Full transcript
Please do not do this. Can you stop
doing this as well? This is terrible.
Look, it looks like someone's used one
of them
Looks like one of them Diablo blades,
bit of red on it. So, yeah, do not use a
circular saw with a Diablo blade and do
this. And also it looks like someone's
used a grinder down there as well. So,
yeah, do not do this cuz they will fall
over and that will be terrible.
There is a private company worth
billions of dollars that knows where you
drove an hour ago and you never agreed
to any of it. And now all over the
country people are risking felonies to
destroy these cameras. And when you
figure out what they actually do, you'll
understand why. You might have seen
these things in your city before. They
have a pole with a little solar panel at
the top and these gray cameras that are
pointed in your direction. They might
seem pretty uninteresting at first, but
now there's hundreds of thousands of
them on the streets and it's a direct
invasion of your privacy. But
surprisingly most regular people have
never heard about them. This is a Flock
camera and the company behind them is
pretty [ __ ] sinister. The main
product of Flock is a small
solar-powered camera that's essentially
an automated license plate reader. These
cameras snap a photo of every car that
drives by and runs the images through an
AI model to build a fingerprint. They
take the make and model of your car,
even documenting dents and scratches to
build a digital identity. And there's a
database where cops can search for a
specific vehicle and track exactly where
you are. With over 100,000 active
cameras right now, there are billions of
images being scanned in every day into
their database. And they're being
accessed by police, businesses, shopping
centers, and even HOAs with timestamps
and location data that you don't have
access to. This has created a map of
every person's life and now it's a
system that knows where you live, where
you work, and where you go every time
you leave the house. And as scary as
this [ __ ] is, so is how expensive our
daily lives have become. So, before we
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for sponsoring this video. We never
voted or agreed for flock cameras to be
put on every intersection in our cities
and use our location data as a product
to sell. I have a degree in information
systems, and everything is connected
through what is called the Internet of
Things. This is when every device that
you own, including your car, your
doorbell, and even your smart fridge,
are all connected and using your data.
And having this data readily available
creates a map that will tell a cop where
you drove. But, that same data can also
now tell advertisers where you shop or
your insurance company how you drive,
and this creates a profile on how to
predict and manipulate your behavior.
This is literally like Watch Dogs or
Black Mirror happening right now in real
life. And the worst part is, you're the
one paying for it. Yet, they are now
being used to send tickets to civilians
who have a a in their lap for over a
thousand dollars all in the name of
public safety. We are literally paying
for the government to survey us right
now. But it gets deeper because license
plate tracking is really only the start.
Flock has another product called Ravens,
which are microphones set up in
neighborhoods listening 24/7. The
company markets these as a way to
protect communities by listening for
stuff like fireworks or gunshots. And
they also have the Condor product, which
is a camera that locks onto humans and
follows them zooming right in on their
face. And recently, they just announced
that these cameras can be turned into a
live video camera with a free software
update. And now they're working on
building camera drones for their next
product. Flock says that these are made
to help protect people with law
enforcement using it like a tool to find
criminals. And you might think, "Hey,
I'm not doing anything wrong. I have
nothing to worry about." Well, imagine
this is you. Here in my home state of
Colorado, a woman named Chrisana got a
random knock on her door from a
detective. He shows her printed photos
from a Flock camera of her truck
accusing her of being a thief in their
neighborhood. He says that her truck is
the exact same truck caught on the Flock
cameras and they know that she's been
burglarizing houses. She had timestamped
dashcam footage of her own truck proving
that she was nowhere near the crime, but
they didn't even look at it. The cop
said that they were 100% certain that it
was her and she should take it to court
if she didn't like it. So they arrest
her right there and she's charged with
the crime that she literally didn't
commit. She had to spend weeks fighting
to finally get someone to see her
footage before they finally dropped the
charges. And they ended up finding out
the porch pirate was a completely
different person. And when Flock was
asked about this, they said that they
didn't owe anyone an apology because
they were misusing their tools. And
there have been multiple cases like this
with cameras misreading the characters
on a license plate and charging innocent
people. This man in Ohio was accused of
stealing his own truck and then was
attacked by a K9 unit and his head was
slammed into the pavement. And then at
the hospital, they charged him with
resisting arrest. This has gone so far
beyond a privacy issue when Flock
cameras are just spitting out
AI-enhanced images, and the people
behind them don't even care to check
them. In Minnesota, a guy who reviews
cars for a living was raided by police
because a Flock camera said that his car
was stolen. But by the time they found
out it wasn't him, he's surrounded with
guns pointed at him. Now, imagine the
same thing happens, but a person panics
or just moves in the wrong way. It's an
easy way for someone who didn't do
anything wrong to get shot. And this
network of cameras all talk to each
other. So, let's say a small town's
police department decides to share their
feed. Any person who has access can
search your street right now. And so
now, watchdogs and even regular people
have started requesting them because in
a lot of states, these logs are supposed
to be public record. And this is where
it gets messy because the FBI and ICE,
which are federal agencies, are using
these to track illegal immigrants.
Because they're federal, having access
to this data is considered illegal. So,
what they've been doing is a workaround.
So, say a fed calls a local cop and ask
them a favor to run a search for a
person. Now, they have access to these
cameras and their required warrant, just
as simple as that. Flock cameras are
even being used at protests to track
them down and hunt for people. When we
look into the search logs of how humans
are being tracked, we see cops typing in
an ethnicity into the search bar to
racially profile people. All of this is
disguised behind this great cause of
helping to find missing people or track
down criminals. But these systems are
just set up fundamentally to abuse
people's rights, even if you did nothing
wrong. There have even been multiple
cases now of police officers using the
cameras to find their ex-girlfriends or
wives with no authorization for the
point of just stalking them. And these
are just the ones who've been caught.
This database that has hundreds of
thousands or even millions of people's
daily lives logged onto a searchable
website is being ran on an honor system.
At this point, we would hope that the
company sitting on all this data would
have some sort of standard for privacy,
so let's look into it. Flock's actual
website is just full of promises. They
say that they won't share, sell, or
access your data. And they say that
nobody who works for Flock is looking at
your footage. But, that's not the truth.
People investigating this have been
pulling records and found out that Flock
employees have been routinely looking at
camera data. They even set up outside
access for third parties that local
police say that they've never approved.
The employees are even intentionally
hiding their accounts so that their
searches won't show up in the public
audit logs. And they show employees
pulling up live cameras, including ones
pointed at pools, gyms, and a children's
gymnastics room inside a Jewish
community center, which one of Flock's
own executives apparently pulled up live
during a sales demo. The same company
that says on their website that no one
is looking at your footage is literally
live streaming at a kids gymnasium.
After this, people found a bunch of
Flock cameras open on the public
internet for anyone to see. And so, the
company rewrote its legal terms and cut
out the part covering its own
negligence. What this means is that if
Flock gets your data leaked, you can't
hold them responsible, which brings us
to De-Flock, an organization that's been
tracking these cameras and has a
crowdsourcing map to find every single
one of them in the world. So, volunteers
will photograph the cameras, pull
records, and pin what they find. So, now
you can type in your own city and see
exactly where they are. These cameras
sit on public poles and roads and are
out in the open for every person to see.
The map just helps people find what's
already there, and now we can see
exactly where they are. Recently, in an
interview, the CEO of Flock was asked
what he thinks about De-Flock, and he
called it a terrorist organization whose
main goal is chaos. Like, dude, the
hypocrisy is insane. These are all just
regular people and volunteers who help
make the map because they value privacy
and their Fourth Amendment rights. While
their customers of these same cameras
are literally using them to profile
people by race and stalk their exes. And
I feel like labeling people as a
terrorist is intentional language by the
CEO. Now, if you just throw that word
onto a group of people, they stop
looking into the product that's being
sold and just put the focus onto the
group that's now considered an enemy. I
look at it as a term that's now being
used to criminalize any person who is
opposed to their own interests.
Essentially, it's making people who
don't want to be tracked all day to be
labeled as a threat. And ironically
enough, before that interview, most
people didn't even know Flock existed.
Now, millions of people have pulled up
this exact map. He just advertised the
movement who was against them for
everyone to see. And what's crazy is
that nobody ever really heard of a Flock
camera a couple of years ago. Now,
they're on damn near every single
intersection in my city and we never had
a ballot to vote against them. The
reason is cities don't hold a public
vote for them. Flock cameras get put
into the police budget as a line item or
listed as a continuation of some program
that's already been approved. So, nobody
in the public ever gets a say. By the
time anyone notices the pole outside of
their own house, they're pretty much the
last ones to know about it. And once
they're built, they might never get
taken down. There are already reports of
Flock letting cities keep using their
cameras for free even after the contract
ends. If we look at where the cameras
are actually being pointed, sometimes
they're not even on a public street. We
see them pointed at the backyard of
someone's houses at an angle where you
can see into their windows. Or at the
front door of a sporting goods store
that sells firearms that can track every
person who walks in and out. This no
longer has anything to do with public
safety or reading a license plate. And
as crazy as this has become, there are
now other companies using the same logic
to sell consumer products and you've
definitely seen them before. These are
the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. They
have a camera built into the frame that
looks pretty much identical to a normal
pair of glasses and since they've been
released, they've sold millions of them.
The problem is they record people who
have no idea that they're being
recorded. There's a little light that's
supposed to blink when the camera's on
or at least give strangers a heads-up,
but obviously now people have figured
out how to turn it off. People buy
stickers to cover it or scratch it off
or just pay someone to permanently
disable them. And so what's happened in
the last few years are videos like this
on TikTok and Instagram. Guys will walk
up to women minding their business in
public and hit on them while secretly
recording on their glasses and then post
it to get views. Meanwhile, the women
who are being recorded have no idea.
Some later end up seeing these videos
and say they felt violated and
humiliated after being posted and made
fun of by people on the internet.
They're being used like props and later
seeing people in the comment section
rating them based on their looks. There
are now even websites and groups online
where dudes will upload videos of women
that they filmed in public on their
glasses and other men will rate them.
These glasses are also being used for
prank videos on TikTok. Teenagers will
go to a mall to troll random people and
even smack them in the back of the head
to get some TikTok clout. And yes,
filming in public isn't illegal, but
it's still weird and creepy as [ __ ]
It's really just an excuse to get away
with messing with random people who are
just trying to mind their own business.
And it gets worse than just some creeps
hitting on women. Because now some
engineering college students found out
that whenever they paired their glasses
with facial recognition and public data,
they could look at a stranger and pull
their name, their address, their phone
number, and family members in real time.
They tested it by walking up to people
that they'd never met and greeting them
by name like they were old friends and
it actually worked. Luckily, these
students never released their software
to the public because they realized what
they made and how dangerous it could be.
And whenever you talk to Meta AI on the
glasses, the footage goes directly to
Meta's servers. Now, imagine if this was
hooked up to Flock cameras live and we
have a full surveillance state. Flock
also has a new product that they just
came out with called Nova and this This
where it gets even more [ __ ] up. Nova
takes all of the camera footage and
stitches it together with your personal
info pulled from people search sites.
These are the same sites that are used
to dox and SWAT people. So now it's
everything about you, including your
name and address and location data, all
bundled into one profile. And another
company that is doing this is Axon.
They're the ones behind all of the
standardized police tech like dash cams
and body cameras. Since the riding we
saw about six or seven years ago, the
stock of Axon has gone through the roof.
And now the company is building what
they call crime centers that pulls
camera footage into one big screen in a
room. Axon has even made their own
license plate cameras. And at one point
they were connected financially with
Flock and plugged right into them making
everything interconnected. Axon knows
that to put up new Flock cameras you
need a higher crew to put up the pole
into the ground and wire it up. So Axon
built their own version that just clicks
onto a street light that's already
built. It runs off of the lights own
power socket, so it's cheaper and takes
less time because you just snap it onto
a street light. Now just think about how
many street lights are in your city.
Every single one of them could become a
camera overnight. Both Axon and Flock
also had deals with Amazon Ring
doorbells. So police could request
videos straight from people's porches. I
mean, just think about it. Your
doorbell, your license plate, your face,
your name, your movements, everything is
being funneled and accessible to the
same network. And at first it wasn't
meant to be an all-seeing system like
this. Each company was built on their
own, but now they have pieced together
everything to track anyone, anywhere, at
anytime. I see it, for all of human
history, walking outside just meant that
strangers can see you and that was it.
They didn't know your name or your
address or where you slept. You were
just kind of a face in the crowd. You
could go to a protest or a mall and
never be tracked back to your house.
Under a full surveillance grid,
everything you do in public becomes a
permanent searchable record. They're
owned by companies you never signed
anything with or agreed to and can be
used for whatever reason they want. And
this is why so many people are upset.
The game has been flipped. We used to be
innocent until proven guilty, but now
it's the opposite. This is one of the
only issues right now that regardless of
where you stand politically, most people
generally agree with. Some people are
going the legal route like city council
meetings, while other people are just
grabbing a sawzall or a chainsaw.
There's a movement of Flock cameras
being cut down, blasted with lasers, and
being painted over. Most of these are
just normal people who are justifiably
pissed off. They're not like
professional activists doing this to
push some sort of political agenda. And
let me say cutting down Flock cameras is
a crime, and it's a felony in a lot of
places, so this isn't a suggestion. But
when we see people bringing chainsaws
and power tools in public to cut down
these poles, I feel like it tells us
that most people never wanted this to
happen. And so now that this problem has
gotten more attention, cities are
starting to pull out of their deals.
Even larger cities like Austin and
Denver aren't renewing their deals
because they said that the city
shouldn't be a part of mass
surveillance. Dozens of towns have now
canceled and suspended Flock with more
turning down new contracts because their
citizens are speaking out about it. But
some cities got so tangled up in these
contracts that whenever they voted to
shut the program down, the only thing
they could do was physically bag the
camera with trash bags. And recently
there was a former cop who was a
whistleblower in all of this. He
confirmed that these cameras track
everything including the make, model,
color, and even bumper stickers on cars.
They can share around to any city or
state with no warrant. And whenever he
talked about his concerns about privacy
inside his own department, he got
suspended without pay. And he even
pointed out the exact mindset of people
who support these cameras saying that if
you have nothing to hide, you shouldn't
be worried about them. But this is
essentially the same system as the
Soviet Union who had a system that
treats people like suspects
automatically. It's not the logic of a
free country. And with this huge amount
of data that's being collected with
cameras and trackers, the data has to go
somewhere. And that's where the company
Palantir comes in. Palantir is a data
company that capitalized on the war on
terror by working with the military to
help hunt down terrorists. They're one
of the largest defense companies in the
world, but they are interconnected with
pretty much every major event in the
last 20 years. The company is now
building predictive policing technology
to guess in advance where crimes will
happen and who will do it before it
happens. And we could dive into this
company all day talking about the
founder who's directly involved with US
politics or the fact that the founder
gave Flock $275 whenever they were first
a startup. But the fact is this company
is valuable because it takes all of our
data including faces, names, patterns,
and even our daily traveling and then
it's wired to the government while being
run behind the scenes of a billionaire.
And this company is public that you can
buy stock in right now. They'll tell you
that it started as a way to find stolen
cars or find missing kids to make the
streets safer. Now, if we connect it to
everything, each of these products that
were sold as a way to protect people
have turned into an interconnected
profile of an entire population. In the
future, if nothing changes, this will be
the new dystopian normal. Right now, you
have no choice if you're being tracked
and monitored anytime you're outside of
your house. But your city does have the
choice if they decide to keep their
contracts with these companies. But it
doesn't have to stay this way. So, I'm
going to leave some links in the
description if you're interested in
changing this within your city. And if
you like content like this, feel free to
check out some of the other videos on my
channel that are similar to this one and
I'll see you in the next one. Peace.