Future Implications and Final Thoughts

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now. or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. uction of IieHarb radium Hello. What are you doing? Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. My name is Noel. They call me Ben up We I'm just letting you check out the sick hat folks. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee, Pal Fake and most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. This episode has been a long time coming. Let's start this way. Guys, when's the last time you the camera at your local stoplight. You know, I think I just stopped looking a long time ago. I just that that assumption of that assumption of non surveillance evaporated for me long ago. I'm not saying it's good thing or a bad thing. It just is. But it's a real thing It's a real thing sure. But yeah, I just assume they're everywhere. like You know, getting these Rbo tickets in the mail, that's not fun, but I like w I always feel like The traffics cl. I was out in the world. I guess I did it to myself, guys. you know. It's crazy how far we've come since we started the show when we were in awe at the city of London and the number of CCTV cameras that were up around that city. And how was it was newsworthy to talk about how many cameras were in that one town, right?lot points and British murder mysteries. We were very worried Oh yeah. Well, then now if you drive around here in the suburbs where I am guys, every single intersection, every single school zone, every single business, like a parking lot where there are several businesses together, like there's a big mall near here It is insane. And I think remember Ben, you remember when we did that thing a long time ago where we asked people to count the number of advertisements they saw Yes, the dangerous game Let's do it again, but with camera cameras Yeah. I mean, that's another question too, guys. like we come from Atlanta traraffic, which is somewhat legendary on the internet. And one thing that you might talk about with your buddies in our Fair metetropolis is how close you will push a yellow light before it turns red, right? You might be somebody like my girlfriend who always does a little kiss to the ceiling. when she pushes a yellow, but if you Have you guys ever made a slight traffic error and then thanked your stars and guardters that the cops weren't around to see you? I mean, I love the points that we're making already here because like you said, Noel, if we live in a large city, we have almost certainly been surveilled in some way or another in a way that doesn't require a warrant. So take that Fourth Amendment. We talked about companies like Shot Spotter in the past and their murky involvement with taxpayer supported law enforcement and how they spy on you Check out that episode. Yeah. And shots spot are just a reminder, R if you don't remember that one in particular, instead of cameras, it's microphones that are constantly listening and attempting to do things like differentiate between fireworks, a car crash, and an assault. Crazy parabolic type microphones, like the kind you'd high movies, these arrays of microphones that don't just pick up what's immediately around them, but can pick up stuff from far away and then and try toulate them and use them to determine positions of the supposed the alleged fireworks and or gunshots, which is a game we like to play here in Atlanta. It's called Fireworks or Gunshots. Yeah. It is do that is actually a game That we play sometimes non consensually. Tonight we are focusing on another iteration of something similar to Shot spotter. You've probably heard about it, if you've been on the internet lately or live in a city, it's an outfit called Flock Group. They're doing business as flock safety just like u You know, it's a weird Ber Mithoff thing because as soon as you start paying attention, you're going to see flock cameras everywhere. Let's get into it This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed hum I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the range bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little NBC News brings you clear reporting Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there NBC News reporting for America This july fourth, comes celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America two hundred fifty. America's Block Party is a campt miss fourourth of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving fourth, helping to make july fourth the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Py tickets now for seventeen dollars seventy six cents at America two fifty dot org slash L What' up, y' Summer's got a different tempo Everything's a little looser, brighter One plan turns into another you hear something, you stay a little longer. Nexting you know, you're somewhere you didn't plan to be. It's those in between moments That's where the ideas hidit Conversations stretch out, littleittle memories sneak up on you sometometimes it's just about what's in your hand, that color, that chill, the new tropical butterfly refresher from Starbucks Guava and passassion frruit flavors with mango pineapple flavored pearls Yeah, that feels like summer before you even taste it. Funny out one small stop becomes the best part of the day Start your summer rhythm With Starbucks, try the new tropical butterfly reffresher from Starbucks Hey everyone, it's Kell Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book Club you've ever heard with my podcast, Earsay, the Audible and I Heart Audiobook Club. Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book Cub for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and IHart Audioobook Club on the IHart Radio apppp or wherever you get your podcasts Here are the facts. Okay, shout out to Georgia Tech We have to do it. It is my ala matter as well. Flock Safety is a company per their website focused on manufacturing, deploying and operating security hardware and software, specifically video surveillance and gunfire locators like Shotspotter And then importantly, automated license plate recognition technology. Those three things already existed before flock became a thing, but flocked has integrated all of this aggregate data in a seamless easily accessible, easily understandable way. That's all thanks to three folks from Georgia Tech back in twenty seventeen, Garrett Langley, Paige Todd, and this is Matt's favorite, Matt Fury. Oh yeah. they co foundounded Flock I'm looking at a picture of the three of them right now from the Shechller College of Business website. and Do you guys ever get that thing when you look at someone's face? You don't know anything about them necessarily, but you can see something with their eyes is just off. I don't get this at all with these three folks. These look like three Georgia tech students that I had some good ideas or something or you know, like figured something out when I'm looking at their faces and specifically their eyes And They just look like good people. They Good lads. W Right great young chest. And you know, I mean don't we know this is always how it goes or often how it goes where a real good idea, a stroke of genius pretty quickly gets cooopted and turned into the bad thing. I love their origin story, you guys and admittedly I'm biased here. I have to I have to be up frront about that because In the beginning, this is a side hustle for these students. The founders, instead of going to Rocky Mountain Pizza, shout out, Rocky Mountain Pizza, the founders literally got together at Langley's house in his dining room and built their first cameras by hand. The official origin story tells us Langley, and yes, that's his real last name. Langley and his co founders would put these handmade cameras around the Atlanta area, around communities in our metropolis and their goal was always prevent crime. If you are familiar with Georgia teech or similar institutions like Virginia Tech or MIT, you know it's far from unusual for students to have any number of interesting side projects. These institutions are incubators and these places love it. It makes them look good when a couple of students get together and have a bright idea. The rate of attrition is super high and brainstorming, but the reality of it is for every nine failed attempts. at a shiny new thing those nine failures can be justified by that tenth attempt becoming us Yeah. same's true of places like MIT. And it's not for nothing that Atlanta is, I think, now by more recent metrics, considered the most surveilled city per capita in the United States,s ' of the whole, you know, testing ground for this technology is right here in our backyard, which we're gonna to get to. And the end of course, of course too Isn't it weird to think that you have the idea, hey Everybody is installing this because it's twenty seventeen when Flock is founded. We're seeing all of these ring cameras go up on people's homes and all these other corporations that have their own version of cameras and security that is just home personal home security They're seeing that happen. But they want to build something that specifically will protect a neighborhood Right? Not individual homes, but the neighborhood as a grid of human beings that live together in a community. And you have these ideas, you begin you know, getting twenty five thousand dollars from a neighborhood's HOA to install cameras and you start doing this whole thing thenen what you're If you really think about it I imagine the movie Get O And that that feeling of driving into a suburban neighborhood and driving around and realizing, wait, like'm maybe I'm not supposed to be here. And also I think I'm being watched We'll get into it, but just the thought that every camer every car that goes into a neighborhood now that has one of these systems set up is being surveilled as though they're an intruder or an outsider or you know, other that shouldn't for sure. but it also goes bigigger beyond that in that now the intent of protecting one little region or one little community then gets plugged into this massive system outside of the original intent. So you can sell this idea as safety, for your community. Let's keep our neighborhoods, keep our streets safe, and then before we know it It's all run amuck and you're part of this mass surveillance state. Yeah. oh, that is excellent foreshadowy. No. we also know, okay, there's a pivotal watershed moment for Flock. It starts as a side project, right? We three kids who are very smart,'re doing cool stuff But in a conversation on a podcast with the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the CEO of Locke Langley talks about how he realized he and the crew were onto something big when a DeCab County detective reached out personally to thank the students for their work And they said, look has played a huge role in helping us solve a home break in just yesterday. And as soon as Langley gets this news, he calls his cohort and he says, I can't do the quote correctly, but he says, as we see in the dock here You all need to quit your jobs. This is what we're going to spend the next decade of our lives working on So it's kind of like the moment where we realize podcasting could be a career. and this Okay, it hasn't been a decade justust yet. We're recording on Friday, june twelfth, twenty twenty six So next year, It will have been a decade And even in just the past nine years ' seeing Breathtaking growth by twenty twenty four. Their cameras were placed in over four thousand separate cities across forty two states. That same year, still twenty twenty four, the company grew from a team of three people to A team of well over nine hundred people. I don't have enough fingies. to show you how many nine hundred is unless I get a bunch of people. Hanging out here. So the next year' twenty twenty five has raised nine hundred fifty million dollars in venture funding along with a total seven point five billion dollar valuation on the market. There's no other way to say it Bus is booming, Maybe we talk about the statistics and the growth a little bit more. Let's do it. We get. You have to understand first of all that Clock can be a bunch of different things. It can be just these cameras that have license plate readers that are meant to look at vehicles and that's what they do. It can have that sound detection system also plugged into it It can have several other integrated versions of itself, including these things called U of mobile security trailers, which is like kind of an add on thing. You can also get now their drone systems set up And in order to make any of those systems work, depending on which ones you buy and you know, the various different packages you can get from Flock you have to get access to their the software systems that make them function that actually capture all of the data from these devices and those people end up becoming users of any other software that you can imagine, right? Like an Adobe customer that has a certain amount that they have to pay every month to have access to that thing and then know that they have one hundred forty thousand subscribers, at least that's according to Floock. So if you're talking about booming business, you've got one hundred forty thousand subscribers to these systems, right to the software. And then you have to understand that buying each piece of equipment We're talking about Hundreds and thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not millions of dollars, depending on how deep you go into the flock system. If you get to the drones And some of that, you're in the millions of dollars So just we're talking about business Good lord. They've got a lot going on Especially for a company that has officially not turned a profit yet. They're focusing on growth, but they're so sry to hearing about companies like that are that are valued at like a trillion dollars but have yet to turn a profit. I get there's calculations that go into that kind of stuff that are deeper than I understand, but I also think that sometimes it's BS. Totally BS doull and that's part of why I love it. I if it if it If this strange religion we call the economy was not hurting so many people, I would find it endearing because think of a company startup as a kid And you're like, oh, my old guy You know what? I know you're not making money with your lemonade stand yet But you look like a seven point five billion dollars kido to. Well, and not to derail us, but I mean, this whole SaceX IPO. like there's this whole, I mean, we should talk about that separately, but the way they've been able to circumvent rules and get it immediately added to like these bundled stocks that go into people's four hundred one Ks So basically you're like forced to own their stock whether you want to or not That's wild. So I'm sorry. just being like the stock market. What's up with that? SpaceX episode, stock market episode. We've got to do those. We we also know flocked wasn't the first to market with any necessarily unique technology, right? The big thing is the AI, the machine learning, the integration of existing tech. And there are other businesses in this space. One of the biggest ones, the Cke to the Pepsi of Flock be the multi billion dollar police tech giant Axon enterprise. Look them up and have some fun. , Okaykay, we're in twenty twenty four, right? So we're going to twenty twenty five. And by last year, Flock was operating in over five thousand, I think it's six thousand now, probably more cities, towns and communities across forty nine of the fifty U. S. states in case you like us are wondering, hey, what's that one weird hold out It is predictably Alaska for a number of reasons that we don't have to get into, but you guys know what Alaska' is very drizzled and set in their ways, you know And very very privacy oriented. The company says five thousand law enforcement agencies. Think about that five thousand law enforcement agents. And I know we're going to get more into the nuts and bolts of it, but How many of those five thousand law enforcement agencies can just dip into the system give things a gander whenever they feel like it. prettytty much all of them if they pay their if they pay their fees and maybe stalk their exes as we talked about on stange news before think that would happen reasonably. Oh, surely not. but we can say, for the most part, with Actually, with few but growing exceptions Law enforcement loves flocks It makes it easier to track people even if they're not criminals. Flux innovations go way past our basic machine learning or data vacuuming, which we all know from you know, Edward Snowden and Prism and the NSA. They're Marketing strategy is also genius because they don't just market to Johnny Lawgh also work with HOAs that can afford them. They work with local, civilian community organizations. and Flock does have We're being totally objective. Flock does have a lot of stuff to brag about. There is no denying that their services which get are for profit have genuinely helped solve and even prevent crimes, break ins, robberies, auto theft, especially, acts of domestic violence, assaults, and even murders So if we if we look at the bright side of the statistics guys doesn't just feel like a good move for public safety. It feels like a combination of technology that was genuinely inevitable. If it wasn't this specific dream team at Georgia Tch it would have been somebody. And honestly, other countries Streets ahead as they'd say on community with this China, most Of course. Yeah, no, I can only imagine, and that makes perfect sense, Ben. But it's one of those things where it's like been predicted in sci fi for ages and more recently, most recently, probably in the dark night with this whole we can't allow this technology. It shouldn't exist, you know, turning every cell phone in the world into a you reverse listening device. And this is beautiful, unethical, dangerous. You've turned every cell phone and Gotham into a. It is genius. And there's part of me, and I'm sure there's part of a lot of people that hear those crime statistics and think about the good uses for this kind of technology. And I'm like, okay, I could be on board with that. I already don't really have any you know, illusions of privacy when I leave my home and I'm not doing anything wrong. But then you start to think about like, you know all of the crackdowns on illegal immigration, on legal immigration, on people who could be targeted. using this technology because if they haven't done anything or this technology getting into the hands of an oppressive Re regime oppressive government. I mean, then you start toot you start to be like is it worth it? Is there a trade offff? It's a really good point because you could see in the like the case of a missing person or someone let's say the general that went missing, right Y my hand If you yeah, McCastlan, if you had these cameras set up around where he lived at the time and they were all ubiquitous throughout that whole region, then you could find it, right even if you didn't want to be found, right? for reasons of personal safety, perhaps or whatever, you know, we imagine that could be. could be really great. You imagine the stories we've talked about in Strange News before where neighborhoods were being broken into. You remember the tourism, the crime tourism thing that was'tound it didn't seem real. It seemed like some kind of propaganda for anti immigration, but it was actually happening At least to some small extent, then it gets blown up But there is a danger because it would be great to have those flock cameras to capture peopleople who are doing something terrible like that, you know, home invasions like that you can so easily get in the slippery slope on this, right? the fallacy of the slippery slope Because I find myself there. I find myself going, o God, no, no, no, we can't do this. What are we doing? This is going to get so bad. This is gonna get so bad inevitably. But I wonder if that I wonder how much of that is me being tuned into the sci fi stuff you're talking about there, Noel, The visions of this, the is tuned into the corruptibility of people in power and just knowing that when something like this exists, even if there is a really, you know benevolent use of it that could be a great benefit to society, there's always going to be that. But we got to have more. We got how can we make that How can we turn ourselves into gods with this power? Yeah, this This is the country that looked at cocaine and said, I need a little more pep This is the country that looked at conventional munitions and said, what if we could build a bomb that could blow up the everything? Right? Yeah Like let's' suersize everything. Flock is supersizing surveillance. I didn't have that notes, but I'm like super committed to this idea now. And we can't be blamed, you know, like you're saying, Matt, I think that's a universal thing. We can't be blamed for pointing out that slippery slope. It's inevitable that something like Flock would happen. It's also inevitable that something like Flock is going to get a huge backlash from an increasingly concerned public, a lot of controversy, But as our pal Alfred E Newman from Mad magazine likes to say, what Me worry You should, you should be worried, even if you're not Alfred E. Newman. There's so many legal battles that are happening with Flock right now. We've talked about it on a weekly strange news program. the same sort of legal beagles and activists and ACLU types who are opposed to shot spotter They take aim at Flock And They do it with a pretty good legal basis, especially the Fourth Amendment. We've got to do the quote you guys, who has the best founding father voice today Wh's feel cheese U let's see, I can do it. The right of the people to secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons of things to be seized. I know that was all over the place. It went from Colonel Sanders to, you know, hoge flaps for the Senatora the the what is it the right honorable Rooster Senator from Louisiana. There we go. Yeah. he's he's he's u He's a real campard seed on that in plain English. And thank you again. That's Perfect depiction of that. In plain English, this means that you as a person as a human being in the US you have broad rights to what we call reasonable privacy. So in theory, no government or police entity can rock up to your home and just say like, hey, Dylan You got a weird vibe. We're checking everything and we're taking your computer. They have to have a reason for seizures and searches. And that reason has to be solid enough again, in theory for a court of law to agree and issue that warrant. But where does mass surveillance fall when it comes to the Fourth Amendment Believe it or not, that's something the courts are still working out and they're getting really Weird vibed about it. Weirdly vibed about it. First of all, can I just say that no one would ever clock Dylan's vibes as being off. They're impeccable. No times sense a good vibes from a mile away. So Dylan, you have nothing to worry about, but that doesn't mean that there aren't tons of other folks that do. This is But have you seen his sweet ride? He's got a sweet ride? I think they might find that to be. What are we talking about? I think Dylan because they're not even they're not going to see Dylan. they're going to see his They're going to see a sweet ride. They're going to see his quirky collection of bumper stickers. Even if he's riding dirty with no license plate or the license plate obscured, that doesn't even matter Be it can it can build a profile based on, you know, his u what his coexist stickers, you know bumper damage. An any slight bumper damage also. saw a I saw one of the I don't love bumperickers. And I he does not have one on his ride for the record. But he's a classy guy. But what I got to tell you guys is I was driving in a heavily surveilled area of Atlanta and I saw the bravest Toyota Camry They had two D flock. bumper stickers, like protest bumper stickers so that every time the camera got their license plate It also got a clear picture of some pretty harsh words for Flock. And I was like, man You were the bravest little camry that I have seen in three littleoster. I love that. Yeah that's what I know this maybe isn't quite the right time to bring this up, but it's just a question that popped into my head. Like I know there are technologies that exist to make your face harder to discern when you're in public, like sort of ring light kind of things that those sort of scramble cameras. You got to wonder Is there going to be a backlash against this technology and you know, people will start rolling out, you know, the modern equivalent of like radar detectors and things like that that will counteract this kind of stuff? Well maybe save that for the end, but it's just Did you know that it's technically illegal to wear a mask, like a full face mask if you're driving and youre or over the age of sixteen in Georgia? I didn't know that sa. I guess it could see found out the hard way of stopping it Was it your Batman mask? You were wearing your skeleton? mask. It was It could obscure your peripheral. Okay. I guess, but lets let'sly argue. I don't think that's could obscure your It was it different for your peripheral? I don't think that happened. So it did happen, but I didn't get in big trouble. I just gotta what are you doing, man from a very friendly police officer. And we know that the more cynical of us may recall that in the wake of the septtember eleventh attacks of two thousand one, Everything changed with the U. S. stance on individual privacy. Edward Snowden proved it years and years ago certain government agencies have and do routinely violate the Constitution through any number of loopholes, legalistic parkour quasi legal rationalizations, all these appeals to the greater good So Flock is not completely original and supporters do champion it. We've talked to people who are proponents of Flock, who genuinely believe this is the Uh this is the next sliced bread for law enforcement Critics are going to argue this is like we were saying earlier in tonight's episode, it's one more slide into an Orwellian surveillance state. and they're going to tell you, if we don't collectively make some serious changes now, things are going to be pretty nasty, not just in the present moment, but for generations to come So maybe our question is what exactly is Flock doing Why are these criticisms growing at the same pace as the cameras We'll be right back. 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This guy, Langley, the fascinating guy.'s he's thirty eight, right Is that correct? He's still pretty you. I don't know. He looks like a baby in the photograph I was looking at. Like just a young well, I guess it was when he was a young. Soft hands and everything. Soft feet and everything. Yeah Soft hands, no eyes. That a baby Play the Camina Sorry, that's been stnuck in head's good te. Nobody ever will get that reference. It's okay. Thank you to the twelve of you out there. Thanks for tuning in. I think a lot of people are getting that It's an ambitious reference and flocked is ambitious. Langley definitely is because he said Focks mission is to ultimately prevent all crime ever in the United States, maybe even in Alaska, but I think our question is at what cost? You know, we talked about the license plate thing we teased a court case. can we talk about the twenty twenty four Norfolk, Virginia case? Why dod I say Virginia like that? I think Rooer got in my head. you know for Rudy Giuliani Sorry It more like way a New Yorker would say Virginia. I don't know why I evoked the name of Rudy Giuliani. In my mind he's just the quintessential New York accent guy, but he's canceled probablybably because we' talking Yeah eleven Yeah was aor. I know what it was. It was The Doughboys did episode about a fast food brand. I know what it was Firehouse Subbs and talked about how Rudy Giuliani used to be considered America's mayor. and then, you know, he kind of backs sllepp. He, And that was right after the Patriot Act. That's exactly right. When he became. That's exactly the mayor. M And in June of twenty twenty four, still reeling from the influence of the Patriot Act A judge in Virginia's circuit court in Norfolk Virginia Norfolk. How do New Yorkers say N? I don't know, but but the southern gentleman would say Norfolk. So I think yeah. There we go. Yeah Yeah. put a w on. I don't know if New Yorkers would ever even talk about No not. it's an eventually Yeah. So this judge made a pretty a pretty groundbreaking ruling and said, look, if you're in Norfolk, Virginia your one hundred and seventy two automated license plate readers or ALPRs They do count as a search under the Fourth Amendment. They cannot be used as evidence in a criminal case if you collect all that stuff without a warrant. They said these are basically like tracking devices. Which is weird though, right? becausecause if you If you aren't going to use If you aren't going to use it as evidence in a case, you can still use it as real time tracking Right? So you can apprehend someone using the thing And then you just It's interesting that difference between being able to use that image of that car in a location where a crime was committed. You can't use that But you can use this thing to go pick that person up and then generate your own, you know, different evidence somehow or find probable cause you can probably. And if anyone's like, know, seing the excellent HBO series The wire, you know what a legal pain in the butt it was for them to get that wire up. AKA, you know, bug people's phones and listen in and there are all kinds of rules around how long you can listen and how much you can record and all these very specific things. Stuff like this When you look at it the way you're describing it, Matt, as tracking devices, it throws all that stuff out the window because it's another example of technology outpacing some pretty antiquated laws and regulations and procedures that are on the books and have been for time Now this stuff doesn't even apply anymore. A wire? That's like quaint. Yeah, think about it this way, folks Even if you are one of the few Americans who doesn't have a cell phone, right? And you are smart enough to take care of a car that doesn't have a bunch of Big brother stuff in it, no GPS even without your smartphone driving around in your old zoo zoo or whatever, the proliferation and ubiquity of flocked camera cities renders all your privacy precautions irrelevant and moot. You know, anybody with the right access to flock, not just law enforcement, right? That person you don't like at your HOA, for instance, they can vicariously follow your path around town from point A to point Z, just like those old family circus comic strip maps If we if we want to see how it really works, I think we got to go to Forbes. There's a journalist named Thomas Brewster who last year wrote an excellent article about how this network of more than eighty thousand AI powered cameras work together Oh, that's right. We got to mention that. The cities also speak to each other, right? So the flock cameras in Atlanta also pulled data from the flock cameras in Baltimore It's it's one ring to rule them all. So our journalist, Brewster puts us in the scene immediately. he is talking about the experience of a police lieutenant in Dunwoody, which is a community a little bit north of Atlanta proper And this lieutenant, Tim Thecht, is responding to a nine hundred and eleven call about a shoplifter at a mall nearby. And as the journalist is observing, the lieutenant launches a drone used by Flock, a Chinese manufactured drone from a company called DJI. It comes off big one. Yeah, that's the big boy. And it comes off from the station's roof. And so in real time, just like in the Dark Night This lieutenant is able to zoom in with the drone on individuals in the area And we don't know which one's the shoplifter. So he gets a shot of a guy who's just like checking his phone, you know, playing octurtle or something. And then he zooms in on a bunch of people who are just standing around waiting for the next marta train. And if you've been Marta, you know they were waiting for a while. Yeah, not the most efficient public transit system but they're working on it, guys. They're working on it. They're working on it guys. They also be aware of all the crime on Marta right now, according to the The city of Atlanta Right. ye. What better rationale for tra? Are there flockking cameras in being deployed in subway stations, for example.. Beause that seems like a whole other level of it. Like I guess we're thinking of it mainly in terms of vehicle tracking. but once you, you know drill down another layer literally underground, you start to be able to track movement of people I mean, in cities where cars are less prominent form of transportation than, say, Atlanta. It's more about tracking people on foot or on bicycles. Let's let's Guys The police officer launched a drone in Dunwoody to go check out people near a Marta station. M H This is this is a part of Flox first drrone as first responder program, right? That's what we're talking about Yeah, yeah. and it's not the drone alone. It's like how, you know, a aircraft carrier never travels by itself 's it's a stew of different technologies, right? He's got the camera feeds. he's got O cameras coming in, he's got that gunshot detection data. He's got a bunch of maps that show you in real time where all the other police vehicles are in the area. And then AI is transcribing every nine hundred ele. Is it weird that I keep getting an image in my head of the ravens as harbingers and sort of spies for the The Night King and Game of Thrones. Like I just that's what I'm picturing here. It's becoming very sinister the more we dig into this.. They didn't even find the shoplifter, by the way, guys, spoiler. Wh Whoops. really, really picture that in your mind. A nine hundred and eleven call goes in Right? You say where the caller says, I am near this intersection and this is happening And that moment, the thing we just described where a drone goes off the roof of a local station nearby, the drone gets there way before any other first responders and he's just looking around trying to find what's Like what's going on? Maybe the description of a vehicle or a person the way we're talking about here That's I mean,'m amazing Maybe you catch somebody way easier that way, someomebody who did something truly terrible or violent you know, or or depraved but also There's just drones coming out now going. Who are you? M. Oh you check out M. This vehicle's weird. You got any games on your phone Right. That's what they're doing. And and also an important point there Matt. they're not expunging the data they collect. So they didn't find the shoplifter in this case At the time the article was written Flock doesn't throw anything away. They use every part of the Orwellian Buffalo. Oh my gosh. Let me pull off this just to do an article with an article Ben from CBS News, june ninth. U it's talking about a countounty shheriff department that is looking at these flock drones. And they got the full flock safety show off the drones kind of thing. like we're going to put on a clinic and show you exactly what's going to happen. And they're saying that the call comes in The pilot who is a part of the police department drops a pin On a map, the drone flies there. and then is live streaming to other first responders who are on their way to the scene and are sitting back at the department watching everything go down They can fly sixty miles per hour and travel up to four miles from their starting point. It is literally objectively amazing and it could save lives, you know, the the Folks cited in the Forbes article from Dunwoody, they are all big fans, true believers in Flock and they don't hesitate to name multiple examples of how flock made a real difference in fighting crime. They said, look, we caught a gang that was knocking off pharmacies and stealing from ATMs across the east cooast nailed one of their getaway vehicles. We identified a criminal via drone because we saw a tattoo on his neck. and we apprehended him before he could commit a crime We found a woman who pulled a gun on her neighbor They're also P crime, right? We're talking about sci fi internally Law enforcement is a big fan of Flock. They're grateful for its ability to monitor those large public gatherings we talk about, the big speeches, the parades, the protests. they are hoping can help the law identify bad actors before they take that shot or stab that child or detonate that bom. It's already been As I think we can all admit, it's already been grossly misused like every other government database. Yeah, or before that person drains the water from the data center The thing that I'm worried about guys is that The things these are going to protect are generally massive corporate interests, right? the corporations that have the big profits and that's why the It's not why the law enforcement agency exists You can argue the law enforcement agency exists to protect the public. My only My only worry is that when it is heavily aimed toward defending the corporate interests and the profits The thing it it is defending against will be us, the human beings, the public, the ones who are trying to stop the thing from happening U because it's become too big and too dangerous But now you've got these systems that can track you everywhere hear what you're saying any part of the city, no matter which public park you go to to try and have that quick little meeting. We got to drain the water from the data centers. that That can't happen anymore without everybody ending up in a detention center somewhere. Right. And we're still using the Euphemism detention Center. History will not look kindly on that one. We got to talk a little bit about How easy this is to deploy. the nuts and bolts. I know we've got a lot of AV gearheads in the crowd, the license plate reader camera from Flock Depending on the model you get, it's going to run you between three thousand to three thousand five hundred dollars a pop which is expensive for an individual, but not necessarily expensive for a department, depending on how much taxpayer money they get Oh, and then you gotta get flocked OS. How about we pause for a word from our sponsors and we'll be right back. This july fourth comes celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America two hundred fifty. America's Block Party is a campt miss Fourth of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. 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Lingo kids. That app we downloaded last week? They love it. The games this funny baby bot character kids were almost there With more than four thousand interactive games, songs, and shows little ones can't get enough of, Lingo Kids is the number one entertainment platform for young kids. Why didn't we download this sooner? Everything kids love. Download it for free. So this is another thing. We talked about ownership, right? You kind of don't really own it because it's like oh gosh, what's that exercise thing that you have to have is it starts with a P u, don't know H Palat time. There you go. That's Please go it Jord, keep the whole face from the lovevel of God compleomplete paralysis of human agency I mean, that's the thing, right? Like your Peloton is most effective when you also have that subscription fee. cororrect? The flock stuff is a similar system Youve got to have Flock OS. This makes all the data that Fock Hoovers up accessible via not just a browser but a mobile app whichich seems kind of casual to me for all that information. You're hanging out with someone and they have flocks OS, they have the app on their phone I would judge them Would you Would you trust somebody who had that on their phone Well, it's weird again, it's so normalized. I have an app on my phone that's a security camera app. We talked about a couple episodes ago guys from my place where I live. and it feels weird opening it up and looking around and I can see portions of my the, you know, the street right outside my house and the neighbors' cars when they come and go and some of my neighbors's activities in the yard That makes me feel really weird and uncomfortable But it's aimed in a way that is going to protect my home or catch somebody if something happens here And then you just imagine that these officers through FlockOS, through things like they have a tool they have called freeformm It lets you it's like an AI tool like any of these other ones. just you give it a prompt, a description of a person, a place, a thing, a time, anything, and it's just like, here's everything It's just, especially if you put in, let's say an exX's license plate number Again, which officers have been caught doing like aala. Right. Yeah. Sorry, it's very troubles. It is everybody who is tuning in be very worried. especially, you know, if the Or Wellyian stuff doesn't bag your badgers folks Please consider this is taxpayer money. That police department in Dunwoody, they pay five hundred thousand dollars a year for their specific deal. They got one hundred five cameras, they got the drone, they got the gunshot detectors, most importantly They've got that OS coordinating all of it Dude, can we Ben, did you find that omniia? list of prices. Oh, oh yeah, we gott to get into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, kick it. Just just for everybody out there, search It's a little weird. Omnia O M N I A Flock safety price list And you will find I found it on the web a giant document. Well, it's several pages long And it has a price list for every individual thing that might end up on U like a transaction with Flock if you're a police department, you're going to get these kinds of things on there like a condor professional services charge which would come out to only seven hundred and fifty bucks When you're talking about the price What did you say been five hundred thousand dollars for the enterprise access or whatever it is? Yeah, per year. yeah, yeah yeah, per annum Dude, you can get a federal subscription to Flock OS and it only costs you four million dollars. Guys, what are we doing? Is today the day an I sound like a guy saying, shouldhould we all get fries for the table? If I get some flock are you guys gonna have some flock too? I think we should look, if I get flock, you're gonna have to get flock because some of the people in my flock zone might get into your head. You have to speak it out of my head. I can't stop thinking about the eighties band flock of seagulls. I just have to put it out There so maybe'll stop relentlessly running through my skull What is? What if we required by law, every flock piece of equipment had to make Sagull s? So you would always know What if we ran we ran so far away where the flock cameras can't find us. Hey goodood luck. We couldn't we couldn't get away' the problem from the flock cameras because they never get away. Oh we should say that too. Yeah, Flock has one of those things that's pretty common in tech startups. They've got the marketing on brands Heard us describe different products as like the condor cameras. they name a lot of stuff after birds. Yeah even is theres the Night King image. That's partially accurate why it's happening. The Fock Raven is their gunshot detector. It's their answer to shot spotter. So it records audio and these little five second clips. It uses AI to play Atlanta's favorite game, fireworks or firearms. And then it will alert police. Th We should mention these things are all usually going to be solar powered with rechargeable batteries, so they don't have to be plugged into the utility grid. It's it's another small but pretty fascinating innovation. And it is w is fully wireless, right? So like even the data goes without any wires Yeah, cellular networks, right to centralized servers. Yeah. And this is not your typical like these cameras are not your typical grab that license plate and send that guy a ticket in the mail kind of cameras They ar used for surveillance and criminal investigation, the two biggest cameras are going to hear about in your neck in the global woods are going to be the falcon and the spparrows. So they photograph of your car