only company; the total is likely several times higher when including all license plate readers.

2. Flock: From Startup to Surveillance Titan

[05:35 – 09:21]

• Origins & Leadership: Flock Safety, spearheaded by Garrett Langley, is an $8.4 billion company, funded by VCs including Andreessen Horowitz.
• Step Change in Surveillance: Flock builds upon traditional license plate readers but utilizes AI to capture more vehicle details (make, model, color, dents, etc.), making tracking more invasive.
• “No public consent”: Widespread deployment happened absent local debate, consent, or votes.

3. Who’s Funding & Who’s Buying?

[09:21 – 11:45]

• Venture Capital Fuel: Tech-oriented VC firms fund Flock, seeking to profit from the “crime reduction” pitch.
• Flock is sold as a “crime fighting tool,” not an invasion of privacy. But the trade-off is glossed over.

4. The Civil Liberty Trade-Off: Justified or Not?

[13:26 – 16:29]

• Famous Analogy: Clayton compares Flock’s tech to the mass surveillance grid from "The Dark Knight" film: "So, yeah, you can catch a bad guy, but at like, what cost, right?" [14:20]
• Fourth Amendment Context: Connor draws the parallel to British general warrants—the Founders’ core grievance, leading to the Fourth Amendment.
• Net result: "This is bulk surveillance. No one's being suspected of a crime... and we’re building this massive data archive that law enforcement can access without suspecting anyone of a crime or having to go convince a judge to get it." – Connor [19:30]
• Abuse Concerns: The rich trove of data tempts law enforcement and private employees to access and potentially misuse data for personal reasons.

5. Courts, Constitution, and the False Security Blanket

[25:28 – 30:07]

• Flock’s Defense: Flock claims “30 courts agree that Flock’s support of first responders is constitutional.” But Connor notes these are lower courts; Supreme Court has not ruled on this technology.
• Legal Loophole: Outdated legal doctrines claim you have “no expectation of privacy in public,” allowing unchecked surveillance—until state/local lawmakers raise those standards.

6. Who Pays for the Surveillance State?

[30:07 – 33:17]

• Primarily Taxpayer Funded: Schools, police, and municipalities use public dollars, though private businesses can also deploy these tools.
• Blurring Boundaries: As private security footage is connected to government networks, lines between private and public surveillance disappear, raising fresh legal concerns.

7. Selling Safety: Marketing the Surveillance State

[33:17 – 37:54]

• Emotional Pitch: Flock and similar companies market the tech by appealing to public fears (missing dogs, crime, finding elderly people with Alzheimer’s).
• DNA Parallels: Connor compares camera network expansion to DNA database marketing (Ancestry, 23andMe), which started as family-finding tools but became law enforcement resources.

8. Privacy and Public Apathy

[22:12 – 24:20, 37:54 – 42:57]

• Apathy as a Barrier: Americans, conditioned to constant tracking, are slow to resist: "People have been conditioned into accepting that they are tracked – that is the price we pay to live in a technologically advanced society." – Connor [22:12]
• Exploited Consent: Fine print and buried terms are often used to justify massive data collection and sharing, with consumers poorly informed.

9. Efficacy and Abuse—London, China, & America

[45:43 – 51:13]

• No Evidence of Crime Reduction: London’s million cameras did not reduce crime; criminal behavior merely adapts.
• Abuses: Law enforcement and even Flock’s own employees have abused access—stalking, inappropriate search, data viewed without cause.

10. The “Permanent Record” and Dragnet Society

[67:10 – 70:29]

• Lasting Impact: Vast, enduring databases allow retroactive targeting of people’s movements and actions; chilling effect on dissent and political participation.
• Historical Trend: Modern American society risks moving toward the surveillance norms of London or China if not resisted via legislation.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This is bulk surveillance. No one’s being suspected of a crime... we’re building this massive data archive.”
  — Connor [19:30]
• “Tyrants throughout history… they don’t go around advocating for tyranny. They advocate for safety.”
  — Connor [47:54]
• “Let’s not have law enforcement getting up in anyone’s business unless there’s individual suspicion of a crime.”
  — Connor [54:24]
• “True consent is informed consent. And I think people aren’t really informed on how the Metas of the world or Flocks are using technologies like facial recognition.”
  — Connor [63:34]
• “Legal reform is not just for the elite, it’s not for the lawyers. You, your listener, can just reach out to your mayor, reach out to your state senator… If a lot of people start doing that, then we’ll see some great change.”
  — Connor [76:15]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [02:10] – Are Americans even aware of Flock cameras?
• [03:16] – The shocking number of cameras vs. McDonald’s
• [05:35] – Flock’s rise, origins, and what sets them apart
• [09:33] – Where the money comes from, who’s funding
• [13:26] – Are the tradeoffs for safety worth it?
• [16:29] – Fourth Amendment, general warrants, and American founding
• [25:28] – Are Flock’s actions actually constitutional? Lower courts vs. Supreme Court
• [30:07] – Taxpayer funding and the blurring of private/public surveillance
• [33:17] – How these tools are marketed to citizens
• [45:43] – Why mass surveillance hasn’t reduced crime (case in London)
• [54:22] – Police abuses and real-world cases
• [60:49] – Are these cameras using Bluetooth or other advanced data gathering?
• [67:10] – Parallels to FISA, NSA mass data collection, and the problem of “permanent record”
• [75:45] – How to take action, fight back using local democracy

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Action Steps & How to Get Involved

• Find Flock cameras near you: Visit dflock.me to map the surveillance in your community.
• Reach out locally: Contact your city council, mayor, or state representatives. Even small numbers of vocal citizens can drive legislative oversight and reform.
• Support privacy organizations: Electronic Frontier Foundation and similar groups often offer resources, model legislation, and advocacy tools.
• Stay Informed: Share awareness, discuss with neighbors, and demand debate about the surveillance state.

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Takeaway

The expansion of surveillance technology like Flock cameras is happening quickly, largely without public debate, and with major implications for privacy, civil liberty, and societal norms. Though the narrative is always “safety,” the real danger may be the permanent loss of freedom—something only active, informed, and organized citizens can resist. As Connor urges: "If a lot of people start doing that [contacting elected officials], then we'll see some great change." [76:15]

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For a deeper dive:

• Visit dflock.me to check surveillance in your town
• Connect with local privacy advocates
• Educate yourself on your city’s/county’s camera and surveillance policies

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Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] switch upfront payment

[B]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 or 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms. Well, there is an epidemic in this country. No, it's not obesity or heart disease. It's mass surveillance of American citizens happening in real time, all under the guise of safety. It'll make you safe. Don't you feel safer with all of these cameras around? And one of the ways this is spreading across the United States at a rapid pace is through cameras mounted on just about every street corner across the United States called flock cameras. So where do they come from? Who's behind them? When? What information is actually being gathered of Americans? And why are Americans, by the way, who don't want them, who sneak up under the dark of night and maybe even tear them down, but they don't even have to tear them down to be labeled domestic terrorists. You could just make a social media post about it and say you don't like it, you're a terrorist. Conor Boyak is the bestselling author, researcher and president of a think tank, Libertis Institute, which focuses on Fourth Amendment rights specifically and knows more about this than. Than most Americans. And it's been tracking this for a long time. Connor, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

[A]

Thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you.

[B]

So, you know, I was just anecdotally in a conversation with a couple of individuals who they've got kids, a busy life, and just mentioned flocking cameras. And they looked at me like I was swearing at them. They didn't know what I was talking about. And it kind of shocked me. Well, what is a flock? What is a flock camera? And I think most Americans maybe don't even have any idea about these cameras at all, what they're doing. I guess maybe let's just start there. Do you find that that's the case, that most Americans are just kind of going through their day? They have no idea that these cameras even exist across the United States?

[A]

I think that's safe to say. However, in the past few weeks, I would say this has really penetrated the zeitgeist. There's a lot more people that are aware, at least of the term flock, if not what flock and their competitor, other companies like them are doing. So I would say people are quickly coming up to speed. There's a contingent of people who themselves encounter these cameras when they're out running errands or driving on the road, and they see this big pole with a camera and a solar panel and a flashing blue light and they wonder, what the heck is that? And they start to see more and more and more of those in their community. So even if they can't put a name to it, there's a lot of people who are noticing this themselves. Of course, there's, I think, a quiet majority of people who are just totally unaware of what's going on and perhaps, you know, apathetic to what's happening. But I would say that the minority is growing and their concerns, they're being very vocal about, and I think rightly so, because as we'll get into, there's a lot of legal implications here that undermine our privacy. And it's worth at least talking about, if not strongly pushing back against.

[B]

Yeah, I want to get into all of that. So we've got a lot to unpack today. And I hopefully this will be sort of like a big education episode for a lot of us, myself included, about who's behind this, where the money's coming from, what they're doing with this data and information, how do we fight back? All of that I want to get to here, but just on a numbers basis. I was looking at some of the most recent numbers on these cameras and maybe you have a more up to date number, but I was shocked, shocked to see, and we can put up a map here that the kind of shows these cameras across the United States. And according to the ACLU numbers, and maybe you have different numbers as well, these cameras are roughly almost at 100,000 cameras across the United States. I think maybe the number might be like 95,000. Maybe that's been updated since then. Not quite sure, but just for a frame of reference. And I just, I just did a little searching to figure out how many McDonald's restaurants there are in the United States. And this is shocking to me. There's about 13,000 McDonald's restaurants across the United States. And it's a joke among Americans that there's a McDonald's on every, you know, every major intersection. Right. So 100,000 of these cameras compared to like 13,000 McDonald's restaurants. Do I have those numbers roughly accurate?

[A]

You do. In fact, I think they may have just passed 100,000. The company itself does publish annual reports and some information they're not required to. They're trying to be, oh, look, we're transparent. Even though we're surveilling all of you, we're trying to be transparent about what we're doing. But I believe they just crossed the 100,000 threshold. Now, it's important to keep in mind that is just Flock. They are the leading provider. There are other companies out there as well. License plate readers themselves are, you know, years in existence, many, many years. And so Flock is just the latest and greatest that's using AI and other things to really enrich the data and empower law enforcement far more than a traditional license plate reader. But devices like these have been around for a while, and the 100,000 number that we're c only pertains to Flock and not all of the devices that are out there. I don't know what that number is, but I think it's probably safe to estimate it's, you know, 3 to 5x, if not higher than what Flock alone has.

[B]

That's unbelievable. More than 100,000 of these. So maybe we can just wind the clock back a little bit and you can talk about when these first sprang up. Who's behind these cameras? Is it one? Was it one company in particular?

[A]

So, yes, Flock is a private company that has raised substantial capital. At present, they are worth about $8.4 billion based on their latest valuation from their latest financing round. The founder and president is Garrett Langley. People love to quip at that guy's last name being the headquarters of the CIA. And maybe there's some tinfoil stuff going on here, but Garrett Langley is the ahead of Flock. But as I stated a moment ago, Flock is just a new iteration of an existing technology. Law enforcement for many years have been deploying license plate readers to be able to monitor traffic, to be able to identify stolen vehicles. The concern that people have, even if they can't quite articulate it, is that what we have with companies like Flock, particularly Flock, is a. A degree of change unlike any other before. Because it's not just a. It's like take a dumb flip phone and then a smartphone, and it's not just a minor improvement. That is a step change in productivity and all kinds of things that you can do on that device. And that is a similar approach with old license plate readers and the kind of dumb features that they had versus what AI and other technologies enable flock to do with the data. They're not just tracking your license plate, they're tracking other characteristics about your car to be able to basically obtain a fingerprint, if you will, and then match your car wherever it goes and is caught by other flock cameras. It's also recording, even if they're not saving the data. We're just trusting that flock is not saving the data of recording you, Clayton, while in the car and not doing any facial recognition. Flock says, oh, we're not doing any of that, and I don't have any reason to believe that they are. But what prevents them tomorrow from flipping that switch and being able to do that, or, you know, maybe they're doing it now and we're just having to trust them. So it's a concern that, yes, these devices have been around for a while and they've been kind of benign, but now that with AI and other technologies, flock is able to enrich that data so much more and track people much more precisely. It empowers them and their law enforcement partners to a degree that they've never been empowered. And this has happened without public awareness, for the most part, without public consent in the part of votes being taken or ballot initiatives or anything like that. And law enforcement agencies have just been gleefully adopting this technology as they often do with new technologies. Their adoption of potentially privacy limiting technologies far outpaces how legislatures and city councils keep up with that quick pace of technological adoption. So this is not just confined to flock and license plate readers. This trend of law enforcement adopting these new tools and technologies has been around for some time. As we can, hey, track cell phones and reverse Internet searches and all of that. This is just applied now to license plate readers, but because it's affecting people's personal privacy, they're feeling like they're monitored wherever they go throughout their small town. It's rightly creating a bit of discomfort among a lot of people. And to me, the net positive of that is it's generating a lot more conversation like you and I are now having to be able to talk about, is this reasonable? Is this right? Is this what we want as a community?

[B]

Oh, that's exactly right. Who's behind. I mean, where does the money come from for this company? Do we know who's, who's funding this? Where the, where their capital has been raised from?

[A]

Yeah, there's a number of venture capital investors. I don't have the name in front of me. I know Andreessen Horowitz is The big one or one of the big ones. And they're a popular VC firm, but they've been raising a lot of traditional tech VC capital because they position themselves as a tech company. This is a new type of technology and they can scale very quickly as they have. You pointed out, Clayton, that there's over 100,000 cameras. We should also point out that that is in roughly 6,000 different American communities. And so the scale at which Flock is able to deploy these devices in communities across the country is what is attractive to venture capital and others who want to be able to scale very aggressively, which Flock has. As I said, their valuation is now 8.4 billion. So the investors are just traditional tech VC firms who are looking at this not unlike investing in Tesla or SpaceX or other tech companies that are bringing new technological solutions to existing problems. What are those problems? Well, Flock doesn't go around pitching investors on saying, hey, invest in us to invade privacy. Their pitch to investors is their steel man case for why Flock exists. And that is we can lower crime, we can help find stolen vehicles, we can solve cold cases. That's very attractive to law enforcement. It's very attractive to investors to feel good about lowering crime while profiting. The challenge is that investors aren't necessarily pitched on the trade off, which is, oh, yes, we're going to go solve crime, but in the process, we're going to create this dragnet society and create the panopticon in America of just this huge surveillance system. So I don't think investors have mal intent here. I think they've been pitched on the rosy positives of what Flock is doing. And let's concede, Clayton, there are positives. There are crimes that are being solved. There are bad guys that are being caught. It's not like everything Flock is doing is evil. The question is, is the trade off worth it? Is the juice, worth the squeeze? And what do we give up in that trade off if we want a safe society? And is that worth the cost?

[B]

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And of course there's a scene in that film or there's a theme that runs through it where Batman, you know, they build out this surveillance system that use tracks everyone's cell phones and is creating almost like a giant grid. I don't know how you would really describe it, but it's tapping into every phone all across Gotham in order to find the Joker. And of course, Fox at one point, who kind of works for Bruce Wayne, says, I'm not going to be a part of this. I'm not going to be a part of this. And, you know, Bruce Wayne basically says, well, just for this one, this one thing, we're just going to use it for this one thing and we'll stop the Joker. And, you know, kind of resolves with the whole machine blowing up. And after they catch the Joker, it all explodes and everything. We're done with this. We're not going to use this type of surveillance anymore. So, yeah, you can catch a bad guy, but at like, what cost, right? What are we giving up in order to catch this one bad guy? Because you could say hypocritically. Well, so that's great. You're going to use this entire system, give up our civil liberties in many ways, but you're fine to just have the border wide open, allow criminals to run free, or just let people with 30 different crimes on their backlog to just be let free back into society to go rape and kill again. So there's a lot of hypocrisy in this. I know, I just, just wanted to make that statement. But what are your thoughts on that?

[A]

Well, I like your Batman analogy, Clayton. I had a different show come to mind. It Was called. This was post 9 11. It was called person of interest with, like, Jim Caviezel. And the whole premise was, yeah, there's this post 911 surveillance system that can see everything and we can go after bad guys, but the people in charge of the system are only using this to go after the bad guys. They're not going after, like, the little guy that's getting hurt because it's not a big enough case. And so the premise of the whole show is we can do good as a result of this whole surveillance system that we built. And that system is going to tell us, hey, this person's in trouble, you know, go help them. And using that surveillance system, there's no question. Again, let's concede the point that there are crimes that can be solved with increased surveillance. That if we were to monitor everyone, everywhere at all times, that would be a deterrent to crime if more people knew that their every action was being watched. So there's no like black and white here where it's. It's good or bad. There is good that flock is doing. The challenge is, and we can go back to kind of the fourth amendment and the early history that led up to the creation of the fourth amendment. The. The American experiment on this issue on privacy was in direct response to what were called general warrants or writs of assistance. The british gave themselves the authority to go search anyone's home at any time for any reason. No judicial review, no suspicion of crime. We can just go search your little, you know, log home anytime we want. Funny enough, I'm, you know, in a log home right now to say that. And, and, and the founders, the colonials, colonists, detested that. It was horribly invasive. And so when the bill of rights was being drafted, the fourth amendment was crafted in a way to directly respond to general broad surveillance of people who were not suspected of a crime. So the fourth amendment was written to say, you need to have what's called particularized suspicion. In other words, you have to be individually suspected of a crime for them to invade your privacy. You have to have probable cause that a crime has been committed. You have to have a warrant, Basically independent judicial review. You can't just sign your own thing. So the concern here with flock is that no one is being suspected of a crime. This is just watching everybody. It's not like, oh, we're going after this one guy like in batman, right? We're going after just him. No, that's not what flock is doing. Flock is saying, watch everybody. Okay, so it's broad Surveillance. There's no probable cause of a crime, of course, because there's no one who's actually suspected of a crime. This is more preventative measures and building up a data log so that law enforcement can go on a fishing expedition and say, oh, you know, Clayton, we suspect him now. Show us everywhere he's been in the past, you know, month, and then ping, ping, ping, ping. It shows, you know, in that. That data set, your archive, basically of your past history. So it's. It's not particularized. There's no suspicion of crime, there's no probable cause, and there's no judicial review. Cops can just go to Flock and say, hey, you know, show me where Clayton's been. Okay, here you go. Right. And we're just allowing officers on their own to go on these fishing expeditions. That's what produces many of the news stories you've probably seen of cops getting in trouble because they're looking at girlfriends or ex wives or other people, and they're accessing this data for personal reasons. The same concerns years ago and ever since with the nsa, where they're spying on our cell phones and emails and location, and they're storing all this data. That rich data set of everyone's actions and location and behavior is very tempting for people to access. So there have been news stories over the years of NSA agents accessing this data to spy on loved ones or enemies and so forth. So that is the concern. This is bulk surveillance. No one's being suspected of a crime. And we're building this massive data archive that law enforcement can access without suspecting anyone of a crime or having to go convince a judge to get it. And so those problems, which we can go into, the solutions, lend themselves to particular solutions. Right? Let's respect the Fourth Amendment. Let's only allow this type of surveillance if someone's suspected of a crime. Let's have a warrant and judicial review. Right? Let's abide by the balance that the Fourth Amendment struck, which is, hey, government, you can invade privacy if there's wrongdoing, if there's crime, sure. But here are the rules. And Flock is enabling law enforcement to

[B]

circumvent those rules and forget the Constitution for a second. I mean, this predates the Constitution. It was in the Declaration of Independence, although not explicitly labeled, the writ of assistance, as you point out. But the list of grievances against King George III was specific in there. And one of those was these British soldiers just going through people's homes and just walk in without any kind of a warrant and doing any kind of search that they wanted. I mean, so I always tell people, when you read the Declaration of Independence, it's fun to read the preamble and the opening of it. But no, read, read the list of grievances, the stuff that when King George got his hands on it a few weeks after the fourth of July, he was furious, you know, to see all this, like, list of things that we were furious about the British doing to the Americans doing to us in the colonies. And then, of course, years later, we get the Constitution of the United States. So this was right there in the Declaration of Independence.

[A]

I love what you just said. Read those grievances. And I often try and make it an exercise and encourage others. When you read the grievances, compare those to your own grievances today. Right here is what they. The basis for them to alter and abolish a government. And how does that compare? And when you read those grievances, you start nodding your head like, oh, that's happening today. Oh, that's exactly as you mentioned, with privacy in particular. So. So I think the challenge with privacy, speaking as someone who works in legal reform with our team at Libertas Institute on this area, is that there is a lot of apathy when it comes to the topic of privacy. People have been conditioned into accepting that they are tracked, that that is the price we pay to live in a technologically advanced society. I want to use my phone, okay? I've got to click, agree on the terms and conditions that I'm not going to read, and Google or Apple or whoever can see everything, okay? They're searching through my email. My Alexa is listening to me. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are tracking my behavior across devices. And if my wife mentions that she wants something, then I see an ad for it the next day. It's all just been kind of normalized. So getting people to care. I will say this very forthrightly. Getting people to care about privacy for our organization and others in this space. Space has been very difficult because people have so much apathy about it. So flock for all of its problems. I'm grateful to them in a sense, because they've catalyzed a lot of opposition or even just awareness to the problem that has enabled us to have more conversations like this, which can hopefully spark more legal reform. So for all their problems, the fact that they've become a bit of a whipping boy on this topic has been useful just to. To help people understand these things matter. And you don't have to trade away your freedom for Safety. Because in fact, these systems don't produce safety in certain cases. Yes, they can solve crimes or create safety, but in the aggregate, that makes a far less safe society because a free society is a safe society.

[B]

Yeah, let's talk about this law enforcement and first responders piece of this tied to the Constitution. So Flock responded to us and issued a statement to redacted news. I want to read it here in a second. But just kind of setting this up, we recently did an interview with, with Thomas Drake, who is an NSA whistleblower. He in many ways he predates Edward Snowden. Edward Snowden, of course, publicly talks about Thomas Drake as his inspiration for not trying to go through conventional whistleblower routes because they're going to be exposed instead had to go outside of that and go to the press. So Thomas Drake in many ways is an American hero. And he on our show warned that Flock cameras are not just crime fighting tools, they are the backbone of a growing surveillance ecosystem. So I just want to put up this statement here on the screen. We can put this up from Flock. They responded to us and they said more than 30 courts agree that flocks support of first responders is constitutional. We offer that support and strict safeguards. So Flock is saying, hey, what we do is constitutional and 30 courts agree to that. What do you say to that?

[A]

Well, these are lower courts that they're talking about. The Supreme Court has not taken up a case. And in fact there is more recent jurisprudence from the Supreme Court, including in the Carpenter case several years ago and their geolocation case that just came out recently, suggesting that if the Flock issue were presented to the Supreme Court court, that things may not go in the direction of Flock. This gets to what I said a moment ago, Clayton, where law enforcement kind of are ahead of the game in adopting these tools and city councils and legislatures and even courts are slow to keep up. So courts can only adjudicate the cases that are brought to them. And I don't know that the right test case has been brought, let alone one that's going to go up to the Supreme Court. And so, yeah, they're hiding behind a few court cases. But ultimately this is a question for people to decide. And regardless of courts validating what is a very, very low standard in one's expectation of privacy. Let me pause there and explain what I mean, because that may sound confusing. It's very difficult to get courts to side against the government and protect people's privacy. The, the prevailing case law is such that individuals do not have an expectation to Privacy when they are out in the public. So this idea that, oh, well, Clayton, you're out driving around town, you have no expectation of privacy. Therefore, it's okay for Flock to have a camera at every intersection and feed all of that to law enforcement and tie that footage to, you know, as Flock is now doing Social Security databases, credit histories, property data so that we can fully understand who Clayton is, what he's done, where he's going. But Clayton has no expectation of privacy because he's out in the public. So we can do whatever we want. This is what courts have basically said. You know, we. Government can do whatever it wants out in the public as long as it's in the public. Right. If you're in your home, if you're in your castle, then the government has a higher barrier to overcome if it wants to invade your privacy. But if Clayton's driving around town, there's no expectation. So when Flock provides you that statement and says, oh, courts have agreed, like, this is a very, very low standard. And courts for years have upheld that standard when it comes to any type of monitoring in public spaces. Here's what matters, though. Here's what is different. As I said earlier, Flock has produced and this technology has. Has offered law enforcement a step change in ability that they did not have before. And so to cite and rely on jurisprudence, some of which is decades old when it comes to privacy, this requires a refreshed discussion as a people. If the government is empowered with tools far greater than they've ever had before, is it the right balance to say the government can do whatever it wants if you're in public and it can spy on you and it can gather all this data about you, Is that really the balance? When these tools so significantly empower the government over what they could do before? This is why the remedy, ultimately, regardless of what courts opine on the matter, is with city councils and state legislatures who can enact greater restrictions. And some. And many have, you know, 50 plus cities have, you know, started banning Flock. In our home state, Utah, for years, we've created privacy protections that are far greater than what courts have established as a floor. So courts have basically said, like, here's. Here's how far the government can go. You can't go below this very low floor. Everything else you can do. Well, what state legislatures can do is they can raise that floor. Okay, hey, fine. The courts say that, you know, the government can do whatever it wants in public. No, no, no. We're going to say in our state that you have to get A warrant and that you can't use facial recognition technologies and that you have to delete the data after one week or whatever. Right. State legislatures can go above the floor. They should go above that floor. Because what courts have done on privacy is basically enabled the government to erode it with very, very low standards, which is why this conversation is important. The public needs to engage. They need to advocate to their elected officials to raise that floor and impose greater restrictions on not just Flock, but other technology providers that empower the government to create the surveillance system that we're now living in.

[B]

Who's paying for these cameras? Is it taxpayers? Schools, Police departments by proxy Taxpayers?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, no, all of the above. These are largely taxpayer funded and on public private property and installed by cities. We should also, however, point out to further. Steel man, the case for Flock is that like, let's say I owned a. A retail store. Let's say, you know, I. I have my own mom and pop retail store and I'm experiencing retail theft and I've got people running out the door with carts full of stuff. And right. As a private property owner, I can install cameras, I can acquire Flock cameras, I can utilize their devices on my property. That's fine. There's no constitutional issues there. So to your question, it's largely government, but there are private actors who can and use these tools on their property as well. The challenge, Clayton, is that this is not just my local security system in my retail shop. This is my camera on my private property now connected to a cloud network with Flock providing access to the data to all kinds of other people. So if law enforcement three towns over is looking for Connor and they're able to say, oh, look, he was in this retail store. Right? So it's this blurring of the lines where the Flock cameras are on private property in many cases. And that's totally constitutional, totally fine. It just creates this new question when the data is being shared with law enforcement freely and. And when law enforcement has no restrictions as to how they can use that data. So this is largely taxpayer financed, but certainly, as you can imagine, if you own a store and there's crime or whatever these cameras could be, or cameras like them could be a deterrent to crime or a way to investigate crime, I don't fault any rational actor for monitoring their property or having their own little surveillance system. I have cameras in my home for security. There's no issues there with that. It's just a different question when, you know, if you remember a few years ago, there was a big hubbub over the ring doorbell cameras, which I had. And ring, they're. They're great, they're easy. I can be traveling and I get in a little alert of who's at my door. So the technology creates a lot of benefit. But then there was a big blow up because Ring was providing access to footage to law enforcement without a warrant. They were effectively doing what Flock is doing as well. And there was a big outcry and they had to walk it back and say, we're sorry. So I don't fault anyone for using these systems. They're. Things like this are great for deterring crime. But when you are amassing this government, this, this, this amount of data, when you're enriching the data by connecting it to all these other databases and when you're just handing it over carte blanche to law enforcement without any restrictions, that's where I think state legislature, state legislatures, excuse me, need to step in and enact some controls as to how the government can use that type of data.

[B]

How do they market these cameras as a way to make us safe? I remember during the Super Bowl, I think it was the super bowl, we saw that ring, that new ring ad, and it showed, hey, you know, if all of your neighbors have ring doorbells and, you know, Fluffy goes missing, your dog goes missing, then there's a new feature that will allow the whole neighborhood to come together with sort of a pet feature that will track down and find missing, your missing dog. And we all love dogs, so that's how they tend to market these things to us, right? Well, we're gonna find your dogs. If, if your grandma who has Alzheimer's just wanders out in the middle of the night, we're gonna find your grandma. Like, that's what this is for. Like, so how exactly do they position themselves?

[A]

This is a fun question. And Clayton, I'm going to go on a bit of a detour first to answer it because I love your example with Ring and dogs. That's different than Flock and safety, which to answer your question briefly, they just say, oh, we help increase safety. But, but think of this additional example. Several years ago, the, the spit tubes for DNA testing were all the rage, right? 23andMe. And these companies and people were able to send their saliva away and find out their heritage. They'd get this cool little graphic for social media where they can say, oh, I'm 1/4 Welsh and 1/8 Italian or whatever, right? And so people were finding loved ones. People were finding out like, hey, I was adopted when I was a baby, I just found my parents, or I was switched at birth. Like, there were all these crazy news stories, and these companies like 23andMe were. We're parading them out as look at what this technology allows to happen. And again, there are many great things that DNA tracking and testing tools can do offer. What those companies didn't market is what law enforcement markets with DNA, which is solving cold cases. What happens with the DNA is you can go to 23andMe or their competitors when you do these saliva tests, and you could download your DNA profile. And then there are open databases on the Internet where you can go upload that data file. And basically, it's like an open source DNA network of connections between people. So you can upload that and say, all right, show me everyone Connor's connected to. And now my DNA is in this public database. It's marketed as a way for me to, oh, go find, you know, cousins or lost loved ones and whatever. And again, that happens quite a bit. But what law enforcement is able to do is, let's say there's a drop of blood at the scene of a crime, and there's no cameras and there's no witnesses, and they're trying to figure out whose bullet is that. That's our only lead. So what they can do now is they can go run that DNA test. They can upload it to one of these open databases, these networks of DNA, and it'll say, oh, we found a second cousin, or we found this guy's uncle, right? Because they're able to match the DNA and find these hereditary connections. So then cops can go to that uncle and say, hey, you know, do you know anyone who lives here? Because we found, oh, yeah, my nephew lives there and da, da, da, da, da, Right? So cops are able to use this rich network of DNA that people are voluntarily surrendering because they're just trying to find their own family members. But they're basically creating a massive snitch network where even if I want to remain private, even if I don't want to be in that database, if my brother or son or parent uploads their DNA, by implication I'm being pulled in because our DNA is connected. So it again raises these questions of how are these things marketed? Like you say, well, you know, ringing in the pets, cameras, or DNA tests and your families. But these tools and these databases of all of this data create opportunities for other nefarious opportunities as well, where people are losing their privacy. And we're living in a society where we're now just in a database and everything is tracked. And again, is that the right relationship we want with one another as a society and with the state? So. So Flock, right? They're just positioning this as we increase safety. We're trying to create a crimeless society. They boast at how much they've been able to decrease crime, how many investigations have been able to be solved as a result of flock. And again, yes, with these systems, you can solve cold cases, you can solve crimes. So that is how they market it. It's the tug of the heart. As you say, no one wants to live in a, you know, society full of crime, but they're not marketing the trade off. They're not marketing what we lose as a result of deploying these cameras everywhere.

[B]

We'll get back to that conversation in a second. But first one, I just want to tell you a frustration I've had as an entrepreneur and as a business owner myself. Over the years, I've started multiple companies. One of the biggest frustration I've had is for small businesses. I feel so bad for them, like a small plumbing company or a small window company, whatever it is. And I would call them to get service, like, hey, I need some plumbing done at my. My log cabin up here in the woods, which I owned. And no one would answer the phone. No one would call me back, and then they would lose my business. Then I got another plumber on the phone who finally answered the phone, and he's like, out. And the field, he's like, hey, I'm at a job site right now. Can I call you back? And then he, like, wouldn't call you, wouldn't call you back because he was busy and he forgot. Then you finally get a hold of, like, a third company, and they actually answer the phone and they have a call center and the person picks it up and they're like, okay, we're gonna. Yeah, we'll get a person out to you on Thursday. Great. They got my business. Think about the first two people I call. They just, like, let sales go, go by the wayside. And that's where Quo Phone comes in. I wish these companies would pay attention to this because it could absolutely transform their business. And the way that this works is Quo Phone basically allows you to have all of your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond fast. Most customers aren't waiting around for a callback. Maybe they're trying to book an appointment. Maybe they're looking for A quote. Maybe they just need help right now. Whatever it is, if nobody answers the phone, then they're calling the next business on the list. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo. That's Q, the business phone system built so you never miss a phone call. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, trusted by over 90,000 businesses who rely on it to stay reachable and look professional every day. So when your money is on the line, always say hello with Quo. Try quote today for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com redacted that's quite quo.com redacted and today's show is brought to you by the Absorption Company. I gotta tell you, one of the things that always frustrated me about buying supplements is you buy them and then, you know, let's be honest, you go to the bathroom and you're like, wait a second, did I absorb any of that? Like, what is going on here? Like, I just paid all this money for like some expensive supplements and like it's all coming out, what's happening? And that's where the Absorption Company comes in. These guys are amazing. I've been using them now for months across a wide variety of supplements. But today I wanted to specifically talk about their WLP1, which is fantastic. And it supports weight management with ingredients clinically proven to increase natural GLP1 by 321%. So the absorption company created WLP1 as a daily weight management solution with ingredients that are clinically proven to naturally support GLP1 activity, appetite, control, metabolism and cravings. So you're not just sitting there eating bags of chips all the time. It's a different approach to weight management focused on helping the body work smarter without the trade offs of prescription options. And it's really great. That's sustainable weight management. It's more about regulating cravings and metabolism than restricting everything you eat. So I want you to try it today. It's really fantastic. The Absorption Company is singularly focused on solving the biggest problem in supplements, which is low absorption. Most supplements absorb less than 16%. And that's where Absorption Company comes in because they use cutting edge technologies to make the supplements with pharmaceutical grade absorption up to 149 times better than standard supplements. So right now, whether you're looking for WLP1 magnesium berberine, which I take every day, their magnesium is fantastic. I take their berberine as well, or CQ10 or dozens of other science backed supplements, start taking supplements that your body can actually absorb. So go to absorb more.com and enter the code redacted news at checkout for up to 35% off your first order. That's absorb more.com enter redacted news at checkout for 35% off your first order. Did these companies like 23andMe and ancestry.com let their users know through some sort of buried terms of service that they're going to sell pop possibly this data? Did they monetize the. Just this genetic information? And we're sort of trusting this company, this like private company that you have this information and most Americans or most people probably didn't even think about it. Like what are you going to do with this information? It's great. Now I can find some long lost Welsh family member or I can trace my lineage back to Scotland or whatever. Find out one of my great great grandfather, great, great, great great great grandfathers fought in the Revolutionary war. Like that's fun stuff, right? But what are you doing with this information? We're trusting these, these private companies to keep this database secret, not sell that information, not through some sort of backdoor to the CIA, give them this information. Can we trust these claims?

[A]

Here's an example. I remember a couple of years ago a big news story blew up with Flickr. If you remember the photo sharing Flickr and I used Flickr, it was the premium place to upload all your photos. You would geotag it, you know, or Yahoo bought it.

[B]

I think Yahoo bought it at one point.

[A]

I think, I think you're right. I don't recall the details. I do remember the outcry though, which was that whichever the acquiring company was, you're probably right, had access to this treasure trove of data. And think now with AI and facial recognition, that training data, that data set is, is very monetizable for training because basically the license that everyone implicitly, you know, agreed to when they uploaded to Flickr was hey, we can use these photos however we want. And so now you've got, you know, the Yahoos of the world or other companies are able to then go to the open eyes or anthropics of the world and say, hey, you know, pay us a billion dollars and you can train your LLMs on our data set. And oh by the way, we have all this rich geographic data in there too for tracking people and everything. So it's just again, we live in a different world than the founders did. We live in a different world than our parents did. And we just need to have kind of a, a New conversation about, do we want to have the social credit scores and the dragnet societies like in China? Or you look in London, where there's, you know, cameras all over the place. Right. Is that the type of society we want? And no one wants to say, well, I'm okay with a little bit of crime. Then like, again, these are trade offs. But there's in legal theory, there's Blackstone's law, which is better that 10 innocent people, 10, excuse me, better that 10 guilty people go free than one innocent person be punished. And so our, our legal system is predicated in large part upon that theory, which is we're okay. Like, think of jury trials and the high bar for courts to clear, to actually convict people. It's hard for the government to punish people. And there are many guilty people that do bad things that go free. But that is how as an American society, we have kind of struck the trade off and the balancing test in the past. Well, that pendulum has swung far in a different direction. And unless we get our state legislators and our city councilors to go enact these restrictions, we can't really wait for or rely on the courts because they've got that very low floor. And so ultimately what you're seeing, Clayton, you said this at the very beginning. You've got people cutting down polls, taking matters into their own hands. And so that's one outcome when people are enraged, but the other is trying to use the legislative process at a local and state level and raising that floor and saying, in our state, we're not going to do that. Let's basically enact the fourth Amendment as it pertains to flock and just impose all these restrictions explicitly since the courts aren't doing it themselves.

[B]

Yeah, a couple of things there. I was just in, I was just in London this weekend, and I don't think that there was less crime as a result of all of these cameras. In fact, if you talk to any Londoners, they'll tell you the exact opposite is the case. I was filming something at one point with a cell phone and a bunch of Londoners said, oh, don't have your phone out. You know that you're gonna get that snatched. And of course, we've seen all the videos of people responding to stabbings and so forth and arresting the wrong people and so forth. So I don't know that it's helping at all, but it was funny. Well, not funny, but when you saw all the World cup, all of the British folks coming over, all the English folks coming over to support their team, and they're seeing like the freedoms that we have in the United States of America, and then they've gone back home. You've seen a lot of these viral videos where these people from England are saying, how did we get so soft? How did we allow ourselves to just. We gave up our guns, we gave up our rights. We have cameras everywhere. We're just like a soft society now. We have you post something on social media and the police show up at your house at 2 in the morning because they don't like what you say. You want to fly an English flag at your house, you're going to be knocked on and told you can't fly the Union Jack or the English flag. Like what is happening here. So it's been like a slow erosion. So this argument that somehow London is safer because of all these flock cameras everywhere or all, all of these surveillance cameras, whatever they call them over there, doesn't seem to be true.

[A]

It's not actually true. The data bears out what you said, Clayton.

[B]

In.

[A]

In London, there are about a million cameras that surveil about 9 million residents. So one, roughly one for every 10 people. And the average Londoner, this stat is, is a few years old. So I'm sure this has changed by now. But several years ago, the statistic was that the average Londoner is recorded about 70 times every single day. And at least one research study that looked into this validated what you said, that they couldn't really find any significant correlation between camera density. In other words, the more cameras, the better to watch everyone. There was no correlation between camera density and crime rates. And so what happens is that's how these tools are sold to governments, to law enforcement. Hey, let's deter crime. You create all these cameras, the crime doesn't change. Criminals adapt, right? It's like gun control. Now you have knife problems in London, and so the criminals adapt. But now you have all the innocent people who were innocent to begin with, and they're now suddenly being monitored. And then you couple this. Clayton, I don't know if you've ever heard of the book called Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate, but his, his analysis is, his review was that the average American commits three felonies a day because there's so many federal laws in particular, and so many of them are so vague that inadvertently we are committing so many crimes not through malicious intent, but just, you know, through ignorance and because we have so many regulations on the books. So now, even if innocent Connor is not doing anything wrong to anyone, you Couple that broad criminality of the criminal code applying to so much behavior. Couple that with a surveillance system that was sold as going after the hard criminals. But now you've basically got all these rich targets you can go after of people who weren't really harming anyone. But hey, the government's got to pay the bills and got to justify the cameras. So let's go after, you know, Conor and some benign thing that he did. That is the kind of dystopian path we head to the Chinas and the London's of the world if there's not resistance. Look, do I condone people cutting down flock poles? I'm not going to say that on your program or anywhere publicly. I don't necessarily condone that. I understand it. I can sympathize with it. I get why people are fed up. This is being done largely without public awareness, let alone consent. There are all kinds of dangerous implications. This reeks of tyranny. Tyrants throughout history, Clayton, you know this have always. They don't go around advocating for tyranny. They advocate for safety. We will keep you safe. We will thwart the enemy. We will protect you. And then they enact this, you know, dragnets system at home. So I get why some people are taking matters into their own hands and saying, if I'm not being heard, if, if the government is complicit in this crime, I don't want to live, you know, down the road from this camera. I'm going to go cut it down so I can sympathize with it. I think the proper and long term best solution is, is legislative reform. But that's not going to happen without more conversation, without more awareness. And again, I can be grateful to flock for being that catalyst for this type of conversation. I can also be grateful for the people cutting down the polls because that is attracting attention and that is raising people's awareness of what's going on. So I think it's all good to raise that awareness to provoke more conversation. Because without that, we're not going to get legislative reform. What we will get is what London got and China got, which is a sleepy society that goes about its business, lets the government do what it's doing and they wake up and find that their country has completely changed the values that their parents and grandparents fought for and lived in, they no longer embrace. That's not what I want. It's not what I want for my kids. Therefore, I think we have to resist. Some people are doing that physically and actively. Others are doing it like myself, legislatively and legally. But I think resistance is warranted if we want to preserve our freedom.

[B]

Yeah, it's really. And you know, I don't want to bag on Europe because there's a lot to love about it. I lived there for five years, lived in Portugal for five years. And just remarkable. Obviously former socialist country. So there's a lot of compliance. There's a lot of. When the government tells the citizenry to do something, they just fall in line. Like they will look askance at you. Why are you not wearing a Covid mask? You know, and how, how do you have the balls to do that? Well, I'm American, so that's why. That's. That's one of the reasons why. And, and I'm not going to wear this mask. I'm not going to stand six feet apart on this. Out by the ocean, on a, on a, on a walkway when there's no one around for, for two miles. Like, that's ridiculous. So all of these things. But in, you know, they send out text messages, messages to go, you know, get Covid shots. And you know, you need to report here, go get a Covid shot. And people just sort of line up like sheep to go get Covid shots. And now it's time for your kids to go get Covid shots. Go. It would send out repeated text messages on a regular basis and like, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore. But that's how a lot of Europe has become. They've just sort of handed over their freedoms. They're just sort of blindly following this, you know, this globalist system there. That's really unnerving. Giving away their cap, their cash so that they don't. Aren't able to transact in cash anymore. Moving to a digital currency, all of it, you know, 15 minute cities. I mean, the list goes on and on and on, but it's a slow erosion of these liberties. And I think Flock to me is like emblematic of like, we're going to draw a line in the sand here. Like, we're not going to allow these things to take over our community because what does it lead to? And it leads to what you talked about, about earlier, which is these, these police officers and so forth abusing these, these systems. So maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the abuse here because these videos have gone viral online. Police, Colorado and other places, showing up at people's doors, referencing holding up photos of your car was captured on a flock camera down the street over here and here. Can you walk through some of the abuses of these law enforcement officials and law enforcement in general.

[A]

Right. So again, typically, unless the state says otherwise, these law enforcement officers are able to access this data without a warrant. They're able to basically use it, like you just said, with that example, as a lead to go investigate things. The challenge that I have with. With saying that's okay, that law enforcement can just, oh, hey, look, Connor was here on this place, and there was a crime down the road. Let's go bother Connor. Well, then they come to Connor's house, and I'm in a grumpy mood they. That day. So I'm. I'm kind of like you in Portugal. I'm kind of resisting a little bit, like, get off my property. Come back with a warrant. Well, that particular cop is not too happy that day either. And he's got a bit of an authoritarian streak. So he starts to manhandle me, and I put. You know what I mean? Like, every. Every touch point. I guess here's what I'm getting at. And this shows my kind of libertarian side. Every. Every interaction with law enforcement has the potential for physical violence. And that's not to say all cops are physically violent or that everyone deserves it. I'm just saying every time we pit,

[B]

it can spiral out of control pretty quickly.

[A]

Correct. Correct. And so sometimes that's justified, too, if the circumstances merit it. But my interest is, let's not have law enforcement getting up in anyone's business unless there's individual suspicion of a crime, and there's good reason to justify that potentiality of. Of, you know, spiraling problems. Remember what was his name? Eric Garner. He was selling, like, the. Lucy's. The. A single cigarette, which was a crime. And so that led law enforcement to go. And he was the one that. Was he the one that said, I can't breathe. And he held. And he was being in a chokehold and. Oh, Floyd.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Well, no, not. No, not George Floyd. This was. I think his name was Eric Garner in New York. And they have a law against selling single cigarettes, which he was doing on the subway. Yeah. Or on the street or something. And the cop put him in a chokehold and choked him. And all because of a single cigarette. Like, is that really a reason to go send law enforcement after someone? Because he. He bought a pack of cigarettes and took one and then sold it to a willing customer. So that's my point is all these horrible interactions you hear about with law enforcement, pulling people over, shooting, whatever. Many of them could have been avoided if that initial interaction didn't need to happen. So back to flock. Right? That, that is the concern is that the law enforcement officers that are using this database as an opportunity to generate leads and go talk to someone or go investigate just creates all those potentialities. There have been a number of cases, like I mentioned earlier, of law enforcement officers who are accessing the database to stalk ex girlfriends or spouses, romantic rivals, sometimes running a single license plate. Hundreds of times you had a case in Texas where a sheriff office searched, I think it was over 80,000 cameras across the nation hunting for a woman who had taken abortion pills. And so in the log it's stated that the woman had an abortion, searched for female, and officials were claiming a welfare check. But court records later show that the police had, you know, not pursued criminal charges. And whatever your position on abortion. Right. It's like, is that proper for the government to go on this massive fishing expedition in Georgia? This was a big controversy. Flock's own employees accessed the city's cameras regularly. So this isn't just a temptation for, for law enforcement to go on a fishing expedition and stalk people. Flocks employees have access to this data. Data reportedly it was over 1000 times that they accessed the cameras in Georgia, including a camera inside a kid's gymnastics room. And this while flock's FAQ on their website said that no one from Flock is accessing or monitoring your footage. And so again, these cameras are being sold to the public saying, oh, we can't even access it. And then lo and behold, Flock can and they have accessed it. Federal law enforcement have been using this in states where laws forbid it. And again, a lot of this is still fresh. So the 50 plus cities that I mentioned that have banned flock is all kind of fairly recent. I think what you're going to see is a lot more news stories emerging in the next month or two. We should also point out that a lot of the awareness that has come to Flock is the result of an organization called dflock. This is who Langley called a terroristic organization. Because what deflock. I think the website is dflock me. And they have the network of, you know, you can go look up your town, all your viewers right now can go to dflock me, look up where they live and say where are their flock cameras? It operates kind of like waze, if you've ever used that, where other users can tag, hey, there's a, there's a cop car here. So it's a, it's a peer based system where, you know, Clayton, if you're driving around and you Notice a flat camera. You can then go say, oh, there's a flat camera right here. And you can add it to the database. So it's a crowdsourced open source database where people can monitor what's happening. And so deflock has brought a lot of attention to this. But then with these news stories and the abuses, they become a focal point to raise awareness about the problem. Not just the locations of these cameras, which is what their system offers, but then also surfacing news stories like this to say, look at what these systems are producing in cases of abuse.

[B]

We'll get back to our show here in just a second, but first I want to share something with you. You've heard us report here on the show that the dollar is losing value daily, our national debt is out of control, and you can bet no one in Washington or Wall street is worrying about your finances or how you're, you're going to afford retirement. That's why you and only you need to become financially independent. It's the only way to break free from the system. Now, if you're wondering how, there is a method that's been proven time and time again, real estate, it's created more millionaires than any other investment type in history. It's exactly how Natalie and I broke free as well. So we're able to do this because we're, we aren't dependent on a boss, the stock market or whatever else nonsense triggers in Washington. You can do the very same thing. Now your path will probably look different from ours and figuring out your next steps can be tricky, especially if you're just getting started. So we built a 60 second quiz that shows you exactly where you stand as an investor and gives you simple, clear next steps for moving forward. And it's free. So stop wishing that you had a portfolio full of performing assets, take action and start building one right now. Right now. Today. Go to Redacted Dot Inc. Quiz and take it while you keep watching this show. Redacted.inc./quiz. I looked up my city and I was shocked to see how many cameras were in, you know, in the, where I live in Colorado, but in multiple areas around us. I was, I was stunned to see that on this map. Again, I come back to the McDonald's analogy. I think, my gosh, 13,000 McDonald's, 100,000 cameras out there. So maybe you can talk a little bit about what, what these cameras are doing. You compared the flip phone idea to how license plate readers back in the day used to operate and now these things are far more advanced. So I've heard people talking about the Bluetooth, and there's obviously people walking up to these cameras now with, like, Bluetooth devices, where they're seeing that these cameras are actually gathering information from Bluetooth. Is that right? So when you're driving by, it's not just capturing your license plate, it's also capturing other data as well. Is that right?

[A]

So that has been claimed about Bluetooth. I've not been able to verify it, but I have seen, seen the counter argument that Flock says that's not happening and other researchers saying that those devices are not picking up Bluetooth. So I think that particular claim is not yet substantiated. The potential is there. Of course. Again, they could flip on a switch or do it at any time, but I think presently I lean from my understanding in saying it's not Bluetooth. But what does Flock do? What have they admitted to doing? What is, in fact the selling point of their devices? You go on their website and you can see it for yourself that these are billed not just as license plate readers, but basically, like I said, getting the car's fingerprint. So the Flock devices are recording not just license plate, but also a vehicle's make and model, its color, any dents, any bumper stickers, any roof racks. And so even if you were to take your license plate off, they're still able to use that fingerprint. Right. And track the device. And so again, for years, the dumb phone equivalent has been, oh, these are license plate readers. Well, these are more now like vehicle identification systems. And again, because these are cameras, they can and do record the people inside of the vehicle as well.

[B]

I was going to ask, do they capture your face, facial recognition, etc.

[A]

So Flock denies that it is doing any type of facial recognition recognition or being able to map the individual. But again, what prevents Flock from doing that tomorrow? Flock is saying that right now. But if demand from law enforcement comes to say, we want this, a private company is going to respond to demand. There are a number of facial recognition systems out there already. What prevents Flock from integrating as a partner with some other facial recognition?

[B]

I mean, Facebook, right? Doesn't Facebook use facial recognition?

[A]

Yeah, and again, in a private context, no big deal, right? Like, hey, you know, for example, on my phone, I can type my son's name, and it uses facial recognition to search through my thousands of photos to find other photos just of my son. Right. And that's great. That's fine. If it's just my feature, it's local on my device, it's again, the Concern when this is connected to the cloud.

[B]

Well, and you consented, right? Because, I mean, that's one of the selling points. Points of the meta glasses, too, right? Yeah. You could walk. You could be wearing them, you could be walking. Who is this person?

[A]

I don't remember his.

[B]

This person's name. And, you know, hey, meta, who is this? You know, I think that's. They even feature that in a commercial. I think it was. I think it was a commercial with, like, Kaylee Jenner, one of them. One of them, One of the Kardashian people, and, like, you know, scans the person's face. And I guess because you've consented, presumably through Facebook, the. Your face shows up and you know

[A]

that, oh, that's John, you know, which again, speaks to. What does consent mean? If people are clicking a little box for terms and conditions and not reading the fine print again, like, is that really where we want to draw the line and say, oh, but, you know, everyone consented to doing all this facial recognition because 10 years ago they signed up for Facebook and they've never shut down their account or whatever, right? Or. Or click the Google terms and conditions. This needs more active. Like, true consent is informed consent. And I think people aren't really informed on how the metas of the world or flocks are using technologies like facial recognition. And just because you bury it in legalese, that might cover your butt legally, but that's not fostering true consent as a society for what we want to experience and what we want to live in. So no flock today, to my knowledge, and by their statement, is not doing facial recogn. But again, like, they could just integrate with a partner and go tell their law enforcement clients, oh, hey, we don't do facial recognition, but we surrender. You know, when you click export, we. We transfer all the video of this, you know, Connor's vehicle over to our partners at Facial Recognition R Us, you know, and they'll do all the facial recognition. Nothing prevents that today from happening. There are a number of facial recognition systems that officers use. Law enforcement officers have the ability to. To go up to someone and take their photo, much like the DNA download that I talked about, where you can upload it to this database and then kind of find someone's relative and thereby try and kind of reverse back to who they are. Cops can walk up to you, Clayton, they can take your picture, upload it to some of these facial recognition systems that have scraped Facebook and Google Images and social media and Flickr and other things, and they're able to Say, oh, based on that photo you took, we think this is Clayton. And suddenly cops are now able to get a lead, get a name and go investigate. So again, these technologies can solve a lot of crime. It's just that as a society, we've not rubber stamped this. Things have changed radically. And if we don't impose controls, law enforcement is just going to continue building out London and China on our behalf.

[B]

How do you see these? How does law enforcement access this is it through a database. When these Flock cameras, they've got, let's say a City has 30 of these flock cameras around multiple intersections, that local police department do they log in with a username and password. They pay sort of a monthly subscription and then they can start to do their research and their queries.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Does it use AI? I'm just curious the mechanism.

[A]

Yeah, this is a software product that Flock provides that law enforcement is given access to. It's a cloud service, which means that Flock, you know, stores and processes the data and will display on a dashboard for law enforcement in their particular jurisdiction. You know, hey, here's all the cameras. And you can search by timeline and you can, you know, if you find someone, you can find everywhere they went. So they're basically given an online portal where they can go in and access Flock's system again without a warrant. And that allows them to be able to go and, you know, download whatever they want and use either that still photo like you mentioned, where the cop shows up on your porch, or they can download the whole video. And independent of Flock, they could upload that to a different facial recognition system. And, you know, officers can do their own enriching of that data if they want, even if Flock themselves are not doing it. So yeah, cops are just given access to the cloud portal and given access to that treasure trove of data that their city's cameras have collected.

[B]

Yeah, you just wonder how the government's using this. I mean, think about it reminds me a lot of the FISA 702 fight, you know, right? Now, of course, a lot of people don't fully understand how it operates, but we've interviewed FBI whistleblowers deeply on this who have made it their mission to educate Americans about how nefarious this is. And Americans being caught up in this like foreign surveillance dragnet, because they might be speaking to somebody overseas and it's sort of an open ended, you know, dragnet, and then, you know, they'll be basically be able to find a crime. Like, we don't have anything on this American yet. But with this open ended sort of FISA dragnet, we'll find something and we'll manufacture some sort of prosecution and your life will be over. So that's what I really worry about with these databases and law enforcement having access to this type of sort of unend, you know, not closed loop. It's just sort of open ended tracking of, of anything from Americans.

[A]

It's why Snowden titled his book, which I encourage people to read Permanent record. This isn't just in the moment analysis of where Clayton is going or anything. It's oh, Flock has been around now for 20 years. Look at this massive database. Oh, you want to look into what Clayton did, you know, eight and a half years ago on a Tuesday afternoon, boom. We can find where he was, was, or cell phones as well. Again, this was the, this is how they went after the January 6th protesters, which was what's called a geofence law enforcement FBI basically drew a map around the capital and gave it to the Verizons of the world and say, tell us everyone whose phone pinged with, pinged a cell phone tower because your, your phone is always pinging nearby networks to say where are you? Where are you? And so they said, tell us everyone who, whose phone pinged within this radius, within this, this area. And that's how FBI started knocking on doors all across the country of people who just showed up to the Capitol that day, didn't even go in the Capitol, didn't do anything wrong. But now again those, those touch points between law enforcement and a person getting up in their business. And, and that was because of the cell phone being able to reverse engineer to, to go back in time and say tell us where these people, tell us who was there at that particular time. And now basically Flock is doing the cell phone equivalent for your vehicles. Thankfully, the Supreme Court just recently, you know, imposed a lot of restrictions around geofence and so the government can't be as free willing with geofence technology like they were before. That was a good ruling that the court just came out with, but we don't have one yet on Flock. And they're effectively doing with our cars what companies have long been doing with our cell phones in terms of location tracking and that permanent record that you're taking talking about. I don't love the idea of living in a society where my every action and location and all my digital everything for my entire life is sitting in a database, you know, that anyone can go query at any time and like you say, find an excuse to come after me that that's not something I want to consent to. And I don't think most Americans, if they were truly informed, would hence the need to get the word out and, and kick up a little dirt on this topic so more Americans can push back.

[B]

There seems to be also this rise of online influencers coming out and sort of supporting flock. I don't know if you've noticed this and I find this interesting, I guess, to say the least. But it reminds me of some of the same kind of individuals who would have held up the Epstein Binders at the White House. That same kind of, same kind of group. But here is an individual but goes by the name of Cam Higby. I love the name Cam, like camera, but Cam Higby, who posted this the other day. Imagine being a law abiding citizen and you're afraid of cameras on public property. What's next? Tearing down the boards that tell you that you're speeding? To which friend of the show, Max Blumenthal, pointed out Cam Higby was sponsored by the Israeli government, the Israel365 action to deny famine in Gaza. So I guess like financing his work when he was there as a so called journalist. I don't know the details of that, but a lot of people dogpiled on top of him for this. Like really, you're supporting this idea of being tracked. And so, and he's, he's really echoing sort of the London stance on this, which is imagine being a law abiding citizen and you're afraid of cameras on public property. So you should, you shouldn't worry about anything with FISA or cameras everywhere because you're, you know, you're not committing crimes. You're just, just, just, just accept it.

[A]

And the government has your best interests at heart and no rogue prosecutor or law enforcement will ever in the future want to, you know, come up with dirt on you. And oh no, we don't have so many laws on the books that you're actually a felon without knowing it. And we could go after you anytime. Let's say you're at a political rally endorsing someone that that person hates a year from now and they want to go after you because you're like, if they can go after you, they can undermine some political leader that they don't like, oh, hey, Clayton was at this thing and we can make this connection. And even if we can't win the case in court, we can make his life hell, right, by putting him through the ringer and making him pay for Lawyers. So again, like, and it's funny Cam's example, like, no one objects to driving by that license. That, that speed detector where it's like, hey, you're going too fast in the neighborhood. Why? Because that's an instantaneous response that is not being archived. That device is not capturing who I am. They're not capturing my license plate. They're not sending an alert to law enforcement to say, oh, Connor sped, go mail him a ticket. Now if those devices suddenly were turned into these automatic enforcement things where I just get a ticket in the mail because like red light cameras.

[B]

Cameras, yeah. Red light cameras, yeah.

[A]

That's why a lot of people object to them. Those, because we're just automating government punishment and we're producing a society where we have less freedom. People, even if they can't articulate it. Clayton Americans naturally understand that our heritage, our values are that we're kind of okay with a bit of crime and people breaking laws. Whether that's Connor going eight miles over, you know, the speed limit or doing a, you know, not stopping fully, you know, at a red light or stopping sign. Like, we're kind of okay with that because we don't want the opposite. We don't want the society that Langley envisions, which is a crimeless society, as he says, because the only way to achieve that, frankly you can never actually achieve that. But, but the path to produce it is this dystopian, Orwellian, heavy handed Panopticon society where we've got London and we've got China and everything is being monitored. And as we said before with the study that found no correlation between the cameras in London and crime, we just end up with reduced freedoms and not actually a crimeless society. The criminals just shift like they have to knives in London from guns. They'll adapt, they'll find ways to still do what they want. And meanwhile, we've surrendered our freedom. We just celebrated the 250th anniversary of America. And as great as that is to kind of memorialize our past, the question is, what is our future and what will America look like 250 years from now? On this topic of privacy itself and the fourth Amendment, this was so critical to the founders because of their lived experience. Well, if we continue to allow the FISAs and the NSAs and the flocks of the world to create this surveillance society, what does our country look like for our great, great grandkids far in the future? That's what concerns me and that's why I think action now is needed.

[B]

Yeah, I find it interesting that there are these online influencers who have sort of coalesced around a similar message and these are the same sort of people that are totally fine taking like paid trips to Israel and places like that. It's very interesting. I'm just throwing that out there. I just find it very interesting. And of course then you see the palantirs of the world and those people who are very silent on the palantirs of the world and they keep quiet about any of that money that's involved in American politics and they're just, they're, they're notoriously quiet about these issues. I don't know, I just find it curious not to, not to put that on you. It's just something I've noticed. Connor, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Hopefully people find this eye opening. I certainly do. Walking through all of how this technology actually operates, where these things are, how can people take action? How do you think that we can move, move forward and take action?

[A]

So if you, your viewers haven't, I would encourage going to deflock me and you can learn what's happening in your community. You can follow them on social media. Not only are they sharing news stories, but there's groups out there like the Electronic Frontier foundation, eff, they're a supporter of deflock and they have resources on their website for the legal reform path of model legislation or here's the, the legal stuff that we need to do. The best thing though, Clayton, I would say that any of your viewers can do is go reach out to a city councilman, go reach out to your mayor, go reach out to your state senator, your state representative, shoot them an email, shoot them a text and just say, hey, I'm concerned about this. Can we have a conversation? A lot of people in my community are worried about this. Are you willing to do something about it? And those little touch points, reaching out to your elected officials. As someone who does this for, for a living, keep in mind, not keep in mind I haven't shared this. I used to build websites for a living. I have no formal legal background. I was just a guy that started talking to elected officials about the concerns that mattered to me. And now I have a think tank and we've changed over 100 laws. So legal reform is not just for the elite, it's not for the lawyers. You, your listener can just reach out to your mayor, reach out to your state senator and oftentimes they'll be willing to engage, they'll be willing to talk and if they're aligned, they can end up running legislation to be able to correct this, and you can be part of that solution. So I would just say reach out to them, have a conversation, let them know your concerns. And in the aggregate, if a lot of people start doing that, then we'll see some great change. Yeah.

[B]

From your mouth to God's ears. Connor, thank you so much for this. Great to have you on the show.

[A]

Thank you, Clayton. Appreciate it.

[B]

Thank you.