Host Charlie James discusses flock safety cameras and their privacy abuses.

What this episode covers

Charlie James: Whenever they try to uh, impede on your privacy, and we talked about Big Brother, whenever they do that, they always do it under the guise of it being for your own good. "No, no, no, no, no. This is for your safety. We're doing this to make you and our community safer." And right now, we're talking about flock cameras. These are AI-enabled automatic license plate readers. They're made by Flock Safety. They capture still images of passing cars—they log license plates, vehicle make, model, color, unique features like bumper stickers—and all of that is cataloged on a searchable database used by law enforcement. So they snap photos of vehicles in plain view on public roads and instantly check plates against a hot list for stolen vehicles or warrants. And they share the data. So while deployed by local communities and police, the data is often shared across regional and national networks, allowing departments out of state to track the license plates. Now, a lot of safety, a lot of privacy concerns in on this, but they always tell you, "No, these are never going to be misused." Never? They already have been. Greer. In Greer. Two officers with the Greer Police Department were fired last month after an internal audit discovered months-long abuse of the city's Flock Safety camera system. This is from FitsNews. Now, two weeks later, a spokesman for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division tells FitsNews that they're reviewing allegations against at least two of those officers. Greer Police Department, on the other hand, they're not even acknowledging that it happened. So, according to the records provided, Greer's pattern of flock abuse first came to light through a now-former corporal, Kareen Lynch, 28 years old, who misused the system to track a subordinate with whom he had had a, quote-unquote, "previous relationship." Police records further allege that Lynch, not even six years out of the academy, repeatedly entered incorrect and deceitful entries into the flock system to track the subordinate's license plate. How about that? These incorrect and deceitful justifications create a false flock report and a public document, uh, his separation papers allege. So, listen, if this is just some guy, some police officer in Greer, or several of them, tracking people that they know or had a previous relationship with, imagine what else can be done. It scares—these flock cameras, and there are people out there that are—uh, they're like—they're getting out the hacksaws, taking these flock cameras down, because people are just sick and tired of being spied on. Sick and tired of it. I want to go to Wes in Tigerville and talk to him real-world. Wes, welcome.

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