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May 2, 2026
The Flock Surveillance Problem Nobody's Talking About
The Flock Surveillance Problem Nobody's Talking About
00:00
18:14
Transcript
0:00
There are men in dark rooms with no windows, wall full of video screens, watching your children without your knowledge, spying on them in areas that they thought were private and free of surveillance.
0:13
And the worst part is, while Flock, a private company, is enabling this, the government is allowing it.
0:19
A city in Georgia found out that Flock, the private surveillance company that's being installed in most major American cities, was spying on some places that you would have thought were sensitive, including a children's gymnastics room, a Jewish community center, a school, a playground, and perhaps most disturbingly, a pool that children frequented.
0:43
Now, they didn't just have access to these. They were actively using these live feeds of children in these areas for sales demonstrations.
0:52
And so what did this city in Georgia do when they found out that this private company is not only spying on children in sensitive places, it's using these live feeds for sales demos? Well, they canceled it, right?
1:05
Absolutely not. The government said, "Go ahead and put it on my tab. Ring me up for another one. We're gonna renew that contract with you."
1:12
The disturbing part about this, yes, is that Flock has access to these private spaces. They have their cameras in areas where they can watch your children without your consent.
1:21
That's not the most disturbing thing, though. The most disturbing thing is that the government knew of this, and then they allowed it, then paid Flock more money to continue doing it.
1:31
Dunwoody, Georgia, has one of the most dystopian things I've ever heard of. I thought it was actually a fictitious name. It's called the Real Time Crime Center, powered by Flock Safety.
1:43
And the center isn't just license plate readers, although that's bad enough and creepy enough in my opinion. It is full-scale multi-sensor fusion and operating picture awareness of what is going on inside of the city.
1:58
We're talking cameras everywhere you could imagine, call geolocation, Flock-sponsored 911 where it decomps using AI those 911 call transcripts into information, body-worn cameras plugged into this control matrix in real time, and even gunshot monitoring.
2:17
Now, this is, of course, giga dystopia to have this going on.
2:21
But what really takes us over the line to another level of craziness you thought would be just impossible for people to do to a local community, they're also using privately owned cameras.
2:33
So while Flock is installing a lot of their own camera infrastructure in this community, that's visible. There's a lot of protest groups.
2:40
I know there's one in my own state of Arizona up in Flagstaff, where people protested Flock so much it seems like they've had success getting them out of the city. It's a huge win for citizen privacy, human dignity even.
2:53
But Flock's system can include cameras from private networks, businesses, schools, community centers, and yes, children's swimming pools.
3:02
The reason we know about any of this is because someone who I consider from this story to be a patriot, Jason Hunyor, a local citizen in the community, filed an application for public records disclosure, and it was from the documents that this disclosure came back with that he discovered Flock had been in the access logs for a lot more cameras than just their own.
3:23
Now, of course, Flock representatives went on full-on damage control mode when this story broke, when the information became public, and they said, "Oh, no, no, no, no. It's not what you think.
3:32
They're part of an authorized demo program. And furthermore, only some of our engineers have some access to those systems. But the city signed off on it. It's totally fine. It's part of an access program."
3:44
So it's interesting they didn't try to frame this as a hack or something going amiss. They said, "Actually, we're, we are doing that, and what are you gonna do to stop us?"
3:53
And it really makes you wonder, once a city becomes a mechanism by which you're selling something, it's kind of like it becomes a used car store. It's almost like a showroom floor at that point.
4:04
The citizens are just dots in the system that you're using to advertise your control grid to other cities. It's very, very strange. Now, Flock has explicitly come out and said, "Hey, nobody is spying on children.
4:17
You're really blowing it out of proportion." But am I?
4:21
Are any of the journalists blowing this out of proportion when for a demo, engineers that we don't know, we don't know their names, we don't know who these engineers are, they are observing children secretly?
4:34
It seems pretty creepy to me, and I don't think that that's creepy in some conspiracy theorist, right-wing nutjob way. I have a four-year-old.
4:42
I would feel, feel pretty weird, like yeah, I mean, I understand if I go out of the house, incidentally, she's gonna be picked up on security cameras. We're not total tinfoil hat parents.
4:51
We're still gonna go to Walmart, and we're gonna be on the security cameras, okay? We're not wearing, like, facial disruption masks or anything like that.
5:01
But I do kind of have this general assumption that when we go to a store like that, when my daughter is picked up on those cameras, that there's not just gonna be a creepy guy in a room maybe thousands of miles away just watching it over and over again with unlimited access to it.
5:15
You just assume that these videos are mostly being taken for automated analysis, which is dark, but it is what it is,
5:23
or somebody's gonna go back and look at them if a crime took place, which genuinely has been fairly helpful, I would say. But Flock says, "No, nobody... It's unjustified. It's unjustified."
5:34
I still find it creepy, though.
5:35
That's my personal opinion is I find that, that it's, it's pretty creepy, and it's not only, like, a random guy who we have no idea who this dude is, you know, the, an engineer that has access to this, his background.
5:46
You know, does he, does he have, like, a, you know, a bit of a background? Is he maybe on a registry? Like, are they even checking for these things? Kinda makes you concerned as a parent.
5:57
So it's not only that, but it's on top of that, they're being used to u- they're, they're b- using the video as a sales tool, as a sales tool.
6:04
So your child is nowYour child is now being demoed as part of this sales tool. I'm very uncomfortable with it.
6:11
I want to read you a couple of quotes from Flock's public information that they have out there, their public-facing materials. They say, quote, "Flock customers own their data.
6:21
Flock will not share, sell, or access your data." And quote, "Nobody from Flock Safety is accessing or monitoring your footage." What were they doing for sales demo- the demos?
6:31
They were accessing it, they were monitoring it, and in essence, they are selling it.
6:36
Even though they're not selling, hopefully, a video recording of children in a pool, they are accessing it and they're using it for sales. That kind of seems like selling your data to me.
6:46
And the response is, uh, you know, predictable. The CEO apologized to the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, calling the choice to use MJCCA cameras, quote, "poor judgment."
6:58
Uh, he did not comment on observing children on a playground or in a pool, but he did apologize to the Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. So again, I want to be clear.
7:09
While Flock maybe went against some of its public materials, none of this was against the rules, and the government did nothing to protect their people.
7:17
They actually enabled this, which is the most horrific, dark part of this story in my estimation. So those are the facts. We always cover those first on the channel.
7:24
There are your facts of what went on, your quotes, your data points. Let's get into what this actually means, though, because that's why you're here watching the show.
7:33
This is a perfect topic to finish up our weekly power law theme of touch.
7:39
You'll recall that from our Monday's video, that the power law underlying all of our stories this week are touch, that the tech elites can touch you. And yes, I mean that in a creepy way.
7:49
That's why I chose to use the word touch, is it is creepy, but you cannot touch them. You cannot touch them back. They can touch you, though.
7:57
And how they're touching you here is a lot of people are gonna get hung up on the cameras, and yes, that is the ubiquitous symbol of the surveillance state, is the security camera.
8:06
The Flock cameras are just the latest version of that. But the true symbol, if we really look through this, it's not the camera, it's the network.
8:16
The network is what enables touch and allows them to sell touch to other people. It's the network of those things. And I'll tell you why that's the more sinister thing than the camera.
8:25
The camera sees, observes, but it's relatively impartial. You can use a camera. I'm using a camera to film myself right now. I've consented to filming myself. I've set this camera up, and it's filming me.
8:36
Uh, it's doing, uh, positive by getting my message out to more people than just in the local community. So camera does not have an agenda.
8:44
But a network, on the other hand, a network that brings these cameras together in a way that enables domestic spying,
8:51
domestic spying, because that's what it is, and general creepiness under the guise of security, that is the much more sinister thing, and let me explain to you why, is once you build that system, once you monetize that system, the system has a life of its own, and what the system wants are more sensors.
9:08
It wants to feel more, it wants to see more, it wants to hear more. It wants more microphones around the city. It wants more cameras. And so the system is the true nefarious cancer at the core of this thing.
9:20
It's not, it's not the cameras, it's not the sensors. The sensors are a downstream effect of the system, and the system is monetized to touch you so that you cannot touch the tech elite back.
9:30
The other insight here proves out a theory that I've had for a very long time. I've been talking about this for upwards of 10 years now. I mention it extensively in my PhD dissertation. Nobody would take it seriously.
9:41
The idea was too soon, and it's unfortunately in a dark manifestation that I now have a couple of things to talk about where this is actually happening.
9:49
And the phenomenon is, is that if you work with a computer for long enough, you will begin to think like the computer. If you work with a computer long enough, you will begin to think like the computer.
10:00
That's exactly what's happening here, and we're starting to see these two worlds butt up against each other, the world of the technocrats and the world of the ordinary people, the humans.
10:10
Consider a children's gymnastics room. Most people, and if you're not a parent, try to imagine that you're a parent. You have a kid, and they're in this gymnastics room.
10:19
Any sane parent that is not totally fried and distorted by the current computing system that's in place would say that it crosses a boundary to film children in that room.
10:32
It crosses a boundary to film children in that room where they have a reasonable expectation that they are private and safe. It breaks a boundary. What boundary is that? It's an emotional boundary, right?
10:44
It's a practical boundary on some levels, but it's an emotional boundary also. I get mad thinking about it.
10:49
It's this, like, essential human right that we have some right to our privacy, especially children, blameless children. And the response from Flock is telling here, because they don't register the emotional
11:02
effect of that, the emotional boundary or the societal boundary even. They register a binary. They say, "Is this against the rules?" Like an if statement. "If not, then we're okay.
11:14
If so, then we need to modify our approach." And so their entire response to this has been that, "This is not against our partner agreement. It's not against our partner agreement, so we're gonna continue to do it.
11:25
And we'll issue some statement to try to smooth things over from our PR team, but it's not against our partner agreement, and we run on rules because we work with a computer all day, so everything is a binary if or else statement."
11:36
I mean, you, you'll notice in the CEO's statement, right? He apologizes to the Jewish Community Center because of everything that's going on in the Middle East right now, right? That's a hot topic.
11:45
You can't look like you're singling out Jewish people on anything, so he had to make the apology there. He didn't apologize for the children's gymnastics room because it's in the service agreement.
11:55
It's not a protected class anymore in America, the children. So you're just allowed to reach out and touch them. There was a real outpour of justified rage from the people within the community of Dunwoody, Georgia.
12:08
They went to the city council meeting and talked for about three hours about this, and their concerns are, uh, e- d- even, I don't care where you land on the political spectrum, you gotta respect people's privacy.And, and I cer- I certainly do.
12:22
They were concerned about Flock. Obviously, they were concerned about ICE.
12:26
They were concerned about targeting women and men, I suppose, who had made abortion-related searches, stalking, protest observation, and tracking people who were at the protests. All of these are very real issues.
12:37
And again, whichever side of the political spectrum you land on, even if you view some of these stances as, you know, "These people are my opponents," you gotta respect their right to privacy.
12:47
Because if you don't, they won't respect yours, and we deserve that equal right no matter what we think in this country. And so what did the mayor do? The mayor said she was concerned and angry. Words are cheap.
12:59
They don't mean anything. It's the actions. She was concerned and angry,
13:06
and she said that she apologized to the Jewish Community Center, not, not to the children, but to the Jewish Community Center, just like the CEO following suit there. She said, "Okay.
13:16
Well, we won't use Don Woody for sales marketing anymore. We won't let them use it for sales marketing." But she said, "I have no interest in ending the contract, so we're gonna re- go ahead and renew it.
13:27
We're gonna keep with Flock." So at the end of the day, no real action taken other than just some lip service to quell the people, to make them feel like their concerns had been heard, but then no action on that anger.
13:38
Nobody's asking the first principle's question, "Should this machine exist?" They were asking, "Can we just tweak some of the parameters so it can continue to exist?" Because it's a presupposition that it must exist.
13:49
We must hold onto the surveillance grid. Why is that, do you think? What happened when she was pressed on that? What happened when she was pressed on that? Well, Hunyor did exactly that.
14:00
I mean, a- absolute patriot, this guy. He kept pressing on it. He kept pressing on it. "Why are these cameras in private places? Why are these cameras in private places, specifically at the Jewish Community Center?"
14:10
She repeatedly said that it was irresponsible to reveal details about which cameras were active in the Jewish Community Center. So, like, where are these cameras? Like, how bad is this?
14:19
What exactly are they covering up with this? Even worse and less coherent, she argued that especially given security concerns facing Jewish institutions, publicizing the precautions could help bad actors.
14:33
What about the playground and the pool and the children's rec center? Like, what, what about those people? Those are surely protected populations, too.
14:45
And this is exactly what I want to hit on, is this is such a common technique that I've been seeing in tech and in media lately, and it's always, always, always to achieve more control over something.
14:55
It's always to get more control, and that technique is exactly the following: You find the hottest marginalized population right now,
15:04
whatever that is, whoever's dominating the media cycles, whoever you can pull on the heartstrings
15:09
the most by invoking, and then you come up with a new system that's creepy, that oppresses people, that surveils people to a new level.
15:17
And since the people are operating emotionally, you go on that emotional offensive, and what you do is you say, "Look, XYZ marginalized population, you know how bad they have it because it's in XYZ news stories this news cycle.
15:31
We have to protect them, and it's a one-off. It's a one-off. You know, it's extenuating circumstances. We know they're under a lot of pressure and scrutiny right now. We need to protect whatever this group is.
15:42
It doesn't matter whichever this group is because bad things are happening to them. And so we need...
15:48
We usually would not breach that societal contract where we would access these hidden private cameras and use them for sales. But due to extenuating circumstances, we're gonna have to do it."
15:58
It's the same justification that they used to pass the Patriot Act. This is the same playbook over and over again, and people, God love them, keep falling for it. We cannot fall for this anymore.
16:12
We're seeing the same exact thing happen. Paradoxically, you know, not a big deal was made out of the children here from the mayor, and not a huge apology given from her or the CEO, spying on children.
16:23
Paradoxically, children are, you know, are one of those groups you can tug at the heartstrings with. And so what are we seeing for age verification in systems
16:31
like in social media with all of the, you know, social media bans going on across the world? We're seeing now mandatory age and identity f- identity verification for using these apps.
16:40
The reason that they're all using this is to protect the children. So I'm not singling out a specific group here.
16:47
It's like whichever group, age group, racial group, whatever gender is, is currently, like, exploitable for those emotional points. They'll come in.
16:57
They'll say, "What technology do we need to push, and how do we link that to the emotional argument of pro- protecting this group of people that, uh, folks are feeling a lot of sympathy for today because of today's news cycle?"
17:09
They're leeches that do this. And like I said, it's the exact same logic and technique that was used to pass the Patriot Act.
17:16
This is used over and over again, and it always results in a diminishment of our privacy, and it is never temporary. The final question I have on our topic of touch this week, our tech power law of touch.
17:28
They can touch you. They can touch your children. You cannot touch them or even know who they are. Is who watches the watchmen? Who is auditing the logs when they access these cameras?
17:39
What are the criteria that an engineer needs to meet to be able to access these cameras? How long can they store and use the footage? Can they exfiltrate it? Is anybody asking these questions?
17:50
And if so, the American people deserve to know. Flock should be public about this.
17:56
When they are allowing people, random people, to the best of our knowledge, because they haven't told us otherwise, to handle your data, we should know the names of those people, and we should know the addresses of those people, we should know their background, and we should know the vetting process.
18:11
But it looks like some clouds are gathering, and it's starting to rain.
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