Investigating Flock: America's Mass Surveillance Company

Folks, I'm currently being stopped by police for doing a story on mass surveillance and a company that are putting cameras in your neighborhood, Flock Safety. Let's see where this thing goes. Crime. It's a complex problem that requires so many people to work together to solve. And at Flock, it's our mission to eliminate it. A former Milwaukee police officer pled guilty to using the Flock camera system. Police say he used it to track a romantic partner and friend. Hey there, we got an interview here. For Flock? Mhm. Like I think it's just people wanting to make a lot of money. Who are you tracking right now? That's a new one. We're surveilling Flock right now. Sir, you're under surveillance. What are you doing running around in the street? None of your business, except for I'm surveilling you right now. Are you with Flock? No, there's a construction firm I work with, CSD. 99% match. They're planning to allow them gain access to the site, and we don't want them on site. And I don't know if they're on site. Hello folks, I'm boots-on-the-ground journalist Tommy G, and this is a Flock camera. And you may have noticed cameras like this popping up around your city. Hi, I'm Ben Jordan, a researcher and journalist. As of today, Flock Safety has installed over 100,000 cameras all over America. So, chances are that Flock is in your city, even if you don't know it. And today, we are teaming up to investigate Flock Safety. That's right. Today, we're going to spy on Flock employees to see how they like being under surveillance. If you go to Google or Flock's own website, the address of their corporate headquarters will lead you to an empty building. The actual address is kept private. And today, we even reveal their secret drone operation, and we get boxed in by police. We're going to cover the biggest red flags to be aware of when it comes to Flock, and arm you with the information you need to know about the surveillance takeover coming to a city near you. In this episode, we'll cover the arguments for Flock. And also, the many arguments against Flock. Folks, we're here in Atlanta, Georgia on a surveillance mission. We are headed to Flock Safety, the headquarters. You probably have seen cameras from Flock in your city. And how are they getting there? Well, from city council approval. And I want to know what the will of the people is. Do they want Flock in their city? Because I do agree this is a complex issue with good points on either side. What is the slippery slope of what we're willing to allow under the selling point of safety, which is of course how they always make things more tight and tyrannical. So, we're going to infiltrate, find our way in. I'll see you guys on the ground. So, what we're finding here is it it appears to be a nondescript building. It's something that's kind of funny. We surveil people, but we also want our own privacy. Kind of a contradiction in my book, but so we're going to throw a drone up, do our own little reconnaissance, and then we'll move in on the target and get some license plates. We started off with a simple mission, surveil Flock employees to understand this company's attitude towards being watched. We were also going to film Flock employee license plates so I could bring this footage to Ben, run it through an algorithm, and understand how invasive this data gathering can be. But what we found is this multi-billion dollar company was not so easy to find. Miguel had a good point, which was like if your son got kidnapped, like wouldn't you want Flock cameras around so that you could track that car very quickly? And the answer is yes. Where a lot of people get nervous is when you see places like China with a social credit score, and you know they want to bring that to America. It's the scope creep of where safety and security lead to. So, there's just a lot of implications of once you allow these cameras cuz on surface level is like, yeah, put the Flock cameras where all the shooters are, and let's clean up our cities. But, where do you draw the line? And you know that the people in power never want that line to be in our favor. To cover how Flock cameras have the potential to be abused, I have to look no further than my city of Milwaukee, where police officer Jose Ayala obsessively used Flock 180 times over a 2-month span to stalk his ex-girlfriend. And in McHenry County, Illinois, where I grew up, this same story played out where a police chief used Flock to creep on three separate exes and was later charged with multiple felonies. And there are countless stories like this. For example, earlier this year in Florida, a sheriff who was working a side security job for a film set started hitting on an actress and repeatedly approached her even after she told him that she had a boyfriend. Other extras on the set noticed this and intervened, so he used the police database to find her vehicle's information and added it to the hot list so he would be notified every single time that she passed a Flock camera. He then followed her for miles and then pulled her over telling her that he had hoped her boyfriend was with her so he could give him a hard time. He then allegedly used the police department's investigative tools to find her on Instagram and continue stalking her there. Folks, this makes me think of the famous Kanye West line. And let's be real, this is not a police problem. To me, this is just people not being able to handle this level of power problem. It's easy to say all cops are bastards when you hear stories like this, but let's be honest, could you be trusted with this power? Think of a time in your life when you maybe thought that you were being cheated on by your partner. Do you think you'd be strong enough to resist being able to confirm if it were true? There's a very good reason that the Fourth Amendment exists and there's a reason that up until these cameras started popping up everywhere, a cop needed to explain to an elected judge why they needed a warrant to give them the power to track someone. So, it appears no company logo on their building? No. No branding? No branding. It seems like they're trying to be relatively incognito and private, which I also enjoy that. We were initially trying to just get their employees license plates on camera. I was almost picturing a corporate headquarters you're driving, big parking lot, but because it's going to be a mixture, I guess we just have to surveil everyone for safety, which is I mean, it's just for safety, guys. We put in Flock interview requests and we'd love to talk to their people, Garrett. We want to talk to you. We think you have some good points and we want to hear how you navigate some of these privacy concerns. We've already seen some examples of this technology going wrong. There's cases of wrongful police encounters and arrests. The first thing you'll see when you go to Flock's website is the words clear evidence and safer communities. But let's talk about times where the evidence wasn't clear and it didn't make people safe. Look no further than California where a man spent almost a month in jail after he was mistakenly tied to a carjacking even though he was 5 mi away. Or this man in the Carolinas who was held at gunpoint after an incorrect Flock hit falsely labeled his car stolen. Or this woman who had her own house police harassed and accused of being a thief even though she was innocent. And the list goes on. Folks, this is something you're going to pay for on both sides. You'll pay on the front end when your city council votes against your wishes to install these cameras all over your city. And you'll pay for it on the back end when officers are using clear evidence to brutalize somebody and you the taxpayer for some reason has to pay a multi-million dollar lawsuit, not the police. And so it seems to me this is a very expensive problem that almost none of us want. It's not like we get together and vote and say we want this. We own this decision. We feel good about it. It's a few members of city council that approve it and put it in just like the data centers. And it's like we'll see what the numbers are. I I just put out a poll on the on my YouTube page. Let's see what the the poll is. So just 27 minutes in, we have 1,100 votes, 94% no. And don't forget vice presidents of such companies were caught logging into the live feeds of girls preschools and gymnastics classes for hours. Hmm, we'll have to look into that. Flock's website claims that nobody from Flock Safety is accessing or monitoring your footage. However, through open records requests I found out that they looked at our cameras over a thousand times. This is Jason, a concerned dad and whistleblower out of Dunwoody, Georgia who exposed a story about an alleged Flock sales demo that apparently involved Flock employees and police monitoring children playing within a Jewish community center. This includes a Flock vice president looking at a private third-party security camera in the little girl's gymnastics room at my son's daycare. Flock claims that this was for a sales demo agreement that my city says doesn't exist and the people who did those camera viewings are now deleted permanently from the Flock system with no record of it happening. Hey, you get back here. Benny boy. Folks, that's right. People could be watching your kids play and you as a taxpayer have to foot a ridiculous bill to know. Shouldn't that be the most transparent thing ever, especially if we are paying for it? Flock's argument to that is, "Oh, they were showing off the cameras as a demonstration for another client." It's like if I owned a company and I wanted to hire a surveillance camera company to install cameras around and they said, "All right, check this out." And they open up their laptop and then they log into a few children in a gymnastics center. Like I would either shoot them or call the police. I'm not sure what I would do, but I would have a very, very visceral reaction to it because it's dumb. They don't even list it in the offices. Not listed in the specialty. Okay, so let's just try and see if we can get in and find our way in. Mark, how are you? I'm good. Good. I'm looking for some help. I'm trying to find the Flock safety office for an interview. They moved Oh, in Flock safety? They moved out. They moved out? Okay. Wait, I'll show you their space. Who thought I was still in there? Okay. How long ago did they move? They still own this space. Okay. They just moved to Buckhead. Suite 106. Okay. So, it's totally empty right now. Yeah, there's no people in there. But, the security guard can direct you. I mean, if you have an interview with someone, I'm sure Okay. he's aware of it. Okay. They take security very seriously. Let me call Ben Jordan. Hello. Hey, so we're downtown and apparently they just moved out of their location and they're heading to a they're moving their office to a place in Buckhead. Ooh, okay, interesting. Do you know how to track down that address? Uh, no, that's the first I'm hearing of it. I mean, I'll I'll do some searching around, but I I assume you're doing the same. Um, yeah, I assume there would be like a news story about it or something just because it's a pretty big So, it must have [clears throat] just happened. Let's see cuz they're they have their empty shell of office and uh property management is helping us out a little bit, so we're going to say that we have an interview here. Oh, let's uh see what they say. Hey, how you doing? Hey there, we got an interview here. I know they just moved. Um For what? Mhm. Who you have an interview with? We're the news. Well, no, I was saying who you have an interview with. Garrett, ideally, but if there's another representative. You said Garrett? Garrett, is the CEO? Mhm, mhm. He's from Atlanta. Yeah, we're we're trying to get an interview today, yeah. Oh, no, you Yeah, but there's nobody here. Yeah, or Damn, so they sent us to the wrong spot. How long ago did they move? Uh It's probably like 2 weeks ago. Yeah, but we don't have anything, so we'll see you guys, okay? So, did y'all did y'all talk to anybody to come here today or y'all just came on We just came impromptu, just like the cameras are springing up impromptu around the country, so we just wanted to ask about that. Oh, okay, yeah, nobody's here. Okay, where's the spot in Buckhead? We can't give that out. Why is that? Like for security reasons? Oh, so they care about their security a lot, like their own privacy? Can I go? Thank you. Can we put a camera by your house in your house? What wait, you guys care about security here? Yeah, we also care about our privacy, too, so well we'll see you guys at the next location, okay? That's the security guard right there. That's the same guy? Yeah, that's the security guard, 100%. Hey sir, we're surveilling you, is that okay? Do you consent to being surveilled? We're just filming you right now. Do you consent to us surveilling you with our cameras? Oh, well, we're doing it for safety. Oh, no, he's getting our license plate. What are we going to do? Sir, we're not having that. You filmed us, we're filming you double now. Oh, yeah. Get him. Film him. Surveil him. Sir, does getting surveilled make you feel uncomfortable at all? Can you send my regards to Garrett, please? Sir, are you calling the cops? Yeah. He's calling the cops on us. I don't feel safe, either. We should call our cops, too. Sir, do you feel in danger right now? Why are you calling the cops? You got to tighten up, man. So, I I pulled the records of Eat More Reality Trust bought a building for essentially did the business of buying building for block a 35,000 square foot lease at the Medici at 3284 Northside Parkway. Okay, we're at perfect. We're 11 minutes from there. Are you guys nervous at all? A little bit. They might know we're coming, though. Yeah, they definitely know we're coming. Let's scope it. Is this actually mixed-use residential? Yeah, this These are all residential right here. Okay, so what do we got here? It looks like they've got mostly privacy windows. If you want to make your voice heard, you can visit people in person. And obviously, we advise you do that peacefully, respectfully, politely. We are about to reveal Flock's secret new headquarters that they quietly moved to, but first, give me 60 seconds to tell you about the sponsor that helps make today's video possible. Today's video covers privacy, and you should know not only are you probably getting tracked as you drive, it's almost certain that your personal information has been leaked on the internet. You see, scamming fraud and identity theft is at an all-time high, and much of that is because of five big-time data breaches that happened in the last couple years. And that brings me to the sponsor of today's video, Incogni. I have been using Incogni for over a year now, and they send me monthly reports like this that show me how many times they've deleted my personal information from dark web operators and from data aggregators. And folks, I know firsthand how scary it can be when people find out where you live, get a hold of your phone number, and your other personal information. It can get very uncomfortable. Folks, I want you to imagine Incogni as your personal assistant that 24/7 is scouring the internet looking for your leaked information and deleting it on your behalf. Incogni lowers your exposure to identity theft, and in the year that I've worked with them, I've noticed a huge decrease in the amount of spam phone calls I receive. Folks, it is very important to protect yourself on the internet, and right now Incogni is offering you, the audience, a huge offer of 60% off their annual plan. That's right. Click my link in the pinned comments, or use the link incogni.com/tommyg, and get 60% off. Incogni helps keep you and your family safe. Thank you, folks, and now let's get to the video. After digging into real estate records, we found that Flock appears to have secretly relocated their headquarters to this building right here. We, the people, our voices have just not been heard, it feels like. This pressure adds up, and we need to use it. Again, we are the ants, and the ants can win against the grasshoppers if we team up properly. They've been here for about 3 weeks now, and I don't see Flock anywhere. It seems they're looking for some privacy. Good morning. How are you? What's going on? Oh, we're just here for a meeting. We're going up to Beautiful building. So, you got to have an FYI real quick. You want to be taking photos of something in the building? Where is that For an interview at at the Flock headquarters. I'm sorry, I'm going to stop you right there. Okay, that's okay. No, you can't. No, sir. Sir. What? The floors are locked down here. And sir, is that rolling right now? You need to cut that off. Film? that out of my face, please? We're just going up for an interview to the Flock building. No, sir. You can't do anything like that. You don't have a point of contact or anything like that. No, sir. You're telling me the Flock people told you to say no? Cuz they They didn't say no to us. That camera is is catching me. Would you mind turning it off? I'm going to ask you to go, please. Can you please leave? We have something. Can you please leave the building? Seems like privacy is a top priority here, huh? please leave the building? Thank you. Appreciate you. Well, Flock's new office is here in this building. Uh they don't want people to know that. And obviously they have their guys at the front keeping us out. He's doing his job. I get it. So far on Instagram, 8,000 votes. 91% no from 1 hour ago. So far on YouTube, 1 hour ago, 3,500 votes, 93% no. I wouldn't even want Flock cameras installed in my arch nemesis neighborhood. What's bad for America is bad for Americans, period. Folks, I love this country, but let's be real. Who here watching actually trust the federal government? Not me. A good case study we can look at is in Minneapolis where ICE agents use Flock competitor Vigilant Solutions for the stated mission of tracking illegal immigrants. Over the course of their operation, ICE agents disregarded the rights of citizens so many times that even the Twin Cities police chief acknowledged that ICE personally violated the rights of hundreds of his citizens and even some of his own off-duty officers. Recently, in the last 2 weeks, we as law enforcement community have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations. And folks, I know this firsthand. I have a family member in Minneapolis that got boxed in while trying to make a deposit at the bank for the suspected crime of looking a little tan. And I personally talked to two Target employees who are American citizens that got pulled off the job, beaten, detained, and kicked out of an ICE vehicle. I'm literally a US citizen. State Representative Michael Howard says he's spoken to them and they've both since been released. No, I'm not okay. And folks, the point is this. This is not a debate about whether you agree with ICE using aggressive methods to round up illegal immigrants. The bigger picture is knowing that the federal government is able to use any excuse they want hiding under the guise of public safety to fiercely crack down on whomever they choose. Today, the target is illegal immigrants. Tomorrow, the target could be you. The next guy we're going to meet is Ben Jordan. I think he has done the best journalistic work on Flock cameras. Uh very interesting guy. Excited for you to meet him. Cool spot, huh? I'm Ben Jordan. I've been a musician my whole life. I'm a researcher. I have a YouTube channel that usually does science education, some journalism. Recently, the surveillance and privacy stuff has kind of blown up and I've weirdly been at the center of it, so. What do you make of Flock Safety? I view it a little bit less nefariously than some people do. Like, I think it's just people wanting to make a lot of money. It's Marc Andreessen who uh is I mean, he's the person who has invested the most money in Flock Safety. Marc Andreessen, whose venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is Flock's biggest institutional investor, was just appointed by the Pentagon to their Defense Policy Board. So, for the people wondering about Flock's proximity to federal power, their eyebrows can only raise after news like this. Marc Andreessen has been involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He's been fined. I mean, like he has this long laundry list of privacy violations and making money off of people's data. And then I see the rest of it just like your standard move fast and break things tech company. They're just trying to grow as fast as they can so they could reach an IPO. When it comes to like security vulnerabilities, when it comes to legal vulnerabilities, I believe that they're just trying to kick that can down the road until they launch an IPO and then it could be uh deducted from people's 401K when they have to pay the fines on it or when they have to uh take down 100,000 cameras because of security vulnerabilities. Would you argue that Flock cameras do make cities safer? No. Uh but I also wouldn't argue that they don't. My only argument that they wouldn't make cities safer is because [music] you're taking money from things like community policing and putting them into a third-party tech company, and paying $200,000 for a drone that costs $15,000. [music] To understand how law enforcement actually views Flock, we spoke to three different perspectives: an Indiana police chief, a Wisconsin sheriff, and a veteran officer in Georgia. Currently, we have 850 cameras in our city. And what it's utilized for is to monitor business districts, residential areas, um hotspots, and our city parks. To have 850 cameras running in this town of 26,000, what is the annual budget to keep that going? Well, they last pretty long, don't get me wrong. But when it's time to replace them, [music] is when it gets expensive. Right now, my budget for technology as a whole, I probably spend just close to $600,000 a year. That would be the equivalent of six officer salaries. But the job [music] that it's doing is doing the job of probably 15-20 officers. Could you say without a doubt this technology makes your city safer? Without a doubt, it makes it safer. I I would I wouldn't know what to do without it. So, working with Flock, what was your experience like with them? Our experience working with Flock has been fantastic. We used them to really help and provide us a lot of coverage in the rural parts of Dane County. We are responsible for about 1,000 square miles of patrol [music] area, including 41 square miles of waterways here in Dane County out of the 1,200. So, the use of the technology was fantastic because it allowed us to be in places that we couldn't be. So, overall, they helped us solve numerous crimes, including homicides. Um also, they helped us find individuals that were missing. So, it played a significant role in allowing us to keep and maintain the peace in the rural parts of our community, which is typically very different than in the urban parts of of of a county. It did not gather any sort of driver information, race, gender, or anything to that extent. Like, let's say if you have a missing person, and they're like an elderly person with dementia, and they're in danger of dying because they're dehydrated, and they're driving around not knowing that they're [ __ ] dehydrated. Then it can help with stuff like that. Or if someone kid- kidnaps a child. So, what are we looking at here? Uh this is just one of the Flock cameras. Can I ask you how you got your hands on that, or is that classified? eBay. eBay? Yep. Okay. And tell me what goes through your mind when you look at this piece of technology. Um I get kind of frustrated because they're very expensive, and it costs tax money, and just the fact that it's tracking everyone everywhere you go, regardless of if you're on a list of um like wanted people. So, you have to be in a funnel for most license plate readers, but for Flock, it's everyone. Yes, and it's nationally shared across like pretty much every police department. And another thing to add on to what he was saying is there's something called Flock Nova, which uses something called OSINT, or open source intelligence, which is your Strava bike rides, your searches that that are public, your Google, all of your data that's online gets combined with your police record, and with your social security number, and with your address, and all that stuff. And then with your location everywhere you you you've been. As you go from like license plate detection to porn site search super fast. To me, it's clearly a Fourth Amendment violation. I noticed that Flock was actually pretty big on privacy. Do you think that's a bit of a hypocritical stance? Yeah, of course. When initially looking into the company, it just randomly I I noticed that the CEO bought his house through a trust, so he could hide his address from the public. The new office address that I got that I found for you, it's not listed publicly online. And like when you told me that, I just knew to look for realty trust. So, I was like, "Oh, okay. A realty They probably got this through a realty trust, so they could make sure that nobody knows where their office is." You have this $7 billion company, and and you don't want people to know where your office is located. Like you're that private. Like I don't have the option to leave my driveway and go to Chick-fil-A without them knowing where I am, but I can't know where their office is. You have some cities where crime has increased after Flock came around and you have some cities where it's decreased. Um there's not been an actual good peer-reviewed study on if license plate readers are effective or not nationwide. How accurate are these license plate trackers? They're pretty accurate. What do you say to the citizens that say I don't want this in my city. I It's an invasion of privacy. I don't like this. We're not here to watch you. You do have an expectation of privacy inside your residence, but this is no different than people with ring cameras and cell phones. Once you step outside your house, that expectation of privacy is gone. They sort of act like they weren't able to catch criminals before that. Like they didn't have like they weren't able to call another police department and say, "Hey, we have a red sedan being driven by somebody who looks like this with this license plate number. Watch out for it." And then be able to find it. Or as if traffic cameras hadn't existed before Flock Safety. Or as if ALPRs haven't existed before Flock Safety. I often want to tell police like, "Give yourself a little more credit." Like don't let this multi-billion-dollar company take credit for your hard work. Like you're the one solving the crime. I could push a button on some of these cameras and log into it and delete and change and modify data. They can't be used in court because of that because nobody can prove that they're secure. I hate surveillance cameras. I don't like I just don't like them in general and I have them all over this property because the cops have showed up here and because we have private investigators. And it sucks that I have to invest in this stuff that I hate so I can at least have my own side of the story in case a cop comes here and says that I assaulted them or something. Probably because the CEO of this company is telling people that I'm a violent lawless activist. And then unfortunately, there's terroristic organizations like D-Flock whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else. And that I think is unfortunate because we don't want chaos or I don't want chaos. I like law and order. And so it's like the the whole thing is just a huge infringement on people's rights. I mean, when I first got my hands on one of these, I was amazed by how shitty they were. It saves data every time it detects motion, and then it has both a Wi-Fi and an LTE radio inside, and then it uploads images and data from that [music] from what it detects. This costs $3,500 a year. Each camera that's up is $3,500? $3,500 for this. Yeah, I mean, this is the cheapest one. This is this is the cheapest one you could have. Yeah, so if you have like 10 in your city, that's $35,000 a year. I'm Isaac. I'm just a student, and my school pretty much picked up, I think, 48 of these over the course of the last 2 years. But, I noticed on campus there were a bunch of these little devices with a Flock logo. It turned out that they were microphones. I looked into them, and I found a like press release from Flock where they explicitly stated that they were only gunshot detectors, and they would delete anything outside of a gunshot. Um, I think about 2 months after I started looking into it, though, they sent a software update over the air. So, now all of these microphones that are spread all over my college campus, they are just actively listening for voices now, which is very uncomfortable, and I'm not particularly happy about that. This is a multi-use parking lot, but there's a high probability that some of these people are Flock employees. We saw people going across the bridge to the office. So, we're going to surveil the entire parking lot and run it through a license plate reader technology and see if there's any people we should keep an eye on. [music] Andrew, what can we use these license plates? Like, can we track people? Can we know where they live? So, there's this uh ParkMobile, if you're familiar with it, if you've ever used it. ParkMobile had like a massive data breach, and all the license plates were pinned to everybody's like credit card information. And so, you could actually just like take this data, which from this program I made you could just like download a CSV if you wanted to. You could take this data and then run it past the ParkMobile data breach and see who all these people are, where they live, what their credit card number is. It feels pretty invasive. Generally, the reason I even make this stuff is to show people what a black hat hacker can do. So the viewer understands, we're going to go about 2-mile loop from your house. Yeah, we'll go like maybe 3 miles total. I mean, this one clearly you can just walk up to it and press the button if you wanted to. The laws that require that mailbox to be put in concrete or like uh that stop sign to have so much it has to go down in the ground so much and there's usually concrete or gravel under there. And this thing they just plop into the ground without paying any attention to the uh roadside safety. Okay, so this is the first one close to your house. And now our journey continues. So we have one there. One there. After seeing over a dozen cameras within a short distance from Ben's house, it became clear he couldn't [music] even go get gas or take a [ __ ] without being surveilled. After realizing this uncomfortable reality, we next went [music] to uncover Flock's secret drone facility where we soon discovered something strange. Yeah, I guess this is the drone facility. Again, no company logo. This looks like an Amazon distribution center. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this isn't a construction company that we're at. I'm pretty pretty sure this is a [ __ ] This is all like shadow names or Yeah. O S equipment. I mean, as far as I know, we're on public property right now, so This is the most heavily guarded construction company. that's a new one. That must be a prototype. We're surveilling Flock right now. How's it going, man? Good. You guys Oh, we We just brought our own Flock camera to the situation. Are you a Flock guy? I'm not. Okay. Wow, you got some cool cameras over here, too. Oh, it's okay. I'm just going to get your license plate, if that's all right. I'm You're under surveillance, sir. Sir. Sir, you're under surveillance. You You okay? Oh, yeah. We're just uh surveilling the scene. For what? Just for safety reasons. what are you doing running around in the street? None None of your business, except for I'm surveilling you right now. It's not very safe to run There's a lot of trucks that come up and down here. We had a truck come down today, and he was going quite fast. So, just This is a dead spot, as you can see. So, just Thank you. Are you with Flock? What? Are you with Flock? No, there's a construction firm I work with, TSB. Are you doing the back maneuver? He's got all the Flock cameras on his front set up. Oh, what the This man, James Boyce, is a former British Army veteran and a current Flock supply chain manager. Not only did he lie about working for Flock, which I'm guessing is probably normal at this company, but he also implied to Georgia law enforcement that I could have been armed. And we'll soon see if that puts my life in danger. They're a very secretive company for a company that doesn't want your secrecy to be preserved. Nondescript building. No signage. We'll track some of these license plates to make sure there's nothing nefarious happening around here. And if they're against that, then they're a left-wing activist. I'm trying to talk to Flock. You guys got to go. This is private property. You're not allowed here. I'm sorry. Is that If that's one of ours, we'll take it back. No, no, no. This is We got it from eBay. Oh, okay. Well, We're trying to talk to Flock, guys. I can't help you there. Okay, well, you're under surveillance right now. I just hope you know. It's for safety reasons. You're being watched. It's kind of nuts, isn't it? Have a good day, sir. Sir, it appears this entire building is under kind of a front company within Flock. And I would guess a lot of their company is structured like that. It's umbrella companies, LLCs, C corps that own this, that are connected to that. And it's clever arrangement, and they're well within their right to do that. But again, it speaks to the hypocrisy of the whole story of they want to be private. It appears this entire company is under their construction organization. They have some umbrellas going on, some LLCs, some maneuvering Yeah. in the corporate structure. You don't want to be like open with the public. You want privacy. Cuz the truth should not be afraid to speak. Anytime there's an element of hiding, it makes you wonder why. And it's a classic example of do as I say, not as I do. Yeah. So, there is like a good argument to this. Like, if you get a job at at Flock Safety for whatever reason, like, there's a pretty big chance that you got that job because you worked for a police department or because you worked for a city council, and now, you know, you may have some conflict of interest in taking this job. Nobody takes this job without knowing what the company does, without knowing how controversial it is. Bloody hell, James called the cops on us, and here's what he said. Uh good morning, Mom. I'm uh Okay. And what's going on there, sir? Uh yeah, I sorry for calling. We've had some incidents here today. I work for a company called Flock Safety, which is This is our main distribution center. And we've had a string of, like, YouTube and streamers or stalkers or whatever you want to call it. They've gone through our headquarter office and other facilities. And now they've turned up here. They're They're trying to either gain access to the site, and we don't want them on site. Uh and they've been driving around the perimeter, basically asking everyone who works here, and I don't know if they're armed or not. Okay. We're on our way to you, okay? Okay. Okay, thank you. We got police. Oh. Cops are here. Oh, are they blocking us all in now? Is that a security guy? I don't know. Hey, you guys move up so he can get out, okay? Sorry, man. We're getting in a little predicament here. Uh we're the guys to talk to. Are all y'all in this car, too? He He's He's trying to get out of here right now. have anything to do No. Have you guys heard of Flock, the Flock Safety Company? Yeah, yeah, of course. They're the ones that have the cameras everywhere in your Okay, so this is their undercover headquarters right here with their drones. Um, and we did surveillance on them, so we filmed them and said, "How do you guys like it?" And now they have the cops here. What do you guys think about Flock cameras in your city? Honestly, I don't appreciate those. I'm not going to lie. I don't appreciate the drones coming into my neighborhood. But, it's just not a good feeling, honestly, to see those those drones flying around everywhere. It's like it's kind of weird to me. I don't know. Let me tell you this cuz so you you guys are working hard in a home improvement company. Your tax dollars go to your local city where they spend money on cameras whether you like it or not. And you're literally paying for the cameras that are watching you as you drive around town. Yeah, and we have we have no like we have no say-so when it comes to that, either, you know? They just do that on their own. So, I feel like it's kind of [ __ ] up, you know? Any updates so far to what's going on here? Yeah, Uber Eats is here. I mean, can we at least let the people go in and out? Like this is the thing with public safety that's The police, in order to make things safe, they're blocking off the entire roadway, so we can't get out as if we look like a flight risk. And now it's putting the public at risk where she has to stop her car over here. Yeah, I mean, nobody's done anything wrong here. Like you're literally doing journalism. Uh, everybody here just literally came like they essentially just came with to give me a ride back. Like it's it's ridiculous. Like we're not on their property. Sir, he's got to go. We all have things to do today. He's blockading us. Okay, okay. Now now it's something else cuz I ain't got [ __ ] to do with this, but now I'm trying to leave. I'm I got out the car because you're blocking Sir, you don't got to disrespect me right now. Sir, are we free to leave? No, I'm I can't leave. I'm Sir, are we being detained? Is this the only exit? Yes. I wanted to see if this absolute numbskull of an officer from Smyrna Police Department violated my rights. So, I ran the scenario by my friend Officer Toombs from the Clayton County Sheriff's Office. You can tell us to go fly a kite and walk right off. And if I ask you, "Hey, am I being detained?" Do you have to give me a yes or no answer? Absolutely. You guys have done nothing wrong. Actually, we've also done nothing wrong and yet we're blockaded by a police officer. Are we being detained? The manager wants to speak It's a yes or no question, sir. You're going to wait here until the manager talks to You're holding me until that guy talks, but you're not telling me if I'm going to be detained. Yeah, you are. Am I allowed to leave? Can I go in my car and leave? They are with Flock Safety, they just confirmed. Hey. What's up, brother? Hi, how are you doing, sir? Good. So, tell him what you need to tell him. So, gentlemen, I I just want to be very clear. Um there's a multi-tenant site here with a lot of people that are just trying to work. I've got yourself and all the other one running in the street. I had to put my brakes on just to stop to make sure you're okay. Are you safe right now, sir? Uh well, I don't know that, do I? So, I just want to make sure we've had reports that you've been to basically every Flock Safety site and facility that we know of. Correct. Yeah, so Your surveillance is correct. We're doing our own surveillance. See, people don't really feel safe right now with people randomly trying to get into our sites and buildings. Oh, wait. You don't feel safe being surveilled. Is that what you're saying? Not at all, sir. Cuz that's what you guys do to us without our consent. Okay. And I think it's interesting when you guys have this happen, you call the police and make us get stopped, but then you do it and it's okay? No, we don't have the devices What we'd like you to do is basically we're saying that you're trespassing on this site and we'd like you to leave peacefully. This guy's blocking us that you called. Physically leave. All of us? This is my office that I work at in Midtown Home and Flu. Are you going to let us leave? Can I not physically leave my in place of employment? I'm speaking because I have something to say, sir, and you are blocking me. Um what we're asking is like you're essentially trespassing on this site at the moment. There's a lot of people that don't know your intent. I don't know if you're armed. I don't know if you're armed. Okay, that's fine. But I mean, it's the same playing field, bud. I mean, that essentially doesn't really bother us anymore today. And Was it bothering you to film you guys? I'm not bothered by filming. I'm being bothered by trying to go on a lunch break and people are running around in the street. Was it such a um disservice to your day that you felt the need to call the police for it? I think if you have someone hanging around outside your house, you'd probably do the same thing. Uh this is a business that happens to have cameras around the nation. And some people don't like it and we want to do our due diligence. By the way, we have put in a request to your press team to actually speak to you face-to-face and have a fair interview. And uh we haven't gotten back from that. So, we did our own digging ourselves. Guys, these are channels. I'm pretty sure Flock will obviously talk to you about what they need to uh and hopefully clear up anything they do. After Flock called the police and had us detained, I immediately filed a public records request for the police reports and body cam footage. In Georgia, by law, a city or police department has 3 days to respond to a FOIA request. I didn't even get an acknowledgement response for 10 days. I then followed their instructions confirming the request on their own portal and a week later they rejected it claiming that it [music] was cancelled due to no response. So, I want the citizens of Smyrna, Georgia to understand that if this nonsense continues, then their property taxes will be paying my legal fees and any fines when I sue the city for the records that they're obligated by law to provide me. Folks, it was important to me to try and get Flock involved in this story. Ben tried reaching out to them about their security flaws. I tried reaching out to their PR team and here's how that conversation went. you were there last week, what was your goal to try to talk to someone at Flock or just to get the aerial footage or what was the goal? Just before we go any further, I guess is there any uh potential in doing um an interview with Garrett or walking one of the headquarters whether it's the drone facility? Well, I want to assess out where you're coming from with this. My question for you is if this is like a let me get Garrett in a weird position and ask him a bunch of Ben Jordan ask questions. I'm not sure that that's a really good use of his time. So, I just am curious, are you coming at it through like a fair lens or are you coming through it Are you Are you Are you coming at this from like a sensationalist YouTuber lens? I think what people are afraid of is the potential for a mass surveillance state. Once it's in place and the scope keeps creeping or a national emergency comes in, then all of a sudden the rules change and something that's we were told came into our communities for one reason is now used for a much more draconian reason and I think that's the other thing that people would be afraid of. Logistically, how would this work? Garrett is in Atlanta most of the time. He has like no availability over the next couple of weeks or months. So, you can also understand that I'm coming from a position where I have to protect Garrett and Flock. For sure. And a lot of people requested new interviews and to look at things and then the story comes out and it's really shitty. I don't love that. you guys trespassed on Friday and that Ben was there as well. I just don't love that. It like It sends a weird message because I'm putting faith If I tell you we're going to work together, I've never worked with you. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just saying like never worked with you. I'm going to kind of put my trust in you and I just know right now that you guys trespassed on our property. Yeah. And it felt invasive. But Momma, does that prove my point of it feels invasive? That's what I'm trying That's the point I'm trying to make exactly. I understand. You're saying it feels invasive that you guys were on our property, but Flock cameras being on public roads taking pictures of public license plates, which is the point of a license plate, I don't believe that what what a Flock camera is is invasive. I got kind of freaked out at the beginning when you're like, "This is what it's like to feel your privacy invaded. This is how people feel about Flock." And I'm like, "I understand that's how people feel, but that's not what Flock is. And so, if you're open to debunking that with me in a fair way, Sure. I I don't want your segment to be like, Flock wouldn't participate because we have nothing to hide. But folks, Flock did hide and they sent me an email saying they were not going to participate and it made me ask, do you guys get the impression that they are a transparent company and do you feel comfortable about them putting cameras in over 6,000 cities around the country? And folks, for reference, months ago, Ben Jordan tried to discreetly tell Flock about security vulnerabilities he saw to help them fix it and this is how they responded. So, to give you a comparison of how security vulnerability reporting usually works, when I found a mild encryption vulnerability in Ring cameras or vulnerabilities in surveillance robots, the companies immediately reached out to me and offered to pay me to help them document and mitigate the problems. I know of three separate security researchers who reached out to Flock Safety about vulnerabilities and were immediately given a non-disclosure agreement. This happened with John Gaines and the irony is, if they acted ethically and transparently with John, then the vulnerabilities probably would have been fixed before I even started making the video. And then this is I guess this is the ancestral relationship between Flock and police departments where now all of the sudden, journalists looking into Flock, this is their hidden drone headquarters that we're looking at. We were at their other hidden locations earlier this morning. And we're probably on the the list now, right? I just need you to leave. Brother, you call the people that are blocking us in. Do you see how that's counterintuitive? Taxpayer funded, by the way. This is pretty uh this is pretty great. Alrighty, so we got one cop, two cop, and then we got the Flock employee who doesn't like being filmed himself that called the police for us filming him. So, uh make it make sense. I appreciate Ben for joining me. Ben is a YouTuber that I have watched to learn and inform myself on this issue. Highly recommend you check his channel out. The link is in the description and um keep learning, keep reading, keep asking questions. That's our duty as a citizen, and we'll see you at the next story. Peace.