‘Get it the ‘FLOCK’ out’: Students rise up against AI-powered license plate readers

So I hate to tell you, but you might be getting flocked as in F-L-O-C-K-E FLOCKED. Across the country, there is a new kind of surveillance taking place. It is an estimated 100 ,000 cameras recording cars, where they go, what they look like, when they pass by. All of this is creating searchable records of everyday Americans' movements. It is what happens when you get flocked. It is a reference to Flock Safety, the largest provider of automatic license plate readers in the United States. These plate readers are pretty unassuming. They are often attached to utility poles like that and street lights that line highways and neighborhoods and parking lots. But these are not your standard traffic cameras. They don't enforce speeding or red light stops. When you drive past a plate reader, like a flock, it creates what is known as a digital fingerprint of your vehicle. According to flock safety, check this out. Information like license plate, make model color and other visible characteristics like bike racks, THAT'S WHAT IT INCLUDES. IT'S A TIME STAMPED, GPS PINNED AND CAPTURED, ALL OF IT WITHOUT NOTIFICATION. YOU'VE GOT NO IDEA IT'S GOING DOWN. THEN AN AI ALGORITHM CATEGORIZES THE INFORMATION AND and they put it into a massive database. The Guardian says it offers nationwide search capability for law enforcement agencies that opt in to share all of this data, which Flock told Congress is about 75 % of its law enforcement customers. According to Flock safety, that data is stored up to 30 days unless these local law enforcement agencies require it otherwise. And supporters say that those plate readers help solve crimes by giving investigators leads they might not otherwise have. But you don't have to be suspected of a crime or really do anything at all to end up being in the database. You simply just drive by it. And as you might imagine, concerns about privacy and whether Flock cameras ACTUALLY WORK, ARE STARTING TO PILE UP. CAN ANYBODY IN THIS ROOM TELL ME DO FLOT CAMERAS STOP CRYING? OKAY? Y'ALL WASTE MONEY, MAN. A MILLION DOLLARS ON THAT, THAT'S TRANCE. I TRUST OUR POLICE. I DON'T PRESS LOCK. NO MORE AUTOMATED LICENSE PLATE READERS OF ANY BRAND. THIS TECHNOLOGY IS ANTI-DEMOCRATIC. JUST TO KNOW, I AM A RIGHT WING MAGA REPUBLICAN voter. I'm telling y'all this so y'all grasp how this issue spans across this political spectrum. An AI surveillance apparatus goes against the very essence of freedom and the core values of our country. We didn't vote for this, and we sure as hell don't want it, so do us a favor and get it the flock out of here. Get it the flock out of here. Creepy sci-fi surveillance aside, critics of automatic license plate readers are pointing to a pretty serious pattern of mistakes and abuse. There are multiple law enforcement officers across several departments who were reportedly caught using the database to stalk people, and Flock, they acknowledged the stalking incidents, other incidents of abuse too, and they told IT'S NOT A LITTLE BIT, IT'S NOT A LITTLE BIT. THE INCIDENTS WERE DISCOVERED BECAUSE OF THE TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY FEATURES built into the platform. All right. Or as Business Insider reports, errors in tagging vehicles that have, quote, led to innocent drivers being stopped at gunpoint, mauled by police dogs WELL, THE COMPANY ALSO ACKNOWLEDGED TAGGING ERRORS SAYING WE HAVE THE UPMOST SYMPATHY FOR ANY VICTIM OF HARM AND THAT THEY THEY CONTINUOUSLY IMPROVE THEIR MODELS THROUGH ONGOING OPTIMIZATION AND TESTING. BUT THEN THERE'S THE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT. NOW IT IS IMPORTANT TO BLOCK SAFETY DOES NOT HAVE A CONTRACT ACTUALLY WITH ICE. BUT CRITICS AND ACTIVISTS SAY THAT THE CONCERN IS LESS ABOUT LIKE THIS DIRECT PARTNERSHIP and more about how the data can be shared amongst these agencies. And Flock Safety says the data captured is owned by the local law enforcement. The company doesn't sell it, but the only way for law enforcement to access the search feature, arguably the whole point of using FLOCK IS BY OPTING IN TO SHARE THE DATA SO THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS HERE'S AN EXAMPLE IN DAYTON OHIO A POLICE AUDIT FOUND A NETWORK SHARING FEATURE THAT WAS ININVERTITELY ENABLED ALLOWING DATA TO BE ACCESSED MORE BROADLY THAN LOCAL OFFICIALS HAD INTENDED THERE. THE INVESTIGATION FOUND THAT THEIR FLOCK DATA WAS SEARCHED MORE THAN 7 ,000 TIMES, CITING THE WORD IMMIGRATION. IN DENVER, WE REPORTED 1400 SEARCHES IN LESS THAN A YEAR. IN CLEVELAND, OFFICIALS reported 2 ,000 searches related to immigration. And as was reported just yesterday, an officer in Columbus conducted six searches in a span of 10 minutes earlier this year. What was the reason listed? Let me check. Ice. According to FLOC's website, ice does not have direct access to FLOC cameras or systems or data and communities of control over for that federal data access. But watch what Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in the podcast just last month. When the topic of immigration enforcement comes up, I'm like, guys, the company has no opinion on this. If the state of Texas wants to enforce immigration, they might use FLOC, but they're going to go enforce immigration no matter what FLOC does. What's the saying? You can't be neutral on on a moving train. I think it's pretty confusing at best. And now the fight over flock has moved onto college campuses. At least 75 campuses have these cameras, places that my next guest, Adrian Carasquillo says are the next frontier of the deportation wars. But there are students who are pushing back. The Bulwark reports the groups are organizing against the use of plate readers with the goal to, quote, sea flock no longer deployed on campuses at all. And joining me now to discus it all is Adrian Carrasququillo, National Immigration Correspondent at The Bulwark, and Tobias Halpern, student of California Polytechnic State University and founder of Deflock SLO, a .k .a. Slow. Tobias, let me start with you. Thanks to both of you for being here. Tell me more about what you guys are doing at Deflock Slow and, you know, why of all the issues on a college campus was this so important to Yeah, I mean, so we're in a unique institution where San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly claims to be a Hispanic-serving institution. And as you started to bring up, the ICE connection was just too big to ignore. And additionally, there's this huge just libertarian issue. You also played a couple of clips. The guy who claimed he was MAGA Republican, he's also anti-flock, and that's because this technology at the end of the day is I like to equate it to a police officer following you around every time you get in your car. And then you don't know whether that police officer is your local police or whether that's ICE or whether that's the FBI or any other federal agent, right? And when you opt into Flock, when you buy a Flock camera like Cal Poly did, you don't just buy a surveillance camera. You're buying access and participation into this network. And so I think that's what really bothers people, and that's what really bothers students, and that's what bothered us at Cal Poly is that as a Hispanic-serving institution, they are going out and entering this network that has time and time again aided ICE in illegal deportations, and just created this surveillance dragnet that is really uncomfortable to anyone when you think about it. Um, yeah. Adrian, let me talk to you about some of the reporting in that 404 Media piece because it is wild. You say in just one day of immigration-related searches in Dallas, quote, this came from 404 Media in your piece. Access data, they access data for more than 6 ,500 different individual flock camera networks comprising more than 77 ,000 total devices. That is wild. Can you tell us a little bit more about the searchable databases? Like how big are they? How far-reaching are they? I mean, that was what I found sort of wild. That's one day. That's just March 6th of 2025. And it just the immigration searches from that day, they were able to access these tens of thousands of cameras. What we're seeing in place like Dayton, Ohio, is that some of these municipalities that voted against working with immigration enforcement FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT, YOU LISTED ALL THESE CAMERA SYSTEMS ARE BEING ACCESSED FROM GEORGIA. THEY'RE BEING ACCESSED THOUSANDS OF TIMES, HUNDREDS OF TIMES FROM DIFFERENT PLACES FOR IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT. YOU LISTED ALL THE STUFF AND I HAD TO DO THAT IN MY STORY JUST TO SORT OF GET OUR ARMS AROUND WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE AND ISN'T IT WILD BUT ALSO FITTING THAT THE CEO SAYS WE HAVE NO OPINION ON IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT WHEN THAT'S SORT OF THE LEGACY OF THE TECH COMPANIES IN TRUMP'S SECOND TERM WHICH IS YOU CAN USE OUR NETWORKS TO DO THIS STUFF BUT WE DON'T HAVE ANY OPINION ON IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT BUT WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF WHAT HE SAID AND THEN THE FLIP-FLOP ON IT? YEAH I MEAN IT ALL GOES HAND IN HAND WITH STUFF LIKE NSPM 7 FROM THE ADMINISTRATION AND EVERYTHING THAT THEY'RE DOING RIGHT NOW IT'S ALL JUST ONE BIG AUTHORITARIAN PUSH YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THIS EARLIER ON YOUR SHOW BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY BLOCK IS VERY POLARIZING UM AND YOU'RE GONNA HAVE EXTREME OPINIONS ABOUT IT OF COURSE YOU'RE GONNA HAVE PEOPLE OUT HERE CUTTING THEM DOWN I'M NOT SAYING THAT'S THE ANSWER ESPECIALLY WHEN MUNICIPALITIES ULTIMATELY JUST HAVE TO PAY FOR THAT BUT BLOCK IS POLARIZING THERE'S NO EASY WAY OUT WHEN ENOUGH PEOPLE START ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS AND I THINK THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN REGARDLESS OF HOW MUCH GARRETT LANGLEY LIES AND HIS REPS LIE RIGHT AND YOU MENTIONED NSPM 7 THAT'S THE THE memorandum signed by the president to sort of crack down essentially on on dissent it to summarize it briefly adrian i want to uh put up what the aclu said about um flocks statement that ice doesn't have direct access to data. They said it's misleading. They said it's an attempt to confuse the public and create a false sense of security among potential government customers. What did you find in your reporting? You know, one of the things that we talked about was this idea of bumper stickers. And at first glance, you might be like, what is that? Why is that? Why is that such a big deal? You know, I saw in one of the screenshots, there was a Raiders sticker, right? So we said there could be a no King sticker, right? I mean, when you think about going after people because of their political views. But let's go a step further, Jacob. You and I both know that these immigration activists are terrified to do the protesting they did during the Obama term now. So what about if they have a no human being is a legal sticker or not one more deportation sticker. You could imagine the ways we've already seen hundreds of instances of abuse. I got some on my computer. This is National Day Laborers Organizing Network. I've got L .A. Taco. This is a sticker from Minnesota of the gentleman who screamed about the raids there. Exactly. If they're tracking the stickers you have on your bumper, what are the CONSEQUENCES, ADRIAN? WE'VE ALREADY SEEN ABUSE. WE'VE ALREADY SEEN THESE POLICE OFFICERS AND THEN, YOU KNOW, FLOCK WANTS TO TELL YOU BUT NO, NO, NO, OUR SYSTEM CAN THEN FIND THOSE GUYS BUT THEIR SYSTEM IS ENABLING THIS ABUSE AND And officers that we know across the country are working with ICE and coordinating through secure communities programs and things like that. But this is another way that they're working with. And look, the DHS secretary Mark Wayne Mullen wants this This quieter, smarter DHS, which we've seen over the last two weeks, clearly is not happening. But at the same time, this is the kind of stuff they're doing. This is the only way they can try to do that mass deportation, strong, cruel stuff that they're going. Tobias, you got 17, am I right? 17 flock cameras banned from campus. How'd you do that? Yeah. So I think it started off with public awareness and that was definitely aided just by this general kind of explosion in the media, other YouTubers. I found out about it on YouTube personally. Um, I have to shout out this great YouTuber, Ben Jordan. He's also a security researcher him along with John Gaines found the, some like 50, three security vulnerabilities that are in these cameras. Um, but yeah, I really started with that public awareness campaign. We took that to the administration, they ignored it. And then that's when we realized we had to build it into anger. We had to take that awareness and turn it into anger. And by targeting kind of every group that we could think of that had leverage over the university president, so incoming students, student government, staff government, groups like that, that was how we ultimately were able to make change. And I did want to touch on there was something you mentioned about the bumper stickers and even a No Kings Day bumper sticker. It's actually has happened. So there There was dozens of searches that were uncovered by the EFF that were agencies across the country that did look up No Kings or 5051 or Hands Off, right? And so this is not like there's not conjecture it's actively happening one california police shared data with ice 1 .6 million times even after it was made illegal by californian legislators you know this at this point. This is all in its sort of nascent form, and it'll continue to develop, and we're going to rely on both of you to come back and keep us posted on what the latest is. Adrian Karski, a national immigration correspondent at The Bulwark, and Tobias Halpern, California Polytechnic State University student and founder of D-Flock Slow. Appreciate you both. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, guys.