# Flock Cameras Don't Just Read License Plates | DarkHorse 334
# Bret Weinstein — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNOkPSDANAc

We're gonna talk about the Flock camera
phenomenon, which people are increasingly
aware of, but I would say
that one of the key dimensions
of the Flock story is that it kind of
suddenly erupted in
many of our consciousnesses
recently because it's sort of quietly
been installed around the country without
a discussion, which is a
big key to the problem.
So these cameras are, Flock is a company.
This company is producing cameras.
I think there is something like 80,000
acknowledged cameras
in the US at the moment.
And what they ostensibly do is sit there
and passively they're solar powered.
The technological innovation to the
extent that there is one is that they
don't have wires that have to conduct
data back to some sort of data center.
They are wireless and
therefore broadcast through the cloud.
And what they are ostensibly there to do
is to track license plates.
And you wanna, can we put up
their website just to see exactly what
you're talking about?
You want Flock's website or De-Flock?
Yeah, Flock first just to see in their
words what it is that they're
doing.
How effective is Flock?
2025 impact census results from 700 law
enforcement agencies.
Their claim is that Flock technology
supported more than 1 million
investigations, assisted in solving 20%
of cleared cases, helped locate more than
10,000 missing persons and contributed
significantly to stolen vehicle
recoveries across the country.
So that it was worth showing.
What they say is they're doing-- The face
that they're putting forward and the face
that they're putting forward is, look,
this is not really an
invasion of privacy.
It's just tracking license plates as you
drive down the street on a public road.
So there's nothing
really to be worried about.
And these things do a hell of a lot of
good according to that.
Now, the problem is that the issue, the
argument to make in favor of these things
is very straightforward.
In fact, we've just done it for them.
The argument against them is actually
subtle and at least
complicated and many dimensional.
So let us just acknowledge upfront that
if you have a network of these cameras
deployed across civilization, it will
result in the solving of a bunch of
crimes that you would
not otherwise solve.
But I would also
The evidence actually
doesn't support that conclusion.
So what I find when I go looking is
cars are found,
but perpetrators are not.
So people get their property returned to
them with the help of Flock cameras, but
crimes are not being solved at a greater
rate and the people who stole
the cars aren't being found.
Okay, well, I would point out that this
actually points of our current police
situation, which is that the people who
are organizing it and dictating it don't
actually give a shit about us.
That's the point.
They've stopped
policing in large measure.
There are entire parts of the country,
we've lived in them, where people don't
call 911 because nobody fricking shows up
and it doesn't matter what
it is that you're reporting.
You can be reporting a literal home
invasion where somebody is threatening
you in your house and the police don't
come for an hour, if at all.
So the point is they're not solving
crimes even with the data
about where to find the car.
Well, that's because
nobody's doing any policing.
Why are they not doing any policing?
Because they don't
actually give a shit about us.
That's why, right?
This is not their neighborhoods that
aren't being policed.
It's our neighborhoods
that aren't being policed.
So I will grant that in a world that
actually functioned, if you deployed
these cameras everywhere, you
would solve a good many crimes.
Some of them absolutely horrifying.
You would solve some crimes.
But I would also point out that if you
were to activate every microphone on
every cell phone carried by every person
and record everything said by those
people, you would also
solve a bunch of crimes.
So the point is the fact that you're
going to do some good here, A, doesn't
mean anything if you're not doing the
good that you could be doing by going
back to actual policing
and investing in it, right?
But it's also not true that everything
that does some good should be embraced
involves a massive compromise of the
liberties that make this a great country.
You know what?
Unfortunately, there's a
perfect analogy here to sunscreen.
Does sunscreen reduce sun exposure?
Best case scenario, okay?
Using a physical zinc and tallow based
sunscreen and you've reduced your sun
exposure, not so much that you're now sun
deprived, but enough that you don't get
the melanoma that you would have gotten
that has killed you.
That is the equivalent of a crime being
solved because there was a Flock camera
in the right place at the right time.
But more people end up harmed by lack of
sun exposure and by the toxins in their
chemical based sunscreens than they do
helped by the fact that they had exactly
the right confluence of factors that
helped them with
regard to their melanoma.
It's exactly the same thing.
Wow, we've got a problem and we can solve
it with perfect surveillance.
So you're telling us that all we have to
do is sacrifice our First Amendment
rights and all of our privacy and we can
move towards the
asymptote of a crime-free state?
No, thank you.
Yeah, I mean, you know, of course, Ben
Franklin nailed this one.
I'm sure I won't get the quote exactly
right, but he said, you know, those who
would surrender liberty
for safety deserve neither.
But
this is just one of many objections.
This is an invasion of privacy.
It is an invasion of privacy without
probable cause.
I mean, that probable cause is one of the
central protectors of our privacy, which
is that government doesn't have the right
to search you unless it has really good
reason, you know, enough to stand up in a
court to think that you're doing
something that would justify a breach of
your privacy rights.
This is just gonna be done en masse, but
there's also something utterly
preposterous about the presentation.
Well, it's just
looking at license plates.
Hey, let me show you something.
You know what this is?
This is a kid camera.
What it does is it photographs children.
Oh, that's sweet.
Yeah, isn't that nice?
Yeah.
So don't worry about it.
You're not a kid.
You're not gonna get photographed because
this is for photographing children.
So basically-- Everyone wants more
photographs of children.
Not everybody does, but
most people presumably do.
That's not helpful.
All right, I take it back.
But the point being, look, you're talking
about license plates.
You're installing a camera.
What you say it's for when you install it
is hardly the limit of what it can be
used for, as many
people have demonstrated.
I mean, for one thing, we know that these
things not only look at license plates,
but they also look at
other features of your car.
They look at things like whether you have
a roof rack, whether you've got a dent,
whether you've got a bumper
sticker or a stripe or whatever.
Do you wanna show the deFlock site?
Yeah, let's look at the deFlock site.
You can either show it
from my screen or yours.
So deFlock is the, I guess the major,
although there are plenty of outfits that
are objecting to Flock.
An open source project
mapping license plate readers.
So what are ALPRs?
Automated license plate readers, are AI
powered cameras that capture, analyze the
images of all passing vehicles during
details like your car's
location, date and time.
They also capture your car's make model
color and identifying features such as,
exactly as you were just saying, dents,
roof racks and bumper stickers, often
turning these into
searchable data points.
These cameras collected on millions of
vehicles, regardless of whether the
driver is suspected of a crime.
These systems are marketed as
indispensable tools to fight crime, but
they ignore the powerful tools police
already have to track criminals,
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