Full transcript
Welcome to Beer Garden Mafia.
Today's show is going to be a little bit
different. Uh you're going to hear a lot
more from Eric on this because he uh
knows a lot more about this subject than
I do. But today we're going to be
talking about these flock cameras.
Eric,
why don't you tell us what what are
flock cameras? What what are they all
about? What do they do?
So,
first of all, I'll let you know. Um I've
actually worked in the surveillance and
camera technology industry for over 15
years. I've worked on everything from a
government project called IF integrated
fixed cameras for the border patrol. Uh
I've worked for large mall companies
dealing with over 500 cameras and
sensors and all kinds of different stuff
for surveillance. So,
uh I have a little bit of background
obviously in in what I'm speaking, but
for flot cameras, they're advertised as
license plate readers or LPRs.
They are way more than that. So,
everyone is counting them as safety and
uh I know police are using them. Uh
I really just want to talk about what
they are. I want to leave my opinion out
of it. I would love to have your opinion
in the comments. I do believe I'll put a
poll up here too to see if you're for or
against surveillance, whether it's Flock
or Axon or any of the other companies
that create these sensors is what they
call them. They don't call them cameras
anymore. They're sensors. Uh because
they do way more than just look at your
license plate. So, they actually will
profile your car.
They'll look at what color the car is.
Is there a dent? Is there,
you know, anything that is a tell that
it's your car? bumper stickers, any of
that type of stuff. The level of
technology in those is way higher than
what it needs to be for just a license
plate rear camera, which I used to
install for malls. I mean, admittedly, I
don't know a whole lot about this
subject, but right away my mind goes to,
okay, so they want to track people and
then they're going to target you with
marketing
off that information.
Like say your car is seen going to Home
Depot all the time,
then your phone is probably going to
get, you know, loaded with Home Depot
ads because they know you go there.
Yes,
I think that's a lot of it.
It's a combination. So, they use that
information. By the way, the flock
camera data actually gets stored on
Amazon servers. I don't know if people
realize that, but it gets stored on
Amazon servers and then the police and
anybody who wants to access that have to
get permission from Amazon to get the
footage or information from it. But it
is a combination of those cameras. There
are cameras in all of the stores. Uh
they also use your phone, your phone
information.
Yeah. See, I mean, we have cameras at
the beer garden.
Yeah. But we don't access those cameras
unless say you come in here and you
steal something.
Then we're going to back up the system.
We're going to look at the cameras and
we're going to see who took it.
Yeah.
But we don't give anybody access to
that. You know, we're not sharing that
technology, that information with
anybody. We're not using it for anything
other than to protect our business.
Right. And it resides on a local hard
drive. So it's not
blasted out to the
It's not blasted out. Nobody has access
to it. And so, um, I think that's one of
the things that kind of scares me about
these flock cameras is who has access.
Correct. And what what are they using
that information for? Now, I do know
there are positive sides to this, you
know, when it comes to crime, when it
comes to kidnapping, when it comes to
that type of situation. I understand,
but I don't agree with them capturing
everybody all the time. I mean, you
brought this all to my attention within
the last couple weeks, and since then,
I've been really kind of doing some
research, and I found several situations
where police officers
use the flock camera system to stalk
exgirlfriends or ex-wives.
Yeah.
That sort of thing that shouldn't be
allowed.
Correct. You know, I mean, it's like I
had a wise old man told me one time, he
says, "Keith, nothing good will ever
come to you without some bad coming with
it."
Correct.
And nothing bad will happen to you
without some good coming with it. And I
think that's where we're at with these
flock cameras. I think there is a lot of
good benefit to it. Like say a child is
kidnapped. You want to be able to
recover that child before anything bad
happens to them.
Absolutely.
And a flock camera can help with that.
Yeah.
So that is a that's a positive or a good
side to it. The bad side of it would be
is if you piss off a cop and he uses
this to to stalk you and do, you know,
bad things to you or your family.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, there are evil people
out there in the world. And I'm not
saying all cops are bad. You know, I'm
not I'm not that person. Most most cops
are great people just like anybody else.
But just like 1% of plumbers are bad, 1%
of electricians are bad, 1% of framers
are bad. Well, 1% of cops are bad, too.
Yeah. And if those people get access to
this system, they can wreak a lot of
havoc for other people that don't
deserve it.
Absolutely. It's way too much power for
the people that are supposed to be
protecting us even to have.
It's just too much power.
Yes.
It's too much big brother in my personal
opinion. I'm trying to keep my opinion.
I agree with that. I I have to agree
with that. I mean, I want them to be
able to use that to uh, you know, catch
a bank robber, catch a a kidnapper, you
know, those situations. It's a great
tool.
Absolutely.
It's a great tool.
Absolutely. The the other thing that I
guess bothered me when I started doing
more research on what the company named
Flock was doing,
they're um, they're not using it for
everybody's best interest all the time.
They don't have guide rails in place to
stop things for misuse,
right?
They don't have guide rails for it. And
and they're selling that information.
Absolutely. And the places the counties
that are these systems are put in, this
isn't voted upon.
No,
this is put in for safety,
right?
This is up in in your in your county or
in your your district before you even
know it. We currently don't have any
here any in Marshall County. Now, there
are yet, and that's part of the reason
why I wanted to make this video, too, is
for awareness for the folks of Marshall
County. You currently do not have those
systems, at least the flock version
currently in our towns. Now, there are
in Murray, there are in Paduca,
Mayfield,
and Mayfield, but there currently is not
in Marshall County. And I would love to
at least educate people. They can choose
however they want to do it or not, but
we need to be able to have a voice and
use the power of
and I think that flu cameras are a good
thing if there are guidelines put in
place.
You have to limit what people can do
with this technology or it could quickly
go to the side that is very invasive
and probably illegal in a lot of cases.
Absolutely. And we have to be careful
too when a jurisdiction decides to put
in a camera system like this. There are
loopholes in the contract for Flock
Axion any insert name of manufacturer of
these type of cameras. There's loopholes
deep down in their contracts. So we can
even say, "Hey, we don't want it to do
this or this." And later in the
contract, there'll be something that
undoes exactly what you tried to put in
as a stipulation. Well, I' I've been
through u a lot of legal issues with
patents and I can tell you that how
courts look at things. If uh say you
have a contract that says you cannot do
this,
but later on in the contract it says you
can do this. A court looks at that like
there was never a meeting of the minds
therefore that cannot be ruled on one
way or the other. It's just
Yeah.
out of their hands.
Exactly.
And I think that's what these people are
doing. And they're a lot smarter
than what people give them credit for.
Well, they're a billion dollar they're a
billion dollar company.
That's what I was just going to say.
You're dealing with a billion dollar
company. They've got more attorneys on
retainer than, you know, our small town
has people.
Absolutely.
So, uh, when that's the case, you you
get all these brilliant minds together.
They know how to manipulate the law.
They know how to manipulate contracts to
their benefit. So, you got to be really
careful when dealing with these people.
Absolutely.
You know, even though they may have good
intentions, and I'm not saying that they
don't,
right?
But you still have to be very careful
because the potential to do bad things
with it is there.
Absolutely. Like I said, it's it's way
too much power. Uh the other thing that
a lot of people don't understand is it's
not just flock.
Oh, no.
If you park next to a Tesla, it knows
you. It knows. It has running
all the time.
Even when you're not in the car.
Correct.
It's just parked somewhere. If it
detects movement at all, it immediately
records
every single
Yes.
phone records everything.
Absolutely. You can hear us making this
video right now.
Jen and I have been sitting in our
living room, not talking on our phones,
not playing on our phones or anything,
and we'll be talking about saying,
"Okay, buying like say a trigger grill."
Mhm.
Or a smoker.
Yeah. you know, oh, we should get us one
of these. You know, I pick up my phone,
every ad on Facebook now is for a
trigger grill or a smoker.
Absolutely.
That phone is listening to you.
Yes.
And smart TVs do the same thing.
That's another point. That is a great
point. Uh I recently purchased one uh
one of those big TVs from Walmart. Like
$300, I got a 75 in TV.
Yeah.
So, when I brought it home, being
tech-minded, I started looking through
the menu. I turned off the camera and
the microphone
that's built into that TV.
Good idea.
Now, that isn't the only way that data
can be collected from a TV. So, you can
actually use they can use LAR. So, they
can use the light from that TV to
determine the size of the room to
determine how many people are in the
room. They can collect data just through
the light off of a TV.
Wow.
And there's another company that's
creating a um a signal basically it's a
signal finder and it's doesn't look like
a camera. It's just a little sensor.
Well, what that does is if you drive by
it will pick up if you have anything
that has a Bluetooth capability, a
laptop sitting in there,
cell phone,
cell phone, headphones, anything that
you have that has a Bluetooth signal and
it takes and pulls the MAC address. The
MAC address is its personal ID. So
that's how you can have two different
like a different speaker over here and
one over here and it will only connect
to that one because MAC address.
So they're collecting all that data and
then they take those MAC addresses and
they assign it to you.
So they already have your information
from the plot camera and then this
sensor can take all of those things and
assign it to you.
Right? So you can't deny that you were
the one driving.
You can't deny anything because they
already had that information. Now, they
haven't gone to those levels yet with
persecution, but that's where this gets
crazy is because if you think about it,
you do something bad. We catch you on
our flop camera.
We didn't prevent you from doing it.
We're waiting until after you've done
it, and now we can prosecute because we
have the information,
right?
And the amount of money that it costs
a local place to have these things put
in, they could hire two or three more
cops.
Wow.
Actual humans. I saw well I read another
article where people are actually
getting tickets in the mail
from these flock cameras.
Y
and the tickets show up like they're on
your your county stationary,
but the address that you mail your money
to to get rid of this ticket is the
flock headquarters in another state.
Really?
So it's not even the county that gets
the money.
It's the people running these flock
systems that are doing this. And I don't
know if they have some kind of deal
worked out with the county that allows
them to do that,
right?
You know, maybe the county gets, you
know, their end off the backside or
something. I don't really know how it
works,
but people are actually getting tickets
in the mail off these. And when you look
at the address, it's not your your
county building that the money goes to.
It's in a totally another state. It's
not even in the state. That's
disturbing.
It is disturbing.
I mean, you talk about big brother
watching.
Oh, it's been around for a long time.
It's here.
It's been around for a very long time.
And it's uh I don't know. I you know, I
don't do anything that I need to worry
about going to jail for. So,
you know, people say, "If you're not
doing anything wrong, well, what's the
big deal?" Well, I don't really like
being watched either. It'd be like if
you have a creepy neighbor that just
constantly stands outside and watches
everything you do, you know?
Absolutely. a little disturbing.
Very disturbing. And it also encroaches
on our Fourth Amendment rights. Yeah,
that's part of the reason why too I also
wanted to just bring light to it so that
people in our community or in your local
community wherever you are watching
this, you can actually at least get
educated about it. And if you feel
inclined, you'll educate yourself and
then you can go and at least talk to
people who are wanting to implement this
in your area. And I know there's a lot
of places that have already had them
removed,
right? But the thing that they're not
realizing is, "Okay, flock's gone. Yay."
Well, Axon or another company comes in
and puts their system in. And well, we
got rid of the flock for you. Flock's
gone.
Well, now it's insert name of company
here.
Yeah. You got rid of McDonald's. Now you
got Burger King and Jack in a Box.
100%.
Yeah. So, it's a very
I don't know what the answer is, but uh
people should be aware of at least
what's going on in their communities.
The amount of surveillance that's being
installed.
You know, another thing I read is that
people are actually cutting these things
down. You don't want to do that, people.
No.
Here's why. If you cut it down, they're
just going to put up another one and
you're going to have to pay more taxes
to cover the cost of that. You're just
costing yourself more money.
Yeah. You're not you're not doing any
good by doing this. You're just costing
yourselves more money. So, don't cut
them down. If you don't like the
cameras, go to your city council
meetings. Talk to your mayors, your
governor, you know, talk to your uh city
and county and state officials. That's
how you deal with it.
Absolutely. And definitely educate
yourself. Do your own research. You This
is once again just for awareness. Do
your own research. Form your own opinion
on it. I know there is a
Yes. And let's be honest, most
politicians, they only pay attention to
the things that affect them.
They may not be aware of the negative
side of these things.
Correct?
So, if you actually educate yourself and
you know what you're talking about, then
you can go and talk to your mayors, you
can go and talk to your city council
members and explain it to them. They may
not be aware.
Yeah. And so once you if you can explain
it in detail so they can understand it,
they're more likely to uh side with you
and say, "You know what? Maybe we need
to look into this a little deeper."
Exactly. And especially if you can get
to the meetings prior to those being
installed. Once they're installed, it's
really, really hard to get a system like
that removed.
Well, it's like anything once you allow
it.
Oh, they just keep taking and going. It
keeps growing.
Yeah. I don't I'm I'm not very trusting
of government anyway. I've had a few
things happen to me in my lifetime that
uh really makes me not trust the
government.
I mean, uh we don't need to get into
that, but maybe on another show I'll
tell you all about some of the things
that have happened to me in my life that
the government has done to me personally
and why I don't trust the government.
But I do not trust the government. Not
on a state level, not on a local level,
not on a federal level. I don't trust
any of them.
So, uh,
there you go.
No, it's uh,
just in full disclosure, I do not trust
the government,
right? Rightfully so. There's a there's
a lot of, uh, nefarious things that have
that have happened. But, uh, I just
really wanted to make sure that we got
on here. Not a super long video. Just
wanted to get on here and educate
people, let people know, hey, do some
research on these things. And it may not
be called flock.
Where can they find this? Tell them how
to find this information.
Uh, if you type in flock in your
computer, search anything, if you
haven't already seen it everywhere on
the news, type in flock and you will get
an idea of what those systems are. Now,
there's a whole bunch of different names
for it. Right now, flock is the popular
one, which may change later on, but um,
if you look that up or if you look up
um, there's something called a PVM, a
public view monitor. Like at Walmart
when you're checking out, you look over
and there's, oh, there's a monitor. I
can see myself. and LPRs, license plate
readers,
right? Well, that PVM shows, oh, just
public view. Why do you need that?
That has more sensors in it than what
they say,
right?
But do your own research. Public view
monitors. Look into those. Look into
license plate readers or LPRs.
And the the other side of this that is
bad is that they're using AI and AI
hasn't it's not foolproof yet. So
there's people who have been arrested
because it messed up one number on their
license plate,
right?
And they tried they actually did book
them and they ended up having to sue
them to get out of it and prove look
right
I didn't do this.
Well AI is like u see I dealt with
robotic technology in my last business
Diamond Heads.
Yeah.
We did that work with robotic arms.
Those robotic arms will do exactly what
you tell it to do. So if you make a
mistake in the programming and you tell
that thing to slam into the part, it's
going to slam into the part.
Yeah.
So you got to be really careful. And uh
I'm not sure that they are being that
careful.
No. No. And that's once again there
there's not enough people who truly
understand the the scope. They don't
understand all facets of it. Some people
just oh well it's you know just for
protection to watch our license plates.
Well that's what they tell you to sell
it. You know what I mean?
Yes. Educate yourselves before this goes
too far and we're not aware of it
because once it's in, as I said, it's
hard to get it out of there.
That's right.
So, you know, do your own research,
figure stuff out, but I wanted to
definitely come on here and just shed
light on it because I did notice that
Marshall County, Kentucky does not have
them yet. And I would love for it to
stay that way. In my personal opinion,
I'd like to see Marshall County stay
without them. I love living here. Mhm.
I moved to uh Marshall County, Kentucky
because this is more like the America
that I grew up in.
Me, too.
People still believe in God, guns, and
family.
Neighbors are still good to their
neighbors. And that's what I really love
about this area.
You know, it's it's more like America
was when I was a kid,
right? And that's where, you know, let
the big cities have that technology.
Yeah.
There's not enough population out here
for that to be of really good use.
No. You do something in Marshall County
before you get home, your mama's gonna
know about it. Your grandmother's gonna
know about it.
Word travels faster than it did. Yeah,
it travels quick around here. We don't
need no flock cameras in Marshall
County. But
no, anyway, that's my two cents. If you
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We're going to do some different topics
on here as we move forward, too. So,
look for that. But we'll see you guys on
the next one. Appreciate you.
Y'all have a great day.
Stay blessed.
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Laughing loud, living free.
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