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Crooked River Cast Show 68
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Transcript
Introduction and Humorous Banter
00:00:12
Speaker
This the Crooked Rivercast. And who are we? Well, we're Rob and Tom. guys are trying to keep track what is going on this great state of Ohio. It's your show 68 for the week of August 3rd, 2000.
00:00:28
Speaker
August already? Oh, crap. Let's go.
00:00:37
Speaker
In the morning, sir. In the morning.
00:00:42
Speaker
How's this fine morning going you? It's going very well. How about you? Good. I mean, it's going to be a nice day, I think, today. And I don't think I have to cut the grass. So that's always a plus on a Saturday.
00:00:56
Speaker
It looks kind of cloudy out there to me. my like My point is any day don't have to cut the grass. Oh, OK. I got you. Yeah.
00:01:07
Speaker
Not that I really cut it that much anymore because have minions for that. Yes, the minions.
Tribute to John C. Dvorak and No Agenda Changes
00:01:14
Speaker
But i guess I guess we'll start the show off with one quick little least mention to, I guess we have to say, RIP John C. Dvorak. I'm sure of most people who listen this show who already also listen to No Agenda have heard that he passed away. But great tech writer from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
00:01:32
Speaker
Crankiest of all geeks.
00:01:36
Speaker
But I don't know. Have you have you listened to any other Adams podcasts since all this past couple weeks? No, i haven't listened to any of the No Agenda since his passing.
00:01:47
Speaker
Well, listened a little bit of the new, so they have... Darren O'Neill and Void Zero, I think doing it. I think what is. think they're just doing it for a couple of weeks, right? Well, that's kind of one only the only reason I brought it up. because i So when I heard of John's passing, I went online and I saw some Adam had posted about a day or so later, he posted, hey, we get to do this podcast is up. That's what he does at his religious podcast with his pastor, Pastor Jimmy.
00:02:12
Speaker
Oh, I see. So that was, so he they had delayed that just to, to make sure the newsletter come out so everybody would know. So he didn't, he wasn't going announce it on that show anyway. So he talked a little bit about it and I kind of, I subscribed and I seems, was a nice show. i hadn't heard it before.
00:02:25
Speaker
Well, I listened to the last, this last one. Yeah. It kind of sounds like, I don't think Adam's going be on the show anymore.
00:02:35
Speaker
Oh, on no agenda. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's going to be involved, but I think he's going to come in and out. This is basically, we said on the, I think we get to do this, he's basically going to be coming in and out.
00:02:46
Speaker
He's going help produce the show, but I think he's, think he's done doing it on a daily basis and being the host. How can you, how can you move on like that? I know. I've been thinking about it for like two or three weeks and then, know, since this hour, two weeks, whatever it says has happened, I'm going, how does he, and that's what I think we talked about.
00:03:04
Speaker
off the mic and said, yeah, you you basically just have to completely, almost completely change the show. You can't try to make it the same show or the same. you can't try to replace. Well, I mean, even criminal right, right. No, you're right about that. But I mean, from Adam's point, how do you keep doing it? Cause John was, he was half the show.
00:03:23
Speaker
and And frankly, and frankly i listened to it because of John. Yeah, I was to say, you could say in many cases more than half the show. offense to Adam, but his personality. And and that's that's really what I enjoyed from it was, okay, I see this great thing in the news.
00:03:39
Speaker
How's John going to crap all over it? That was, and I look for
Co-host Banter and Personal Stories
00:03:45
Speaker
it. I want somebody to pull me back from the, from the, the clouds or the edge or whatever it is. You know, it's either doom and gloom or it's so good. It's too good to be true. And then someone needs to tell you it's cause it's not true.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. so it's going hard. I listened to a little bit of it. Another new one. And they, they got good chemistry. You can tell they've been doing they had their own show for ah ah like four or five years. Very similar to no agenda. So I figure it's going to take a little while for it to, uh,
00:04:14
Speaker
uh, kind of, um, develop. I mean, cause are, are they still doing the news breakdown type of thing? Yeah. That's kind of what, ah according to the first half of the show I listened to, that's basically what they did. They just, yeah, we just basically copied no agenda.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah. We would just pick our news or clips that angered them. Uh, and they, I forget what they called their podcast. Rage, something rage or something that, or anger or something or other. Well,
00:04:44
Speaker
So are they not going to do their podcast? That I didn't get to. i don't know. Good question, actually. I don't know. i wonder what ah Adam's going to do now. I mean, he I know he's got his own other little podcast, but no agenda, I'm sure, took up quite a bit of time for him. Yeah, it sounds like he's going to be involved with the production and all that kind of stuff.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, for a while. And it sounded like he like created all kinds of stuff for these two guys to go off of and use. And these guys are seeing this stuff, this software that he's written, Adam, is amazing for podcasters and it might be an exit strategy for Adam.
00:05:26
Speaker
It's literally one of the comments they said. What? Say that again? that hes he He's written a bunch of software for but these two guys just to continue the show, like Clips clip stuff and bunch of different stuff they didn't really get too much into. Adam even talked a little bit about it in his podcast. and the But the Void Zero is saying, or whichever one was saying, like, this is good stuff. You could probably sell this.
00:05:48
Speaker
It's an exit strategy for him. Like, software to help you play Clips and software to do a bunch of other things they were talking about. Well, I like that, but I mean, that's not an exit strategy. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah.
00:05:59
Speaker
Depends on, he's 60, so he could be a a side gig while you're retired kind of strategy. Yeah, he's not going retire. Probably not. He's going to keep going. I think he's really focusing on his, we get to do this podcast.
00:06:13
Speaker
We get to do this? Yeah, that's his, that he does with Pastor Jimmy. Oh, I hope that's not the only one he does. He's too good of a broadcaster. Yeah. is's too he's ah He's not a podcaster. i don't I mean, I know he is, but that's what and he's too good.
00:06:30
Speaker
He has to do more of a big-time show, like a No Agenda. I've heard his other podcasts. They're more like podcasts, like kind of like ordinary.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, does he have any other ones besides we get to do this? Well, he he did one. don't know. I'm assuming he's still doing one with his wife. And he was doing another one that was kind of like a podcasting 2.0 info.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, he still does that, I think. Yeah, but those are like podcasts. Like, no agenda. The way he handled it, the way he played news clips, the way he played intros, I mean, that was like hosting a radio show.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yep.
00:07:12
Speaker
Like live broadcasting. I mean, i don't but i don't know if he can go get away from that. that That's other thing. It was live. No agenda. Yeah. Live to tape. Yeah.
00:07:23
Speaker
Well, whatever. Yeah. But it's... um that that's a different skill set than we're like this. And maybe that's, maybe that's his contribut contribution to the show would be, uh, to be that behind the scenes guy, how kind of pushing that along and helping them kind of do what he did and maybe mentor mentor them into maybe, you know, being a little bit, don't know. Yeah. I just, I don't, yeah, you could tell,
00:07:53
Speaker
I could just tell he was just, I can't almost, he didn't, he never said it, but it just felt like when he, the way he was talking is, I don't think I could do it. You could tell he just lost all. I don't want to say lost all interest, but yeah. Like you said, how do you do it without somebody like that? Like your partner for the last 18 years, you just don't.
00:08:12
Speaker
Right. But I mean, it he came might get the bug again. Yeah, that's true. That's the other thing. he might And he always had the ability to come back on and maybe they make it a, he makes cameos every once a week or something like that. Or he just develops a show with one of them or both of them even. and Why not?
00:08:32
Speaker
and Just so you know, I mean, it's only been like a year and a half. so I've been, I'd probably find somebody to replace you. I have no issue with that, even if I'm not dead.
00:08:43
Speaker
Maybe five or six years we talk about it, but right now, either either one of us are expendable at this point. ah So speaking of that, we you know we're we're back from our rejuvenation break. We just said, ah, screw it. Let's just take a full month off.
00:08:56
Speaker
Freedom. We took a freedom month off. Blew a bunch of fireworks off. We took a MAGA month off. Yes, MAGA month off. but i I don't know if I told you this but after 4 July, we had both our neighbors across the street came over and thanked us for the fireworks show.
00:09:10
Speaker
That's very cool. yeah I was like, and then, you know, the neighbors behind me, they were whooping and hollering. i was worried about them complaining because they get, they get some of the, they get some of the shrapnel from our firewood. Yeah. You know, your houses are pretty close together for a show like that.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah. And so everybody was happy. But the biggest news right now in our house is we have a new driver in the family, Tom.
00:09:36
Speaker
Cool. Cool. Passed her tests with flying colors. Excellent. Awesome. Yeah. And boy, am I happy because sitting in that car while she went through those cones, I mean, i think we went out at least a dozen times.
00:09:51
Speaker
yeah like I'm like, can I, is it, can I jump out? I could just, can I get out this window? i think I can get out this window. get me out how How did, ah what did she score on that? On the maneuverability, she got a hundred percent.
00:10:03
Speaker
Okay. Cause that's what I i got a hundred percent on, on that. I remember, I remember on my driving, I got 70 something. Yeah, she got like a couple of knocks on her driving and I can't, it's hard to determine what it was, but I think she stopped too soon or too, too soon in front of a stop sign. I think that's what they knocked her on or something like that.
00:10:22
Speaker
Okay. There's a couple different things. She turned a little bit, something or other and whatever. It's all, she passed. and She's, she's sweet. But yeah. Um, so then we had to call the insurance company.
00:10:34
Speaker
She's your chauffeur for, uh, her sister. Yeah. Yeah. And have to pick her up from school, which is a er bittersweet. It's bittersweet because at times it was a little, oh, I got to make it over there now.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. It was really good to just have her locked in in a vehicle for 15 or 20 minutes every day. Gotcha. So we had some good conversations. I'm not going to miss those, but then we'll figure something out. But anywho.
00:11:05
Speaker
Anywho, I guess we'll we should probably get into something other than what we did the last few months. Good, because now I can stop watching though the the body cam footage that I've been watching for a month and addicted to.
00:11:19
Speaker
You too. Yeah, I've been doing... but Yeah, we may put one of those on the show come in very soon, I have a feeling. Oh, my gosh. It's hard to A lot of them, because they're so visual, right? But...
00:11:33
Speaker
I do listen to a lot of reaction. like yeahll I'll listen to Asmongold react to a body cam footage. and like At work, I'll listen to it.
00:11:45
Speaker
Occasionally, I have to turn my head and kind of see what the hell's going on. but But it's pretty you can you can kind of get a good idea without watching it, actually. Yeah, yeah.
00:11:55
Speaker
But... I don't even know if the visual is as important as just the way people crash. Like they they just break down. Like there's, they can't think for the next five seconds. Like what's going to happen if I do this?
00:12:12
Speaker
I just watched the Hodge twins do an Asian couple. Like there was somewhere in Florida, some timeshare thing. i don't know. They were trying to, they were on the sales floor. i think they were like going to buy timeshare or condo or something like that. I don't know. go But they're, they got trespassed.
00:12:26
Speaker
the Yeah, the timeshare people should have been arrested, not them. Well, go ahead. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know exactly what it It was something about buying something in the community. I don't know. So they were trying to get there for five hours. They were trying to work with this lady and this couple, but it was, it was, it's actually a good one.
00:12:43
Speaker
Because the dude is, eight they're both Asian, the dude, but they're American. They're not like from Asia, right? You can tell that one dude's holding the baby and the wife won't leave. Cops like, just leave now. and Everything's good. They don't want you here anymore. They're going to sell you anything. Just leave now. And he's going, come on, honey. And she's, she just, she ain't even paying attention to him.
00:13:02
Speaker
Oh my God. So she gets arrested right in front of her kid. It was like, dude, okay. And you know what? You know, because I was waiting for the guy to come in and be like, don't arrest my wife. No, he he just turned around and started talking to the, like kind of giving the sales. To the other girl trying to pick her up.
00:13:18
Speaker
What? No. He's like already left his wife. Yeah. He's trying to pick up one of the sales chicks on the floor. No. but He didn't. He was just kind of I'm a, yeah, you know what? me um You know what? He's probably thinking, ah, a night off.
00:13:32
Speaker
Get this quiet room. Quiet hotel room to myself tonight. Because they were ripping on him big time, the hot students. They're like, what? You could tell this guy never says said no to her.
00:13:44
Speaker
Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Stop. Stop watching body cam footage. And and let's talk about flock cameras.
Controversy and Privacy Concerns with Flock Cameras
00:13:53
Speaker
Oh, it's so much better.
00:13:55
Speaker
ah No, not even close. Actually, the yeah body cam has become a quite a treasure trove of enlightenment to many. It's the greatest thing BLM has ever given us. Yes.
00:14:08
Speaker
Yes. careful what you wish for because you just might get it and they have, but these on the other hand are not the same. So basically I caught this video by Ben Jordan from a year ago and I went, huh, this is interesting. And of course the algorithm and it's, I think it's becoming a bigger story as in the last week or two, or maybe it's just my, my algorithm, my feed.
00:14:32
Speaker
But then I see there's now a story on, so as there are some stories nationwide about people going after these cameras. And if you don't know what these are, we'll get into them. But basically they're, you see them on almost every street corner feels like now. And they're, they're a very inconspicuous black egg shaped camera with easy with a solar panel on it. And they're license plate readers. They take a picture and log every license plate that goes by.
00:14:53
Speaker
So a lot of them are being vandalized. Surveillance 24 seven. lot of them being vandalized. And so then now I get, as i'm researching some of Ben's videos, I see news channel five as a video or a new, an article.
00:15:09
Speaker
And I didn't even pull it up. There it is. So, uh, stirring a string of vandalism vandalized flock camera spans Lorraine County.
00:15:20
Speaker
So there's some interesting parts of this. And, uh,
00:15:25
Speaker
You know, it's the high extent that maybe it's not that interesting. There's typical. We'll just listen to what News Channel 5 has to say. Law enforcement in Lorain County is investigating a string of vandalism. Agencies across the county and in nearby Ashland County have reported damaged flock cameras.
00:15:41
Speaker
Those license plate readers have become a controversial surveillance tool. Many don't expect the debate to cool down anytime soon. These little cameras have become a big source of controversy. I'm your Lorain County reporter, Catherine Ross, and this camera smashed here in Huntington Township is one of several investigators say were targeted by vandals recently. Vandalism, is ah it's a felony.
00:16:04
Speaker
It's actually a felony offense. It comes amid growing debate over who's using these cameras and how. From the rolling farmland on the Southern County line to busier residential areas, flock cameras throughout Lorain County are battered, smashed, and even missing. We've had one shot. We've had several cut off the pole. Suspects are taking some type of blunt object. The Lorain County Sheriff's Office says its flock cameras have been vandalized at least five times in the past several weeks. We're at a point where five, two of them at one location, we may have to set up like special details. Police in Lorain, Amherst, and Elyria say they've all... So they're now going to have... they're not Cameras for cameras.
00:16:47
Speaker
No, not... No, not so he said details, which means they want to they're going to have a police car watching the camera.
00:16:58
Speaker
They're going to be missing all the crimes because they were relying on the camera. Because they were watching the camera. watch what Right. Okay, continuing. Open hit two. This week, Elyria police arrested a 22-year-old for destroying this flaw camera on Infirmary Road.
00:17:15
Speaker
What's his name? now facing felony vandalism charges. With these cameras being damaged, it kind of hampers us with our investigations. They are a very helpful tool. Major Steve Scharchnitz says the license plate readers have been a game changer for recovering stolen cars, finding missing people and even solving a recent homicide.
00:17:33
Speaker
But Flock has come under fire recently as some question whether they violate people's privacy. So I think one of the reasons that you're seeing people going after the Flock cameras themselves as opposed to engaging in a in a political discussion or a legal discussion about it is the sense of frustration.
00:17:52
Speaker
Case Western in law professor Michael Benza says it's turned into a Fourth Amendment debate. News 5 has previously reported on that debate, including protests about outside agencies like ICE accessing Northeast Ohio cameras. This is just as much a political and social issue as it is a legal issue. Benza anticipates the issue eventually moving through the courts, but some in law enforcement believe the tools are misunderstood.
00:18:16
Speaker
Sharshan says there are guardrails and parameters to flock surgeons. He tells us the damage is not an effective protest and is doing more harm than good. We need to sit down and discuss this. i don't understand the mentality, the mindset, like I mentioned earlier. Big Brother's not watching you. You're a law-abiding citizen. You have zero concerns. But it is doing things and helping with solving crimes. In Elyria, I'm your Lorain County reporter, Catherine Ross.
00:18:42
Speaker
Let's pause this for one quick second. There's few more seconds left. 40. And there it was. And that's what we always hear. we heard it from I heard it from the left and the right. Well, if you don't break the law, who do you have to worry about?
00:18:55
Speaker
And then Trump gets in the office and everybody on the left goes, oh, the Patriot Act, i don't like it. Yeah. Because you don't know who's going to be in charge of this information. Oh, wait, we'll find out actually later. We don't actually know who is in charge But, okay, so there's vandalism.
00:19:15
Speaker
What do you think was Phlox's response to the vandalism?
00:19:22
Speaker
I have no idea. Oh, they got a warranty program. And there's more. Flock is now taking notice of the recent rash of vandalism against its cameras. It's adding a new service for clients. A blog post dated July 14th directly references damaged cameras and announces a protection plan to repair or replace covered cameras in case of vandalism.
00:19:42
Speaker
There's a whole section on Flock's fee schedule page for equipment replacement. They love lays out various costs, like $800 for a camera that needs to be replaced because of vandalism, theft, or damage, or $0 if you have that camera protection plan. yeah There's no pricing information for that protection plan itself.
00:20:01
Speaker
So Phlox reaction to you damaging their cameras is.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah, we'll just sell more cameras or a warranty. A replacement plan. It's like ah like your cell phone plan. you can just smash all you want. We'll replace them.
00:20:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:22
Speaker
So what let's look. what's What's Flock? let's let's hear Let's hear this. So this was the video from a year ago. This guy, Ben Jordan. Ben Jordan is, he he says he's a musician. i'm not sure I'm not sure what he plays. I know and like in some of his videos in the background, I've seen one of those.
00:20:38
Speaker
It was like techno boards where they, you know, they plug wires in and they make different sounds and modulate frequencies. Synthesizer. Synthesizer kind of boards, you know, where like a, like an old switchboard kind of thing. Kind of cool stuff. It's this old synth.
00:20:50
Speaker
yeah ahead Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, true. Yeah, because it looks old. So that means it is. ah But yeah, because it it it is, I've seen a couple of videos on this kind of cool. can make a lot of stuff with it, but I'm not sure if he plays it. That's what he does his music, but he's got.
00:21:05
Speaker
He's got music on Spotify and one of his current projects before he got involved with this was, this is actually, you might like this. Musicians will like this. He's trying to find the perfect frequency or frequencies that he can lay behind his tracks to mess AI up.
00:21:21
Speaker
So it can't learn from his songs. So all it hears is noise. So we can't hear it, but the AI can hear it. And it went, and when they hear it, it's complete crap and mud basically. Huh?
00:21:32
Speaker
ah He said the only, i think the only, cause he had brought this up on um ah the Rick Beato's channel. Something similar, maybe not exactly this, but yeah, he actually did bring this up. He said the only drawback really to some of this technology is your dog will go crazy. Cause it's usually high pitched stuff that we can't hear.
00:21:50
Speaker
um But he, on the Rick's channel, he has a, he built a little device that will block, mics on like your Alexa or your, or or your cell phone ah and while you're in the same room with it, or it's pointed in a similar direction.
00:22:08
Speaker
So that's the kind of, he's kind of a, ah a a nerdy musician. Yeah. He's trying to block things that nobody's listening to anyway. So. Well, no, but AI is listening to all the music on Spotify. So it's not trying to learn from him.
00:22:23
Speaker
ah you know, it's learning from everything, isn't it? Doesn't it just gobble everything up? I think it's interesting. I think if you if you could, if you, I mean, they're stealing his, they're stealing everybody's crap and making its own out of it. So why not fight it, fight back? don't know. Is it going to do anything? No, I just think it's pretty cool.
00:22:39
Speaker
And here's, here's a, Here's his intro to this video. Again, this is about 11, 12 months ago when he started finding cameras all around.
00:22:54
Speaker
If you're an American, and you've been probably seeing a whole bunch of these things. And in some places, they're so common that you don't even notice them. They just blend into the background like they're trees or streetlights. And you've probably correctly assumed that they're recording traffic. They're also recording and logging license plates and using AI image recognition. But what if I told you that they are, in fact, not owned by your local police department or your local government, but are licensed to them by a third-party startup? And all of your vehicle's whereabouts are being tracked by a third-party data broker? What if I also told you that major retail chains are also using them and they're combining your vehicle's whereabouts with your personal information, your shopping habits, and even your in-store behavior? And some of them are giving that information to law enforcement. And what if I told you that I just possibly may have come up with a way to break it?
00:23:44
Speaker
Hmm. So I think, you know, he brings up the shopping centers. If you go into lot of Lowe's or Home Depot, Kohl's, they've got these
00:23:57
Speaker
little independent like older cameras. It's like a, uh, it's like a trailer. And then as a pole that goes up and it's got a bunch of cameras on it, that's what this is.
00:24:10
Speaker
These are, these are maybe not flock cameras, but a exactly same technology. Cause there's more more than one flock is a organization flock is a business. We'll get into actually the next clip. Let's talk, let's listen to what Flock is and what it does. This one's a bit long so we can we'll start and stop it. I got a couple spots, but
00:24:32
Speaker
it's interesting the tie in between all the data that we have out there. And it's like, starts to get a little, we'll get into it Plock Safety is a startup that was founded in 2017 that specializes in developing and leasing security cameras that have AI capabilities such as license plate recognition and vehicle identification. And these security cameras feed into databases that law enforcement, private companies, and even private citizens can access and utilize. And if you own a car in the United States, you have unquestionably been logged within one of these databases. It works like this. You drive past a flock safety camera and it records an image or video. An image segmentation model or something similar looks for the license plate itself for a rectangle with some key identifiers like taillights or a rear window. Once it is confident enough that it found a license plate, it sends a portion of the image to an OCR model or optical character recognition, which is probably the most widely used type of AI for consumers. For example, it's used in PDFs or any type of automatic data entry like scanning and caching checks on your phone with your bank's app.
00:25:39
Speaker
AI like this typically uses a confidence level threshold. So if the OCR model is above, say, 90% sure that your license plate was read accurately, then the information is saved with a location and timestamp on it.
00:25:51
Speaker
Okay, so I really hope it's more than 90%.
00:25:56
Speaker
Because a 10% incorrect rate seems awfully high, no? I suppose. And as you get through some of this stuff and he's tearing down, cause he's got like, i don't know, five or six videos of this. He's tearing down some of his equipment and it's not very, the software is not very good.
00:26:15
Speaker
It's not very accurate. And he brings up a couple times in some of these clips, some of the, cause like I kind of cut it out cause it really wasn't made for audio, but he's going to go through a few incidents where, and you may have seen them in the news lately, but you know, for one example, the cops followed a family into a shop, shopping center or parking lot, pull them out their car, laid them flat down on the pavement and held them on gunpoint because they thought they were driving driving a stolen car. And it was, it was, it was a mistake on the, on the AI, on the flock.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. There's been people arrested for or nothing. Yeah. Wrongly accused or wrongly, yeah
00:27:02
Speaker
and I don't even know. I mean, wrongly identified. Yeah. Yeah. It's like as a a being somewhere where they weren't or um you know having a stolen vehicle. i think I think Tim Pool was talking about some woman that got arrested for stealing stuff off porches.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and and And the cop came by to arrest her and said, hey, we we have you on camera stealing about packages like from Amazon or whatever. And they arrested her and she was like, I have proof.
00:27:37
Speaker
You know, whatever proof she had. have proof where I was at that time. And the cop basically said, I don't care. He just arrested her because that's his job. His job is not to be the judge.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, so it's that's a tough position for the cop to be in. Well, a good cop not. but ah Well, yeah, you call a supervisor a and or and or somebody else to come over and let's figure it out. but So let's hope it's way more than 90%, but I don't think, I'm not confident it is.
00:28:05
Speaker
And if it is, it's probably 92, 93%. And that's still, i'm sorry, seems low case and let's keep It can also classify the make and model of your vehicle and note if there are any bumper stickers or add-ons or cosmetic damage on the vehicle. And this information as well gets stored to that database. A law enforcement officer can then run your license plate and see every single time that your vehicle has been tagged in the database. So if you're... So your license plate, it's logging scratches, it's logging dents, bumper sticker.
00:28:41
Speaker
No, wait. Can we, wait, can we, can we tag the, can we follow some of these blue hairs that, that have their entire, the entire back of their Prius covered in stickers? Well, those people might need to be.
00:28:53
Speaker
Only 90% of it would be right. Apparently. Right. But he I mean, some of them are so bad that you can tell they have anti-Trump stickers stop, you know, stuck over anti-Bush stickers. It's like, come on. Someone needs to see a, a, a, a mental professional.
00:29:07
Speaker
Those people may, we may need to try to find, but. So, and they're logging all this stuff. So got a dent, you got a sticker. What kind of bumper sticker? Are you ah able to search for certain bumper stickers?
00:29:20
Speaker
Why not? Why couldn't you?
00:29:23
Speaker
Here in a city that has a lot of these cameras, it pretty much has the same effect as secretly sticking a GPS device on your car. Flock Safety is also happy to provide service to businesses and homeowners associations. And those private clients often allow law enforcement to access the data from their cameras. Then there's the hot list. If law enforcement puts you on the hot list, they are notified every single time that flock detects you. So it's kind of like having a police tail all day, every day, but without the pesky annoyances of requiring a judicial warrant to target and track a citizen who.
00:29:56
Speaker
So. You can tail, you could put a tail on somebody without a warrant. a Virtual tail. And what could go wrong?
00:30:10
Speaker
may not even be suspected of any sort of crime. So now you might be asking, what is there to stop, I don't know, Texas law enforcement tracking women out of state who are suspected of getting illegal abortions? Or how would you prevent a jealous, abusive person who also happens to be a law enforcement officer from using the system to constantly track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner?
00:30:30
Speaker
Well, unfortunately, you wouldn't prevent it because these are just two of the many examples of things that have actually already happened. Flock safety has exhibited the usual hyper-aggressive startup behavior that we've all grown accustomed to. gu Near Orlando, Florida, for example, they installed nearly 100 cameras on public roadways without even notifying and the county. And this entire industry.
00:30:52
Speaker
how does that How does that work? So does does did the city approve it and they didn't want to pass the county? Or did Flock just start putting cameras up on the side of the road? I highly doubt it because it needs somebody to pay them.
00:31:05
Speaker
I don't know. They put a hundred cameras up and the county didn't even know about it until after the fact. How does, how do you, how do you put that up? I mean, you have to have a crew to do it. or Do you hire your own crew?
00:31:17
Speaker
Like. No, i think they subcontract. I would imagine this the flock subcontracts it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, if if no, how how did this the, the county didn't know about it?
00:31:29
Speaker
My thinking is the city approved it. Okay. And, but no one talked to the county about it. You would think that you would need both. You would need everybody's approval, I would think. I don't know. i don't know how that works.
00:31:41
Speaker
You would think, but of course, no. No. Sales pitches police departments with their cherry-picked success stories. If we didn't live in a surveillance state, this old lady with dementia would have never been found. Or if it weren't for all these cameras, this homicide suspect would have never been taken off the streets and would still be murdering people right now. Had this license plate reader error not led to a mother and her young children being held at gunpoint, that family would have never received a $1.9 million dollars settlement from Aurora, Colorado taxpayers. Weirdly, I couldn't find that example in any of their sales decks. From every single agreement that I've looked up and seen, the police department or local government do not own the camera but pays for their installation, then rents them for an annual subscription fee.
00:32:25
Speaker
And usually this is between $2,000 and $3,000 per camera per year, but apparently there's been a recent price hike that has strained the budgets of some police departments. In all these agreements, Flock Safety's liability policy is extremely tight and protects them against virtually all claims should something go wrong or an equipment or data error mislead an investigation. And one of the most amusing parts of this agreement is this section that is telling the police. So if the camera's wrong, if their software is incorrect, not my fault.
00:32:56
Speaker
a Not my fault. Hey, you figure it out.
00:33:02
Speaker
Can the city's... or counties or whoever paying for the service, can they even examine the cameras? Can they examine, can they have somebody examine the software without Phlox permission?
00:33:13
Speaker
Are they even allowed to audit it? Have somebody take one of them and dismantle it just to make sure nothing's wrong with it and nothing's hidden in it? I doubt it. Let's find out. Police department to call 911 and not rely on Flock safety services in the event of an emergency. Yikes. Civil communities, police departments, private businesses, and individuals are not allowed to sell, lease, lend, give away, auction, or otherwise transfer ownership of any of Flock's IP or hardware. At no given time are you allowed to decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, modify, alter, tamper with, or even repair any of it. Later in this video I'll be disassembling and somewhat reverse engineering some ALPR cameras, but not Flock. If I did have access to some of Flock's hardware sitting in a box right over there, my attorney advises me that showing you any of it would jeopardize the existence of this video as a whole.
00:34:08
Speaker
A big reason for this aggressive scaling is because the business model of companies like this is actually quite brilliant. They market themselves as public safety services, licensing cutting edge technology, but license plate readers and security cameras have existed for decades. Block safety and their Andresen Horowitz, who is the VC of choice for data brokers and big data startups like Databricks, Scale ai and
00:34:45
Speaker
golden just to name a few they've invested nearly half a billion dollars into Flock Safety, adding another $275 million just a few months ago. These are data broker numbers. For example, ADT, the largest and most recognizable home security company and brand in the world, went public in 1969 and has a market cap of $6.8 billion. dollars And that market cap is eclipsed by Flock Safety's recent F-Series valuation of nearly $8 billion. dollars And it needs to be pointed out that Flock Safety and Andreessen Horowitz have spent a combined $92,680,000 in lobbying. And the vast majority of that lobbying was in the last year.
00:35:23
Speaker
In the last year.
00:35:27
Speaker
So my question comes to my mind is, who really owns the data?
Retailer Data Logging and Privacy Issues
00:35:32
Speaker
Who owns this data?
00:35:35
Speaker
It sounds like Flock. Flock, for sure. So a private organization... is logging license plates from all over the country, all over, and they're keeping the data and they're able to do what with this data?
00:35:53
Speaker
Like, who else are they selling it to?
00:35:58
Speaker
And if you want to know how widespread this is, can you type in your browser, Tom? Can you type dflock.org?
00:36:14
Speaker
deflock.org is one of the, there's four or five people I've seen that are kind of helping. It went took me to Sundays for dogs. So
00:36:33
Speaker
Six months ago, if you go onto the homepage of deflock.org and D-E-F-L-O-C-K.org,
00:36:40
Speaker
dot o r g
00:36:43
Speaker
I think I went on this a week ago. What's the number you see on that? It says LPRs, which is... 123,815. Middle last week went it was at 116,000. When think this video, one of the videos was six months it was 80 thousand.
00:36:58
Speaker
when i think this video of one of the videos was far six months ago maybe it was eighty some thousand
00:37:08
Speaker
And then then it has it does have cities rejected, rejecting LPRs. So LPRs are license p plate readers. And there's 97. 97 cities that have rejected it.
00:37:26
Speaker
Can you guess how many in Ohio? Zero. One. One. Where? Kent. Shockingly enough, it's Kent. I don't know why that shocks me, but maybe because of university it shocks me, but Kent.
00:37:41
Speaker
So you can look at the map and find out where you live. And what, I guess one of the, I haven't tested it but one of the things on this. Oh man, this thing works good.
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah. Is, uh, you can actually, didn't haven't, I haven't tried it, but they said you, you can apparently,
00:38:02
Speaker
it'll route you around flat camera or flat cameras. So you can, what's my route without passing a flat camera. And I would imagine at some levels, you're not going be able to. So if you take, and I was like, well, where would be like,
00:38:16
Speaker
I'm looking at like Cleveland area, Northern Ohio, Cleveland. And there's this one spot that just got, it's just one big blue dot. it Just hold these dots on top of each other. I'm like, what's that? Oh yeah. That's university circle. That's Wade. It's Euclid Avenue. It's in the heart of Cleveland clinic.
00:38:32
Speaker
Right. it There's like a hundred of them.
00:38:37
Speaker
And then we thought, well, yeah, but didn't, didn't the city of Cleveland vote down the renewal of flat cameras?
00:38:46
Speaker
That's what they said. Yeah. And then you pull up the article. ah No, actually, no they they they quietly approved Flock. the ah It's a temporary approval that goes till December.
00:39:00
Speaker
they're goingnna They're going to pass it. Right. Because in December, going to be paying attention to it because it's December ah and it'll just get passed. So it's a nine to six vote. So i would imagine in December, it'll be a 10 to five vote or something.
00:39:15
Speaker
It's hilarious why, though, they passed it. Why? I haven't read anything in this article.
00:39:23
Speaker
And if you're anti-ice, you don't like fla flock.
00:39:28
Speaker
so that So a few of the council members don't like don't like ice using flock to arrest people. And there it is. Be careful what you wish for, because you never...
00:39:43
Speaker
You never know who might be in charge of that big government that you've put into place. And then and we'll get into, <unk> actually we'll touch it a little bit on on that. Cause then we'll, well, as we get into more, couple more of these clips, we'll, we'll start to figure out where Ben and Jordan lies on, on some of these issues. And not sure we're all on the same page, which to me is even better because we can find common ground on this. We can find a common ground on other things.
00:40:06
Speaker
Um, and I guess we'll keep going with, yeah. Okay. here Next one. Could it get any worse? What could make it worse?
00:40:17
Speaker
Well, it's just... Maybe you are a law enforcement officer and Flock Safety has helped you solve cases. Or maybe you think that a poorly substantiated claim about a drop in crime is worth the constant monitoring and tracking of hundreds of millions of taxpaying citizens who are not criminals. And those small little glitches that result in young children being held at gunpoint face first on the hot asphalt in a parking lot are just some cracked eggs in the overall omelet that society is trying to make. And if you agree with that, and that's your perspective, fair enough. I strongly disagree with you, but this is a conversation that's not even worth having because all of this is about to get a whole lot worse for everyone, except for the billionaires extracting wealth from taxpayers, of course. Hey guys, and i'm still in the studio. We just finished our Q1 product launch. theo Fingers are still a little bit shaky.
00:41:06
Speaker
Flock Nova is going to change the game for criminal investigations. Really? So many chiefs that they have this system and that system and that system. They know they have the data, but it's taking their analysts hours and hours to build a case.
00:41:18
Speaker
And now with Flock Nova, it's ah one click to one case solved. Wait. One click to one case solved, huh? Oh, it's taking me hours to build a case against...
00:41:32
Speaker
are like I'm sorry. Is it too hard to prove somebody's guilty? I'm sorry. How can we make it easier for you?
00:41:42
Speaker
Well, we'll use AI. Damn. I didn't think about this before. What could go wrong with AI? It's perfect, right? So how, if you're a cop listening to this going, Oh really? One click one case solved.
00:41:59
Speaker
Oh, insulting to to detect it. Like, yeah, that's sure. It's that f freaking easy.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah. So remember, um one click, one case solve.
00:42:11
Speaker
Flock Nova is a brand new product that is in beta at the time of me recording this, and it combines computer-aided dispatch, criminal records, video surveillance, automated license plate reader data, and here's the kicker, third-party data acquired by Flock Safety. What third-party data, you ask? They haven't exactly been transparent, but 404 Media asked the same question and found out that Flock Nova was using data leaked and sold from large-scale hacks and security breaches. And since that story broke, Flock made an announcement claiming to no longer be using illegally stolen personal data. Most of us at face value don't really seem to mind or at least don't think it's a big deal that our data is being farmed from us. Like, is it really that big of a deal that your activity on Pinterest under a mostly anonymized account is being stored and analyzed and sold? well it becomes a very big deal when it's combined with other data and stops being so anonymous. And when your health questionnaire information on BetterHelp was sold to Facebook, where you posted a bunch of photos from bars 10 years ago, and then all of that gets bundled by a data broker with your tracked and logged bad driving habits that your vehicle manufacturer sold. Yeah, that's a thing, too. Guess what?
00:43:19
Speaker
All of this may explain the reason your car insurance costs twice as much as anybody else in your age demographic. Or it may explain why you can't seem to get a good interest rate on a loan. And now, especially in 2025, where something you may have posted a decade ago will get you arrested and deported. My point is, data privacy never really seems like a big deal until it is. Some states have various laws regarding this, but nobody really seems to give a shit because in the few cases where they do get caught, the fine or settlement is a mere fraction of yeah the income generated from buying and selling your third party data. a large retailer or fast food chain is not using flock safety, then they're probably using some other type of automated license plate reader. But once you lock in those doors, oh my God, let's just use Walmart's corporate privacy policy.
00:44:07
Speaker
So this gets kind of crazy. So they're they're tying in. All this information, or they could possibly with Flock's help get third party thirdparty data. So what he's saying is Flock was at least, they've come out and said they've stopped that, but how do you prove this?
00:44:27
Speaker
So if there's a data breach, if somebody broke into a credit card company and a bunch of stuff got out or, and he mentions this later in one of the other clips, Park Mobile, which is a ah ah parking app that ive used I use in like Cincinnati and Columbus and stuff like that when you park on the street, most most places they don't even have ah parking meters. They have a sign and you either text or you log onto the app.
00:44:51
Speaker
Pay your parking that way. Parking garages, so and so forth. So they're gonna take all this data They're going to take stolen data and then use it to help find out what.
00:45:06
Speaker
Almost anything, I think, they can probably find out. And again, who owns this data? Well, some of this stuff is stolen.
00:45:15
Speaker
Policy is an example. They're logging your personal identifiers, your name, your phone number, your address, your email, your driver's license number, your signature, device identifiers such as your phone or smartwatch's Mac address. They're sussing out your age, gender, citizenship, race, marital status, household income, education, unemployment information, family health, number of children, credit card numbers and other payment information, geolocation history, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, and if known, background checks and criminal convictions. Oh, hang on, I haven't even gotten to the creepy part yet. Inferences, a.k.a. your behavior and preferences from your shopping patterns, intelligence, and aptitude. And they reserve the right to share any and all of this with third parties, including but not limited to, you guessed it, It's been reported that police departments have been running queries and sharing Flock Safety's data with ICE. Some Home Depot and Lowe's locations are also Flock Safety customers, and they have also been known to share Flock Safety's data with law enforcement. It might be safe to assume that some of the immigration rates happening at Home Depot and Lowe's locations may be connected to this honeypot of data. So when an immigrant picks up some construction supplies before work, the store will then send the license plate and vehicle identification data to Flock Safety. That would trigger an alert on the hot list. And just like that, masked men arrive and pick up the Venezuelan day laborer with no criminal record and ship them off to a prison camp in El Salvador. Like, why? Can't y'all just f***ing sell tools?
00:46:46
Speaker
Okay. So yeah, be careful what you wish for. Big government. This is what big government does. But I'm going to say stores are not sending data to ICE.
00:46:59
Speaker
They're not sending data to police.
00:47:03
Speaker
What they're actually, what's actually happening from what I can see is they, you have the ability to open up these cameras to law enforcement. Meaning when law enforcement goes on to look at the flock network, let's say they see their cameras and whoever else is also sharing neighboring communities, HOAs,
00:47:23
Speaker
Parking lots for Lowe's. So yeah, I guarantee you that ICE was using these to, they they probably red flagged license plates that they knew of illegal immigrants.
00:47:34
Speaker
And when they saw them in the parking lot or were seeing them coming in and out the parking lot, hey, let's do a raid here. Now, as much as this kind of, it almost sells me on some of this technology because yeah,
00:47:49
Speaker
they're illegal aliens. They should leave the country. I still don't think
00:47:54
Speaker
I still don't. I mean, no, there's better. There's other ways we can do it. What do you think?
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah, no, you give up a little bit of freedom for safety. You don't deserve either. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like the, I like that ice is able to use it, but.
00:48:10
Speaker
But I don't like that ice is able to at the same time. You know, it's. I get it, but I don't, that's, so so just to defend like, what he he he's, he's, he's given it to Lowe's in Walmart, which I'm sure they're not like, you know, these innocent companies, but I don't think they, they have, they're active actively sending information to law enforcement.
00:48:30
Speaker
No, no, I don't think that. I think they they share their cameras. Right. But like, I don't have a issue with a private company putting up cameras. Right.
00:48:41
Speaker
And sharing it with law enforcement.
00:48:45
Speaker
Like, I don't mind sharing it. I mean, yeah okay, so they're sharing it with law enforcement. Oh, gosh, I'm a little, I'm a little, uh...
00:48:59
Speaker
I like torn with that because why did they get the cameras to protect the, to protect their stores? Right. Yeah. To make your parking lot. Well, a, to make your parking a lot safer. But B, if you've got somebody maybe stealing something, running out to the car, you you may have, the you probably have the license plate on file somewhere.
00:49:17
Speaker
Right. But if they leave it open to law enforcement, so can law enforcement, they can flag a license plate. And if it shows up in your parking lot, it'll tell them it was there, even though it's not their camera. That's not cool.
00:49:30
Speaker
So you can turn that off. And part of that deflock, it'll show you who they're sharing with. And if you start clicking on that, I saw some videos of somebody going through the site and clicking on it and showing some of the features to it. And it was like, holy cow. It's like, you know, you click on it where they're sharing it and it shows like a 3D map with arrows going, pointing, looping to other cities. And it's just, it's like a spider web going everywhere.
00:49:53
Speaker
It's crazy. But most are sharing it. This deflock.org is pretty... site is amazing. Yeah. My little city's got like 15 or 16 cameras.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. And now I see them everywhere. Yeah. I thought I saw... I thought I knew my city had them. I just didn't realize where... I mean, i mean there's one like literally 500 feet from my house.
00:50:17
Speaker
Yep.
00:50:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's crazy. All right. So...
00:50:25
Speaker
Here's where Ben loses me to some extent, because it's similar to the News Channel 5 article. It's like, well, you know, if you're a law-abiding citizen, what do you have to worry about?
00:50:37
Speaker
What do you have to worry about? not Until the law changes or they're...
00:50:47
Speaker
Or it's you have a mask man or you have ah a mandate for um for vaccines and then they track you. Did you actually go get your vaccine or did where were you? Where are these people? Where are non-vaccinated people at? Let's tie license plate data with vaccination status and then we can find out exactly where all the...
00:51:04
Speaker
Things can change quickly and all a sudden you've you've been a law abiding citizen, but something retarded happens. So listen to his twist here, because he brings in Europe. and And of course the music has been throughout this whole thing and it's not horrible. It's not too intrusive, but it is kind of.
00:51:20
Speaker
It's a little annoying. It's a little annoying, but you can also tell where he's like. where he's going with doom and gloom and oh, it's nice and happy. ah Which again, i I go back and forth. i don't know, would you rather have no music and just him talking? Because I don't some cases it's... It's hard when you're when you're using it as a reaction.
00:51:42
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. So let's let's let's hear when Ben loses kind of loses the plot little Everywhere in the European Union, your data privacy is treated and recognized as a fundamental human right. Their general data protection regulation requires you to explicitly opt in before your personal data can be logged or collected. And this provides the framework for similar protections in the UK, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Switzerland, South Korea, Canada, India, even China, and so on. And in the majority of these countries, these protections are extraterritorial, meaning that Even though Google or Facebook are American companies or services, they'll need to become and remain compliant to those rules if they want to continue doing business in those countries. There is no reasonable need to try and disrupt license plate readers in these places because your health information, your social media activity, your facial expressions and sentiment while standing in line at Walmart aren't being bundled with them and then leased to law enforcement.
00:52:41
Speaker
Is he high?
00:52:44
Speaker
Has he not noticed what's going on in England right now? Right. Because the data, private, and ah what he's saying is because private companies don't have the access and can't sell our data without our permission and and in england in Europe, then there's there's no reason to worry about these flat cameras. because Because he trusts the companies in Europe.
00:53:11
Speaker
and ink in Europe, even though they're the same companies he doesn't trust in America. They're going to do the right thing because the law said so.
00:53:20
Speaker
Oh, Ben, you know, it it is where lefties always go. i mean, it's fine as long as, you know, you don't do anything wrong. Okay,
00:53:31
Speaker
so that's bad enough. So here we have...
00:53:35
Speaker
We've got cameras tracking you, virtually tailing you if they need if they want to with no warrant, ah logging a license plates compared to dents, scratches, bumper stickers, make a model of car, time and date, all this crazy, I mean, it makes you want get that cabin up on top of the mountain and just load it with guns, right?
00:54:00
Speaker
How could it get, hu don't hit don't give away your secret plan. How could it get any worse? Well, so any if any tech nowadays
00:54:15
Speaker
is not 100% secure. That'd be fair to say. There's almost no tech that can be 100% secure, especially when you're tying into a network. that Would you agree to that? Yes. Yeah.
00:54:27
Speaker
So how good is Flock security?
Security Concerns and Privacy Invasion with Flock Cameras
00:54:32
Speaker
Well, let's see what Ben has to say about it. I'm sure it's great. You may remember me from this video where I told you about 40,000 of these things that your tax dollars pay for that are tracking your every move and repurposing data collected about you every time that you drive past them. Upon further investigation, it turns out that there are over 80,000 of them and we got some and we hacked them. You can press a button a few times on the back of these cameras and within a few minutes, turn them into your own personal spy device or malware host or honeypot that steals people's login credentials or a cryptocurrency miner. whatever you want really. for
00:55:06
Speaker
What?
00:55:09
Speaker
Unbelievable. Yeah. Oh, it's, it's, that's, it's just the start of it. So this is the intro to one that I was going to go on to this video next. And then I saw another one after this, but this is the intro to that. And I'm like, Oh, well this can't be good. So he goes on through this video and like makes his own reader and actually does it in the first one too. Let's finish this. Or alternatively, how you can point an antenna at them and decode the video stream using a technique used by the CIA during the Cold War. Or how another researcher found a Google search phrase that had the capabilities of showing you the real-time location of these cameras and police patrol cars. This isn't clickbait or an exaggerated claim with no payoff. Just the other day, weeks before this video will be released, U.S. senators and representatives drafted an official letter to open an investigation that highlights the national security risks associated with our findings. And in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how they work.
00:56:04
Speaker
So then he goes through the video, takes apart cameras and shows, doesn't show you how, but gives you an idea of how easy it is to break into a lot of these cameras.
00:56:17
Speaker
To the point where it actually, they're saying actually takes longer for you to connect. I forget what it said. It's it's like to seconds in a lot of cases.
00:56:27
Speaker
But it could get even worse, even worse, Tom. Worse or more, worse. Because what if there's no passwords on any of these things?
00:56:38
Speaker
A few weeks ago, using a commercial search engine, I very easily found the administration interfaces for dozens of flock safety cameras. I shared this information with 404 Media and with John Gaines' help, that number quickly grew to nearly 70. None of the data or video footage was encrypted.
00:56:56
Speaker
There was no username or password required. These were all completely public facing for the world to see. And some of them still are. You don't have to be an expert to find and gain access to this. You don't even have to type anything in to see every single person, vehicle and activity that took place in these locations in the last 31 days. Whether you wanted to watch this footage live in real time or look at footage from a month ago, you could just point and click your way to it like you were watching Netflix. You could even open up the live streams in VLC or cast it to a television. Making any modification to the cameras is illegal, so I didn't do this, but I had the ability to delete any of the video footage or evidence by simply pressing a button. I could see the paths where all of the evidence files were located on the file system, and I could see their hashes and signatures. Some of the devices we saw were the familiar-looking Falcon cameras that you see all over the country, but the majority of these were Phlox new Condor cameras, which are designed to detect and track pictures. people. They're PTZ cameras, meaning pan, tilt, zoom.
00:57:57
Speaker
And they quite literally use AI to zoom in and follow you around whether you're a person of interest or not. In just the time that it took to count and verify these. Oh, listen. So to check, this is what he saw in the time that he was just researching how, you know, what these cameras, all these, these are cameras that open to the internet. They're streaming on the internet.
00:58:18
Speaker
ah there I don't think there's like a you can't go on flock.com or whatever and go see them. But if you do, if you're good enough at searching, you can find out where these cameras are.
00:58:28
Speaker
And, and just in the meantime, he was kind of poking around. Here's what he saw. It's so creepy. Vulnerabilities. I saw a family in North Carolina load their infant and a bunch of merchandise in a Lowe's parking lot. And I suppose one could cross-reference their license plate with the ParkMobile data breach and find out exactly where the garage that will store these new fancy tools. I watched a man leave his house in the morning in New York.
00:58:53
Speaker
I watched a woman jogging alone on a forest trail in Georgia. This trail had multiple cameras and I could watch a man rollerblade and then take a break to watch rollerblading videos on his phone.
00:59:05
Speaker
How? Because the camera's AI automatically zoomed in on it. Just like it zoomed in on a couple arguing at a street market in Atlanta. So what? They're still anonymous, right? m but there's But they're anonymous, Tom.
00:59:21
Speaker
Right. Sure. Right? No, it gets creepier. It gets creepier.
00:59:29
Speaker
Because maybe they're not anonymous because, you know, we live in this world today where you can get almost any information online. So let's see. No, they're not. Within two minutes of open source intelligence using a commercial facial recognition engine, I found out that one of them just finished medical school and the other is dealing with chronic irritable bowel syndrome.
00:59:48
Speaker
The couple also just had a baby last year and they have a pretty concerning debt to income ratio. I also know that they drove over 45 minutes from their address in the suburbs to attend church in Atlanta that morning, and then they checked out this market and bought a sweater. I watched a law enforcement officer and ambulance escort a man having a mental health crisis in Iowa.
01:00:06
Speaker
I know this because the Cedar Rapids Police Department maintains a public database of every single emergency call in the city, as well as daily arrest reports with individuals' names, addresses, ages, and genders. Listen, I know that I'm being creepy right now. Just saying these words out loud nauseates me, but I'm trying to show you just a fraction of the information that anyone in the world with access to a commercial search engine has had regarding anyone who attended this market or walked on this trail in the last 31 days. And it gets worse. Here's an exposed flock safety camera permanently pointed at a playground near the Bay Area in California, openly and publicly broadcasting both live and archived video footage of young children playing unattended
01:00:51
Speaker
for the children. just saying this stuff out loud feels so incredibly wrong. Yeah, because it is. Now, they've found like 70 or 80 of these cameras that are completely open.
01:01:07
Speaker
There's no password, no login, nothing. And...
01:01:13
Speaker
so course, he is, um you know, he's he's starting to get some attention. You know, cops showing up at his house, strange cars parked outside of his on the street, neighbors concerned about all these cars, strange cars with people sitting in and parking on the street. he thinks He thinks the cops are getting upset or, they you know, they're trying to check and he thinks he's got private detectives or or somebody.
01:01:38
Speaker
He's shown some video of this and you'll we'll add the videos in the in the show notes on crooked river cast.com where you can check out the blog and there'll be all of our kind of clips on there. You can watch these videos in full because there's a lot of stuff I'm not putting in there and a lot of the visuals are pretty good.
01:01:54
Speaker
Um, if you, if, if you've had any experience with flock cameras, you can always send us an email at crooked river cast at gmail.com and tell us your experience. Good or bad? And tell us what you think about this because it's a little wacky. So what does Flock say?
01:02:13
Speaker
Well, let's see what Ben has. Let's see what Ben has come up with to see what Flock has said because he has ah interesting way of the you know bringing it to us.
01:02:24
Speaker
I've been contacted by people on or communicating with civic councils who found my videos concerning and they shared Flock Safety's response with me. The company claimed that the devices in my video did not reflect the security standards of the ones being publicly deployed. The CEO even posted on LinkedIn and boasted about Flock Safety's security policies. So I formally and publicly offered to personally fund security research into Flock Safety's deployed ecosystem. But the law prevents me from touching their live devices, so all I needed was their permission so I wouldn't get arrested. And I was even willing to let them supervise this research.
01:02:59
Speaker
I got no response. but now, since the general public has access to live video feeds from search engines, let's just save the back and forth and I'll literally read you Flock Safety's response to IPVM about their security from a brand new Flock Safety camera that's publicly deployed. Might as well, it's my tax dollars that paid for it.
01:03:18
Speaker
So he's reading this in front of the Flock camera. The devices in this YouTube video were not connected to the cloud and to the best of our knowledge, not customer installed. So the security is akin to factory setting. It's like looking at an iPhone stolen off a truck before it was ever connected to the cloud. While he's doing this, the camera sees two women walking all the way in the background and it it moves off of him and starts zooming in on the wi women walking in the background. So he has to cut the video so that...
01:03:47
Speaker
So that the women can pass because it does a quick edit. So the women can pass. So it focuses on him instead of the women pass. like oh god So yeah, the point. And that's why he he shows the video. The the guy is pretty funny. The guy's rollerblading or yeah. and then he stops to watch rollerblading videos.
01:04:06
Speaker
And as he stopped, the camera's like above him. And he's they zoom in. You could see what's on his screen, what he's watching.
01:04:14
Speaker
And this flock's like, oh, this is there's nothing nothing to see here. Cloud. If a person were able to gain physical access to the device leased to the city, which is illegal, they still would not be able to gain access to the footage as the data is only stored for a very limited time duration on the device following its transmission to the cloud. None of these vulnerabilities affect our cloud platform, where the vast majority of all evidence and metadata is stored.
01:04:42
Speaker
As he was doing it on their cloud platform. you Right. it Okay. I got one more clip. Thoughts? um I'm boarding up my house. I'm not leaving.
01:04:55
Speaker
I'm telling you, this is insanity. what we what It's bad enough if the cops were doing this, but it's not the cops. That's kind of his whole point to this. And it's kind of his dystopian point to it, I think, is, oh, it's a it wasn't for private business, it'd be okay.
01:05:12
Speaker
No, it wouldn't be. But this it makes it even worse. Are you kidding me? They're collecting all this data and they're selling it. They're selling it two or three different ways. i I guarantee you. They're making money off the cops in the cities and they're selling it to this, that, whoever else they can compile it and give them information and they can sell them.
01:05:32
Speaker
Like such as.
01:05:36
Speaker
You're asking me? Yeah. Well, you could, you could sell to advertising. Yeah. Okay. You could sell, I mean, just, just as. It's like your Facebook, uh, you know, you're, you're, you're the product. Your Facebook isn't um isn't the product.
01:05:52
Speaker
Like he said, so you buy a car or a truck. It has, it has GPS in it tracking you and Ford. And all of the other ones, I'm sure, take that data, they collect it, and they sell it to to insurance companies, advertisers, whoever.
01:06:10
Speaker
It's a whole other revenue stream for them. So start tying this stuff into license plate data, along with the scratches and and stickers and all the stuff you went over to Walmart.
01:06:23
Speaker
they're They're taking all this video from video data from their stores and compiling it so they can try to figure out well how to sell you better. And then what what after they've done with that, they're probably compiling it and saying, who can we sell this to?
01:06:36
Speaker
The advertisers, different companies. Hey, look, they walk past your competitors, but or they walk they walk they don't walk to yours. They see your competitors first. You should change your label. Give us $1 million. Hmm.
01:06:49
Speaker
And having this stuff just able to, I mean, i think the cameras we're just hearing about these 60 or 70 are the exception. Maybe seems like this was an error. I think later on in some of the videos, Flockhead said, yeah, these are, these were cameras that mistakenly went out with ah SIM cards that weren't password protected.
01:07:09
Speaker
Okay. But the problem is nobody's allowed to check this stuff because you got it so locked down. no you there Has anyone done an independent audit of any of these? No, they're not allowed to.
01:07:21
Speaker
You literally can't without Phlox permission.
01:07:25
Speaker
So I think I'm pretty sure Ben lives in Georgia. He keeps bringing up Georgia. A lot of these cameras that he was showing were in Georgia. And so what do we do?
01:07:37
Speaker
ah Boarding up your house is one thing, but you eventually have to leave.
01:07:41
Speaker
Right? them Eventually you' have to leave. So boarding it up isn't necessarily answer. Okay.
01:07:49
Speaker
Or, I mean, nowadays, I guess you don't. You can always send out for delivery for groceries. I got to go to work. Yeah, and then there's, yeah, you got to pay for those groceries. But, so what Ben has been getting is bombarded, it sounds like, by, after these videos, by communities, activist groups, trying to convince their city council to get rid of these cameras or don't put them in to begin with.
01:08:17
Speaker
And he's like, I, you know, one of the reasons he wants to put out more videos is he's putting on more videos, he says, is because he can't be everywhere. He's got a lot of people requesting. So here's an example real quick before we wrap up of, he's at a city council meeting in Dunham, Georgia.
01:08:30
Speaker
Oh, excuse me, Dunwood, Georgia, a city council meeting, going over the, you know, what he's found. And, and then you'll see flock's response too.
01:08:41
Speaker
About a year ago, I started formally researching the security posture of the police surveillance industry. Myself, John Gaines, and Joshua Michael found close to 60 security vulnerabilities within or closely related to Flock Safety's ecosystem. We were able to... All right, hold on. That's not talking about the cameras we were just talking about that were just open.
01:09:01
Speaker
He's talking about at least 60 security flaws in their software or system, either with Flock System or in systems closely related to Flock. That's separate to the cameras we just talked about that were just wide open streaming to the internet.
01:09:16
Speaker
This is every flat cameras he's saying that has this software has these 50 or 60 vulnerabilities. That's why I go back to no tech is 100% secure. It just makes it even worse.
01:09:29
Speaker
Connect to and completely take control of the ALPR cameras. We could view or modify the footage. We could install malware on them. We could view the hard-coded credentials that led to other places. And there was even one that allowed us to track the real-time GPS location of police vehicles. I published a selfie video, literally pulled from one of the newly deployed Flock cameras right down the road at Peachtree Creek Greenway.
01:09:52
Speaker
and showcased how easily I was able to access zoomed in footage of every single person who walked on that trail over the last 30 days without using a password. Some of these findings were reported to flock directly, and some of them are now published and flagged by MITRE, which is part of Homeland Security to manage cybersecurity threats.
01:10:11
Speaker
Some of these are still rated today as high or critical vulnerabilities. Members of U.S. Congress have cited my research in a published letter to the FTC calling for a formal investigation into Flock's negligence as a risk to national security. So how did Flock respond to all this? Fake news.
01:10:28
Speaker
The CEO himself claimed that Flock had never been hacked. And he spent his time sending unsolicited emails to law enforcement agencies around the country telling them that their agency was under coordinated attack by activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness.
01:10:47
Speaker
This was Flock's response to a formal report about security vulnerabilities. I watched Flock representatives stand up at city hall meetings just like this one, with people dead in the eyes, and despite evidence verified by MITRE, claim that Flock has never been hacked. A few minutes later. There are not documented breaches online. There's documented meaning attempts to intrude on a single camera online. And that is like saying, if someone hacks into your iPhone, Apple has been breached.
01:11:16
Speaker
It's simply a different kind concept. I'm sitting over here fidgeting while your surveillance defender keeps changing the definitions of data and security breach. So now we're all here and we could go to the nearest Falcon camera right now and I will lend you a laptop and walk you through the quick process of seeing if just one of these vulnerabilities have been fixed. I want someone to help me understand, given the evidence that we produced, how anyone would think that signing more contracts with any third-party surveillance vendor would be a good idea without setting up an independent security and ethics audit first.
01:11:53
Speaker
I can't open a barbershop or a Chick-fil-A without a safety inspection. Exactly. Exactly. You can't take a crap. and way Actually, in some cities, you can take a crap on the sidewalk.
01:12:06
Speaker
Shoot. I've seen it. Yeah. Nevermind. And it's permitted. yeah but But you don't need a permit to put up a camera. You don't need any civic approval. It's just just whatever your city council thinks is right. And with the sales pitch that these guys have, these companies,
01:12:27
Speaker
yeah you almost can't, they almost can't say no. And
01:12:35
Speaker
i don't see, don't see how people are more outraged. I just don't think many people know about it.
01:12:43
Speaker
But do you think they would get outraged when they do?
01:12:47
Speaker
I don't think so. I don't think so. I think most people are wrapped in, well, I mean, i'm not doing anything wrong. Yeah. And so you do.
01:12:59
Speaker
Until so you do changes and you are something you are doing something wrong. Yeah, until you do something wrong, but but you don't know you're doing it wrong because something's changed.
01:13:10
Speaker
And I guess the only way to combat this is to go to your city council meetings. Local, local, local. It's kind of the only thing you can do. Get them on record.
01:13:22
Speaker
And when, when your city gets a ah million dollar lawsuit because the AI screwed up the license plate read, ah they they can be on record saying, no, I'm for all this, even with the risks. And then with, with the way city budgets are, can you, can, could Colorado, or i think it was, we're in Colorado.
01:13:41
Speaker
You think they had just had a million and a half dollars just in surplus? No, that probably meant they cut something else out of the out of services or didn't fix a road or two because they had to pay this family for the lawsuit as the cops, you know, wrongly accused them of stealing a car.
01:13:59
Speaker
But it's not Flock. Flock's completely washed their hands of the whole situation. Fricking ridiculous.
01:14:09
Speaker
Anyway, that's Flock. You should check out your city's local cities website. Website. Yeah. my My city has a flock portal, transparency portal.
01:14:22
Speaker
Portal. Really? Yeah. it says, yeah, mine does, at least. so gives you It gives you how many unique plate reads over the last 30 days, how long data is retained. It's 30 days. Number of searches.
01:14:40
Speaker
Total user search sessions over 30 days. days And um hot lists alerted on.
01:14:52
Speaker
And number of hot list hits.
01:14:57
Speaker
Hot list being NCIC, NCMEC, or that's the Amber Alert. oh I don't know what NCIC is.
01:15:10
Speaker
I don't
Data Ownership and Transparency Discussion
01:15:11
Speaker
know. Do they tell you whether they're sharing their information with any other law enforcement? Let's see. Policy and trust. What is not detected? Fake, facial, people, gender, race. What's what's detected? It's vehicles and fleets.
01:15:28
Speaker
Data is only used for ah law enforcement. Data is owned by North Royalton and is never sold to third parties. Okay. It's not a lot to be used for immigration enforcement, traffic enforcement, harassment, or intimidation.
01:15:47
Speaker
i mean, these are policies. so Sure, you still have to catch them if they do it. Yeah. All system access requires a valid reason and is stored indefinitely.
01:15:59
Speaker
Hot list policy. Hot list hits are required to be human verified prior to action. And public search audit. down Oh, I can download searches performed over the last 30 days.
01:16:12
Speaker
Okay. So there's a little bit of transparency here. So I would i would suggest everybody check what their local... police department does with this info.
01:16:26
Speaker
Yeah. Good catch. I didn't see looking at my city. If that there's anything, didn't even find that. You just search Google for it or just go on the city. Yes. I, what I did was, um, I did a flock camera security search and it kind of, uh, I just Googled it. Yeah.
01:16:46
Speaker
And then it asked if I want to know more about like my local neighborhood. have to look kind Kind of like the smart search or whatever, the you know, ai search. You could probably go on Grok or any anywhere.
01:16:59
Speaker
And then I typed in North Royals on how many cameras does it have? Because I was counting 20 on that deflock thing, but a handful of them were like right on the border. So I'm thinking it might have been another city.
01:17:11
Speaker
We have
DIY Tactics and Legal Concerns with AI Cameras
01:17:12
Speaker
10 in our city. And there's a 60-month contract. So five-year contract 2022. And then it it there's a of a bullet point that says transparency and that sent me right to the North Royalton.gov. Oh, I just told everybody where I live.
01:17:38
Speaker
But ah I went to that and then and there's a link on the main page, on the police department page.
01:17:49
Speaker
been in my community for quite a few years now I'm looking at. Yeah. Two-year contract, $31,000 contract. This is 2023. Includes installation and maintenance of five cameras.
01:18:03
Speaker
That's it? Which read vehicle colors, types, and license plates. Yeah. Yeah, but my neighboring city's got a shit ton of them. Mm-hmm. e
01:18:14
Speaker
Yeah. Now he does bring up in the first, i think one of the first videos at the end that he, I think he figured, he he thinks he figured out as a way to, to stop it or to fool it.
01:18:26
Speaker
And he did. go back and watch the full video, he'll go through a lot of it. What he tears apart a camera. He actually tore apart a police attached license camera that he bought off auction to, cause he didn't want to use that actual camera that Motorola makes to maybe get sued. So he actually, cause he's a geek nerd. He disconc disassembled it, analyzed it and built his own.
01:18:52
Speaker
So like Raspberry Pi, this and that, and it's basically a camera. They taught the computer to all the different things. You got look for the vehicle, then you look license plate all other stuff. And what he found out was, first of all, the software they're using that a lot of the, or at least some of the police or law enforcement are using is not great. It's, it's got really low.
01:19:17
Speaker
Crappy is what he said. So he's used ah some other stuff to make it better, make it easier. he actually made one that's he what he feels is better than what's generally out there. And what he's come to the conclusion is if you, well, you can cover your license plate, but you'll get pulled over.
01:19:34
Speaker
He, he designed a, sticker that will go over your license plate that has a little flex, like little, like he kind of figured out where the AI kind of got screwed up on.
01:19:45
Speaker
I think they sell paint like this too. Well, paint the paint is, I've looked at that because when I go when i take one of my kids to school, I drive past a school zone. I've gotten hit by it. The license, is the reflective stuff, it's reflective as far as I understand it. It it will overexpose, especially on a flash.
01:20:03
Speaker
Right. extra reflective coding This, he actually tried to figure out how the AI screwed up on some of the, the because he had ah he made his own license plate called POO5000.
01:20:16
Speaker
So a pretty easy plate to recognize a lot of zeros and O's in it. so So he kind of figured out where the AI was screwing up on some of these and kind of recreated that. So it's actually a clear sticker with like these little flecks of squares and rectangles on it.
01:20:28
Speaker
e And it just, it it doesn't, it's hard to notice that it's on there. Right. But it screws, it totally screws the AI up. Okay. But in most communities, you are on you are permitted from obscuring or putting anything over your license plate.
01:20:45
Speaker
You're not permitted. You're you're not permitted to, yes. Prohibited, I should say. You're prohibited. So a lot of people you see put like tinted covers on there. That's technically illegal too.
01:20:56
Speaker
Right. So this would be considered in most cases, guarantee, in my opinion, ah Even you put this little thing and and all you all saw was a couple of square, like stuck off from the one side of the five and a little like, like kind of almost what he brings up is almost like throwing some mud on your license plate.
01:21:12
Speaker
but So if ah if a police car is behind you and they're going to run your plate, can they see it at night when the when the lights are... i don't think they'd be able to see it from the car. Yeah. um But a lot of cars police cars now have automatic plate readers where the cop will just trigger it and it grabs the That's Yeah. So if it wasn't grabbing the plate, he then would probably pull you over. i don't know. I'm just guessing. But...
01:21:34
Speaker
And then if he actually, he would take you a second, you would actually have to look at the license plate. At a glance, you probably wouldn't know. At a glance, it looked like it was dirty. And I'm thinking, well, you know, just throw some mud on it every once in a while. Yeah, I like my vehicle clean.
01:21:48
Speaker
No, I know. um I'm thinking, ah the other thing I thought was if you can get a license plate frame that is not rectangle and fit it to where your license plate goes, which think in most cases you probably can't.
01:22:00
Speaker
But that's it looks for the rectangle. It looks for, ah I think it says it looks for a windshield rectangle, like headlight rectangles, and then the license plate. Right. if you made the license plate a triangle or a star, like the the the cover around it, it may not recognize it.
01:22:16
Speaker
Yeah, until the local police pull you over because of something's being blocked. her Well, yes, it's still you' you're still you're still poking the law, but by the letter of the law, you have not covered or changed your license plate or whatever. the you' you've just You just have a weird shaped oval license plate cover.
01:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, but you're just poking the law at that point. I'd rather not poke the law. Yeah. do camera. The camera should be something that the citizens of the city can argue their points and get rid of them if if they feel necessary.
01:23:00
Speaker
And then something that wasn't really brought up real quick is with the insecurities of these cameras, how how good are they in court? oh ho How reliable can you... can you i don't even think it's used in court.
01:23:14
Speaker
What for? It's not catching a crime. It's just reading plates. So if they catch you, they catch you. if they're If they use it to catch you. Right. They use it to say you were in this area at this time. That's what they would use it for probably.
01:23:30
Speaker
But how do you know that wasn't well then in there? was It wasn't edited or? Yeah. Yeah. No, I, okay. I understand what you're saying, but you should have an alibi most likely. Well, it shouldn't be admissible as evidence if it, if it's that easy to break into them and change it. the True. I'd like to, you know, let alone the the mistakes the i AI is making.
01:23:50
Speaker
Well, you should be able to audit the info. Yeah. And
Encouraging Public Involvement and Closing Remarks
01:23:53
Speaker
that's, that's the one of the biggest things. I don't like the cameras to begin with. It's, it seems. I mean, intrusive. Oh, it's completely. it's You're just taking pictures of everybody.
01:24:02
Speaker
Yeah. Everybody's license to plate. The thing is, it's not really taking pictures. It's, it's not keeping, it's not, I don't think it keeps pictures. Does it? For a month. It keeps the information, but it keeps the picture for a month.
01:24:16
Speaker
Okay. That's what he was going on and seeing. All He has 31 days video recording.
01:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy. These trail cameras or these pointant point, point, zoom cameras. And the flock ones are the same. but I think it's 30 days. But guess it would give a a good lawyer or something to something to pick at if you that was part of your evidence in your in some case.
01:24:44
Speaker
But it would also give a good way for a criminal to get out of his crime by saying, whoops, these flock cameras are insecure. How can you... But anyway, I mean, that's... Did you show a little different today? If you made it all the way the end, we thank you very much. Anything else you want say, Tom?
01:25:00
Speaker
No. Block you. Block you ah Make sure you get involved. People need to get involved. Yeah. This is... yeah i mean i'll I'll be honest, man. They passed this and in my city, and I didn't know about it until after they were installed. So, yeah you know, I can say get involved, but...
01:25:22
Speaker
you You got to just do it. You got to go to your council meetings every everyone once in a while. Yeah. whatever Whenever that council meeting was it was passed, there was probably four people, if you're lucky, in the whole place. I doubt it. I've been to a couple of them. and ah yeah Yeah. Four or five people at the most.
01:25:41
Speaker
I know. I've been to a couple. Man, they're very frustrating. Frustrating. it's bor They're boring. they're they're worried There's way too much procedure. Without substance.
01:25:53
Speaker
It's awful. Frustrating to see how government works. Yeah. But in some cases being slow and antiquated is probably okay. But like i said, check out the blog. You can watch all these videos in full plus see the couple of articles and keep an eye on it because they're happening everywhere. And like I said, it's been a week and it's gone up by like 20,000 cameras or something.
01:26:13
Speaker
That's crazy. You know what? i think a lot of council meetings now you could do on video, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you don't even have to go there. Yeah. Unless they're, you know, unless they want to hear from you.
01:26:26
Speaker
i mean, unless you want to say something. Right. But you could at least kind of keep tabs on them. Yeah. Who voted for what, but I mean, put, put, put some, ah put some stats, put some information at them and say, look, cause here's what's going on. How, how, how secure You know how confident I liked the way your city was doing.
01:26:43
Speaker
Transparent, but. Yeah, you know you know, I got to say my city's pretty, yeah it's, it's a, ah we're a suburb of a large metropolitan area, but it's kind on the outskirts. We're right on the border of a, of a more rural based area. So it's not bad. Yeah. I don't think Cleveland's that up transparent, but I'd be interested to take a look.
01:27:08
Speaker
Yeah, actually that's true. I mean, well, Everybody go out there and look. Yeah, go check it out and let us know. QuickerRiverCast at gmail.com. How transparent is your city?
01:27:19
Speaker
Whether it be Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Columbus, whatever. Let us know what you're finding out there and we can add to the conversation. But on that note, I think that's all we got today.
01:27:31
Speaker
think that's enough for everybody. Yeah. It's enough. You're welcome. I ruined your Monday. Just imagine how many flock cameras you passed up on your way to work this morning. That's a scary, scary thing think about right there.
01:27:46
Speaker
But we thank you for listening. If you made it all this far again, I say thank you very much. we appreciate CrookedRiverCast at gmail.com. CrookedRiverCast.com where the blog comes out when this show drops. On an unhappy note, talk to you next week.
01:28:04
Speaker
Peace.