Controversy grows over the use of Flock cameras | Behind the Investigation

From wherever you're listening right now across the country, you know the name flock, and it's because this company is making national headlines for tracking people across their everyday lives. But it's the word tracking that has also become controversial and created a lot of questions. The reporter that has been leading a lot of this investigating into flock cameras, Brendan Keefe here, our chief investigator. I'm Anastasia Olmos, and this is behind the investigation talking about flock. Yeah, it's fascinating because this is an incredibly powerful technology by all accounts, no matter whether you're for them or against them. You have to admit this technology is powerful that you can type in not just a license plate. You can type in a description red sedan with a scratch on the rear quarter panel, or a bumper sticker or other identifiers roof rack. And you can search cameras, in some cases, across more than 6000 agencies across the United States and some 100,000 cameras. And actually find not just where a car is, but where it has been. And it's not just cars. It's not just license plate readers. They also make video cameras that can follow a human being walking through a park and also use AI to catalog that. So it becomes searchable of historical movements where you've been for the last 30 days. Put enough of those points together and you get a clear picture of someone's movements, what church they go to, what school their children go to, whether they go to a gun range or not, whether they have been to a protest. You can actually type in person with protest sign person with Trump, sticker person with Biden sticker on their car. Those are searchable terms. And those powers are now in the hands of police agencies across the United States. And, you know, we start this this podcast here talking about the word tracking and how these cameras could have access to our everyday lives. But I think back to when this technology first came out several years ago, I was living in Tennessee and working in Tennessee, and there was a lot of, you know, hype around, oh, the police department now has these license plate readers within the city or the county, and now they can catch criminals, and now they're going to know who's coming in from out of state. And when they're looking for a wanted person or they're looking for a missing person, they're able to capture them. And that was really a positive at the time. But, you know, fast forward now to when technology is really kind of AI all kind of threatening our privacy, there's a lot more, uh, concerns, especially with, you know, what you've reported on. There are people that have been able to get into these cameras just in the public. and nationally. There are even officers losing their jobs over essentially stalking through these cameras. Yeah. So you mentioned the word positive, and now there's this negative connotation. The reality is the cameras themselves are agnostic. The system is agnostic. It's just data, but it's data on people collected without a warrant, without reasonable suspicion, without probable cause. Your car has most certainly passed these. Anyone watching or listening to this, unless they're in Alaska, where there there are no flock cameras yet, where their flock already has registered there as a business, but they're in 49 other states. So if you live in Hawaii or the lower 48, as they call it, the rest of the United States, your car has been definitively has been captured by this system, catalogued, but more importantly, photographed. And your location has been logged to where that is searchable time location. So it's sort of who, what, where and when. Flock likes to say, well, we don't really take pictures of the person behind the wheel of the car. But now they do have the capability of tracking people with these other cameras. A camera they call a condor. Um, and so sort of flock wants it both ways. They are 100% correct. Every day this is used to solve crimes, catch murderers, kidnappers return lost people. I personally have covered successes of Alpr automated license plate reader cameras going back 15 years, where flock has grown in the last, really 2 or 3 years. It is now all over the country. They won't tell us how many cameras there are. We asked them point blank. They said, we don't tell you how many cameras there are, but independent third parties have tracked now more than 90,000. And they're growing every day because there are cameras all over. Like just on my way to work, I pass about 24 cameras in my news car just to come here from home. And I drive through jurisdictions where I have done investigations on police departments where the police chief, the last police chief, is no longer in law enforcement because of investigations I've done. So if someone in that agency wanted to track me, they could easily do it. And they don't need anyone's permission. Would they be violating policy? Yes. In Georgia. They'd also be violating the law if it wasn't for a law enforcement use. But there isn't someone sitting over their shoulder checking. This is why, in response to all of these criticisms, flock came out with this audit assistance tool. So instead of looking through millions of records trying to find a needle in a stack of needles, not even in a haystack, they're now getting a dashboard where a supervisor can see this search needs review. Click the needs review button, check to see. And that's actually why we're seeing so many police officers arrested. It's one of the reasons, the main reason right now, why we're seeing so many police officers arrested in Georgia and elsewhere, is because this audit assistance tool is now catching them. But it raises two questions. You know, one, the biggest one is why or how many people were doing this before the audit assistance tool. And why didn't this already exist as a method to catch them? And the other thing is what you're saying that even though they've created this internal system, it requires the system to flag that. And then for a person to pick up that flag and look into it. Yeah. And they are, and it uses AI. And to Flox credit, they're, you know, they're saying, hey, look, every time one of these officers is arrested, certainly in the last month or two, it's because of their audit assistance tool. And by and large, they're right. I know of personally a couple of cases, one of which hasn't even been reported. It's a case here in Georgia where a female deputy says she was stalked by another deputy who was her love interest, but they had a violent relationship and had broken up. And after that, deputy was fired, she says he was still finding her and she didn't know how she ran her tag through. Have I Been flocked.com, which uses public records? She ran her tag through and found out that he had been following her using, uh, the flock system. Weeks after he was no longer working for the sheriff's office, he still had his login and he was able to track her. Um, now, again, this hasn't been reported. That deputy has been fired. We're not naming the agency or the deputy right now, which is how I can tell you all of this. But that's one of the cases I know where they found out through have I been flock.com? What's interesting is at the same time, flock has come out with this audit assistance tool, it is now eliminated. The elements that made have I been flock.com work, which is that when you file a records request with a local police, you were able to see the officer who searched it from an external agency, and you could see the tag they searched so you could actually see who was searching you. According to flock. We asked them point blank, why did you remove this information? They said, because police officers, they said they heard from nearly 200 officers who were worried that their names were in these public records and that they were getting sort of harassed or doxed, or they were worried about their safety. So it's important to point out, while you have no choice of whether or not you're tracked by this company and therefore by the police, the police don't want you tracking them. Now, at least the nearly 200 officers who asked flock to keep their names out of it. My goodness. And so you have been one of the only reporters to actually sit down with flock in recent months and ask them about a lot of these questions. Yeah. Flock has actually been really responsive on public relations. As you know, these days, a lot of people don't want to sit down with us for accountability interviews. Who wants to sit down across from an investigative reporter and answer tough questions? To Fox's credit, they sat down with us and they knew it was going to be an accountability interview. So and that's now all over the place. I mean, all sorts of people have chopped up our interview and have, you know, broadcast it for various reasons on their social media, the sort of anti flock movement people have snipped from our our reporting and even flock has done it. So flock took the part where I said it's used to catch murderers and kidnappers and and rapists and such. They took just that part out of context from our otherwise critical story that was fair and balanced and two sided. And they took just that part and put it in a promotional video to make it look like we were endorsing flock. They've changed their PR tactics in the last few weeks as we're recording this where they were going, they were blocking comments on social media. So flocks social media, they the post with me in it, multiple posts with me appearing to endorse a clip of me appearing to endorse flock in a for profit companies promotional video using our content. I wasn't able to share a link in the comments saying, here's the full story for context, because they were blocking comments just recently, they're now unblocking. They're allowing people to comment on their new posts and they've taken a new stance. Their CEO, Garrett Langley, who graduated from Georgia Tech, one of the co-founders who came up with this idea and this technology. He had previously in interviews called Df.loc and others terrorists closer to Antifa. He called them. These are the people who are trying to just map the cameras. He said that they're equated them to terrorists. He has now walked that back and said, I made a mistake, I apologize, I never should have done that. So they're taking a far more engaging, uh, stance toward critics. And they're even saying that these questions about everyone being tracked, or at least everyone being recorded by flock, are legitimate questions that the public should be able to ask. So that's a total change in their sort of public relations stance. And the other, you know, headline that I've seen recently is police departments such as LAPD, who is pausing their relationship with the system. Uh, they're, you know, cameras and things because they want to change the guidelines of how the data is used and who is receiving tickets and things like that on their end. Are you seeing that police departments are starting to make changes as well? Yeah. I mean, Denver police canceled their contract and it was over. And it kind of brings up the politics of it. There are there are left leaning places like LA, there's some in Connecticut and some others who have done this that are that are left, you know, leaning locales. They're sort of liberal Democratic states and cities. Um, and it's interesting because most of the anti flock movement until very recently was sort of more left wing activists and activists. It was sort of a cause celebre. And then now we've actually seen it to where the right wing libertarian, uh, the libertarian arm of the Republican Party and other conservatives are now questioning, hey, wait, this isn't just back the blue police, this is the government and the government has access to when I go to the gun store or because remember, it's not just these cameras that are essentially connected to police departments. There are retailers who have these in the parking lot. Some of those retailers sell guns. And so now some people who are Second Amendment rights folks are saying they're now joining the First Amendment rights folks saying, hey, this could be used to track my movements. Um, and even if it's in public, if you have enough of those points, it starts to paint that picture of where you've been. And do you really want the government being able to track you without you being suspected of a crime? And, you know, with that, uh, previously you had reported on everyday citizens who were able to get FLoC logins. On the dark web. Well, at least we've spotted them for sale on the dark web. And you know, since then, initially, FLoC didn't use multi-factor authentication. It wasn't turned on by default or it wasn't required. They're now, uh, pushing much harder for departments. It's now on by default, meaning, you know, you get like a text if you want to log into Netflix, you know, if you want to log in to your Panera app, you sometimes need a multifactor authentication. But to get into the most powerful network of license plate reader, camera data and historical movements of Americans across the country, you didn't need to have that. Now, as a practical matter, smaller police departments, those officers don't all have department issued phones. They have a personal phone. So maybe that department doesn't want multi-factor authentication on a personal phone. But this brings up the security issue, is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And so while FLoC says, you know, immigration Ice does not have direct access to FLoC data. That's true. They had a pilot program with Homeland Security that's been stopped, but there are still immigration agents who have access to FLoC data through cooperating police departments. And FLoC has now said, hey, look, we can't control that. That's up to the customer. So all Ice needs is a police department that's friendly to them to provide access. And now they can search for, you know, for doing immigration enforcement, whether you're for or against that. Some departments don't want their data being used that way. So a couple of states have passed laws saying you can't share beyond our borders or you can't share for immigration. California is one of them. It's actually illegal to share that information outside of the state, and now they're not doing it. So I'm wondering moving forward, what accountability accountability looks like. You just mentioned that lawmakers could step in and could kind of rein in the power that a company could have, a police department could have to follow and track its citizens or the accountability on the company to lock down the type of searches or data. What what do you think moving forward? Well, Fox point of view is we're a tool just like a firearm. And every time a firearm is misused, you don't blame the manufacturer. This is sort of their argument. Or every time a police car is misused in a pursuit, you don't blame, you know, Ford or Chevrolet for that or Dodge. And that's sort of their argument. But this is different because you're talking about the historical movements of Americans. And as we know, we're tracking so far more than 40 cases nationwide where police officers have been disciplined, fired and or arrested for using the flock data to track down and track the movements of their exes. There's even a fatality. The Brazelton police chief here in Georgia was fired and arrested and then took his life by suicide shortly after he was released awaiting trial on this. So this is how serious all of this is. And there are women and men who have been tracked. Even fellow deputies, love interests within a department have been tracked by officers in that department running their tags and even running the tags of of rival suitors. So this is how serious this is. At the same time, you have flock sort of dialing back on some of its transparency. At the same time, it's sort of pushing transparency within its public relations. So there's a new transparency tool, uh, that they've unveiled with a number of police departments. They've flock has provided the ability for police departments to post logs of, here's all the searches we've done. When you go to those transparency portals, as they call them, it looks like a lot of data and it is, but it's also meaningless data. And I say that as an investigative reporter, I can't derive any meaning from this because the officer's name is not included in the transparency portal. And also the tag that was searched is not in the transparency portal. Now, to the credit of the law enforcement, would you really want, you know, criminal suspects knowing you're searching their tags? But all that's there is the time, the date, an ID number, which means nothing to the to the public. And then the reason for the search. And so it might say stolen car or. But there's. Well, you can select anything you want in some of the cases, even cases where there have been adjudications all the way to guilt, the. The officers or deputies put in test to search for their ex or they. One put in in Milwaukee awaiting trial. He he he he he HEAGAG as the reason now flock changed how that's done. It's no longer a box where you can put in anything. It's now a drop down menu. But in many cases it's just investigation or Information or test is still an option. And so if you can put test in there, if no one's checking and that's where of course they're going to say the audit assistance tool comes in. But flock recently moved to a new headquarters. That headquarters is unmarked. There's no sign outside that says flock. Is there. Some YouTube streamers recently tracked down that location, sort of tried to go in and interview flock, and they were told to stop recording or asked to stop recording, and that was kind of the point of the streamers, what they were trying to say. The YouTubers, including Ben Jordan, whom we've interviewed before, was that sort of like, wait, you don't want to be filmed, but you're filming us, you know, everywhere we go, but we want to go film your headquarters. Um, similarly, they have a very large manufacturing plant in Smyrna and that's unmarked as well. There are the names of the other businesses leasing there, but, but not flock. Um and so, you know, there's lots of good reasons to why flock wouldn't want to be found, but there's also a lot of reasons maybe why I wouldn't want to be found. And I think that's what some of the critics are saying as an investigative reporter. Do I want the targets or subjects of my investigations to be able to find out where my movements are when I'm not suspected of a crime. And as of right now, they have that capability. But those cameras can also be searched by every other agency to which they're connected. Yeah. So for, for people listening, watching, you know, from the everyday person who doesn't want to be followed, you know, on, on their walk to the park or whatever it may be, or if it's, say, a lawmaker listening, somebody within a police department. What do you think the overall takeaway for, for people listening? Well, let's flip that around for a second too. Because remember, we're we don't have a, we're not taking a side here. We're just pointing out sort of hidden truths or things that maybe people didn't know. As you pointed out, flock has become a household name. Uh, and before our reporting, we had our first story. We had to explain what flock is. That's no longer the issue, but to flip it on its head here, what do you say to the people who have a child who goes missing and that child might be able to be recovered by. Searching tags within a certain area on the flock camera. Or what if there's a killer out there and we're able to get a lead? We. Meaning the public through the police to try to track the killer down before he kills again, or a kidnapper to be able to return someone who'd been kidnapped or serial burglars. These are incredibly effective tools. I covered one story where there was an ATM thief. Someone was following the person who fills the ATMs with money and killed that person. And it was a crew, and there was no physical evidence. There was no video, but they actually ran through a different alpr system. Investigators ran the victim's tag and then looked for tags within four scans of that tag, and they kept finding the same tag. They brought them in. They were the killers. They were convicted. So this technology is incredibly powerful. And the police are saying, don't take this away from us. Because if you if you take this away from us for a bad feeling, then your your community is going to be less safe. That's their argument. The flip side of it is, though, this is the United States of America, and under the Fourth Amendment, you are supposed to have the freedom of movement secure in yourself and your papers. I'm paraphrasing here, but basically that if the public or if the government wants to search your location or information, the Supreme Court just had a recent case, Chatree, where they said the government can't use Google location data, even within like a sort of a geofence within a certain period of time to search for the phones of people who aren't suspected of crimes. Um, there's a question over whether that's going to apply to FLoC going forward. There's a big appeal right now in the fourth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals about whether FLoC is tracking the whole of people's movements. The lower court ruled they aren't, but that's now up for appeal before the Fourth Circuit, after this Chatree decision sounds like a lot of inside baseball, but these are issues for the legislature. There are issues for the courts, and as of right now, they're unresolved. And that means that this technology is powerfully in the hands of police, whether they're doing good or bad. And yes, it's catching bad guys, but it's also catching bad guys with a badge who are searching for their exes or their love interests. Yeah, it's important that people know what's going on and pay attention as this all unfolds. And I know that you have some rolling investigations and you are always holding the powerful accountable. And so we will stay tuned for your further investigations, as well as everything that's going around the country right now. Thanks for tuning in to Behind the Investigation with Atlanta News First Investigates. For more on this story, go to Atlanta News first.com and click on the A and F investigates tab. 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