Callie: I feel like with most issues today, you can pretty easily predict which side of the political aisle is going to be for it and which side is going to be against it. But every once in a while, something comes along where people on both sides start saying, Wait a minute, are we sure this is a good idea? And that's what's caught my attention with all of these flock cameras. if you haven't heard of them, they're automated license plate reader cameras that are being installed all over the country. Their initial purpose was to help law enforcement track vehicles and solve crimes. And while there are some obvious benefits, there's also growing concern about how much information these cameras are actually collecting, who has access to that information, and how that power can be abused. I think it's worth looking at why this has become such a bipartisan concern, whether we can actually do something with that momentum, and why the UK seems to have approached this technology rather differently.
Cole: When you hear about a technology that's helping police find stolen cars, locate missing people, or solve violent crimes, it might be easy to look at it and say, What's the problem? And that's exactly why I think this conversation about flock cameras is more complicated than it initially appears. Because for me, the accuracy of the information almost isn't the point. I understand why law enforcement wants these cameras, and I understand that they can be useful. What bothers me is the idea that we're building a society where the government can track where we go, when we go there, and potentially reconstruct our movements after the fact. that surveillance state mentality feels fundamentally un American to me. It's not what I believe the American experiment was designed around. We have plenty of things we could be doing to make our society safer and better. I don't think building a massive surveillance infrastructure is one of them. And my concern is that once we decide something like this is normal, it's really difficult to decide later that we've gone too far.
Mecca: When I first started looking into flock cameras, I could see the appeal in some ways pretty quickly. If you're a police officer trying to find a stolen car, locate a missing person, or track down someone who's committed a serious crime, having that technology can help you identify that vehicle could be incredibly valuable. And I don't think anybody wants to make it harder for law enforcement to solve serious crimes. It also reminded me of the show Person of Interest, where there are cameras everywhere. Following everyone. But the more I learn about how these cameras are actually being used, the more uncomfortable I became. Because there's a big difference between using technology to help solve a crime and having a system that's constantly collecting information about everyone's movements. Even when used appropriately, that level of surveillance is troubling. And then you have situations where the technology gets something wrong and innocent people end up being stopped. Or in some cases held at gunpoint because the vehicle or information doesn't actually match what the police are looking for. That's where I have a hard time saying the benefits outweigh the risk. Maybe there is a place for this technology, but I think there have to be some very serious restrictions on how it's used, who can access it, and what happens when it gets used wrong or is wrong. And while I'm normally a staunch police supporter, I do believe there's often a thin blue line. It often appears in many cases that there are some police that may have had an issue with being trusted to utilize this technology legitimately. Welcome to two millennials and mom.
Callie: I'm Callie.
Cole: I'm Cole.
Mecca: And I'm Mom.
Cole: So let's let's kinda for anyone who isn't familiar, let's set the stage here real quick. These flock cameras are allegedly advanced network of ALPRs. That is an automated license plate reader. And so what they are kind of set up and supposed to do is you set them up around your city or your county or whatever it is. They're all linked to a network and they take pictures of your license plate. But they don't just take pictures of your license plate. They take pictures of everything around you while they're taking pictures of your license plate. So they could potentially see people in the background. They may be able to see who is driving said car. Where that car is and what's going on around it. The biggest difference between the this flock camera and just a general security camera is that these flock cameras are all networked together and they are storing that data for sometimes relatively long periods of time. I think it's like at least 30 days generally. And if you are someone like me who has a tendency to do a lot of research, the more information you have, the more information you tend to find, you can kind of follow those rabbit holes and get a lot out of it relatively quickly with an efficient search method. And when it's all kind of already there gathered for you, yeah, it could make police work in a lot of instances really, really easy. right now there are flock cameras all around the nation.
Mecca: Like a hundred and twenty thousand and they're
Callie: I think it's more than that.
Cole: There are more
Callie: I think there's
Cole: than one hundred twenty thousand flock safety license plate reading cameras installed across the United States. Forty nine states, more than six thousand communities with contracts spanning roughly seven thousand law enforcement agencies. So, I mean, ALPRs have been around for a while. They're not exactly something new. Anytime you get on a toll road, at least most of the toll roads around here in Texas, they have an ALPR. It's scanning your license plate to see where you got on the highway, where you got off the highway, so they know how much to charge you. as that technology has been implemented and as technology gets more advanced and cheaper, they have been implemented. Flock as a company was founded in 2017. And so in the last nine years, they've installed over 120,000 cameras across just the US. It evolved from police can identify a car that is that is crossed a specific intersection or entered a specific roadway, to police can search a a database of Everywhere that car has been in the last 30 days, how long it's been there, when it moves, how fast it got from point A to point B, all of that, because it's all stored in this Flock database. So the question that that kind of leads us to to start off with is the technology itself the problem, or is it what happens when you connect thousands of these cameras into a searchable network? And to me, I think it's kind of both personally.
Callie: Yeah, I do think it's kind of both.
Mecca: And see I don't know that it's the technology as much as it is the cumulative
Cole: Cameras are not inherently a problem.
Callie: Access to those cameras is different story.
Mecca: Yeah. Yeah.
Cole: But yeah, if you have
Mecca: That's where I was going.
Cole: if you from your phone can pull up I can get mom's search history, Callie's search history, dad's search history, the neighbor's search history, all of my friends search history. I have access to all of their financial accounts. You concentrate all of that information, now it has a potential to be a problem. It kind of goes back to old school Spider Man with great power comes great responsibility. And personally me We as a society, in my opinion, have not expressed a a high level of accountability or responsibility when presented with great power.
Mecca: Okay, let's
Callie: That's a nicer way of putting it than I was going to.
Mecca: let's go back and talk about some of the benefits though. Cause there are benefits to this. I mean, it really can help. tracking tra crime. it I mean it it could possibly help you with missing people. I mean it it all of those alerts that we get the amber alerts and gray alerts and is it clear alerts? Clear alert silver alerts.
Callie: silver alerts and clear alerts and
Mecca: Yeah, it it could help with that because you could go and do it. So
Callie: It pinpoints down because it's got all of that information to sift through and pinpoints down where to look.
Mecca: As long as you're in a vehicle.
Callie: Right now.
Cole: Or around an area that has vehicles.
Callie: has vehicles.
Mecca: Okay. So
Cole: Which, let's be honest, is pretty much everywhere these days.
Mecca: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean there there are definitely some benefits
Cole: Societally speaking.
Mecca: to I I I mean, there are benefits, but it just
Cole: Sure.
Mecca: seems like the system is way too open.
Cole: I was about to say there are benefits to heroin.
Callie: That's a quote.
Mecca: That's a jump. But okay.
Cole: N no, there are. We literally use heroin medically. It's called morphine. Would doctors use it
Mecca: Yes.
Cole: if there was no benefit?
Mecca: No
Callie: Everything in moderation. Sometimes, mom, this is this is where I can hear you in my head going, Well that conversation didn't go how I expected it to. This is this is what
Mecca: Not at all. Not at all.
Callie: you have signed up for this evening. So
Mecca: Okay.
Cole: I mean, you can say that about anything, alcohol, tobacco, o almost any drug that is available over the counter, under the counter, black market, whatever, they all do have benefits. That doesn't mean that they don't also have drawbacks, many of them extremely severe.
Callie: Caffeine
Cole: Yes.
Callie: Advil Testaflostonastica on whatever weird commercial that has anal seepage as a side effect.
Mecca: Yep, not going where this conversation I thought was going.
Cole: Yeah. Your
Callie: And
Cole: your eczema med medication that has a potential side effect of death.
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: Yeah. Okay. So we've established that there could be benefit or not.
Callie: Well, so, but let's let's let's drill down on that a little bit more. So, in terms of tracking stolen vehicles, if you had one system across the country that said, Hey, I'm looking for Texas license plate, da da da, and they could all look in their database and say, Hey, I most recently saw it here and I saw it here, you could literally start building a map and say, It's probably somewhere in this general area. It's
Cole: This is the direction they're travelling.
Callie: Right. I I kind of think, Mom, it's kind of like the where was that? God, it's the one that I couldn't pronounce so we made Cole do the good news story about the deer in the high grass using the drones to pinpoint the deer in the high grass so they could go and save all the baby deer. I feel like it could be used in that same kind of capacity, right? Like, hey, it's over it's somewhere
Cole: Exactly.
Callie: over here. Let's go find it. Now we're not shredding the baby deer. We found the car. So that
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: could be used for missing persons. This child has been kidnapped and th with this is where they were last seen. violent crimes from any kind of I'm not even gonna mess with that, hit and runs. We don't know who did this. but here's a picture of them, who everybody who left the scene and blah, blah, blah. You know, whatever it may be. Drug trafficking, identifying suspect vehicles, reconstructing all of those suspects' movements, like we were talking about, starting to pinpoint all of those. movements and everything. And so in some ways I can certainly see how you could classify all of these benefits as making policing more efficient. I mean, we're in the world of automation.
Mecca: Okay, here's my question. Don't we already have this capability or is that just fiction on TV?
Callie: That's fiction on T V, except
Cole: What do you mean?
Callie: now it's happening in real life.
Cole: What when you say don't we already have this capability, elaborate.
Mecca: Don't we already have the capability of of finding missing cars or say, hey, they went through this intersection? I mean, you read that all of the time.
Cole: I mean in to a certain degree, sure, but that requires you to actually go out and do research. It requires someone on the ground to go and say, Okay, they came through here, like a like a physical tracker in a lot of cases, but that is generally very targeted and it is at the same time, they're not also saying, okay, well the bad guy that went this way, also I know Mecca has been away from her house for three weeks because her car left three weeks ago and never returned.
Callie: But think about the sheer number of cameras that are in place that could be used. So like right now, I feel like if somebody were to call and say, hey, my house was robbed. Somebody took my Amazon package from my front porch. They, the likelihood of them having a camera on their front porch is not low. Then you take into consideration how many other people on their street have a camera on their porch. So now you know who took it. Where the what kind of car they were in, and now we know what to look for, right? Then you take into consideration kind of what you're talking about, mom, in terms of fiction. Well, there's there's cameras at all of these intersections, so we can start pinpointing all of this data. But when you really take into consideration the actual technology that is on each of these intersections, it's pretty minor. There are r lasers and things like that to say, hey, there's people sitting here waiting. We can go ahead and switch the light now because there's nobody coming crossways. Let's go ahead and switch it this direction. But they're not absorbing, storing, computing all of that data. Okay, there's a Tesla right here and a Nissan Ultima over there and a Chevy Silverado here with this license plate in this color from this state that just was at this intersection. They're not computing all of that. It's there are cars, there are not cars. It's been thirty seven seconds, changed
Mecca: And the flocks do more than that.
Callie: the light. The flocks do
Cole: A lot.
Callie: significantly more than that. And then this is where I start, and and maybe I'm jumping ahead, but this is where I start getting nervous. They're taking all of that way more information that we're just talking about, and they're putting it in one repository. So for example, right now, if I were to get pulled over for speeding in Oklahoma as a resident of Texas. The Oklahoma Police Department can really only see what's in their police department system. They can't see if I've got something in Dallas County. They can't s
Cole: I mean they see if we have warrants, but
Callie: they can see if you have a federal warrant. In most cases, they can't see.
Cole: They can generally see state warrants.
Callie: Then that's relatively new. Because most of those systems do not cross over. They do not unless it is a federal warrant, they do not cross over. But still, they can see a little bit. They don't have a Cali file that's ready to go. She was born here, she did this, da da da da da da. And the amount of data and information that these flock cameras truly are collecting and putting in that one centralized repository, A is now accessible to everybody, and B is now accessible to everybody. And what I mean by the first everybody is police from all over the place. And what I mean by the second everybody is there are lots of issues and problems with the networks that Flock has set up that they aren't protected. Callie, as a regular citizen who happens to know a decent thing about computers, can go and get access to that information. Yeah. So the security layer is abysmal.
Mecca: And is that Flock's fault?
Cole: Yes, also
Callie: Yes.
Cole: in my opinion, besides the point.
Mecca: Why?
Callie: Also true. But k' mom, can you imagine if somebody got into your your email? Because Google, let's say that you have a Gmail account, if Google just published a list of passwords, would
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: would you appreciate them? I mean, it it's just public information. Here's Mecca's password.
Mecca: I mean, are they gonna clean it up or?
Callie: No, that's not nefarious purposes.
Mecca: That's a joke.
Cole: The intent is inherently malicious.
Callie: Right. So y yes, I think that that is definitely a problem. In and of itself, beyond the rest of this. Like it's just one of the problems.
Mecca: Yeah. I mean it's just way too open. The system is just way too open. It doesn't seem to have any guardrails with it. And and so it's it's not
Cole: The fact that there is a system that is intentionally being designed to surveil normal, everyday, average Americans, regardless of the actions that they are taking, is the issue.
Mecca: I agree with you.
Cole: There are other issues with the system, but that one is is the big one to me.
Callie: A glaring, bright red, flashing light.
Mecca: I I mean I I get it. I I I'm
Cole: Like, do you want the NSA reading your emails?
Mecca: Do I think the NSA probably already is?
Callie: And you're okay with that?
Cole: D not the point. Not the point.
Mecca: No, it's just and the difference here is the NSA may be doing it and I don't have a clue about it. The flock cameras I know and and I'm aware of the issues and so I do want to have a
Cole: We have such a different thought process on this thing. it's okay if it's not as bad if I don't know you're harming me.
Mecca: No, that is not what I said. That is not what I meant to say anyway.
Cole: That's what you said translates to.
Callie: Think that we've got to break it down a little bit more specifically. Do you believe that there's a difference between being observed and being tracked?
Cole: I think that's semantics. I think in general you could argue that those are the same thing.
Callie: Okay.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Okay. Do you guys remember that show? I wanna say it was on like Discovery Channel or something, history channel called Man Tracker.
Cole: Tracker Man. yeah, man tracker. That's it. Yeah.
Callie: It was literally a reality TV show where this guy who was good at tracking
Cole: Tracking people.
Callie: they would drop you into a forest
Cole: Man, he was a hard nosed old booger too.
Callie: yeah. And so he's on a horse and you're on foot and you have to get to this spot.
Cole: You get I think I think they gave you like a twenty four hour head start or a forty eight hour
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: head start or something.
Callie: I'd be curious to know what his percentage rating was. Yeah. He was good.
Cole: Very rarely did he lose. Very rarely.
Callie: But all of a sudden it turned these people into game. Literally a game. For him to come and track them down and say, I think they went this way. Let me go get
Mecca: And do you think that's what this has the capability of being?
Callie: I think it is being used as that.
Cole: This is eliminating the need for that. This is saying we know where you are because we already have the information. We don't even have to go out and look.
Callie: We don't have to track you.
Mecca: Okay. Callie, do you think that your car doesn't do that?
Callie: I d I think to a point, yes, I do think that that my car does that. But
Mecca: And do you think that that
Cole: Combustion engines all the way, baby.
Callie: But, but,
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: but, but I think that right now mm that all of that data and information stays within that corporation.
Mecca: And that's what I was gonna ask. That's a limited I mean, yes, it's a it it it's a risk, it's accessible, but it's it is limited. And Flock is just
Cole: I'm not sure that's true.
Mecca: bigger than that. Yeah, that that's the other thing here is insurance.
Callie: It's by the same company.
Cole: Right, but Google knows that when I'm at mom's house and sends me ads for things that are in her house. That's how metadata works.
Callie: Y yes, correct. no, you're not incorrect. Not what I'm talking about. W these are all things that we have technically agreed to. And I have agreed that my that my data that my car is absorbing and communicating is communicating it within the Tesla umbrella.
Cole: I think that's a fair argument. I don't think very many people know that
Mecca: And nobody has
Cole: that's what they have agreed to, but
Callie: p Human Centipede.
Mecca: well maybe they maybe they don't, they should, but maybe they don't. But the the point still there is that that's locked down to to that specific thing. And flocks don't seem to be. Flocks are open to any subscribing police department. Flocks can be open to individuals. I mean there there's just too much access that's available through Flock. I I don't
Cole: The repository of data is too large, the power is too great f for people to be trusted with it.
Mecca: Yeah. Yeah.
Callie: So we had a question in here that says, When does individually public information become private because of aggregation? That I think was really fitting right here. Well, we have so much of it, we're just going to share it.
Cole: I don't know how to answer that question.
Callie: I know.
Cole: And I think that's kind of the p part of the problem.
Mecca: Would you feel better if If it was a government that had that access or would you feel worse if it
Callie: No.
Cole: No, it is the government that has that access. They're just buying it from a corporation.
Mecca: But there would be a difference between buying it and the government owning all of that.
Cole: Both are bad.
Callie: I I was gonna say, what? That sounds like semantics to me.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: What would the difference be?
Mecca: So you think we can control
Cole: so we so they can just sell
Mecca: it?
Cole: everyone's location to the highest bidder now? Awesome.
Mecca: No, no, no, wait. The question is, do you think we can control a private corporation better?
Cole: I don't think we can control a government.
Callie: Mom, remember when you were so upset when Twenty Three and Me got purchased and you went through getting your data? I don't mean to to rub salt in a wound here, but how much of a nightmare that was, how much data and information was out there, all of your genetics all of a sudden that could be sold to an insurance
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: company to say, Hey, Mecca, we're not insuring you because of this thing from that spit swab that you s collected to and sent to twenty three and me twelve years ago. Yeah.
Mecca: Ten years ago, yeah.
Callie: And how worried you were. This is not indifferent.
Mecca: I I totally agree with you. And and I'm I think that's my whole point though, because if you look at twenty-three and me, the issue there was that they were s being sold and nobody knew who was going to buy them or what was going to happen to that data. And I think this is the same thing.
Callie: But Yeah.
Mecca: Flock has the data and we don't really know and have zero control of how that data is going to be sold or used. And and so for me there's that question of do we at least have the possibility if it were government owned to have rules and regulations? Because I don't know how you get that for a corporation.
Cole: But it already is. I mean, Flock can't do it without the government. They can't do it without federal, state, local municipality governments because Flock doesn't own every intersection. They don't own every roadway. They can't just put their cameras up. They
Callie: Right.
Cole: have to sell this contract to these municipalities. This is an inherently a service that they are selling to the government.
Mecca: Okay.
Callie: We're gonna put our equipment on your owned land because you're the one who owns that public street.
Cole: effectively they're leasing these cameras to municipalities.
Callie: Yes.
Mecca: Right.
Callie: And and then I think that this is a great natural lead into how they're already being abused because there is
Cole: Heavily?
Callie: no regulating body. So i and I and I feel like There are inherently bad people in every aspect of people. Time, race, gender, favorite color likers, whatever it is, all of them you can find inherently bad people in. And so that I feel like that's always going to be the case. And then you put something like this, literally a library of information together like this, and say, Here's a library card, right? And so you've got all kinds of police officers. what are they what are they called? The
Cole: Hang on, because I don't even know if that's even an adequate description. Cause at least in a library, you have to go and find the book. Like you have to do
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: it yourself. You have to know the Dewey decimal
Callie: They'll help you.
Cole: number or at least be able to look and know what genre it's in and do a little bit of legwork
Mecca: I don't know if it's any different.
Cole: yourself. This is, hey, welcome to the library. What can I get for you?
Callie: Okay, fair enough. But there are lots of instances of them being
Mecca: So yeah.
Callie: abused and being used for, again, nefarious purposes. Hey, I want to track my wife and see where she's been and if I can believe and trust her. And so I've been tracking her license plate for.
Cole: Which let's be honest, if that's the relationship you're in, you probably shouldn't be married anyways.
Callie: Also true.
Mecca: But you could also do it on your phone.
Cole: If she shares her location with you.
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: if she shares her location. So I mean there are other ways to get to it with was really my point. But i what you're saying, I mean the
Cole: Which which but but those other ways generally involve opt in. Like Callie said, that's an agreement that
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: you're making.
Callie: Yeah. Don't you remember when I had that stalker in Waco and we had my car swept for bugs for tracking devices?
Mecca: Don't remember that.
Callie: yeah. yeah. Cause he would only show up when I was home.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Yeah. yeah. So now we're just handing out that information to whoever wants it. Especially within these municipalities and and police departments. We're giving access to anything.
Mecca: And there are multiple, multiple reports of them being abused. I mean,
Callie: yeah.
Mecca: this police and the ones that really angered me were the police chiefs using them to track their ex wives or their girlfriend or his her last boyfriend or all I I mean
Cole: Which is stalking.
Mecca: stalking by the chief of police at this place or that place or by this officer or this sergeant and you just want to smack them all.
Callie: I mean, tracking
Cole: Yeah.
Callie: estranged wife, hundreds of times, providing undercover agent vehicle information to other people and other parties, officers who have been accused of having inappropriate searches for girlfriends. There was one, where was that? It was a guy, it was he it was a police officer who tracked an actress that he thought was cute, went and pulled her over without cause so that he could meet her.
Cole: That's stalking.
Mecca: See
Callie: stalking for
Mecca: that's stalking. Yeah.
Callie: all like these aren't even people like that they know they're making excuses for all of this.
Mecca: Mm.
Callie: And so I mean there are all kinds like there there's a whole section on Wikipedia devoted to controversial uses.
Mecca: And when you were reading that to me, the ones that really just bit my butt were where they pulled somebody over and and held them at gunpoint. Okay. The wrong people.
Cole: wrong people. This
Callie: Yeah. Yeah.
Cole: isn't even the same thing that we're talking about. This is the the information that Flock is providing being inaccurate. Which again,
Mecca: True.
Cole: besides the point, but
Callie: is a whole nother problem.
Cole: they're pulling over families with small children in the car and holding them at gunpoint because this Flock camera read read one digit on a license plate wrong and it came back as a hot stolen vehicle. Of a different make and model
Callie: Or the state wrong?
Cole: and color.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Yeah, yeah. I i it I I I again, like these are just like totally mind-blowingly we would not accept this. I make the joke all of the time. Is there any career where you can be as wrong as a meteorologist? And everybody's like, Callie that's hard, blah, blah, blah. This is handing everything on a silver platter, and it's not even being double checked.
Mecca: Yeah. It doesn't take anything. I mean, I know a a couple of those officers all they had to put in was, you know, surveillance or something generic to get the to the information. And there's no audit trail. There's no there's rules. Yeah.
Callie: Yeah. No. Rules. You have to have a case number assigned to this so that there is a paper trail of all of this.
Cole: You have to have a warrant.
Callie: You have to have a warrant. Like nothing.
Cole: Like the bare minimum here for me. And
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: still bad idea.
Callie: Awful. Awful. I mean, it's just
Mecca: You know, and and I'm I'm gonna say this knowing that I'm gonna get in trouble for it, but there are two instances where we've seen that this was used that I I think a lot of people would really question. And one of those was immigration enforcement, where they're using this database to track somebody that they, you know, believe is in the US illegally or not. And then there was one where it was a woman in a state that doesn't allow abortion and they tracked her into another state. That's not ways that this should be being used. That's deciding that you're guilty before anything has happened and we're going to use this against you.
Cole: mean here's the here's the thing, mom. When you drive, are you always a perfect driver?
Mecca: No.
Cole: Neither am I. And I'm probably the best driver out of the four of us.
Callie: Oh, screw you, said
Mecca: Ha
Cole: I'm not always a perfect driver. But let's say I am at the grocery store one day and I'm not paying attention and I accidentally run into the back of somebody with my cart. And it really hurts when that happens. It sucks. It's happened to me before. It's not pleasant. Let's just say that person is a police officer. And even though I say, hey man, my bad. I'm sorry. He's having a bad day. He decides he doesn't like me. He goes to work, logs into the flock system, and goes, Hey, this big redheaded tall guy, I'll followed him out of the parking lot. I got his license plate number. Let's see where he's been. I'm gonna go start finding everything that he has done wrong in the city of wherever we're at,
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: and I'm gonna charge him for it.
Mecca: Or just harassing you, pulling you over. That I mean, he doesn't even have to find everything you're doing. He can just start harassing you.
Cole: He can start monitoring the route that I take to and from work, waiting
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: for me to mess up. Just to get his revenge on me because I I ran into him by accident because I wasn't paying. Even though I messed up, I did something bad. That's not exactly what's the word I'm looking for here?
Mecca: Warranted?
Cole: Reciprocal response, I believe, is what I'm looking for.
Mecca: Okay. I I but there's also nothing in place for anyone who abuses this system.
Cole: Well, I mean, people have been charged, which is is good because they did things that were illegal, like committing stalking.
Mecca: Stalking.
Cole: But there's nothing in place to prevent people from I mean, and and and that gets into a very different type of argument here. Is the law intended to prevent people or is it in place to punish people who do bad things?
Callie: Mm.
Mecca: That's a great question.
Cole: Kind of irrelevant for this conversation, but
Mecca: Not really.
Cole: it's adjacent, but
Mecca: I mean you could push this a little bit further and then just for everyone who does make a mistake, you've got the evidence right there. So it it
Cole: Exactly. And then you can start looking at things that they do and deciding, okay, it's not a mistake now, but we're gonna make it a mistake 'cause we don't like this type of person.
Callie: But but the bigger argument here is still the Fourth Amendment, right? Like all of this is leading up to illegal search and seizures that that the constitution has says you are not subject to.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: And I think that there's like I I can hear people in my life that I haven't even talked to about this, but I can hear them in my head. Well, well then Callie, like just don't do anything bad.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Then you won't have anything to worry about. And yeah,
Cole: Bad thought. Bad thought.
Callie: I'm just like, okay, hold on, hold on.
Mecca: But you don't know that.
Callie: Don't know what.
Mecca: Y you don't know that that that's true, just don't do anything wrong. It's kinda like Cole said, I mean, all of us make mistakes driving. So y you you don't know.
Callie: some of us speed intentionally just for the fun of it. Like, n there's a whole integrity side of this.
Mecca: Wonder who that would be.
Callie: It's not me or Cole, 'cause we're the best drivers of all of us. But I mean, I think that we've got to
Cole: That's a solo crown.
Callie: mm mm mm. The king and the queen. So I think that there's an argument here, like that really dismantles this, well, don't do anything bad. There's a difference between privacy and committing crimes and hiding crimes, rather. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, mom, you go around your house and you close all the blinds. Why? Like if you're not doing anything bad, what is there for anybody to see? Like it doesn't mean you're automatically doing
Cole: Not the point.
Callie: something illegal,
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: but it's your right to privacy.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: I don't need to be on display all of the time. I I keep thinking
Cole: And you know, a lot of people will argue that they have a First Amendment right to record us. But here's the thing: the Bill of Rights is for the people, not for the government. Let's
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: be honest. So your First Amendment right does not trump my Fourth Amendment right.
Callie: Right.
Mecca: Agreed.
Cole: So selling th the First Amendment to the government, it shouldn't work this way.
Callie: I mean, I just feel like this is like this is selling our souls to the current government in power, to any future government in power, like to any governing body. This is selling our souls in my opinion.
Cole: Yeah, because here's the thing. Neither of you like the current administration, not that I'm a huge fan, but mom, let's go back to your example that you thought about the the the godseye or whatever from person of interest. They were the good guys, and they did some pretty rough stuff sometimes. What happens if the bad guys get it?
Callie: And how much effort
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: did they put into trying to ensure that the bad guys didn't have access to it?
Mecca: Yeah. I mean you just don't have control over those players.
Callie: And those guys those guys exhibited an extreme level in of integrity. I can't say what I was gonna say.
Cole: How many people will do that?
Callie: Pete Heggsith put a put a signal chat together to start talking about war plans. Are these the people that we trust with this information? He didn't he couldn't even get the right people in his chat. And these are the people that we trust with all of this information on us?
Mecca: So what's the solution?
Cole: No, not me.
Callie: No! No! Get rid of these!
Cole: What's the solution? Don't don't allow this. Speak up. Say, hey, we're not putting up with this.
Mecca: Okay. Just blanket, take all down. We're done. You you can't do the anymore.
Callie: Yep. Yes.
Cole: And I'm gonna say this
Mecca: So the
Cole: to the to our audience the same way I said it to you the other night when we were having this conversation. Go read 1984. Surveillance states are not a good thing. Go talk to people who lived in post-World War II East Germany in the Soviet bloc. Surveillance states go talk to people who lived maybe not quite as bad now, but post-World War II China. Surveillance states are not a pleasant place to live. Go talk to somebody who escaped from North Korea.
Callie: If anybody knows anybody, we'd love to have them as a guest on the podcast.
Cole: Hundred percent.
Callie: That doesn't sound appealing to me.
Mecca: I I just I I was trying to determine if there was a way to limit them. Control
Callie: To regulate them.
Mecca: yeah, control them in some way that we could continue to receive the benefit without completely being surveilled.
Callie: How? How like that data has to be taken, kept, and sifted, even to find the bad stuff.
Cole: And secured.
Callie: Yeah. In a needle and to find the needle in the haystack, the hay doesn't just move out of the way. You have to sift through it.
Mecca: Okay, here's the question. If I disappeared, would y'all
Callie: We'd call the man tracker. He's really good.
Mecca: You wouldn't become a flock supporter if, you know, dementia sets in and I
Cole: No, because that would that that would display a lack of integrity on our part. it's okay for
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: us to use this, just not anybody else.
Mecca: Well. Those things are happening all the time.
Cole: Like I get what you're saying, and would I want to find you? Absolutely. Am I willing to infringe upon everyone else's rights to do it? No. Sorry.
Callie: H w where's where's your where's your misused quote? Here's your chance.
Cole: no, I I I've intentionally been avoiding using it, but I think it is pertinent, regardless if this was the original intent or not, because
Callie: Yes, I agree.
Cole: I d I I I understand the original intent, regardless. I agree with the common usage of it as well. Anyone who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither security nor liberty.
Mecca: Benjamin Franklin. Okay. So there other applications, other types of of these, like if you go to the UK, they have a similar type of camera.
Cole: one of the most heavily electronically surveilled cities on the if not one of the most heavily surveilled cities on the face of the planet. But there's a big difference.
Callie: London, yes.
Cole: They're not networked together. They are it is I think it's like four million or something. It's a crazy high amount of cameras
Callie: yeah.
Cole: in the city of London, but they're all privately owned CCTV. So that's a closed circuit
Mecca: Okay, so
Cole: television system where, like, yeah, if you want to have security cameras in your house, if you want to have security cameras in your front yard, if you want to have security cameras looking out at the street so you can see what's going on around you, fine. You have the right to do that. You have a constitutionally protected right to do that. But those are not all networked together, sharing information and compiling it into a searchable database.
Callie: There's also very specific access given to that data that is incredibly protected and and there's always a trail, a paper trail, if you will, a digital paper trail. Is that a thing? We're going with it.
Mecca: Can still be a thing.
Callie: a digital paper trail of who accessed this data, when, how often. There's all kinds of regulations around how that information can be accessed, much less used.
Mecca: And and so that was my previous question is if you had the guardrails in place, but you're saying this the issue here is that the ones in the UK are not all networked together where these flock ones are. And so even th if you put the guardrails in place, you you still have too much data available.
Callie: Yes, because here's the difference. So if you go and actually look at some of the the at least openly available information on what kind of cameras are being used in London, which again is the most heavily surv surveilled city in the world, like these are not flock cameras. I wanna say they have like under five thousand flock cameras. These are all almost all C C T V closed circuit television, like recorded images from a camera.
Cole: security cameras from local businesses.
Callie: Security cameras. So if they said, hey, some six foot tall redhead just went and murdered somebody on this street corner, they have to go and find that specific camera and that specific information. And I I'm not trying to get into the efficiency part of it because efficiency, I get it, better, easier, faster. We found the redhead faster. But at the same time, like it isn't just sitting here saying, okay, redheads are here. And putting it all there so that every six foot tall redhead could be presumed guilty and tracked. so not only are the cameras like the flock cameras making mistakes, those mistakes aren't being verified in any capacity at all currently. Hard hardly. and so like you're having to do the actual work to verify the information. I feel like it's the same thing that you have verified sources, right, in the in journalism. Just because somebody said it doesn't make it true, we have to have all of these other pieces of of information to confirm whether or not that's actually true before we disseminate that information and act on that information. I feel like it's similar in in this regard. You can't automate the integrity of it. It n there's just there's work being put in to verify all of this information. And even then, even then in terms of numbers, they're like remember, these are just cameras, but the estimates are like still between six hundred thousand and a million cameras, like general surveillance cameras across the capital o of London. And so it's it's a different you're kind of comparing apples to oranges here. And Cole, you made a point when we were originally talking about having this discussion about, historically the United Kingdom or or other countries outside of the United States have been significantly more willing to put up with shit
Cole: Abuses of power.
Callie: abuses of power than the United States. Best I have.
Cole: I mean literally since the beginning of recorded history that is the case. Just
Callie: Right.
Cole: period. That is why we are the
Callie: And so I think that that's
Cole: great experiment, the great American experiment is because we weren't willing to put up with someone else's arbitrary bullshit.
Callie: I just think it's comparing apples to oranges.
Mecca: Let's go back to a little bit of the the abuse because there are two things that are are on my mind here. One of them is we know that there are abuses. There, some of those have been tracked, some of those have been prosecuted. At the same time, because there's zero control over this, we don't know if that's five percent of the time or fifty percent of the time. Is that one officer in one department or is that twenty officers in that department? Cause we just don't know that.
Cole: Do we just catch the one?
Mecca: Yeah. The other thing and this story just
Cole: Cause here's the thing. More than just
Callie: No checks
Cole: that one guy are doing
Callie: and balances.
Cole: it. He's just the guy that
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: got caught.
Mecca: The other story that just so massively disturbed me was about a young girl who the flock cameras were used. The flock made a mistake. And they pulled her over for a a hit and run. The car didn't match the description of the hit and run.
Cole: Different make, different model, different color.
Mecca: Different no damage, although apparently the police officer did report that there was damage on the car. But here's the thing that got
Cole: Yeah. Lied to try and cover his own ass.
Mecca: me. Even with all of that, this girl went to jail.
Callie: 23 years old, went to jail for 13 days, including several days spent in solitary confinement.
Mecca: Because of a mistake, she
Cole: So much for innocent until proven guilty.
Callie: Right.
Mecca: That wasn't verified. Well, and that was another thing because we talked to somebody, oddly enough, who had just gotten a ticket from a flock camera that had occurred 60 days previously. And well, and I say they got a ticket, they got a letter asking
Cole: It also wasn't a flock to be fair. It was a un a municipal city camera.
Mecca: Okay, you're right.
Cole: It was an ALPR, but it was not specifically flock.
Mecca: But my point to that is the letter came in almost 60 days after the incident. It didn't say that you're being fined. It asked you to either confirm that that the picture included was
Cole: Admit you're guilty.
Mecca: you or someone that you knew driving your car. So
Callie: Because the the paper that came in the mail had not one but three photos on it. The f back
Mecca: Three pictures with it.
Callie: of your car, the front of your car, including the driver and anybody that could be visible in the car from the front and the car next to him, I think.
Mecca: Yeah. surrounding. But
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: the issue was it didn't it you you didn't get a fine. It it wasn't a ticket, but it was a notice
Cole: Yet.
Mecca: saying, I I need you to a confirm this is you so that you're confirming that you are are guilty about something that happened 60 days. I mean, Callie, you and I say this all the time. I don't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. So I Sure, I'm not gonna remember what I did. So to me, that that takes all of your defense. You you can't even defend yourself against that or rat your kid out because they were driving your car that day.
Callie: Or rat yourself out.
Mecca: And what are what happens after that? And and the rules are so vague. I mean, Flock has been canceled by a lot of municipalities. So is that ticket valid?
Cole: 'Cause there's been so much backlash.
Mecca: Yeah. Is that ticket valid? Should you I mean, should you even respond to that? What's that gonna do to your insurance if you do respond to it? I mean There's a whole lot that's going on with this whole thing that it's not just I mean, I know that you guys see it as the issue is surveillance. I get that. I really do understand that that's y'all's issue. But it it's just exacerbated by all of the other issues. I mean, I I can't tell you. Think of that girl, a twenty three year old girl, and you said how many days? Thirteen days. So
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: So she got fired.
Mecca: most likely lost
Cole: Definitely.
Mecca: her job if if if she had one, if she wasn't a or got kicked out of school if she was in school.
Cole: Yep. Probably gonna get evicted 'cause she couldn't pay rent 'cause she lo missed two weeks of work.
Mecca: Yeah. I a and that doesn't even that doesn't even cover what it would do to her emotionally.
Cole: Now, she's gonna win a massive suit against the city.
Callie: Florida State. Florida State Highway Patrol.
Cole: even better. They've
Callie: Every Floridian.
Cole: got way deeper pockets.
Mecca: I I mean, but there's an emotional toll that goes along with that. And like I said, the ones that really upset me are you've you've gotten information and you pull somebody over at gunpoint who hasn't even done anything. We're asking for mistakes to happen and for people innocent people to be shot when we're doing all of that. So we're just exacerbating the issue here.
Callie: In Tennessee, it was a set of grandparents who were detained at gunpoint, pulled out of their car in front of their three year old granddaughter who's watching from the backseat because the flock camera made a mistake in reading their license plate. One letter.
Cole: And
Mecca: I don't know. I mean, there's a part of me that appreciates the the availability to to do good things, but I mean Cole I really do understand that that the surveillance We just can't let it go unchecked.
Callie: It's just crazy to me. And and I don't know. Yeah. I I can't I feel like if you break this down like super simply, the benefit is to automate police work.
Cole: Yes.
Callie: And the negatives are everything else. Ha ha like I can't imagine a a world in which it would be acceptable to say, hey, in order to make Callie's job easier, all of the rest of you are fucked. Cool?
Cole: Well, I mean, I I think it's broader than that. Like I get what you're saying and I don't disagree, but let's talk about this. And and this I think can lead into our weird thought here a little bit. There are states where
Callie: Mom already did our weird thought.
Cole: where automated
Callie: It's okay.
Cole: ALPR citations are enforceable. There are states where they are not. So like in Texas,
Callie: Sure.
Cole: for example, where we live, where flock cameras exist, they can send you a ticket, but they can't enforce it. It's against state law. But the whole point of this, this automating the system, is to enforce every potential infraction, to catch every single one. Well, to me, that is an issue because that's treating the symptom. Not th that that's trying to pacify everyone and make everyone follow the rules by
Callie: Is that legislating morality?
Cole: Exactly.
Callie: I'm not sure there's a more
Cole: Exactly.
Callie: clear example of it than this. We're literally gonna give
Cole: Yeah, and so
Callie: you a ticket for anything and everything.
Cole: Anything that you do wrong, we're gonna cite you for it. And
Callie: Yes.
Cole: nobody has to catch you doing it. You're just guilty as soon as we catch you.
Callie: Immediately.
Cole: And I mean, not that I am advocating for breaking the law, but I don't always drive the speed limit. And sometimes that's
Callie: That's my point.
Cole: better for me and the people around me. It's safer than driving the speed limit, especially here in Texas, particularly in the DFW area.
Callie: Can you imagine the situation that if just overnight tomorrow all we all woke up and no car ever exceeded the posted speed limit, ever. Every single one was the same. Then it would be been f beneficial. Weird. But
Cole: I mean, I have some friends who are police officers. Do you know what police officers have? that most people don't really realize or think about? Discretion. They don't have to write you
Callie: yeah.
Cole: a ticket or arrest you for breaking the law. They can use their own discretion. You know what flock cameras don't have? Discretion. So if I'm two centimeters over the white line, I'm getting a ticket.
Callie: Every time.
Cole: Every time.
Mecca: And we didn't even talk about that.
Cole: It is really this b I I mean, I I I hated it when I was in school, but go read nineteen eighty four. This is Big Brother. This is what he he was warning against. And 2017, apparently we didn't go to the same schools because they were like, this is a great idea. Let's build a surveillance state and sell it to the government.
Callie: this grosses me out.
Cole: Me too. But anyways, here in Texas, it's illegal. There are still flock cameras. As far as I know, there are still citations being mailed to people. They can't enforce them. Unenforceable.
Callie: Unenforceable. Yes.
Cole: And people are paying them because they think they may be enforceable.
Callie: Yes.
Mecca: It's almost a scam.
Cole: And a lot of people aren't paying them because they know they're not enforceable, and yet they're still spending the taxpayer dollars to maintain the surveillance systems, to mail out these citations and try and collect.
Mecca: That was one of our I I mean, when our friend told us about getting this one, our our immediate response, because we were kind of reviewing this,
Cole: Don't pay it.
Mecca: our immediate was response was, don't pay it. But then she said, Well, it it doesn't have a fee on it. It's it's not a ticket. It's a letter saying that this occurred and we need you to confirm that this is you or someone else that you know. And and as Cole was digging into the research of do you need to pay this? And does it matter which camera it is? And and what happens if you do say that it's
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: you? And what happens if you don't, you know, if you don't respond, can they can they still ticket you? Can they charge you more? Because now they have to have a solicitor come and and, you know, do all this. It's a whole weird Scammy racket. It's just not very clean in any way.
Cole: This is I'm
Mecca: Okay, well.
Cole: I'm I'm over this. This is I'm I'm depressed at this point. Can we get some can we get some good news here?
Callie: yeah, I'm my skin's crawling.
Mecca: Since since I ruined the weird thought, you want your good story? Good news story? Okay,
Cole: Yeah, give me the good news.
Mecca: this one is about a little kitten. He's about a pound. It came into the shelter in Chicago?
Callie: Cincinnati.
Mecca: Cincinnati. Got the C part. His name is Gelato, and Gelato had a spinal injury and couldn't stand up, but he was so little at a pound that none of the devices that the shelter had would fit him,
Callie: Or that could be ordered.
Mecca: or that could be ordered, would fit him to help him to support his back end so that he could walk. So they made their own. They bought little rulers, I mean, like you used to use in school. And tape, and she said there was a piece of ribbon in there somewhere. But the part that really, really cracked me up was they bought two matchbox ambulances and used those for the wheels of the bottom of the little
Cole: That's funny.
Mecca: wheelchair mobile wheelchair, and he is getting better and he can stand on his own. But it they just I mean, it is the cutest little thing to see this little bitty tiny cat, but They've helped him by building their very own device so that he could be mobile. Way to go.
Cole: That's awesome. And a paraplegic cat named Gelato is hilarious.
Callie: it funny. I'll put a
Mecca: It it is. It really is.
Callie: link in the show notes too so you can see pictures of little gelato in his wheelchair. He's really cute. And we're not even cat people.
Mecca: He's really cute. And little. Yeah. So well, all right, my little speed demons. Still love you.
Cole: I don't even drive that fast. That's your daughter.
Mecca: That's true. Mostly.
Callie: It's Tezzy.
Cole: Yeah, it's Tezzy's fault.
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: Love you.
Callie: Love y'all.
Cole: Love you too.
Cole: When you hear about a technology that's helping police find stolen cars, locate missing people, or solve violent crimes, it might be easy to look at it and say, What's the problem? And that's exactly why I think this conversation about flock cameras is more complicated than it initially appears. Because for me, the accuracy of the information almost isn't the point. I understand why law enforcement wants these cameras, and I understand that they can be useful. What bothers me is the idea that we're building a society where the government can track where we go, when we go there, and potentially reconstruct our movements after the fact. that surveillance state mentality feels fundamentally un American to me. It's not what I believe the American experiment was designed around. We have plenty of things we could be doing to make our society safer and better. I don't think building a massive surveillance infrastructure is one of them. And my concern is that once we decide something like this is normal, it's really difficult to decide later that we've gone too far.
Mecca: When I first started looking into flock cameras, I could see the appeal in some ways pretty quickly. If you're a police officer trying to find a stolen car, locate a missing person, or track down someone who's committed a serious crime, having that technology can help you identify that vehicle could be incredibly valuable. And I don't think anybody wants to make it harder for law enforcement to solve serious crimes. It also reminded me of the show Person of Interest, where there are cameras everywhere. Following everyone. But the more I learn about how these cameras are actually being used, the more uncomfortable I became. Because there's a big difference between using technology to help solve a crime and having a system that's constantly collecting information about everyone's movements. Even when used appropriately, that level of surveillance is troubling. And then you have situations where the technology gets something wrong and innocent people end up being stopped. Or in some cases held at gunpoint because the vehicle or information doesn't actually match what the police are looking for. That's where I have a hard time saying the benefits outweigh the risk. Maybe there is a place for this technology, but I think there have to be some very serious restrictions on how it's used, who can access it, and what happens when it gets used wrong or is wrong. And while I'm normally a staunch police supporter, I do believe there's often a thin blue line. It often appears in many cases that there are some police that may have had an issue with being trusted to utilize this technology legitimately. Welcome to two millennials and mom.
Callie: I'm Callie.
Cole: I'm Cole.
Mecca: And I'm Mom.
Cole: So let's let's kinda for anyone who isn't familiar, let's set the stage here real quick. These flock cameras are allegedly advanced network of ALPRs. That is an automated license plate reader. And so what they are kind of set up and supposed to do is you set them up around your city or your county or whatever it is. They're all linked to a network and they take pictures of your license plate. But they don't just take pictures of your license plate. They take pictures of everything around you while they're taking pictures of your license plate. So they could potentially see people in the background. They may be able to see who is driving said car. Where that car is and what's going on around it. The biggest difference between the this flock camera and just a general security camera is that these flock cameras are all networked together and they are storing that data for sometimes relatively long periods of time. I think it's like at least 30 days generally. And if you are someone like me who has a tendency to do a lot of research, the more information you have, the more information you tend to find, you can kind of follow those rabbit holes and get a lot out of it relatively quickly with an efficient search method. And when it's all kind of already there gathered for you, yeah, it could make police work in a lot of instances really, really easy. right now there are flock cameras all around the nation.
Mecca: Like a hundred and twenty thousand and they're
Callie: I think it's more than that.
Cole: There are more
Callie: I think there's
Cole: than one hundred twenty thousand flock safety license plate reading cameras installed across the United States. Forty nine states, more than six thousand communities with contracts spanning roughly seven thousand law enforcement agencies. So, I mean, ALPRs have been around for a while. They're not exactly something new. Anytime you get on a toll road, at least most of the toll roads around here in Texas, they have an ALPR. It's scanning your license plate to see where you got on the highway, where you got off the highway, so they know how much to charge you. as that technology has been implemented and as technology gets more advanced and cheaper, they have been implemented. Flock as a company was founded in 2017. And so in the last nine years, they've installed over 120,000 cameras across just the US. It evolved from police can identify a car that is that is crossed a specific intersection or entered a specific roadway, to police can search a a database of Everywhere that car has been in the last 30 days, how long it's been there, when it moves, how fast it got from point A to point B, all of that, because it's all stored in this Flock database. So the question that that kind of leads us to to start off with is the technology itself the problem, or is it what happens when you connect thousands of these cameras into a searchable network? And to me, I think it's kind of both personally.
Callie: Yeah, I do think it's kind of both.
Mecca: And see I don't know that it's the technology as much as it is the cumulative
Cole: Cameras are not inherently a problem.
Callie: Access to those cameras is different story.
Mecca: Yeah. Yeah.
Cole: But yeah, if you have
Mecca: That's where I was going.
Cole: if you from your phone can pull up I can get mom's search history, Callie's search history, dad's search history, the neighbor's search history, all of my friends search history. I have access to all of their financial accounts. You concentrate all of that information, now it has a potential to be a problem. It kind of goes back to old school Spider Man with great power comes great responsibility. And personally me We as a society, in my opinion, have not expressed a a high level of accountability or responsibility when presented with great power.
Mecca: Okay, let's
Callie: That's a nicer way of putting it than I was going to.
Mecca: let's go back and talk about some of the benefits though. Cause there are benefits to this. I mean, it really can help. tracking tra crime. it I mean it it could possibly help you with missing people. I mean it it all of those alerts that we get the amber alerts and gray alerts and is it clear alerts? Clear alert silver alerts.
Callie: silver alerts and clear alerts and
Mecca: Yeah, it it could help with that because you could go and do it. So
Callie: It pinpoints down because it's got all of that information to sift through and pinpoints down where to look.
Mecca: As long as you're in a vehicle.
Callie: Right now.
Cole: Or around an area that has vehicles.
Callie: has vehicles.
Mecca: Okay. So
Cole: Which, let's be honest, is pretty much everywhere these days.
Mecca: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean there there are definitely some benefits
Cole: Societally speaking.
Mecca: to I I I mean, there are benefits, but it just
Cole: Sure.
Mecca: seems like the system is way too open.
Cole: I was about to say there are benefits to heroin.
Callie: That's a quote.
Mecca: That's a jump. But okay.
Cole: N no, there are. We literally use heroin medically. It's called morphine. Would doctors use it
Mecca: Yes.
Cole: if there was no benefit?
Mecca: No
Callie: Everything in moderation. Sometimes, mom, this is this is where I can hear you in my head going, Well that conversation didn't go how I expected it to. This is this is what
Mecca: Not at all. Not at all.
Callie: you have signed up for this evening. So
Mecca: Okay.
Cole: I mean, you can say that about anything, alcohol, tobacco, o almost any drug that is available over the counter, under the counter, black market, whatever, they all do have benefits. That doesn't mean that they don't also have drawbacks, many of them extremely severe.
Callie: Caffeine
Cole: Yes.
Callie: Advil Testaflostonastica on whatever weird commercial that has anal seepage as a side effect.
Mecca: Yep, not going where this conversation I thought was going.
Cole: Yeah. Your
Callie: And
Cole: your eczema med medication that has a potential side effect of death.
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: Yeah. Okay. So we've established that there could be benefit or not.
Callie: Well, so, but let's let's let's drill down on that a little bit more. So, in terms of tracking stolen vehicles, if you had one system across the country that said, Hey, I'm looking for Texas license plate, da da da, and they could all look in their database and say, Hey, I most recently saw it here and I saw it here, you could literally start building a map and say, It's probably somewhere in this general area. It's
Cole: This is the direction they're travelling.
Callie: Right. I I kind of think, Mom, it's kind of like the where was that? God, it's the one that I couldn't pronounce so we made Cole do the good news story about the deer in the high grass using the drones to pinpoint the deer in the high grass so they could go and save all the baby deer. I feel like it could be used in that same kind of capacity, right? Like, hey, it's over it's somewhere
Cole: Exactly.
Callie: over here. Let's go find it. Now we're not shredding the baby deer. We found the car. So that
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: could be used for missing persons. This child has been kidnapped and th with this is where they were last seen. violent crimes from any kind of I'm not even gonna mess with that, hit and runs. We don't know who did this. but here's a picture of them, who everybody who left the scene and blah, blah, blah. You know, whatever it may be. Drug trafficking, identifying suspect vehicles, reconstructing all of those suspects' movements, like we were talking about, starting to pinpoint all of those. movements and everything. And so in some ways I can certainly see how you could classify all of these benefits as making policing more efficient. I mean, we're in the world of automation.
Mecca: Okay, here's my question. Don't we already have this capability or is that just fiction on TV?
Callie: That's fiction on T V, except
Cole: What do you mean?
Callie: now it's happening in real life.
Cole: What when you say don't we already have this capability, elaborate.
Mecca: Don't we already have the capability of of finding missing cars or say, hey, they went through this intersection? I mean, you read that all of the time.
Cole: I mean in to a certain degree, sure, but that requires you to actually go out and do research. It requires someone on the ground to go and say, Okay, they came through here, like a like a physical tracker in a lot of cases, but that is generally very targeted and it is at the same time, they're not also saying, okay, well the bad guy that went this way, also I know Mecca has been away from her house for three weeks because her car left three weeks ago and never returned.
Callie: But think about the sheer number of cameras that are in place that could be used. So like right now, I feel like if somebody were to call and say, hey, my house was robbed. Somebody took my Amazon package from my front porch. They, the likelihood of them having a camera on their front porch is not low. Then you take into consideration how many other people on their street have a camera on their porch. So now you know who took it. Where the what kind of car they were in, and now we know what to look for, right? Then you take into consideration kind of what you're talking about, mom, in terms of fiction. Well, there's there's cameras at all of these intersections, so we can start pinpointing all of this data. But when you really take into consideration the actual technology that is on each of these intersections, it's pretty minor. There are r lasers and things like that to say, hey, there's people sitting here waiting. We can go ahead and switch the light now because there's nobody coming crossways. Let's go ahead and switch it this direction. But they're not absorbing, storing, computing all of that data. Okay, there's a Tesla right here and a Nissan Ultima over there and a Chevy Silverado here with this license plate in this color from this state that just was at this intersection. They're not computing all of that. It's there are cars, there are not cars. It's been thirty seven seconds, changed
Mecca: And the flocks do more than that.
Callie: the light. The flocks do
Cole: A lot.
Callie: significantly more than that. And then this is where I start, and and maybe I'm jumping ahead, but this is where I start getting nervous. They're taking all of that way more information that we're just talking about, and they're putting it in one repository. So for example, right now, if I were to get pulled over for speeding in Oklahoma as a resident of Texas. The Oklahoma Police Department can really only see what's in their police department system. They can't see if I've got something in Dallas County. They can't s
Cole: I mean they see if we have warrants, but
Callie: they can see if you have a federal warrant. In most cases, they can't see.
Cole: They can generally see state warrants.
Callie: Then that's relatively new. Because most of those systems do not cross over. They do not unless it is a federal warrant, they do not cross over. But still, they can see a little bit. They don't have a Cali file that's ready to go. She was born here, she did this, da da da da da da. And the amount of data and information that these flock cameras truly are collecting and putting in that one centralized repository, A is now accessible to everybody, and B is now accessible to everybody. And what I mean by the first everybody is police from all over the place. And what I mean by the second everybody is there are lots of issues and problems with the networks that Flock has set up that they aren't protected. Callie, as a regular citizen who happens to know a decent thing about computers, can go and get access to that information. Yeah. So the security layer is abysmal.
Mecca: And is that Flock's fault?
Cole: Yes, also
Callie: Yes.
Cole: in my opinion, besides the point.
Mecca: Why?
Callie: Also true. But k' mom, can you imagine if somebody got into your your email? Because Google, let's say that you have a Gmail account, if Google just published a list of passwords, would
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: would you appreciate them? I mean, it it's just public information. Here's Mecca's password.
Mecca: I mean, are they gonna clean it up or?
Callie: No, that's not nefarious purposes.
Mecca: That's a joke.
Cole: The intent is inherently malicious.
Callie: Right. So y yes, I think that that is definitely a problem. In and of itself, beyond the rest of this. Like it's just one of the problems.
Mecca: Yeah. I mean it's just way too open. The system is just way too open. It doesn't seem to have any guardrails with it. And and so it's it's not
Cole: The fact that there is a system that is intentionally being designed to surveil normal, everyday, average Americans, regardless of the actions that they are taking, is the issue.
Mecca: I agree with you.
Cole: There are other issues with the system, but that one is is the big one to me.
Callie: A glaring, bright red, flashing light.
Mecca: I I mean I I get it. I I I'm
Cole: Like, do you want the NSA reading your emails?
Mecca: Do I think the NSA probably already is?
Callie: And you're okay with that?
Cole: D not the point. Not the point.
Mecca: No, it's just and the difference here is the NSA may be doing it and I don't have a clue about it. The flock cameras I know and and I'm aware of the issues and so I do want to have a
Cole: We have such a different thought process on this thing. it's okay if it's not as bad if I don't know you're harming me.
Mecca: No, that is not what I said. That is not what I meant to say anyway.
Cole: That's what you said translates to.
Callie: Think that we've got to break it down a little bit more specifically. Do you believe that there's a difference between being observed and being tracked?
Cole: I think that's semantics. I think in general you could argue that those are the same thing.
Callie: Okay.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Okay. Do you guys remember that show? I wanna say it was on like Discovery Channel or something, history channel called Man Tracker.
Cole: Tracker Man. yeah, man tracker. That's it. Yeah.
Callie: It was literally a reality TV show where this guy who was good at tracking
Cole: Tracking people.
Callie: they would drop you into a forest
Cole: Man, he was a hard nosed old booger too.
Callie: yeah. And so he's on a horse and you're on foot and you have to get to this spot.
Cole: You get I think I think they gave you like a twenty four hour head start or a forty eight hour
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: head start or something.
Callie: I'd be curious to know what his percentage rating was. Yeah. He was good.
Cole: Very rarely did he lose. Very rarely.
Callie: But all of a sudden it turned these people into game. Literally a game. For him to come and track them down and say, I think they went this way. Let me go get
Mecca: And do you think that's what this has the capability of being?
Callie: I think it is being used as that.
Cole: This is eliminating the need for that. This is saying we know where you are because we already have the information. We don't even have to go out and look.
Callie: We don't have to track you.
Mecca: Okay. Callie, do you think that your car doesn't do that?
Callie: I d I think to a point, yes, I do think that that my car does that. But
Mecca: And do you think that that
Cole: Combustion engines all the way, baby.
Callie: But, but,
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: but, but I think that right now mm that all of that data and information stays within that corporation.
Mecca: And that's what I was gonna ask. That's a limited I mean, yes, it's a it it it's a risk, it's accessible, but it's it is limited. And Flock is just
Cole: I'm not sure that's true.
Mecca: bigger than that. Yeah, that that's the other thing here is insurance.
Callie: It's by the same company.
Cole: Right, but Google knows that when I'm at mom's house and sends me ads for things that are in her house. That's how metadata works.
Callie: Y yes, correct. no, you're not incorrect. Not what I'm talking about. W these are all things that we have technically agreed to. And I have agreed that my that my data that my car is absorbing and communicating is communicating it within the Tesla umbrella.
Cole: I think that's a fair argument. I don't think very many people know that
Mecca: And nobody has
Cole: that's what they have agreed to, but
Callie: p Human Centipede.
Mecca: well maybe they maybe they don't, they should, but maybe they don't. But the the point still there is that that's locked down to to that specific thing. And flocks don't seem to be. Flocks are open to any subscribing police department. Flocks can be open to individuals. I mean there there's just too much access that's available through Flock. I I don't
Cole: The repository of data is too large, the power is too great f for people to be trusted with it.
Mecca: Yeah. Yeah.
Callie: So we had a question in here that says, When does individually public information become private because of aggregation? That I think was really fitting right here. Well, we have so much of it, we're just going to share it.
Cole: I don't know how to answer that question.
Callie: I know.
Cole: And I think that's kind of the p part of the problem.
Mecca: Would you feel better if If it was a government that had that access or would you feel worse if it
Callie: No.
Cole: No, it is the government that has that access. They're just buying it from a corporation.
Mecca: But there would be a difference between buying it and the government owning all of that.
Cole: Both are bad.
Callie: I I was gonna say, what? That sounds like semantics to me.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: What would the difference be?
Mecca: So you think we can control
Cole: so we so they can just sell
Mecca: it?
Cole: everyone's location to the highest bidder now? Awesome.
Mecca: No, no, no, wait. The question is, do you think we can control a private corporation better?
Cole: I don't think we can control a government.
Callie: Mom, remember when you were so upset when Twenty Three and Me got purchased and you went through getting your data? I don't mean to to rub salt in a wound here, but how much of a nightmare that was, how much data and information was out there, all of your genetics all of a sudden that could be sold to an insurance
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: company to say, Hey, Mecca, we're not insuring you because of this thing from that spit swab that you s collected to and sent to twenty three and me twelve years ago. Yeah.
Mecca: Ten years ago, yeah.
Callie: And how worried you were. This is not indifferent.
Mecca: I I totally agree with you. And and I'm I think that's my whole point though, because if you look at twenty-three and me, the issue there was that they were s being sold and nobody knew who was going to buy them or what was going to happen to that data. And I think this is the same thing.
Callie: But Yeah.
Mecca: Flock has the data and we don't really know and have zero control of how that data is going to be sold or used. And and so for me there's that question of do we at least have the possibility if it were government owned to have rules and regulations? Because I don't know how you get that for a corporation.
Cole: But it already is. I mean, Flock can't do it without the government. They can't do it without federal, state, local municipality governments because Flock doesn't own every intersection. They don't own every roadway. They can't just put their cameras up. They
Callie: Right.
Cole: have to sell this contract to these municipalities. This is an inherently a service that they are selling to the government.
Mecca: Okay.
Callie: We're gonna put our equipment on your owned land because you're the one who owns that public street.
Cole: effectively they're leasing these cameras to municipalities.
Callie: Yes.
Mecca: Right.
Callie: And and then I think that this is a great natural lead into how they're already being abused because there is
Cole: Heavily?
Callie: no regulating body. So i and I and I feel like There are inherently bad people in every aspect of people. Time, race, gender, favorite color likers, whatever it is, all of them you can find inherently bad people in. And so that I feel like that's always going to be the case. And then you put something like this, literally a library of information together like this, and say, Here's a library card, right? And so you've got all kinds of police officers. what are they what are they called? The
Cole: Hang on, because I don't even know if that's even an adequate description. Cause at least in a library, you have to go and find the book. Like you have to do
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: it yourself. You have to know the Dewey decimal
Callie: They'll help you.
Cole: number or at least be able to look and know what genre it's in and do a little bit of legwork
Mecca: I don't know if it's any different.
Cole: yourself. This is, hey, welcome to the library. What can I get for you?
Callie: Okay, fair enough. But there are lots of instances of them being
Mecca: So yeah.
Callie: abused and being used for, again, nefarious purposes. Hey, I want to track my wife and see where she's been and if I can believe and trust her. And so I've been tracking her license plate for.
Cole: Which let's be honest, if that's the relationship you're in, you probably shouldn't be married anyways.
Callie: Also true.
Mecca: But you could also do it on your phone.
Cole: If she shares her location with you.
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: if she shares her location. So I mean there are other ways to get to it with was really my point. But i what you're saying, I mean the
Cole: Which which but but those other ways generally involve opt in. Like Callie said, that's an agreement that
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: you're making.
Callie: Yeah. Don't you remember when I had that stalker in Waco and we had my car swept for bugs for tracking devices?
Mecca: Don't remember that.
Callie: yeah. yeah. Cause he would only show up when I was home.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Yeah. yeah. So now we're just handing out that information to whoever wants it. Especially within these municipalities and and police departments. We're giving access to anything.
Mecca: And there are multiple, multiple reports of them being abused. I mean,
Callie: yeah.
Mecca: this police and the ones that really angered me were the police chiefs using them to track their ex wives or their girlfriend or his her last boyfriend or all I I mean
Cole: Which is stalking.
Mecca: stalking by the chief of police at this place or that place or by this officer or this sergeant and you just want to smack them all.
Callie: I mean, tracking
Cole: Yeah.
Callie: estranged wife, hundreds of times, providing undercover agent vehicle information to other people and other parties, officers who have been accused of having inappropriate searches for girlfriends. There was one, where was that? It was a guy, it was he it was a police officer who tracked an actress that he thought was cute, went and pulled her over without cause so that he could meet her.
Cole: That's stalking.
Mecca: See
Callie: stalking for
Mecca: that's stalking. Yeah.
Callie: all like these aren't even people like that they know they're making excuses for all of this.
Mecca: Mm.
Callie: And so I mean there are all kinds like there there's a whole section on Wikipedia devoted to controversial uses.
Mecca: And when you were reading that to me, the ones that really just bit my butt were where they pulled somebody over and and held them at gunpoint. Okay. The wrong people.
Cole: wrong people. This
Callie: Yeah. Yeah.
Cole: isn't even the same thing that we're talking about. This is the the information that Flock is providing being inaccurate. Which again,
Mecca: True.
Cole: besides the point, but
Callie: is a whole nother problem.
Cole: they're pulling over families with small children in the car and holding them at gunpoint because this Flock camera read read one digit on a license plate wrong and it came back as a hot stolen vehicle. Of a different make and model
Callie: Or the state wrong?
Cole: and color.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Yeah, yeah. I i it I I I again, like these are just like totally mind-blowingly we would not accept this. I make the joke all of the time. Is there any career where you can be as wrong as a meteorologist? And everybody's like, Callie that's hard, blah, blah, blah. This is handing everything on a silver platter, and it's not even being double checked.
Mecca: Yeah. It doesn't take anything. I mean, I know a a couple of those officers all they had to put in was, you know, surveillance or something generic to get the to the information. And there's no audit trail. There's no there's rules. Yeah.
Callie: Yeah. No. Rules. You have to have a case number assigned to this so that there is a paper trail of all of this.
Cole: You have to have a warrant.
Callie: You have to have a warrant. Like nothing.
Cole: Like the bare minimum here for me. And
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: still bad idea.
Callie: Awful. Awful. I mean, it's just
Mecca: You know, and and I'm I'm gonna say this knowing that I'm gonna get in trouble for it, but there are two instances where we've seen that this was used that I I think a lot of people would really question. And one of those was immigration enforcement, where they're using this database to track somebody that they, you know, believe is in the US illegally or not. And then there was one where it was a woman in a state that doesn't allow abortion and they tracked her into another state. That's not ways that this should be being used. That's deciding that you're guilty before anything has happened and we're going to use this against you.
Cole: mean here's the here's the thing, mom. When you drive, are you always a perfect driver?
Mecca: No.
Cole: Neither am I. And I'm probably the best driver out of the four of us.
Callie: Oh, screw you, said
Mecca: Ha
Cole: I'm not always a perfect driver. But let's say I am at the grocery store one day and I'm not paying attention and I accidentally run into the back of somebody with my cart. And it really hurts when that happens. It sucks. It's happened to me before. It's not pleasant. Let's just say that person is a police officer. And even though I say, hey man, my bad. I'm sorry. He's having a bad day. He decides he doesn't like me. He goes to work, logs into the flock system, and goes, Hey, this big redheaded tall guy, I'll followed him out of the parking lot. I got his license plate number. Let's see where he's been. I'm gonna go start finding everything that he has done wrong in the city of wherever we're at,
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: and I'm gonna charge him for it.
Mecca: Or just harassing you, pulling you over. That I mean, he doesn't even have to find everything you're doing. He can just start harassing you.
Cole: He can start monitoring the route that I take to and from work, waiting
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: for me to mess up. Just to get his revenge on me because I I ran into him by accident because I wasn't paying. Even though I messed up, I did something bad. That's not exactly what's the word I'm looking for here?
Mecca: Warranted?
Cole: Reciprocal response, I believe, is what I'm looking for.
Mecca: Okay. I I but there's also nothing in place for anyone who abuses this system.
Cole: Well, I mean, people have been charged, which is is good because they did things that were illegal, like committing stalking.
Mecca: Stalking.
Cole: But there's nothing in place to prevent people from I mean, and and and that gets into a very different type of argument here. Is the law intended to prevent people or is it in place to punish people who do bad things?
Callie: Mm.
Mecca: That's a great question.
Cole: Kind of irrelevant for this conversation, but
Mecca: Not really.
Cole: it's adjacent, but
Mecca: I mean you could push this a little bit further and then just for everyone who does make a mistake, you've got the evidence right there. So it it
Cole: Exactly. And then you can start looking at things that they do and deciding, okay, it's not a mistake now, but we're gonna make it a mistake 'cause we don't like this type of person.
Callie: But but the bigger argument here is still the Fourth Amendment, right? Like all of this is leading up to illegal search and seizures that that the constitution has says you are not subject to.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: And I think that there's like I I can hear people in my life that I haven't even talked to about this, but I can hear them in my head. Well, well then Callie, like just don't do anything bad.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: Then you won't have anything to worry about. And yeah,
Cole: Bad thought. Bad thought.
Callie: I'm just like, okay, hold on, hold on.
Mecca: But you don't know that.
Callie: Don't know what.
Mecca: Y you don't know that that that's true, just don't do anything wrong. It's kinda like Cole said, I mean, all of us make mistakes driving. So y you you don't know.
Callie: some of us speed intentionally just for the fun of it. Like, n there's a whole integrity side of this.
Mecca: Wonder who that would be.
Callie: It's not me or Cole, 'cause we're the best drivers of all of us. But I mean, I think that we've got to
Cole: That's a solo crown.
Callie: mm mm mm. The king and the queen. So I think that there's an argument here, like that really dismantles this, well, don't do anything bad. There's a difference between privacy and committing crimes and hiding crimes, rather. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, mom, you go around your house and you close all the blinds. Why? Like if you're not doing anything bad, what is there for anybody to see? Like it doesn't mean you're automatically doing
Cole: Not the point.
Callie: something illegal,
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: but it's your right to privacy.
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: I don't need to be on display all of the time. I I keep thinking
Cole: And you know, a lot of people will argue that they have a First Amendment right to record us. But here's the thing: the Bill of Rights is for the people, not for the government. Let's
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: be honest. So your First Amendment right does not trump my Fourth Amendment right.
Callie: Right.
Mecca: Agreed.
Cole: So selling th the First Amendment to the government, it shouldn't work this way.
Callie: I mean, I just feel like this is like this is selling our souls to the current government in power, to any future government in power, like to any governing body. This is selling our souls in my opinion.
Cole: Yeah, because here's the thing. Neither of you like the current administration, not that I'm a huge fan, but mom, let's go back to your example that you thought about the the the godseye or whatever from person of interest. They were the good guys, and they did some pretty rough stuff sometimes. What happens if the bad guys get it?
Callie: And how much effort
Mecca: Yeah.
Callie: did they put into trying to ensure that the bad guys didn't have access to it?
Mecca: Yeah. I mean you just don't have control over those players.
Callie: And those guys those guys exhibited an extreme level in of integrity. I can't say what I was gonna say.
Cole: How many people will do that?
Callie: Pete Heggsith put a put a signal chat together to start talking about war plans. Are these the people that we trust with this information? He didn't he couldn't even get the right people in his chat. And these are the people that we trust with all of this information on us?
Mecca: So what's the solution?
Cole: No, not me.
Callie: No! No! Get rid of these!
Cole: What's the solution? Don't don't allow this. Speak up. Say, hey, we're not putting up with this.
Mecca: Okay. Just blanket, take all down. We're done. You you can't do the anymore.
Callie: Yep. Yes.
Cole: And I'm gonna say this
Mecca: So the
Cole: to the to our audience the same way I said it to you the other night when we were having this conversation. Go read 1984. Surveillance states are not a good thing. Go talk to people who lived in post-World War II East Germany in the Soviet bloc. Surveillance states go talk to people who lived maybe not quite as bad now, but post-World War II China. Surveillance states are not a pleasant place to live. Go talk to somebody who escaped from North Korea.
Callie: If anybody knows anybody, we'd love to have them as a guest on the podcast.
Cole: Hundred percent.
Callie: That doesn't sound appealing to me.
Mecca: I I just I I was trying to determine if there was a way to limit them. Control
Callie: To regulate them.
Mecca: yeah, control them in some way that we could continue to receive the benefit without completely being surveilled.
Callie: How? How like that data has to be taken, kept, and sifted, even to find the bad stuff.
Cole: And secured.
Callie: Yeah. In a needle and to find the needle in the haystack, the hay doesn't just move out of the way. You have to sift through it.
Mecca: Okay, here's the question. If I disappeared, would y'all
Callie: We'd call the man tracker. He's really good.
Mecca: You wouldn't become a flock supporter if, you know, dementia sets in and I
Cole: No, because that would that that would display a lack of integrity on our part. it's okay for
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: us to use this, just not anybody else.
Mecca: Well. Those things are happening all the time.
Cole: Like I get what you're saying, and would I want to find you? Absolutely. Am I willing to infringe upon everyone else's rights to do it? No. Sorry.
Callie: H w where's where's your where's your misused quote? Here's your chance.
Cole: no, I I I've intentionally been avoiding using it, but I think it is pertinent, regardless if this was the original intent or not, because
Callie: Yes, I agree.
Cole: I d I I I understand the original intent, regardless. I agree with the common usage of it as well. Anyone who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither security nor liberty.
Mecca: Benjamin Franklin. Okay. So there other applications, other types of of these, like if you go to the UK, they have a similar type of camera.
Cole: one of the most heavily electronically surveilled cities on the if not one of the most heavily surveilled cities on the face of the planet. But there's a big difference.
Callie: London, yes.
Cole: They're not networked together. They are it is I think it's like four million or something. It's a crazy high amount of cameras
Callie: yeah.
Cole: in the city of London, but they're all privately owned CCTV. So that's a closed circuit
Mecca: Okay, so
Cole: television system where, like, yeah, if you want to have security cameras in your house, if you want to have security cameras in your front yard, if you want to have security cameras looking out at the street so you can see what's going on around you, fine. You have the right to do that. You have a constitutionally protected right to do that. But those are not all networked together, sharing information and compiling it into a searchable database.
Callie: There's also very specific access given to that data that is incredibly protected and and there's always a trail, a paper trail, if you will, a digital paper trail. Is that a thing? We're going with it.
Mecca: Can still be a thing.
Callie: a digital paper trail of who accessed this data, when, how often. There's all kinds of regulations around how that information can be accessed, much less used.
Mecca: And and so that was my previous question is if you had the guardrails in place, but you're saying this the issue here is that the ones in the UK are not all networked together where these flock ones are. And so even th if you put the guardrails in place, you you still have too much data available.
Callie: Yes, because here's the difference. So if you go and actually look at some of the the at least openly available information on what kind of cameras are being used in London, which again is the most heavily surv surveilled city in the world, like these are not flock cameras. I wanna say they have like under five thousand flock cameras. These are all almost all C C T V closed circuit television, like recorded images from a camera.
Cole: security cameras from local businesses.
Callie: Security cameras. So if they said, hey, some six foot tall redhead just went and murdered somebody on this street corner, they have to go and find that specific camera and that specific information. And I I'm not trying to get into the efficiency part of it because efficiency, I get it, better, easier, faster. We found the redhead faster. But at the same time, like it isn't just sitting here saying, okay, redheads are here. And putting it all there so that every six foot tall redhead could be presumed guilty and tracked. so not only are the cameras like the flock cameras making mistakes, those mistakes aren't being verified in any capacity at all currently. Hard hardly. and so like you're having to do the actual work to verify the information. I feel like it's the same thing that you have verified sources, right, in the in journalism. Just because somebody said it doesn't make it true, we have to have all of these other pieces of of information to confirm whether or not that's actually true before we disseminate that information and act on that information. I feel like it's similar in in this regard. You can't automate the integrity of it. It n there's just there's work being put in to verify all of this information. And even then, even then in terms of numbers, they're like remember, these are just cameras, but the estimates are like still between six hundred thousand and a million cameras, like general surveillance cameras across the capital o of London. And so it's it's a different you're kind of comparing apples to oranges here. And Cole, you made a point when we were originally talking about having this discussion about, historically the United Kingdom or or other countries outside of the United States have been significantly more willing to put up with shit
Cole: Abuses of power.
Callie: abuses of power than the United States. Best I have.
Cole: I mean literally since the beginning of recorded history that is the case. Just
Callie: Right.
Cole: period. That is why we are the
Callie: And so I think that that's
Cole: great experiment, the great American experiment is because we weren't willing to put up with someone else's arbitrary bullshit.
Callie: I just think it's comparing apples to oranges.
Mecca: Let's go back to a little bit of the the abuse because there are two things that are are on my mind here. One of them is we know that there are abuses. There, some of those have been tracked, some of those have been prosecuted. At the same time, because there's zero control over this, we don't know if that's five percent of the time or fifty percent of the time. Is that one officer in one department or is that twenty officers in that department? Cause we just don't know that.
Cole: Do we just catch the one?
Mecca: Yeah. The other thing and this story just
Cole: Cause here's the thing. More than just
Callie: No checks
Cole: that one guy are doing
Callie: and balances.
Cole: it. He's just the guy that
Mecca: Yeah.
Cole: got caught.
Mecca: The other story that just so massively disturbed me was about a young girl who the flock cameras were used. The flock made a mistake. And they pulled her over for a a hit and run. The car didn't match the description of the hit and run.
Cole: Different make, different model, different color.
Mecca: Different no damage, although apparently the police officer did report that there was damage on the car. But here's the thing that got
Cole: Yeah. Lied to try and cover his own ass.
Mecca: me. Even with all of that, this girl went to jail.
Callie: 23 years old, went to jail for 13 days, including several days spent in solitary confinement.
Mecca: Because of a mistake, she
Cole: So much for innocent until proven guilty.
Callie: Right.
Mecca: That wasn't verified. Well, and that was another thing because we talked to somebody, oddly enough, who had just gotten a ticket from a flock camera that had occurred 60 days previously. And well, and I say they got a ticket, they got a letter asking
Cole: It also wasn't a flock to be fair. It was a un a municipal city camera.
Mecca: Okay, you're right.
Cole: It was an ALPR, but it was not specifically flock.
Mecca: But my point to that is the letter came in almost 60 days after the incident. It didn't say that you're being fined. It asked you to either confirm that that the picture included was
Cole: Admit you're guilty.
Mecca: you or someone that you knew driving your car. So
Callie: Because the the paper that came in the mail had not one but three photos on it. The f back
Mecca: Three pictures with it.
Callie: of your car, the front of your car, including the driver and anybody that could be visible in the car from the front and the car next to him, I think.
Mecca: Yeah. surrounding. But
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: the issue was it didn't it you you didn't get a fine. It it wasn't a ticket, but it was a notice
Cole: Yet.
Mecca: saying, I I need you to a confirm this is you so that you're confirming that you are are guilty about something that happened 60 days. I mean, Callie, you and I say this all the time. I don't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. So I Sure, I'm not gonna remember what I did. So to me, that that takes all of your defense. You you can't even defend yourself against that or rat your kid out because they were driving your car that day.
Callie: Or rat yourself out.
Mecca: And what are what happens after that? And and the rules are so vague. I mean, Flock has been canceled by a lot of municipalities. So is that ticket valid?
Cole: 'Cause there's been so much backlash.
Mecca: Yeah. Is that ticket valid? Should you I mean, should you even respond to that? What's that gonna do to your insurance if you do respond to it? I mean There's a whole lot that's going on with this whole thing that it's not just I mean, I know that you guys see it as the issue is surveillance. I get that. I really do understand that that's y'all's issue. But it it's just exacerbated by all of the other issues. I mean, I I can't tell you. Think of that girl, a twenty three year old girl, and you said how many days? Thirteen days. So
Callie: Yeah.
Cole: So she got fired.
Mecca: most likely lost
Cole: Definitely.
Mecca: her job if if if she had one, if she wasn't a or got kicked out of school if she was in school.
Cole: Yep. Probably gonna get evicted 'cause she couldn't pay rent 'cause she lo missed two weeks of work.
Mecca: Yeah. I a and that doesn't even that doesn't even cover what it would do to her emotionally.
Cole: Now, she's gonna win a massive suit against the city.
Callie: Florida State. Florida State Highway Patrol.
Cole: even better. They've
Callie: Every Floridian.
Cole: got way deeper pockets.
Mecca: I I mean, but there's an emotional toll that goes along with that. And like I said, the ones that really upset me are you've you've gotten information and you pull somebody over at gunpoint who hasn't even done anything. We're asking for mistakes to happen and for people innocent people to be shot when we're doing all of that. So we're just exacerbating the issue here.
Callie: In Tennessee, it was a set of grandparents who were detained at gunpoint, pulled out of their car in front of their three year old granddaughter who's watching from the backseat because the flock camera made a mistake in reading their license plate. One letter.
Cole: And
Mecca: I don't know. I mean, there's a part of me that appreciates the the availability to to do good things, but I mean Cole I really do understand that that the surveillance We just can't let it go unchecked.
Callie: It's just crazy to me. And and I don't know. Yeah. I I can't I feel like if you break this down like super simply, the benefit is to automate police work.
Cole: Yes.
Callie: And the negatives are everything else. Ha ha like I can't imagine a a world in which it would be acceptable to say, hey, in order to make Callie's job easier, all of the rest of you are fucked. Cool?
Cole: Well, I mean, I I think it's broader than that. Like I get what you're saying and I don't disagree, but let's talk about this. And and this I think can lead into our weird thought here a little bit. There are states where
Callie: Mom already did our weird thought.
Cole: where automated
Callie: It's okay.
Cole: ALPR citations are enforceable. There are states where they are not. So like in Texas,
Callie: Sure.
Cole: for example, where we live, where flock cameras exist, they can send you a ticket, but they can't enforce it. It's against state law. But the whole point of this, this automating the system, is to enforce every potential infraction, to catch every single one. Well, to me, that is an issue because that's treating the symptom. Not th that that's trying to pacify everyone and make everyone follow the rules by
Callie: Is that legislating morality?
Cole: Exactly.
Callie: I'm not sure there's a more
Cole: Exactly.
Callie: clear example of it than this. We're literally gonna give
Cole: Yeah, and so
Callie: you a ticket for anything and everything.
Cole: Anything that you do wrong, we're gonna cite you for it. And
Callie: Yes.
Cole: nobody has to catch you doing it. You're just guilty as soon as we catch you.
Callie: Immediately.
Cole: And I mean, not that I am advocating for breaking the law, but I don't always drive the speed limit. And sometimes that's
Callie: That's my point.
Cole: better for me and the people around me. It's safer than driving the speed limit, especially here in Texas, particularly in the DFW area.
Callie: Can you imagine the situation that if just overnight tomorrow all we all woke up and no car ever exceeded the posted speed limit, ever. Every single one was the same. Then it would be been f beneficial. Weird. But
Cole: I mean, I have some friends who are police officers. Do you know what police officers have? that most people don't really realize or think about? Discretion. They don't have to write you
Callie: yeah.
Cole: a ticket or arrest you for breaking the law. They can use their own discretion. You know what flock cameras don't have? Discretion. So if I'm two centimeters over the white line, I'm getting a ticket.
Callie: Every time.
Cole: Every time.
Mecca: And we didn't even talk about that.
Cole: It is really this b I I mean, I I I hated it when I was in school, but go read nineteen eighty four. This is Big Brother. This is what he he was warning against. And 2017, apparently we didn't go to the same schools because they were like, this is a great idea. Let's build a surveillance state and sell it to the government.
Callie: this grosses me out.
Cole: Me too. But anyways, here in Texas, it's illegal. There are still flock cameras. As far as I know, there are still citations being mailed to people. They can't enforce them. Unenforceable.
Callie: Unenforceable. Yes.
Cole: And people are paying them because they think they may be enforceable.
Callie: Yes.
Mecca: It's almost a scam.
Cole: And a lot of people aren't paying them because they know they're not enforceable, and yet they're still spending the taxpayer dollars to maintain the surveillance systems, to mail out these citations and try and collect.
Mecca: That was one of our I I mean, when our friend told us about getting this one, our our immediate response, because we were kind of reviewing this,
Cole: Don't pay it.
Mecca: our immediate was response was, don't pay it. But then she said, Well, it it doesn't have a fee on it. It's it's not a ticket. It's a letter saying that this occurred and we need you to confirm that this is you or someone else that you know. And and as Cole was digging into the research of do you need to pay this? And does it matter which camera it is? And and what happens if you do say that it's
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: you? And what happens if you don't, you know, if you don't respond, can they can they still ticket you? Can they charge you more? Because now they have to have a solicitor come and and, you know, do all this. It's a whole weird Scammy racket. It's just not very clean in any way.
Cole: This is I'm
Mecca: Okay, well.
Cole: I'm I'm over this. This is I'm I'm depressed at this point. Can we get some can we get some good news here?
Callie: yeah, I'm my skin's crawling.
Mecca: Since since I ruined the weird thought, you want your good story? Good news story? Okay,
Cole: Yeah, give me the good news.
Mecca: this one is about a little kitten. He's about a pound. It came into the shelter in Chicago?
Callie: Cincinnati.
Mecca: Cincinnati. Got the C part. His name is Gelato, and Gelato had a spinal injury and couldn't stand up, but he was so little at a pound that none of the devices that the shelter had would fit him,
Callie: Or that could be ordered.
Mecca: or that could be ordered, would fit him to help him to support his back end so that he could walk. So they made their own. They bought little rulers, I mean, like you used to use in school. And tape, and she said there was a piece of ribbon in there somewhere. But the part that really, really cracked me up was they bought two matchbox ambulances and used those for the wheels of the bottom of the little
Cole: That's funny.
Mecca: wheelchair mobile wheelchair, and he is getting better and he can stand on his own. But it they just I mean, it is the cutest little thing to see this little bitty tiny cat, but They've helped him by building their very own device so that he could be mobile. Way to go.
Cole: That's awesome. And a paraplegic cat named Gelato is hilarious.
Callie: it funny. I'll put a
Mecca: It it is. It really is.
Callie: link in the show notes too so you can see pictures of little gelato in his wheelchair. He's really cute. And we're not even cat people.
Mecca: He's really cute. And little. Yeah. So well, all right, my little speed demons. Still love you.
Cole: I don't even drive that fast. That's your daughter.
Mecca: That's true. Mostly.
Callie: It's Tezzy.
Cole: Yeah, it's Tezzy's fault.
Callie: Yeah.
Mecca: Love you.
Callie: Love y'all.
Cole: Love you too.
