We’ve seen some unhinged messaging from Flock in the past few weeks, including the email to Staunton, VA in which Flock’s CEO, Garrett Langley, told police that they’re under attack from “activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness.” Flock seems to have taken the brakes off its paranoid insanity with TV ads and reposted op-eds.
Let’s start with the TV-ad. A DeFlock Discord user posted the following screenshots, saying an ad showed on his Smart TV to tell him “We’re all lucky other cities in Massachusetts haven’t followed Cambridge’s lead in removing these lifesaving devices, else a serial killer would get you!”
The TV ad appears to actually exist. It quotes an op-ed published in the Boston Globe and republished on Flock’s website:
[L]eft-leaning jurisdictions have turned against Flock cameras lately, concerned that the data they generate could be used by immigration authorities to find immigrants living in the country without authorization. We’re all pretty lucky, though, that other cities in Massachusetts haven’t followed Cambridge’s lead, or else a serial killer might still be on the loose.
This is a multi-billion dollar organization that has historically steered (more or less) clear of politics—at least publicly. Until now.
The Op-Ed
I want to briefly touch on the content of Alan Wirzbicki’s reposted op-ed itself. The rhetorical strategy is the typical cherry-picking. Select a success story—in this case, a murderer being apprehended—and use it to justify the entire system as though it is the only possible thing that could have possibly led to this outcome. It’s a tired and dishonest argument.
left-leaning jurisdictions have turned against Flock cameras lately, concerned that the data they generate could be used by immigration authorities to find immigrants living in the country without authorization.
It’s true that left-leaning jurisdictions have this concern. It’s a concern that is founded in multiple high-profile incidents where Flock transfered information to the federal government without permission and in violation of law. The guardrails failed. Flock failed.
But “the left” is not the only group disturbed by mass surveillance. In other cases, police have used electronic and mass surveillance to target right-wing groups.
These cameras don’t discriminate. They’ll track Antifa. They’ll also track the Proud Boys.
They will track law-abiding citizens on their way to Planned Parenthood or the gun store.
Left, right, we’re all suspects.
The author of the op-ed seems to have a brief moment of clarity when he notes that, despite Flock’s assurances, the guardrails on this technology are fundamentally worthless:
[G]uardrails or no, it’s hard for me to believe that municipalities could actually prevent immigration authorities from accessing their Flock data if the feds really wanted it badly enough.
But then he goes on:
But at least to me, license plate readers are a much less threatening form of government surveillance than, say, facial recognition software and cameras that scan crowds of people.
He fails to connect his own dots. Regardless of what Flock offers as a service today, the capability to record conversations and apply facial recognition across 250,000+ cameras and microphones is there for the taking “if the feds really wanted it badly enough.”
Whether you’re in a “left-leaning” or a “right-leaning” city, once the cameras are up and the data is being harvested, one thing is certain: there’s no take-backsies when the next guy takes office.