Episode 251: Surveillance In America, Pt 3: Just Say No

Summary

What the Hack? — Episode 251: Surveillance In America, Pt 3: Just Say No

Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Beau Friedlander (DeleteMe)
Guests: Ben Jordan (researcher and privacy advocate), Nathan Fried Wessler (ACLU), Jason Kebler (404 Media), John "Gainsec" Gaines (security researcher)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the current reality of surveillance in America, focusing on how pervasive camera networks—ranging from law enforcement tools like Flock’s license plate readers to private home security cameras—threaten privacy and constitutional protections. The hosts and guests move from examining historical legal precedents to analyzing the companies and mechanisms driving today's surveillance expansion, finally offering actionable advice and a call for both personal and legislative action.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How Surveillance Expanded (01:00–06:29)

• Historical Context: Once, surveillance was limited to banks and stores; now, it’s ubiquitous due to tech adoption (smartphones, IoT, social media).
• Constitutional Principles: The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches—requiring warrants for law enforcement use of evidence like video or audio.
  • [06:29] Beau: “The Fourth Amendment is super clear that the tape is not something law enforcement can use without a warrant... The second part—the warrant clause—is even more important.”

2. MAP v. Ohio and the Precedent for Exclusion of Illegally Obtained Evidence (07:21–11:29)

• Dollree Mapp’s Story: In 1957, police busted Mapp without a proper warrant, leading to a Supreme Court ruling that evidence obtained illegally must be excluded.
  • [08:46] Beau: “They tossed the house and found what they were looking for… She did appeal… In 1961, it reached the Supreme Court... they ruled on the Fourth Amendment: illegally obtained evidence had to be thrown out. No warrant, no case.”

3. Surveillance Corporations as a Fourth Amendment Workaround (11:29–16:39)

• New Wave of Surveillance Companies: Companies like Ring and Flock Safety provide law enforcement with workarounds: private data streams, less oversight, sidestepping the warrant requirement.
  • [13:07] Jason Kebler: “A new surveillance company will pilot something in a small town…they start advocating for others, and it spreads from there.”
  • [14:03] Ben Jordan: “One third of American households have voluntarily installed surveillance cameras inside their home that connect to a third party cloud service.”

4. The “Nothing to Hide” Argument and Its Flaws (14:32–16:39)

• Flawed Logic: Common refrain: if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide.
  • [14:40] Gainsec: “Okay, you have nothing to hide, then let me see your phone. Unlock your phone and let me have it.”
• Questioning Necessity and True Benefits:
  • Is the sense of safety worth the loss of privacy?
  • Cloud-connected cameras often offer false security; alternatives exist that don’t expose footage to third parties.

5. Terms of Service: No Real Choice (16:39–18:11)

• Non-negotiable Policies: Users can't alter or negotiate ToS; rights can change post-purchase.
  • [16:58] Beau: “Terms of service are not a contract between equals...what they've decided can change at any time.”
• Personal Agency: Some listeners get refunds or uninstall systems when ToS changes.

6. Personal Solutions and Reducing Your “Surface Area” (20:07–21:28)

• Privacy Not Binary: Every data point increases visibility. Reducing surface area is possible—take down unnecessary cameras, delete personal data online.
  • [20:07] Beau: “Privacy isn’t binary...it’s more like a surface area. Every camera, every social media post...shrinks or grows that area.”

7. Hypocrisy and Corporate Secrecy (21:02–22:00)

• Irony: Heads of surveillance companies use trusts to obscure their own addresses, while selling products that make everyone else easier to track.
  • [21:28] Ben: “I know where Garrett Langley lives...it was ironic that somebody who thinks we're safer when we know data about everybody went to such lengths to hide his address.”

8. Systemic Access Problems: The Mountain View, CA Case (22:06–24:21)

• Security Lapses: Unintended third party and agency access to city cameras went undetected for months.
  • [22:41] Beau: “A door was left open in a house, and you thought it was locked. Maybe it was a glitch...But for months, agencies Mountain View never authorized were looking through their cameras.”

9. Outsourcing Surveillance and Lack of Oversight (24:39–28:21)

• Discussion of Flock’s ability to aggregate private and third-party cameras into their system; employees and police could access sensitive footage (e.g., children’s gyms).
  • [26:30] Ben Jordan: “Bob Carter searched The Flock database 63 times last year...But the problem is Bob isn’t a police officer…he’s Flock’s VP of business development.”
• Oversight Gap: Private sector projects avoid government restrictions; little transparency or control.

10. Regulation Roadblocks and Legislative Solutions (28:16–36:14)

• Lack of Progress: Despite bipartisan support, privacy regulation like “Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act” has stalled.
  • [31:36] Nathan Fried Wessler: “Congress could tomorrow...do two different things, each of which would address this problem.”
  • Consumer privacy and closing law enforcement loopholes are both crucial.
• State and Tech Company Roles: Some hope at state level, but companies, motivated by profit, are unreliable stewards of privacy.
  • [34:53] Nathan Fried Wessler: “State governments are maybe the best hope...some good faith efforts, but none as far as we would want.”
  • ICE abuses subpoenas to unmask critical social media users; tech companies sometimes (but not reliably) push back.

11. The Feeling of Safety vs. the Loss of Privacy (38:01–49:06)

• Feelings Aren’t Facts: Cameras create a sense of safety, but the data doesn’t support a real benefit—privacy is being bartered cheaply.
  • [38:01] Beau: “Cameras went up and people felt safer. Not because the data said they should, just a feeling. But feelings aren’t facts...”
• Tech to Fight Tech: Advocacy for using digital tools to counteract surveillance, but solutions need to be accessible to all.
  • [38:38] Ben Jordan: “You can still fight back with technology...most of the stuff is insecure...you can take these extra measures. But it needs to be more accessible.”

12. Suppression, Vulnerabilities, and Broken Expectations (40:27–43:42)

• Suppression & Retaliation: Security researchers face suppression; Google search often “useless” for finding critical stories.
  • [41:37] Beau: “He [Gainsec] documented over 50 [Flock vulnerabilities]...then he tried to report them...and then he was let go from his job.”
• Expectation of Privacy: Camera feeds often created with intent for privacy, and many remain alarmingly exposed.

13. Flock Safety as a Fourth Amendment Workaround (43:42–49:06)

• Mass Surveillance: Flock and similar companies enable warrantless, mass location tracking and law enforcement data sharing.
  • [43:52] Nathan Fried Wessler: “Is Flock Safety...a structural workaround for the Fourth Amendment? — I think it’s tremendously dangerous. Yes, it is.”
• Nationwide Tracking: These networks allow searching across jurisdictions and for purposes beyond local law enforcement’s original intention, including targeting abortion seekers or aiding ICE.
  • [44:41] Nathan Fried Wessler: “It doesn’t take too many cameras...to create a durable record of where we’re going and when.”
  • “What we really need are legal solutions...at the very least, police shouldn’t be able to go into that database unless they’ve gotten a warrant first.”

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “The question now is whether we believe that, whether the feeling of safety is worth what we’re trading for it. Because what we’re trading for it is the thing itself.” – Beau Friedlander [38:01]
• “If you're not doing anything criminal, then there's nothing to worry about.” – Jason Kebler, highlighting the flawed mindset [14:32]
• “We were safe before our homes had cameras. Not perfectly safe. Nobody's ever been perfectly safe. But we've managed.” – Beau Friedlander [18:11]
• “The person selling surveillance to your police department didn’t want to be surveilled, which tells you everything you need to know about who these systems are actually built for.” – Beau Friedlander [21:48]
• “It’s not a bug if that’s how the system was built.” – Beau Friedlander on systemic access failures [24:21]
• “You can still fight back with technology...but it needs to be more accessible so my mom can do it.” – Ben Jordan [38:38]
• “These surveillance systems are designed actually to force us into surveillance.” – Nathan Fried Wessler [47:44]

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Actionable Takeaways

1. Personal:

• Consider Unplugging Cloud Cameras: Uninstall, use local storage, skip the subscription, and avoid unnecessary sharing with third parties or law enforcement.
  • [18:11] "You might not be able to do much about the camera on a pole outside your house, but ... there's one camera you for sure have control over."
• Shrink Your Digital “Surface Area”: Limit what you share, reduce exposure on social media, and use privacy services.

2. Civic/Policy:

• Push Lawmakers: Support legislation like the "Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act" and comprehensive consumer privacy laws.
  • [31:36] Nathan Fried Wessler: “Congress could tomorrow...pass legislation to dry up the abusive data broker market...and close the loophole for law enforcement.”
• Support State Initiatives and Hold Tech to Account: Advocate for state-level action; pressure tech companies to push back against abusive data requests.

3. Stay Informed:

• Follow Investigative Journalists and Researchers: Ben Jordan’s YouTube channel, 404 Media, and independent security experts like Gainsec.
• Beware Information Suppression: Critical stories are often buried in search; diversify your news sources.

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:00–06:29: Fourth Amendment principles and history
• 07:21–11:29: Mapp v. Ohio story and legal precedent
• 11:29–16:39: Expansion of surveillance and corporate role
• 16:39–18:11: Terms of service, consumer rights
• 21:02–22:00: CEO privacy hypocrisy
• 22:06–24:21: Mountain View camera access scandal
• 24:39–28:21: Aggregation of cameras, privacy violations
• 28:16–36:14: Regulation, legislative gridlock, and company responsibility
• 38:01–49:06: Fighting back, feelings vs. facts, and mass location tracking

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Tone and Style

• Direct, conversational, and sometimes wry: The hosts blend personal anecdotes, historical narrative, and advocacy, alternating between urgency and humor ("Fill your front yard with geese. Geese are really good at this sort of thing." [18:11])
• Call to action: A sense of agency—listeners are repeatedly encouraged to take steps to protect their privacy and demand better from officials.
• Richly sourced: Cites court cases, specific legislative proposals, and firsthand investigative work.

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Summary:
This episode of “What the Hack?” articulates the real and present dangers of the surveillance state, emphasizing how corporations and local governments have created a sprawling, loosely regulated network that works around constitutional controls. Through detailed discussion, illustrative stories, and expert interviews, listeners are shown not only why this matters but what can be done—both at the personal and systemic level—to resist ever-creeping surveillance in 2026.

Transcript

[Beau Friedlander]

What they did to your family. You're lucky to make it out alive. Streaming on Peacock.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

These men are going to come after me.

[Beau Friedlander]

Taking them out. It's my only chance. Put a bullet in her head. From the co creator of Ozark.

[Ben Jordan]

Looks like a family was running drugs.

[Beau Friedlander]

Execution style killing.

[Ben Jordan]

It's rare for the Keys. Any leads on who they might have been running for?

[Beau Friedlander]

The cartel killed my family. I'm gonna kill them. All of them. Mia Streaming now only on Peacock.

[Ben Jordan]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

[Beau Friedlander]

You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride.

[Ben Jordan]

Download the State Farm app or go

[Beau Friedlander]

[e-mail] like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

They're easy to miss, but they're watching you. Small cameras are popping up on the

[Beau Friedlander]

side of public roads throughout your communities. The use of those, at least has

[Ben Jordan]

sparked debate over surveillance and privacy.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

In Washington have kept their license plate reader cameras off due to concerns over privacy and the access to data. The city of Stanwood says they're turning theirs back on and we need every single flock camera turned off and uninstalled now. Officers call them a public safety game changer, but privacy advocates say they're a quiet expansion of government services. Surveillance.

[Beau Friedlander]

Something is happening. People are paying attention. Cities are pushing back. The debate that used to happen just on tech journals or podcasts like this or an ACLU white paper is now happening in city council chambers. So the question is no longer what these surveillance companies are doing wrong or how broken they are from a constitutional point of view. The question is now, what do you actually do about it? What does fighting back look like when the thing you're fighting is, I mean, really an amazing number of cameras? I'm Beau Friedlander and this is what the hack, the podcast that asks, in a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe? Online. Surveillance cameras have been around for decades. They were in banks, in parking lots, convenience stores. No one lost sleep over them. Unless, of course, they had just committed a crime in front of one. Then the Internet happened. Social media, smartphones, Internet of things, AI data brokers that Amazon, then Google, ebay. Piero Mittier is such a good guy. But still, data, data, data. Then politics became a spectator sport and started chowing down our data to achieve this or that goal. And here we are the nightmare version of Minority Report.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Look at me.

[Ben Jordan]

Look at me.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Positive for Howard Marks. Mr. Marks, by mandate of the District of Columbia pre crime division, I'm placing you under arrest for the future murder of Sarah Marks and Donald Dubenham's taking place.

[Beau Friedlander]

Still want that retina scanner? How about the Ring camera? Or the digitization of your neighborhood watch in the form of a private company's camera feeding real time video and still images of your daily life to law enforcement and possibly secret courts.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

It's like my daddy used to say, in the land of the blind,

[Beau Friedlander]

the

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

one eyed man is king

[Beau Friedlander]

minus the deployment of parapsychology. You know, the minority report features Precogs, a group of ESP unicorns captured and used to create a zero crime world. I'm sure these companies would love to have those precogs. The world that Steven Spielberg created. Right? That seemed improbable. Now the one eyed king is among us. It's everywhere. It's legion. It goes by different brand names, but its family name is surveillance. Even the Precog thing seems plausible in our post telepathy tapes. AI is everywhere world zeroing out crime with Ring cameras.

[Ben Jordan]

There's a lot of steps there.

[Beau Friedlander]

Explain what you mean by we can. And also to astro stat. Like if you go to the overall what I saw, I said in certain situations. So like around neighborhoods. That's Ring's chief inventor. That's what he calls himself. Jamie Siminoff backpedaling a claim he made to Jennifer Pattison Tuohy that ring and AI could zero out crime. I think with our products in neighborhoods. And again, this is like you have to be a little bit specific to it. I do see a path to get where we can actually start to get to where like yeah, we take down crime in a neighborhood to call it close to zero. Zero out crime.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Well, at the same time, like I just said, I do generally think that in 10 years from now, Flock will have eliminated crime in America.

[Beau Friedlander]

That's Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock Safety. Now there's a cost to doing what Langley and Siminoff envision. It's. It's what we're going to talk about. It's not something you can measure in dollars or even in the number of crimes solved. Our system of government is the cost. Let that sink in. Made possible by the same ethos that gave birth to for profit prisons. Companies like Ring and Flock Safety and a host of also rans are providing prosecutors and law enforcement with a workaround for that pesky fourth amendment which by the way is our nation's privacy policy. There are two parts to it. The the first is the reasonable clause, which is reasonable cause, which you'll probably recognize from police procedural shows. Right. The government has, as represented by the police or the FBI or whatever you like, cannot search you or take your property without a reasonable justification. The law is interpreted and enforced based on determinations of what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy. You make a phone call to a friend, it's reasonable to assume no one's listening. You walk to the corner store, it's reasonable to assume no one's filming and recording that. You hit the Garden, Madison Square Garden to catch game, you're not being watched.

[Ben Jordan]

Calls denied from Madison Square Garden to halt its use of facial recognition technology in six months.

[Beau Friedlander]

Okay, so it's fair to say that it's reasonable to assume that you are being captured by a camera a lot of the time unless you live somewhere sparsely populated. Even so, the fourth Amendment is super clear that the tape is not something law enforcement can use without a warrant. Because the fourth Amendment has a protection clause for that kind of material, whether it's video, telephone conversations or even diary entries. The second part of the fourth amendment is more important. Actually, here it's the warrant clause, much simpler. Law enforcement needs a warrant signed by a judge before they can search you or your property.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

The police officers claimed that they were informed that there was some paraphernalia for

[Beau Friedlander]

the numbers game in the house.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

And they were also informed that a person wanted for questioning in a bombing

[Beau Friedlander]

was in the house. In May 1957, Cleveland was a numbers town. Numbers policy, rackets, street lottery. It ran on slips, ledgers and cash is a multi million dollar business controlled by men like Don King, before he was a boxing promoter and a mobster named Shondor Burns. The Cleveland PD was under intense pressure to shut it down. And they had developed a by any means necessary culture to do it.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Doll.

[Beau Friedlander]

Remapp was no pushover. She'd been married to a mobster, was was dating a light heavyweight boxer. And when three police officers showed up at her door on May 23, she did exactly what they didn't expect. She called her lawyer. Don't let him in without a warrant, he told her. So she didn't. The police loitered outside for three hours and then they kicked the door in. When they got some backup smashing the glass, Mapp demanded to see a warrant. The sergeant held up a piece of paper. Now, according to the US Supreme Court opinion, what happened next was she put

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

this piece of paper into her bosom.

[Beau Friedlander]

And very readily the police officer put his hands into her bosom and removed the paper. However that works. So they tossed the house and found what they were looking for. Numbers, slips, bedding, gear. And in that same trunk, four books or magazines. It's not clear. And some sketches among those officers, one who had reached into Doll Map's shirt. They decided those pictures were lewd and lascivious. So Ohio knows this search is dirty and the gambling charge isn't going to stick. But the state had a really strong obscenity statute that was easy to prosecute and it didn't require any explaining about how they got through the door. So they dropped the numbers charge and tried her for the books, magazines, whatever. In 1958, Dollary Map was convicted and sentenced to one to seven years in prison for possessing obscene literature. So she did appeal. She had a lawyer. She knew people. And in 1961, it had reached the Supreme Court. But they weren't ruling on the obscenity charge. They ruled on the fourth amendment because it decided, even at the state level, illegally obtained evidence had to be thrown out. No warrant, no case. So what does this have to do with surveillance companies? The ones that are currently selling millions of dollars worth of license plate readers, AI powered cameras, and even drones to law enforcement across the nation. In 1957, the police used a tip about a numbers racket to kick in Dollary Mapp's door and ended up busting her for pornography. In 2026, that same scenario is getting a green light. Flock safety cameras ping a stolen plate, someone gets pulled over, there's a gun or drugs in that car. If the ping counts as an unreasonable search, if tracking your movements without a warrant violates the fourth Amendment, your expectation to privacy. Garrett Langley has built a system that may well end up in the dumpster behind the Supreme Court because the company and others just like it. They're selling a dangerous idea that solving crime justifies anything, even our expectation of privacy as guaranteed by the law of the land. So if MAP vs Ohio is a 60 year old law school, one finger salute to the aspiration of a Panopticon state. I thought we ought to see what's being done about that.

[Jason Kebler]

I'm only one person and you know, there's lots of people doing really great work on this, but so much of it is happening at the local level, and it's happening. It happens really slow at first, and then it explodes. And I've seen it time and time again.

[Beau Friedlander]

That's Jason Kebler. He's the co founder of 404 Media, which has produced some of the best reporting about flock safety.

[Jason Kebler]

You know, there's a lot of different drone programs right now. There's something called drone as first responder. And this is like basically autonomous drones that are connected to the 911 system. And so when a 911 call is placed, a drone just like automatically goes and starts recording. And this was a pretty much like unheard of thing a couple years ago. And now there's like thousands of towns that have this. And it's largely been pushed by like a couple smallish companies that have become really big companies by doing this. The pattern that I've seen over and over and over again is a new surveillance company will pilot something in a small town that often doesn't have like a newspaper or journalist there. Like you sort of wouldn't know. They get one police officer to advocate for like a pilot program for their technology. That cop wants a new toy. They try the new toy and then that cop starts advocating for other police departments to use this. Like, hey, we use this drone program and there's like a grant to get it for free or to try it out. And then suddenly they're at like police tech conferences and it just like spreads from there. And it's pretty crazy how quickly that can happen.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yeah, I mean, that's how the surveillance state started in China. It started in a small town where there was no newspaper and nobody really cared about the people there because they were uyghur. The difference here is smart marketing dressed up as public safety, grassroots, word of mouth, cop to cop, and it works. Part of the reason these surveillance companies are growing, part of the reason it spreads from town to town, from small town to small town, and then, you know, gets bigger without anyone really noticing, is that a lot of people feel safer when the cameras go up. Not because the data says they should, not because anyone checked. Just a feeling the camera is there. Therefore something is being done.

[Ben Jordan]

These days, one third of american households have voluntarily installed surveillance cameras inside their home that connect to a third party cloud service. And nearly 2/3 of households have outdoor cameras.

[Beau Friedlander]

That's Ben Jordan, who found a flock camera outside and got curious. And that curiosity turned into two of the most watched investigations into the company anywhere on the Internet. A formal security briefing with members of congress, and a public push to warn people about the privacy concerns and security risks.

[Ben Jordan]

The vast majority of these camera owners have a very poor understanding of who may be able to watch the footage coming from them.

[Jason Kebler]

The most common thing that I hear about Flock and about Ring is this idea that if you're not doing anything criminal, then there's nothing to worry about.

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

I mean, the Louis Mon thing, like, okay, you have nothing to hide, then let me see your phone. Like, unlock your phone and let me see it. Let me have it.

[Beau Friedlander]

That's John Gaines, or Gainsec, an independent cybersecurity researcher who helped Ben Jordan understand what he discovered when he was looking into Flock security systems.

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

But that's beside the point.

[Beau Friedlander]

Am I doing anything criminal? Isn't the right question to ask?

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

I think that the biggest thing is like, is this necessary? But the guys that it's law enforcement, that it's law enforcement infrastructure, you know, so we don't have to worry about it. That makes people feel fine. Okay, yeah.

[Beau Friedlander]

At some point we moved from do we need these? To how can we make them better, smarter, more quote, unquote efficient? But nobody really answered the first question. We just moved on to the second. Do you actually need a camera? What's it going to do for you? And if the answer is it makes you feel safer, is that feeling worth what you're paying for it, not just in dollars, but in what you're feeding into the system that you can't opt out of?

[Ben Jordan]

If, God forbid, your house gets robbed and your doorbell camera records it, is that actually going to result in you getting your things back and your window repair? Maybe instead of paying $200 a year for a cloud camera subscription, you could increase your homeowners or renters insurance to include replacement cost value.

[Beau Friedlander]

Okay, but maybe you feel like you need the camera. Maybe you run a business and your insurance costs are lower if you install them. There are options that don't require connecting to a cloud server. And you should think about that. It's a kind of a pain in the butt, but you should think about it. Plenty of cameras do encrypted video and can record directly onto a memory card. You don't even need to connect them to WI Fi. And there are no terms of service that come with that monthly or yearly subscription either, which is a bonus. But it is more cumbersome. To be fair,

[Jason Kebler]

consumers don't read the terms of service. And that is objectively true. There's been studies that show consumers don't read it. But, you know, why would you, first of all. And second of all, you can't alter these terms of service. You either have to agree to them or you don't get to use the product or own the product.

[Beau Friedlander]

Terms of service are not a contract between Equals. You didn't get to negotiate. You can't change them. Like Jason said, you either accept what they've decided for you or you don't get to use the product. And what they've decided can change at any time.

[Ben Jordan]

I actually, I had ring cameras around the house here and it was like part of that ecosystem. And I mean, I had been thinking about taking them down for a long time and I had taken a bunch down and I actually contacted Amazon's customer support and just sort of stuck with it for about an hour, just chatting with them and got a refund for $800 worth of ring cameras that some of which are like 2 years old. And they literally, I'm just going to like pile them in a box and return them. And it was because their terms of service changed and because of all that stuff. And I was just like, yeah, they're useless to me now, so I want my money back. And they're like, okay, we're going to make a one time exception. It's like, all right, well now.

[Beau Friedlander]

And if you're listening right now and you think like that's a one time exception, you're absolutely wrong. The fact is, if going to change their privacy policies. Let's say they sold it again. Let's say Flock bought ring at some later point from Amazon. You know, we, we would be looking at a situation where you would absolutely be able to say, I don't want these anymore. Yeah, take them back.

[Ben Jordan]

Absolutely.

[Beau Friedlander]

And they would have to take them. It's amazing the money you can find in the couch. When people, when it comes to tech and people doing cool things, you might not be able to do much about the camera on a pole outside your house, but so what can you do? There's one camera you for sure have control over. The one that you bought, the one you installed, the one you're paying a subscription every month to a company whose terms of service you didn't read and couldn't change anyway if you did. We were safe before our homes had cameras. Not perfectly safe. Nobody's ever been perfectly safe. But we've managed. And whatever that package was that got stolen off your porch, there's a decent chance that Amazon or whoever will just send you another one. That's how it works now. So before we talk about fighting the surveillance infrastructure you didn't choose, it's worth asking whether you want to start by dismantling the one you did. Take them down, see what happens. Probably nothing. And if you still feel like you need something, get a camera that Records, a memory card. Skip the cloud, skip the subscription. The footage is yours and it stays yours. Fill your front yard with geese. Geese are really good at this sort of thing. Anyway.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

You tell yourself no one wants your college era band tees, but on Depop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Depop, just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

[Beau Friedlander]

So if the first step is asking whether you actually need a camera on your home, home by your door, what's next? Here's one way to think about it. Privacy isn't binary. It's not something you either have or you don't. It's more like a surface area. Every camera, every social media post, every job listing, that's your LinkedIn. It's all surface area. You just made yourself a little more visible with each one of those things taking down your ring camera shrinks that surface area. You know, going online and having your, you know, having a company like delete me remove your personal data doesn't make you invisible, but it reduces that surface area. Invisible isn't really the goal. The goal is something simpler, like to not be watched by people who shouldn't be watching.

[Ben Jordan]

There's a funny, funny trivia is that Garrett Langley bought his home through a trust so he could hide his address.

[Beau Friedlander]

Gary Langley, the founder and CEO of Flock? Yeah. But now I have a friend who bought their house through a trust. And let's just say their name was Quigley Copper. Yeah, and old Quigley Copper called the llc. Quigley Copper llc. Didn't work? No.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Oh.

[Ben Jordan]

I mean, I know where Garrett Langley lives. Like, it still didn't work, but it. It. But I thought it was ironic that somebody who thinks that we're all safer when we. We know data about everybody and where they're all traveling and stuff like that went through such. Such great lengths to hide his. His address.

[Beau Friedlander]

The person selling surveillance to your police department didn't want to be surveilled, which tells you everything you need to know about who these systems are actually built for. And. And nowhere is that more clear than. Than in this little story. Something that happened in Mountain View, California.

[Ben Jordan]

On Friday, the city of Mountain View released a statement that multiple federal law enforcement agencies accessed data from one of Mountain View's ALPR cameras. Mountain View officials say this is a system failure on Flock Safety's part. But Saturday, Brian Hofer, executive director for Secure justice, says this is farthest from the truth.

[Beau Friedlander]

These features are not turned on by default. So when Mountain View says, oh, we don't have any idea how this happened, well, it's someone from your department turned it on and provided that access.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

That's the real story.

[Beau Friedlander]

In August of 2024, in Mountain View, California, the city launched a Flock safety pilot program. 30 brand new cameras. After a few months, someone ran a routine audit and buried in the results with something that shouldn't have been there. 29 of the 30 cameras had been opened up to outside agencies. This wasn't approved by the city of Mountain View. It wasn't approved by anyone. The city said they had no idea. A door was left open in a house and you thought it was locked. Look, maybe it was on purpose, maybe not. Maybe this was just a glitch or someone not setting it up right. Although a glitch like this probably should have been fixed before it was shipped, probably shouldn't have been possible. But for months, agencies Mountain View never authorized were looking through their cameras. What agencies? It's still not entirely clear. What did they do with what they saw? No idea. No one knows. That should bother you. And that's the thing that should keep us all up at night. It isn't a nation state hacker breaking a heavily guarded system. This is a system setting a default that got changed or maybe never even got correctly set in the first place, that was just broadcasting anyone who happened to be there. And somewhere someone was watching in a feed and they never were supposed to see in a city, in a population that they had no idea they were being watched. California even had a law that, that said this was illegal. It didn't matter.

[Ben Jordan]

California Senate Bill 34, a state law that restricts how automated license plate reader data can be shared, especially with out of state and federal agencies.

[Beau Friedlander]

This law is 10 years old. SB 34 went into effect January 1, 2016. So when we talk about who's watching and what they're going to do with that, we don't know. And that's not a bug if that's how the system was built.

[Ben Jordan]

You know, one thing that. Another thing to be scared about.

[Beau Friedlander]

Ben Jordan, again, that I've been thinking

[Ben Jordan]

about a lot this week is this week we. Well, my friend Jason Hunyar, he's basically a resident of Dunwoody, Georgia, and he's been pulling FOIA records For the last couple months and spending an arm and leg on it. And he had found out that Flock employees and the Dunwoody police officers, they've been watching cameras that aggregate to Flock through. You know, it's like a third party camera that aggregates their data to Flock,

[Beau Friedlander]

meaning you could get the benefit, I guess, benefit of all the. Of Flock's network and their AI services. But with a camera that Flock didn't sell you, maybe one that you've already installed.

[Ben Jordan]

Basically this Jewish community center was worried about anti Semitic attacks or something. So they agreed to share their stuff with Flock so the police would have access to it in case something happened. And then what ended up happening? They ended up having people or random employees from Flock just, you know, 60 year old dudes watching the gymnastics room of children, children's gymnastics room in a preschool center and stuff like that. And then police just randomly spending their days watching, watching the footage here. And I mean it's like things like that. It's like that's. That. That doesn't sound like safety to me at all. That sounds terrifying.

[Beau Friedlander]

Just to be clear, in case you had trouble following that, Flock doesn't just run their own cameras. They can also take footage from any third party camera security cameras at a business parking lot, a community center. If you own a store and you have a camera out front, Flock can connect to that. Now Flock Safety says in their contract that only authorized users can access that footage. Not even Flock Safety employees can.

[Ben Jordan]

Bob Carter searched The Flock database 63 times last year for all sorts of things like person on skateboard or yellow truck. But the problem is Bob isn't a Dunwoody police officer. He's not a police officer at all. He's Flock's VP of business development and also a registered lobbyist. Also, according to public records, on September 30th of last year, this same Flock Safety employee logged on and accessed a camera in the gymnastics room of the MJCC in Dunwoody. And as it would turn out, Bob is not the only Flock employee that accessed these gyms cameras. Randy Gluck is also in the audit accessing these cameras on three separate occasions, on three separate days between Flock employees, police officers, and names that I can't trace back to either organization. You can see the combined hours of these people watching strangers and children through this facility's cameras, including, but certainly not limited to the pool, the fit line studio and the preschool daycare areas.

[Beau Friedlander]

The fact that these systems are being marketed as law enforcement, but are in fact private sector projects where if it were government, there, there would probably be more oversight over how they were used and who has access. And, and we're now in an ecosystem where there's. There's no oversight because, I mean, they're not even using software that protects the. The machinery.

[Ben Jordan]

At the very least, it would be less of a waste of money. Right? Like. Like, if the government was spying on people directly, they wouldn't be paying, you know, billions of dollars to data brokers that stay in business through that. But I mean, that's like, that's literally the worst case scenario by do it by doing it directly through the government, not through third parties. And obviously, it can only get better there with like, regulation and things like

[Beau Friedlander]

that, which leads us to the next thing that we can at least push for, which is regulation.

[Ben Jordan]

It's to the point where, like, with this flock thing, people will reach out and say, hey, this senator wants to speak to you. And at this point, I'm just kind of like, I don't. I can't really make it happen, like, just because I know how it's going to. And I know that even if they. I manage to motivate them and even if they just repeat flock stuff to me over and over again and I manage to, like, get them on the other side of it, what are they going to do? Write a bill and pass it? Because that's crazy talk in 2026.

[Beau Friedlander]

Well, what do they say about the USDA angle? What do they say about that?

[Ben Jordan]

Right? Yeah, it's just, I mean, I'm sure

[Beau Friedlander]

you said that to senators. What's the response when you say you wouldn't allow the local butcher to do this?

[Ben Jordan]

But, you know, it's like, it's almost as if you, like, go into McDonald's and the person working at the front that's taking your order and you're like, hey, if you use a little bit less salt in your burger recipe, you will make this much more money and less people will get food poisoning. I figured this out. I have all the paperwork here. They're going to say, okay, I'll talk to my assistant manager about it. It'll never get to the top, you know, like, it's just one of those things.

[Beau Friedlander]

Brutal.

[Ben Jordan]

But, like, that's sort of where we're at right now with politics. Because, like, what I mean, okay, great example. I'm supposed to be in D.C. and I was going to go to New York and D.C. and in D.C. i was going to meet with a bunch of different senators and. Or just general people in Congress Talking about this very thing and about passing this law and things that, you know, remediation strategies for, like how we could do this and you know, needs to happen on a local level and a state level and yada yada yada. And for the second time, the government shut down and everything is being postponed. And so it's just like, okay, this is a matter of national security that's been shut down twice because like, you know, because of how ineffective our government is right now.

[Beau Friedlander]

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[Nathan Fried Wessler]

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[Beau Friedlander]

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[Ben Jordan]

We're gonna take this city back over

[Beau Friedlander]

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[Ben Jordan]

It's time we started hunting them.

[Beau Friedlander]

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[Ben Jordan]

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[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the most straightforward way is just to bypass the courts and Congress just has to fix our data privacy laws.

[Beau Friedlander]

This is Nathan Fried Wessler.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Congress could tomorrow and there have been very serious proposals to do two different things, each of which would address this problem.

[Beau Friedlander]

Nathan Fried Wessler is a deputy director with the ACLU Speech Privacy and Technology Project, where he focuses on litigation and advocacy around surveillance and privacy issues, including government searches of electronic devices, requests for sensitive data held by third parties, yada yada yada. Here's what you want to know about Nate as he argued the Carpenter vs United States case that has changed the way that tech and the fourth Amendment interact for hopefully ever.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

One is just general consumer data privacy legislation to dry up the abusive data broker market that's gathering and monetizing incredible volumes of information about us. It's location records, but it's also our purchasing records from online and retail establishments. It's our browsing history. It's everything. And it just creates this incredible detailed look, an encyclopedia about every one of us, the then is for sale. One of the buyers for that is law enforcement. But there are lots of commercial buyers. And then of course, there are hackers, there are extortionists. There are lots of reasons to worry about that. So that's one thing Congress should do. The other thing is a piece of legislation called the fourth Amendment is not for Sale act that has very strong bipartisan support. In fact, it passed the House in the last Congress passed it with more votes from Republican members than from Democratic members. Republicans were more unified in support than Democrats were. And this would just close the loophole for law enforcement. It would say police cannot pay money to get location data or other sensitive records that they otherwise, outside of the state of broker market, would have needed a warrant for. It's a really easy fix and one that Congress can just pass anytime now.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yeah, now there's the rub. Congress can pass this law. Now, I don't want to get into the politics of why a law like that wouldn't be passed any more than I want to talk about the CFPB right now. But it is a hot potato. Shouldn't be, but it is. And it's because there's money on the table. And the money that's on the table is being protected by who you all know who you are. If you're listening, I doubt you are listening because I doubt you care very much about privacy if I'm talking about you in such a pejorative way. But here's the deal. Flock safety comes to mind and ring now with its social searching, like, let's go find the dog dog or you know, the person who we don't want in our home, you know, our HOA or whatever. So this law sounds like it's kind of tailor made for the problem that is flock safety. But the problem is we live in a country where you're very busy because there's so many things wrong with privacy and surveillance in this country. There just needs to be somebody slap in the hand that's grabbing all this dough attached to all this data, and it hasn't happened. There is no CFPB for privacy and surveillance and those issues in the United States. Do you foresee anything like that happening? I know there's legislation to try and make something like that happen, but what's your. What's your take? Because you're in the middle of it.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Yeah, I mean, I think right now, state governments are maybe the best hope. Right. There are, you know, a small number of state attorneys general who are actually taking some of these Questions very seriously. There are a small number of states where legislatures have passed consumer data privacy legislation that has some teeth. None of them have gotten as far as we would want, but there are some good faith efforts. And I think over time, you know, maybe in a few years, we could see the Federal Trade Commission reinvigorated. And really, you know, there were some important enforcement actions that it took. Over the last decade, much of that has dried up, but it could come back pretty quickly in a new administration. And none of those are going to fix everything at once, but we need to kind of COVID the field, and those can make a difference. This current presidential administration with ICE and cbp, Department of Homeland Security, that's really just running wild. We have to think really critically about who are the entities that can help protect us. And the tech companies actually have a really important. One of the issues I work a lot on these days are abusive administrative subpoenas by ICE to the tech companies trying to get information about people who are just posting stuff online on social media, critical of these incredibly abusive immigration raids and other enforcement actions that are happening.

[Beau Friedlander]

What's actually happening there.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

So people are posting online, often under social media handles, and saying ICE is bad or something. ICE is bad. Or posting a photo of ICE brutalizing someone or ripping them out of their car out in the open in a neighborhood.

[Beau Friedlander]

A murder.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

That's right. And then you have ICE sending subpoenas to the tech companies to try to get the information about who that poster is. They're using just a handle, some social media handle, trying to get their names.

[Beau Friedlander]

That sounds very messy. That sounds not just illegal, but that sounds terrifying.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

It's terrifying. It's a violation of the First Amendment. It's actually statutorily illegal. And what we really need is the tech companies to stand up as strongly as they can, scrutinize those requests, push back on them, go to court and protect us.

[Beau Friedlander]

Are they.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Are they. They are starting to do better, but they're missing a lot of them. They're not. You know, I think they're pushing back in quiet ways. Sometimes they're providing notice to people sometimes that these subpoenas have come. But there's more they could do to be out front because they're the ones who know about it. They have to. They have to protect us. We often can't protect ourselves.

[Beau Friedlander]

So that's something that I find frightening, Nate, which is that you just said that companies like Meta and X and TikTok have to protect us. I don't think they feel that way.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

You know their motive is to make money. Now, hopefully they understand that they're going to lose customers if their privacy practices are bad enough and get enough coverage. So I think they have some incentives in the other direction. But it's not a good place where we have to rely on them to be the watchers. We really need stronger, stronger laws and state legislatures and Congress and cities need to step in and set strong, durable rules and to keep them updated to protect all of us.

[Beau Friedlander]

Here's where we started. Cameras went up and people felt safer. Not because the data said they should, just a feeling. But feelings aren't facts, they aren't policy, and they're certainly not law. Dollree Mapp had a feeling too. She felt like she should call her lawyer, that she had rights and that they meant something. And she was right. The question now is whether we believe that, whether the feeling of safety is worth what we're trading for it. Because what we're trading for it is the thing itself. So what does that leave us with?

[Ben Jordan]

One thing that I really like about my platform and one thing that I'm trying to really push more is that you can still fight back with technology. Like the stu stuff that like Flock has access to or the stuff that the police have access to is not exclusive to them. And a lot of times when we think of like government power and military tech and stuff, we imagine this, like, almost like, you know, action movie esque type James Bond world where it's like, no, like, it's not that advanced. Like, most of the stuff is insecure or most of this stuff you can build something to, to, I guess, help preserve your privacy and you can take these extra measures. But it needs to be more accessible so my mom can do it. Like, it needs to be more accessible so somebody who, you know, isn't comfortable sideloading apps or something like that can use this stuff. And especially when it comes to things like ice, especially when it comes to things like IMSI catchers, like, all this stuff is you can defend yourself against it. And I really like the idea of trying to motivate people to keep digging in that direction. And I think SEO one thing, like, I was really bummed out by it at first because it does, like, suppress my video. It definitely suppresses John Gaines research. Like, I, I didn't know about John's work until I was. Well, like, he reached out to me on Instagram because, like, he couldn't get in touch with me. Like, you know, just through like some

[Beau Friedlander]

other network that's gainsec.

[Ben Jordan]

Yeah.

[Beau Friedlander]

For those of you who are in that world. He doesn't, he doesn't pop up at all, I think for quite a while.

[Ben Jordan]

And he. So if you search, is it any different?

[Beau Friedlander]

I haven't checked because some of those are, I think like DuckDuckGo.

[Ben Jordan]

DuckDuckGo.

[Beau Friedlander]

You can find him, but it's powered by Bing. That's part of why. And they have different. It's different search, but it's definitely better.

[Ben Jordan]

One positive thing that Flock Safety has done for me is fully convinced me to stop using Google. Which is like, kind of funny. Like, just because I found out how bad it was and I was like, this it, like, and I'm, this is, I'm not using hyperbole here. Like, if you search Flock Safety, security, vulnerability, Flock safety, ice, anything like that on Google and look at it, you will fully realize how utterly useless Google is at what it's supposed to be doing.

[Beau Friedlander]

Like, but you will find you on YouTube and they do.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

On that.

[Ben Jordan]

Yes. Yeah. They, they, they can't, they can't really. I'm making Google too much money too.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yeah.

[Ben Jordan]

For them to. That's a whole new level. But yeah, I mean, it's actually ridiculous. Like you could go pages in before seeing any sort of like legitimate journalism that is, you know, usually by a major source or by a well respected source.

[Beau Friedlander]

Well, let me ask, did you know that? And do you think that there's any. Is that just an algorithmic thing or is there suppression happening on Google?

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

I mean, look, I'm gonna say, like, if you were to ask me about what happened to my last job, I'm not gonna speculate.

[Beau Friedlander]

This is Gainsec again. He's part of the story in a unique way because he spent months researching the vulnerabilities of Floch and He documented over 50 of them. And then, and then he tried to report them back to Flock to let them know, like, hey, something's up. Sent his findings to the government to be like, maybe you should look into this. And then he was let go from his job.

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

The timing is suspicious. You know, it's in the same sense that, you know, if you look at the three PR statements they put out about my research, like, you know, we've been working together, but I didn't know that.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

So.

[Beau Friedlander]

Wow, that actually says it all. Thankfully, as more and more have been reporting this, this is not so much the case anymore. But that doesn't mean the underlying problem got fixed. I mean, it sounds, it sounds sort of like years and years ago. I'm guessing it was more than 10 years ago, when all those CCTVs were found, you know, like, there was. You could go to websites where there are thousands and thousands and thousands of feeds and people who used the default password like, this sounds like a. It sounds like nothing's changed. You know, maybe it's become a little harder, but that we're still there. Are we still there?

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

So to answer, you like, to. I think, to drill down your question, like, was there an expectation of privacy? Like, I think that would be a hard argument. You know, when these camera feeds ended up. Right. Except exposed, it's like, you know, you can have the understanding that you're building this to be internal, but like everything else on the Internet.

[Ben Jordan]

Right.

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

You need to assume that, like, it. Eventually it'll end up there. So.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yeah. And if you're law enforcement, you have to assume that with, like, a bag of chips.

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

Yeah. I think. I mean, I'm kind of past the point of. In the. In the. In the realm of security to, like, expect more from anything. But I really thought that, like, okay, this round of, you know, research, like, people are going to care.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Okay.

[John Gaines (Gainsec)]

What. What point. What needs to happen before you say it's not okay. You know,

[Beau Friedlander]

Is Flock safety right now creating a structural workaround for the Fourth Amendment in the United States?

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Yeah, I think it's tremendously dangerous. Yes, it is.

[Beau Friedlander]

This is Nate Wessler again from the aclu.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

There's litigation about this right now in the federal courts and state courts under the Fourth amendment or state constitutions about what you do with a company that's putting a whole bunch of location trackers. Right. These license plate reader cameras scattered around our cities. And then the really pernicious thing is feeding all that location data into giant databases. Right. That Flock is. Is, you know, the most controversial of these companies. But it's not the only one. There are other.

[Beau Friedlander]

No, no. There's a whole.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yep.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Drn. That are doing similar things. And these databases have billions and billions of plate reads. Right. And by plate reads, I mean geotagged records of where every car that goes past any of these cameras is and the time it's there.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yep.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

And it doesn't take too many cameras around a city to then create a durable record of where we're going and when. And not just a particular person who's suspected of a crime, but all of us. Right. It's then this record just sitting there, ripe for the picking, and that's. That's dangerous. And we've seen. Around Flock in particular, we've seen that, you know, despite Flock saying that it won't sign a contract directly with ICE for immigration enforcement. We've seen tons of audit logs now showing ICE agents just asking their buddies and local police forces to run searches for them. We've seen records showing that police in Texas were tracking a woman who went to Illinois for an abortion, a Texas resident, using these license plate reader cameras. These cameras. You know, one of the things about Flock and some of the other systems that is so dangerous, it's not just localized tracking. The profit motive, the profit model of these companies is to create a nationwide database that they can sell access to, right? So it might be that police in, say, Norfolk, Virginia, you know, have 140 or 180 of these cameras around their own city. But the database they get access to isn't just the Norfolk cameras, it's cameras nationwide. And so they could track a car starting in Virginia as it winds its way across the country, or they could just look and see, oh, what's going on in Illinois right now. We want to know what cars are doing there, what this particular person was doing in this time period. And it's literally just at the click of a button. Unless courts can step in and say, no, no, the Fourth Amendment applies here, too, because this location record is so sensitive.

[Beau Friedlander]

Well, the insanity of this is the Fourth amendment does apply here. It's obvious. It is obvious that I have the expectation of privacy going to the supermarket, because if I don't, then this is kind of like Covid. But the whole world has turned into quarantine. Like, there's no place. There's no place to be in the world where you are literally not known and not tracked. Now, we already know we're carrying a tracking device in our pockets. Most of us, right now, unless you have very specific hygiene habits. Like, look at me. Do I look normal? No. Okay, I know that, but whatever. I got this phone right? Do you know I turn it off all the time when I'm going places for a reason? Because I just want to pollute their data, and I turn it on when I need it. And I. And I think that that's something that people don't realize. Like, that seems a little extreme. It's not extreme at all. I mean, tell me what. What extreme looks like to you. I mean, is it. Is my behavior of trying to evade it, which is not working? I'm not using meshtastic to, you know, communicate all the time. Is that extreme, or is what Flock Safety and its cohort of companies are doing with license plate readers extreme? Which one is the extreme?

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Yeah, I mean, your question, you know, your question to me, answers itself. Of course. These companies are the extreme ones. And, you know, we. I think it's really critical just to say that we shouldn't be living in a society where every individual has to figure out if they can help themselves to maintain privacy because these digital systems aren't designed to let us do that. Right. These surveillance systems are designed actually to force us into surveillance. So, yes, smartphones have some features that can help. I turn location services off on my phone unless I'm actively using a map or some other app where I literally right now need to know my GPS location. So there's just less chance of apps, random apps, monetizing my information most of the time. That's great. It's not hard to do, but I have to remember to do it. And it's not something that automatically will turn on and off. And that's actually a lot to ask of people who are busy. We all have a lot on our minds. We all have a bunch of tech. What we really need are legal solutions. We need legal rules that cut off avenues for abuse. So things like court saying that, as you said, of course, pervasive vehicle tracking by this network of private cameras operated by police is a Fourth amendment search. And at the very least, if you're going to have these cameras dumping into a database, police shouldn't be able to go into that database unless they've gone to a judge and gotten a warrant first.

[Beau Friedlander]

If you're interested in this. This area, I want you to go and subscribe to Ben Jordan's YouTube channel and check out his work on flock safety. And also really, really important, go to 404 Media and subscribe. They've been covering this beat. They've no rival in journalism right now when it comes to this topic. So go check out 404 Media, check out Ben Jordan and subscribe. Do your homework. The more you learn, the more you will want to do something about this. So now it's time for the Tinfoil Swan, our paranoid takeaway to keep you safe on and offline. This week's Tinfoil Swan. You've just been listening to it for however long this episode is. You know, if you are concerned about these cameras, write to your lawmakers and talk to them. I mean, Ron Wyden and Rand Paul, who we're going to be talking to on this show, put forward an act. The Fourth amendment is not for sale act. It could change things. While you're waiting for that to happen, I want you to do something simpler. I want you to, if you're using any surveillance around your house, I want you to try and take it offline. Don't let it feed into the cloud. Look at what you're sharing and to whom and, and take some agency over it if you feel like. Listen, if you are on. There's, there's sides here, right? Privacy, not privacy, sides. If you, you don't believe in the fourth Amendment anymore, or if you think that's a carve out in the Constitution, that's your right, I guess. But as long as it's the law of the land, I do suggest turning off the features that are in conflict with the law of the land. And that's it. Stay safe out there. Be smart, be a privacy protector when you can, and we'll talk to you next week. This episode of what the Hack was produced by me and Andrew Stephen, who also did the editing. Our theme music is by Andrew Steven. If you think you heard Ben Jordan's music in the mix, you're right. There's some other stuff, but there's some Ben Jordan too. Check him out on Bandcamp or wherever you get your stuff. What? The Hack is a production of Delete Me, which was picked by the New York Times Wirecutter as the number one personal information removal service. You should be using it already. If you're not and you want to, well, you can. Here's what to do. Go to joindeleteme.com wth that's joindeleteme.com WTH and get 20% off. I kid you not. 20%. 20% off. That's joindeleteme.Com WTH now. Stay safe out there. Sierra.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Have you ever asked yourself, can the

[Ben Jordan]

president really do that? Or wondered if there was too much money in political campaigns?

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Then check out the new season of

[Ben Jordan]

you Might Be right, hosted by us former Tennessee governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. We're back for a brand new season now, and you Might Be Right cements the idea that construction disagreement can lead

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

to real problem solving.

[Ben Jordan]

This season we're going to dig into the role of National Guard AI regulation and a lot more.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

New episodes drop every other week.

[Ben Jordan]

Follow you Might Be Right.

[Nathan Fried Wessler]

Wherever you get your podcasts, we all

[Beau Friedlander]

need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to the longstanding advice show and Ambie Award nominated Best personal growth podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. Who?

[Ben Jordan]

Me, Mike Pesca.

[Beau Friedlander]

Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from a world class expert. You know, someone who actually very much

[Ben Jordan]

knows what they're talking about.

[Beau Friedlander]

Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silences. You've got questions, we'll find the experts and the answers, so follow how to with Mike Pesca wherever you get podcasts.