Earlier this month, the Washington Post published an article entitled How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking. It describes, in disturbing detail, how local police officers were using Flock’s video surveillance technology not to identify kidnappers or vandals, as intended—but to stalk their ex-girlfriends’ trips to the grocery store and doctors appointments.
Part of what’s so harrowing about all of this is that typically, if you are being digitally stalked or harassed by an ex-partner, your main recourse is to report it to the police. Here, not only were local police the stalkers—they were given free rein to indulge in their stalking tendencies, via the surveillance infrastructure their departments spent millions of dollars on.
While some are quick to vilify the police officers as bad men tantalized by a new toy, Flock’s tentacles have been spreading for some time now. And it is impossible to detach Flock from a broader ecosystem of control through technological surveillance.
I first heard about Flock relatively recently, at a conference in April organized to “take back tech” from oligarchs. At this conference, community organizers discussed Flock’s sprawling architecture, how their automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) capture images of cars and license plates virtually everywhere—tracing the whereabouts of cars not only through mounted cameras but also through drones and mobile trailers that do not need permanent mounting, fixed utility poles, or wired power.
These community activists got involved in this fight long ago because Flock, for years, has been tracking vulnerable people via their license plates—from immigrants seeking refuge to women crossing state lines to get abortions.
In the name of public safety and “eliminating crime,” as Flock laughably puts it, Flock cozied up to city council members, inking multimillion dollar contracts between local police departments and its surveillance infrastructure.
Local activists were only able to dismantle these agreements by understanding how deeply unpopular these cameras are across many different political affiliations. What was meant to be a public safety measure was actually making people feel like their every move was being watched. So activists built coalitions, pressuring any council member who supported Flock with the loss of their seat. Eventually, in places ranging from New England to Texas, voters made it very difficult for pro-Flock council members to retain their seats.
As it turns out, it is a nearly universal human experience to rather despise being watched without our consent. The freedom to move around is also a core tenet of the United States. In fact, the freedom to move around is probably how every single car manufacturer listed in Flock’s database has marketed itself for decades.
And now, unlike the invisible surveillance infrastructure humming in the background because of tech firms like Palantir, we can physically see Flock cameras watching us—perhaps more graspable as an invasion of privacy in an emotional sense, proven by the people who literally sawed down a Flock camera in Kansas City the other day.
All of this has allowed progressive midterm candidates to leverage right-leaning disdain for Flock, banking on an anti-Flock platform to swing libertarian voters in their favor. For instance: Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, has made one of his key campaign talking points the fact that his Republican opponent is tied to Flock cameras. Representatives in Ohio and Tennessee are also calling out their opponents’ affiliations with Flock. Even President Trump was asked about Flock at a press conference last week.
Meanwhile, responses from Flock and its backers are feckless. In the Washington Post article about the stalker-policemen, an Andreessen Horowitz partner who invested in Flock tried to deflect from the police officers’ malicious usage, arguing that the number of times Flock cameras have been used improperly are “infinitesimally” less than the times Flock cameras have been used properly or for positive law enforcement reasons. In a totally bizarre follow-up, he compliments Flock for rooting out bad apples in police departments, claiming very brazenly that we should thank Flock for identifying the stalkers in their departments.
Of course humans have problematic and bad tendencies. (This is why Flock will never “eliminate crime,” unfortunately.) But there is literally no way for a Policeman Ex-Boyfriend to stalk his citizen ex-girlfriend hundreds of times a week without something like Flock—unless he were literally tailing her physically, in which case he probably would be fired for not showing up to work. Beyond that, this investor’s defense is the same tired argument used for everything from guns to social media: that the tool is not the problem, but the person behind it. Yet time and time again— because of incentives that must only benefit the shareholder like this Andreessen investor at the end of the day—there is an emphasis placed on the individual, and an unwillingness to acknowledge any role that technology or systems have in this equation.
Here, finally, it’s impossible to ignore the groundswell of opposition to Flock, and the swift action that’s been taken in the last month. Even police departments are holding their officers accountable: in the last week, four Georgia police officers were arrested for using Flock to stalk. A constable in Texas told Flock to “come get your garbage out of my county.” On a milder note, it’s been proposed that surveillance camera companies must institute privacy guardrails within the product to protect from abuse—like requiring police officers to label every license plate search with a criminal case number.
But at the end of the day, this is about something more than just Flock. As people learn more about this Black Mirror plot unfolding in real life, Flock has risen from relative obscurity to something not only immoral, but something terrifying. Most people don’t love the idea of being recorded on their bathing-suit-clad way to a typically safe public pool. They certainly don’t like the idea of their local deputy microwaving buttered popcorn between midnight and 4 a.m. to watch his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend drive to the pharmacy.
And when technology becomes terrifying, that may overshadow the purported “convenience” or “public safety” of it all. People will start to feel harassed, unsettled, controlled. And you know who really hates feeling like they are controlled—or like they have no freedom to drive their car? That may be a very large swath of American voters.
What else we’re paying attention to…
Australia is banning generative AI from topping the music charts.
The AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness received subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking for its communications with lenders about the money it was borrowing.
For the first time, New York City has more tech workers than San Francisco, attributed in large part to Wall Street’s focus on AI.
Boeing engineers and technical workers—part of a 17,000 person union, the largest white-collar union in Boeing—voted to reject the company’s four-year contract offer.
Despite owning property there, Jeff Bezos and Jared Kushner can’t get into this one country club.
Jon Oliver digs into predatory subscription practices, and corporations that engage in “dark patterns” to keep you locked in and spending more. “No company needs to know I had a child. There is a reason that you start birth announcements with dear family and friends, and not, ‘To whom it may concern at the Whirlpool corporation.’”
A popular AI assistant has embedded itself into email, messaging apps, calendar, and their users’ device’s audio, location, and screen. Some users—citing times when the AI agent became “naughty” and sent out emails without consent—are concerned about privacy.
An arbitrator ruled that the Washington Post improperly fired union-protected columnist Karen Attiah for her posts about Charlie Kirk.