As Americans are told to accept an ever-expanding web of cameras, drones, and AI-powered policing in the name of public safety, few journalists have followed the rise of Flock Safety as closely as Jessica Burbank. An investigative reporter and political commentator, Burbank published an early in-depth investigation into the rapidly growing surveillance company for Dropsite News. She has since continued reporting on Flock through a series of investigations and a self-produced documentary—free to watch on YouTube—which examines how the company is reshaping policing and civil liberties across the country. Burbank joined Current Affairs to discuss the expansion of mass surveillance in America, how Flock has embedded itself in local governments with remarkably little public scrutiny, and why she believes its growth poses a profound threat to democratic freedoms.

Emily Topping

So, Jessica, you have spent the last year and a half reporting on Flock Safety. Our listeners may be aware it's a security software company, perhaps best described as a mass surveillance company. They started out with automatic license plate readers. These monitor traffic and take photos of all passing cars, and that information is then logged into a searchable database and compared with information from the National Crime Center. They have obviously expanded quite a bit since they were formed in 2017.

For listeners who are not familiar, what exactly is Flock Safety, and how widespread has it become?

Jessica Burbank

I would call them a mass surveillance company. They don't like when you call them that; they would say that they offer automated license plate readers. Basically, it's an AI-powered license plate reading system that also identifies the make and model of your car, if it has bumper stickers or any unique identifiers on it, and it's going to keep what they call a fingerprint of your car. They have cameras in thousands of communities in almost all 50 states, and they've spread quietly through securing local government contracts, in many cases behind closed doors, where there's little public input or really vague notice to the public when they're signing off on these contracts. Sometimes it's just snuck into a consent agenda where the police force will just write it in like it's typical spending. Now they're something like a $7.5 billion company, and at the point when I initially started reporting on them, about a year and a half ago, no one really knew who they were. There was little to no national coverage, other than 404 Media and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Topping

Yes, it's interesting: when we think about mass surveillance, security cameras specifically, we often think of it as occurring in "high-crime neighborhoods"—areas with high poverty—but your initial report on Flock Safety began in a place called Scarsdale, New York, which is the wealthiest suburb in America. Could you tell us a little bit about what was happening in Scarsdale at the time and what drew you to that story?

Burbank

Yes, my buddy Josh was just going to city council meetings and messaging me, "You won't believe it. There's this mass surveillance company that's coming here and got this contract, and the village board approved it with no notice." And I'm like, "Josh, rich people like security cameras. I don't know what to tell you." And he kept on it and was upset about it for a while, and finally I said, "Let's get on the phone and talk about this." It was pretty obvious there was a big story there, and I was dumbfounded that there was no coverage on Flock. I'm an independent journalist working for Drop Site News, but I was like, why is a huge outlet like the New York Times or CBS or CNN not taking this on? Someone with the resources necessary to do the story justice and legal cover if this multi-billion-dollar tech company with Founders Fund money decides to sue.

You go through this process of, well, they could retaliate against me, but it's worth it to tell the story. That's the world we live in, where independent journalists are taking these big, high-risk stories because traditional media just won't do it. And so, yes, Scarsdale is a super-rich town, so them fighting this fight is interesting. The level of crime there—they had to tell people to stop leaving the keys in their cars to resolve the auto theft problem. That's how safe it is. So, they don't need this tech.

Topping

Which is interesting, because Flock was kind of pitched as specifically preventing vehicular theft and carjacking, and that clearly wasn't necessarily a concern in Scarsdale. Where were they planning on putting these cameras up? How did the community become aware that this was about to be implemented?

Burbank

Yes, so we don't know the locations of where the cameras were going to go, and Josh Frankel, a Scarsdale resident, put in a FOIL request—because in New York State it's not FOIA, it's Freedom of Information Law request—for the camera locations, and the town denied him, and he's been fighting it for a year and a half now, and the NYCLU (New York Civil Liberties Union) is now backing him to get those camera locations. And the police chief, Steven DelBene, said they're not going to disclose the camera locations because a criminal could anticipate where they are and adjust their behavior accordingly—that was essentially what he was saying—and that the trend with this tech has been that it's getting smaller and smaller, and we expect that to continue. So the idea is there'd be mass surveillance one day with pinhole cameras, and we have no idea where they are, and that's why they're fighting this lawsuit and keeping this information from the public.

But initially it was just that they put public safety equipment as the topic of discussion for a village board meeting. And so one woman who runs this online news journal in Scarsdale—it's like a one-woman show—happened to be at the meeting, and they moved to add to the agenda adopting a Flock contract. And because she wrote about it on the blog, and Josh saw it, more people started talking about it, and it spread.

Topping

So it's kind of a stroke of luck that this woman happened to be in the right place at the right time and noticed, "Hm, public safety equipment. That's interesting." I saw that you wrote Mayor Arest—ironic name, by the way—amended the agenda and added a resolution to authorize the execution of the Flock contract; it passed 6-1, and the entire process took 35 seconds total. You said that, "Typically voting on a motion without prior notice is reserved for urgent matters." How is this possible? Is this part of Flock's strategy to get their software into towns, kind of sneaking it into these agendas?

Burbank

I've asked Flock that question directly, and the answer I got is, "Well, it's different in every case; it depends on what town." And so I would say yes. It's just too consistent. So maybe this is not an explicit strategy that they're disclosing to the public or want to talk about with journalists, but we've seen this happen in so many municipalities. Almost an identical process in Sedona, Arizona, a similar process in Eugene, Oregon, and countless cases around the country where it is slipped into a consent agenda. In one case in Lucas County, Ohio, the county commissioners voted on it in a consent agenda, which is just when you're supposed to have routine items; they slipped in a huge contract with Flock for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the county commissioners didn't catch it because the police department was trying to make it seem like this is just business as usual, just buying some equipment. And at the next meeting, they tried to reverse their ruling. They said, "We didn't know you were trying to get us to approve a contract with this mass surveillance company, especially at a time when we're in a budget shortfall. Why would we pay to surveil our citizens?"

Right now, Flock is suing to hold Lucas County to their initial vote to keep the contract. And so that tells me that their strategy is to ensure that towns that even don't want them have them. Do we feel good about that being a component of law enforcement or public safety when there's no consent of the public considered?

Topping

I'd love to touch on why residents are concerned in the first place. One of the people that you interviewed in your documentary, which people should watch because it's really fascinating, said he was mostly concerned because these cameras allow retroactive surveillance. He said, "They not only track citizens through space but through time," and he pointed out that you used to need reasonable suspicion for a cop to start tracking your movements. They had to suspect you of a crime and then would follow up, perhaps by seeing what you were up to. Now, this person said someone can say, "I don't like what this guy said at a meeting. What's he been doing for the past 30 days? Let me take a look back into his movements for the past month."

Burbank

That can happen, yes. The persistent surveillance that we see with Flock, there are certain provisions in a contract you can add, like in the case I just reported on in Dunwoody, Georgia. They retain the data for a period of 30 days, but if they decide someone is suspicious and they want to initiate an investigation, they pull data for 30 days on what this person was doing. And we've seen this before, as Charles Seife, who's worked with the NSA and has covered surveillance for quite some time, said in the documentary when I was interviewing him. It's kind of comparable to when a cop follows someone in a car and finds a reason to pull them over, whether it's a turn signal, suspicious speeding up, or slowing down; they find a reason if they want to pull someone over.

And with surveillance, that becomes so much easier because the data is already there. You don't even have to go through the process of collecting it. It's being collected for you with this technology. That's really scary. And it feels like an invasion of privacy and a Fourth Amendment violation, where you're supposed to have probable cause. You can't do an unreasonable search and seizure on someone's property or on their person. There was a case fought on Fourth Amendment grounds in Virginia, and they lost. That was a big blow to people that had a lot of hope that they could establish some kind of precedent here, and so it's scary when the courts are really on the side of mass surveillance spreading.

Topping

Yes, can you explain a little bit about what happened in Georgia and why this was such a big blow to people concerned about this surveillance?

Burbank

Yes, so Dunwoody is a wealthy sort of suburb of Atlanta, and Atlanta is where Flock is headquartered, so this was an early adopter of Flock. They're all in on it. Patrick Krieg runs the real-time crime center there, and that is just a monitoring center for their mass surveillance tech. He happened to be in a messy divorce with his ex-wife, Kendra Krieg, and the story is that he and three other officers were together one Sunday night, working an extra job, they say, and they spotted Kendra Krieg's vehicle.

All these cops are hanging out Sunday night—sure, maybe they're on an extra job for the city, but they happened upon Kendra's vehicle, and then Lieutenant Krieg followed it and came back and explained a personal issue, as they put it, and that he's going through a divorce. Which to me, if I were another officer, I would say, "Well, this sounds like we shouldn't have our hands on this. This sounds like a potential conflict of interest. If this is your personal life, maybe we should defer this to someone else who's not you."

Topping

That's a world where you're a cop and you're being ethical, though.

Burbank

Yes, this is a world where a cop going through a messy divorce is flagging his ex-wife's vehicle as suspicious, and this prompts Detective Ehlbeck to pull 30 days of Flock data from the system. Patrick Krieg finds a GPS tracker on his car. It turns out that was placed on his vehicle by Kendra, but not in Dunwoody city limits, and so it wouldn't even be their jurisdiction to investigate that tracker being placed on his car.

And so in a court proceeding in Cherokee County, where the case was referred to, Ehlbeck was questioned about the Flock data he pulled on Kendra, and he was asked, "So did this help you locate where the GPS tracker was found?" and he said, "I didn't look into that." Which is interesting, because when I requested a comment on Patrick Krieg and the Flock data in the ex-wife situation from Dunwoody police, I was referred to the communications director of the city of Dunwoody, who said that this was part of an investigation for the GPS tracker, and the ALPR (Automated License Plate Readers) data helped us identify that Kendra was the offender, which is just not true. That's not what the case records show, and that's not what Ehlbeck's testimony says.

So it's an example of the asymmetry of power, I find, in the people who have access to these systems and those that don't have it, and that's so much worse when you're in an intimate or a personal relationship with people who have it. Because for Kendra, she faces an aggravated stalking charge, which is a felony, and Krieg gets to continue running the real-time crime center, because what he was doing is just routine police work. That doesn't sit right with me.

Topping

Yes, absolutely. And you said in your own investigation the key question isn't whether this investigation into Kendra was warranted, but this divide between who gets to access this information and why is it considered stalking when a private citizen does it and not when a police officer does, even when there's this conflict of interest. And I found it crazy: you quoted the Institute of Justice, saying they've identified over a dozen cases of officers abusing ALPR systems to track their exes and romantic rivals.

Burbank

Yes, they've been on Flock since before my investigation. The Institute of Justice has done a lot of good work, and that's an insane figure, but I think it speaks to the fact that this technology has spread much faster than regulatory bodies could meaningfully respond and assess its risks. And so why is it that cops can search this system, which is sort of self-audited—so if it is other law enforcement officers reviewing it, are they likely to report a colleague for a search that they shouldn't be doing? Is the system set up to flag biased searches for conflicts of interest? How would that work if it's not Krieg himself looking up Kendra, but instead Ehlbeck, his colleague? And how does this come into play when the officer misusing the system has superiority over you? So this is a regulatory nightmare, even if law enforcement got serious about protecting against these kinds of searches, which it seems like they're not.

Topping

Yes, like you say, it doesn't seem like the law has yet caught up with this technology to prevent it. And that's a great point: What's to stop me from telling my cop buddy, "Hey, could you look something up for me?" and then it kind of circumvents that blockade.

I feel like the main Flock story that people might be familiar with came out of Texas in 2025, and that was when a sheriff's deputy used the ALPR system to track down a woman who was suspected of having an abortion. He searched for her vehicle using the exact words "had an abortion, search for female." Ultimately, when this came to light, they claimed that it was a welfare check because her family was "concerned about her safety" and whether she was "possibly bleeding out in her car somewhere." But records from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that police had also opened a death investigation into the fetus and were apparently also consulting the DA about possibilities of bringing criminal charges against her. So obviously this is very different from Flock's initial claims of preventing carjackings and theft. Can you tell me a little bit about the response to this story and what, if any, efforts have been made to prevent this sort of thing from happening again?

Burbank

Yes, so this story's crazy because they were searching the Flock databases in Illinois, for example, and this is a Johnson County, Texas sheriff. In Illinois, abortion is legal, so you're looking to prosecute a crime in a state where that exact action would be legal. That sounds to me like a case for the Supreme Court to solve: can Johnson County prosecute an abortion that was obtained in Illinois? And you know some states are trying to pass laws to say, "Yes, we can, if you're a resident of this state." That's terrifying.

Flock, whenever you ask them directly about who has access to their data, they say, "Well, it's up to you. Whoever we have a contract with, they get to decide if they want to just keep the data to themselves or if they want to tap into our network and our system." And that's really how Flock has gotten so many contracts. The CEO, Garrett Langley, has this sole source justification letter, and typically when any local government says, "Yes, we want this technology. We're doing this big project and spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in some cases. We're going to do a request for proposals." And different companies say, "This is what we'll give you, and this is our price, and this is our offer." And there should be some competition among different companies.

What Flock does is they say, "No one else has what we have." And it's not true that there aren't license plate readers made by other contractors or surveillance cameras. What they offer that's unique is this national network, and they say it's up to you if you want to share your data. When they get asked about data being shared with ICE, they say things like, "Well, if we had a warrant, we would have to notify you so you could protect yourselves." And it's like, well, no, the question is not whether you would tell us; it's would you give our data to the federal agency, and they don't give a direct answer. So that's the kind of company we're dealing with, one that will deflect direct questions and outright lie. When I reported on the gymnastics cameras of a community center being viewed by Flock employees, they said that the story was false but didn't say what specifically I said was false, and everything was evidenced in a FOIA request. So that's the company we're dealing with. The data is being accessed, and crimes are being prosecuted in ways that local communities and even elected officials are not okay with, and Flock is just okay with deflecting and denying everything.

Topping

Yes, I want to get to the gymnastics story, because that is insane. Not only do we have to worry about how cops are accessing this, but also Flock employees themselves. Correct me if I'm wrong, but an employee had logged in to these cameras and witnessed a children's gymnastics class—bizarre—and their response was that he was logging in for the purpose of a sales demo. What does that mean? So it sounds like they did perhaps admit maybe something happened.

Burbank

They did, yes. So I have such a chip on my shoulder when a $7 billion company with huge government contracts lies, because as the person whose job it is to get the truth to the public, dealing with a company that doesn't hold itself to any sort of ethical standard but expects to secure government contracts is just crazy to me.

This was a wild situation. Jason Hunyar in Dunwoody, who is a member of the community and who is going to have a child, comes into this data through an FOIA request showing that Flock employees have logged in and viewed the camera, yes, of a gymnastic studio where children's gymnastics is taught. There's a preschool in the community center. It's sort of a family center, and Flock had access to their data through a public-private partnership. So the fact that an employee would log in and just view the gymnastics studio camera and then log out, I said that he was spying on kids; that's what that means to me. When you're watching someone and they don't know they're watching you, that's spying. I didn't make any accusations as to why he logged in and viewed that camera. I just said that he was spying on kids, and they said that it was sort of a dangerous allegation because we all know what's being insinuated with that and how people feel about their kids being watched.

And I think we know that Flock had a sense of wrongdoing because I came into an email where Langley sent a letter to the director of the Marcus Jewish Community Center apologizing and said that this was poor judgment on behalf of Flock and apologized on behalf of Flock. And then he sent this letter also to the mayor of Dunwoody, ahead of a city council meeting, where they voted unanimously to expand their contract with Flock. So in public they're saying nothing's wrong about this, and anyone who says so is lying, but privately the CEO is apologizing for what's been done.

Topping

And you're like, "Hey, I didn't necessarily say you're doing anything nefarious, but if you look at the bullet points of what happened here, I think spying on a children's gymnastics studio says it for itself."

Burbank

Yes, I was like, "I can't believe you're mad; I could have done worse."

Topping

I noticed in his apology letter he said, "I apologize on behalf of Flock for the lack of thoughtfulness." What would be a thoughtful way to have gone about logging into these personal cameras? It's crazy, because why is Flock even inside a building like this family community center? Obviously, facilities like this often have security cameras, but usually it's personal to the actual building, to the security company, or whatever that oversees it. It's bizarre to me that such a massive company is even employing these inside private facilities.

Burbank

Yes, it's all in the name of safety. And the Marcus Jewish Community Center, from what I've gathered from members of the community, was concerned about antisemitic attacks, and so they invested a lot in a surveillance system, and what Flock offers is to manage all the sort of backend and the data through a partnership for the community center. So really capitalizing on that fear.

What even was the sales demo? Why are Flock employees regularly accessing these cameras? For what? What are they looking into? But also, how is it a selling point? Like, "Hey, look at these kids doing gymnastics. Don't you want a Flock contract?

Topping

Put it in a new advertisement showing all our different facilities. It's really, really bizarre.

Burbank

Scary times, yes.

Topping

Going back to what you were saying about Flock and working with ICE, Flock says that it doesn't directly work with ICE, that local agencies are the ones that control the access to the data and the footage. But does it matter whether Flock itself cooperates with ICE? Like you say, it seems like these surveillance networks inevitably somehow become available to federal agencies anyway. Maybe they're not personally handing the data over themselves, but somehow it's still getting into the hands of ICE.

Burbank

Yes, I talked to a former police officer about this anonymously. And there are a lot of police departments that are strong-armed into contracts with ICE, where they'll cooperate with ICE to get enough funding to maintain their operations as they currently exist. Even the Department of Fish and Wildlife cooperates with ICE, and you'll see in Flock searches it will be Department of Fish and Wildlife, and then the purpose for the search will be like "ICE investigation" because they're subcontracting with ICE as well. So it's police forces, the Department of Fish and Wildlife—all kinds of state and local government agencies that are forced to cooperate with ICE. So if the local police have a Flock system, you will see searches for Customs and Immigration come up in their system. So Flock doesn't have to say, "We're giving ICE permission to access our database"; ICE just works directly with the cops.

Topping

Wow. Why do you think it is that local police departments and local governments have so widely accepted this technology? It seems oftentimes they're doing it at the 11th hour in these city council meetings, kind of circumventing public opinion. In Troy, New York, just this last week, there were protests over the implementation of these cameras. It sounded a lot like what happened in Scarsdale, where it was kind of done secretively, and the mayor actually declared a state of emergency to keep these cameras operating and to keep the contract going through. Why is it that they are so happy in pushing this idea?

Burbank

I've ruminated on this a lot, Emily. Why? Why would you be so down for this? And why would you have a negative view of China, but for some reason in America, mass surveillance is different and okay, but in another country it's Big Brother? It's just mind-numbing, but I think they live in a different reality, where to them anyone who opposes mass surveillance must be a criminal with something to hide, and they want to get one over on the police and maintain their criminal lifestyle, and everyone else wants to live in a peaceful world where crime never happens, and when it does, it's caught immediately. And so Flock does have a selling point of these cameras helping solve crimes. But how many of these crimes would be solved even without the cameras? How do we collect meaningful data to really understand if the cameras are improving police work and safety?

I've spent years as a public policy researcher, and I don't know what kind of randomized control trial you could create to make this a data-driven policy to really meaningfully prove that Flock is necessary. I have some ideas of how Flock could be used in a more ethical way, but these people really believe and are sold on this dream that it makes policing easier and expends fewer resources for the officers and departments, and it makes our community safer.

Topping

Yes, and I think it's a hard argument in certain areas over others. We mentioned Scarsdale; I think the number one crime, 40 percent of crime, is identity theft. They have a very limited amount of carjackings and theft. But then you think about a city like New Orleans, where I live, where carjackings and robberies are a larger problem, and we do have a limited police force. They're always trying to recruit cops, and no one wants to be a cop here. So I think that has been a big selling point for people in New Orleans: instead of hiring a police officer who has to use subjective judgment and a gun, wouldn't it be safer to put these cameras up to help prevent crime? And it kind of becomes a different conversation there.

How do you respond to communities that maybe do have bigger issues with crime, and what potential effects they might see by putting these cameras up?

Burbank

I think we know that we have a police force, and I'll use myself as an example. When my apartment was broken into in Boston, I was a renter, and I had to call the police so that I was not held responsible. The police came and said, "Yep, there's size 11 footprints in the snow—it was a fresh snowfall—going to your fire escape and then leaving. So we're going to collect and make a police report about that, and if anything else happens, let me know." And there is no investigation done to find who that person might have been. There were no fingerprints taken on the window where they entered. They didn't take seriously the series of threatening emails I got in advance of this break-in.

And so, if the cops do not serve regular working people with the resources they currently have, why do we expect that to change with mass surveillance technology? And from the proliferation of mass surveillance tech, we've seen it has been used to prosecute our behavior more than it's been used to keep us safe. And I expect that trend to continue. I see no reason why the police would change their behavior on that front. So, as much as I can understand people wanting to live in a safer place, and I can imagine if the police operated differently and more responsibly, tech like this could be used for good, but dealing with reality as it exists, I don't see that happening.

Topping

Yes, there was a really telling story out of San Diego this week when a man was suing the local police department because he was arrested and put in jail for a month on charges of carjacking, and it turns out the police had wrongfully used Flock data to connect him to the crime. And like you said, assuming that police will use this data responsibly has this kind of magical idea of how police in America work, which just isn't accurate whatsoever. I was going to read you a little bit of this reporting on this story because I thought it was crazy. According to Ars Technica:

Last November, Hugo Parra was arrested on felony charges after San Diego police relied on Flock data and a witness statement to wrongly connect him to an attempted carjacking at gunpoint."

 

Although Flock cameras can capture license plate data, cops did not have even a partial plate to help them verify if the car was involved in a violent crime."

And it turns out that the Flock data that cops used to justify this arrest actually showed that he was five miles away, so it ended up giving him an alibi, and ultimately his own cell phone data pinging off his location also proved that he wasn't there, so that would have happened eventually anyway without the Flock information. So theoretically this can also be used as justification for arresting people for things that didn't even happen if they're interpreting it in the wrong way.

Burbank

Totally. I've heard anonymously from people who do sort of defense work in the criminal justice system that it is really easy for prosecution teams to get access to Flock data to place a suspect at the scene of a crime, but it is a different story for defense teams trying to prove innocence, where they could potentially get Flock data to say that no, this is where they were at this time, and actually look at all of these other cars that were also at the scene that should be suspects and looked into. But that is a request that is frequently, if not always, denied by police departments that have access to the Flock system, and when these defense teams, actual criminal defense attorneys representing clients facing charges, ask Flock, "Okay, can you give us the data?" they say, "Ask your local police department." So that's the reality we're living in, where there's also that huge disparity among access to Flock data.

If this was really about justice, fairness, and safety, it should be used to prove innocence just as much as it's used to prove guilt. And so the way that surveillance can be turned into a weapon against the public, I think we do see that happening in our criminal system. That's really concerning. And I've been talking to defense attorneys, so if anyone out there has a story related to this—it's hard because a lot of it's sensitive data, and there are plea deals and all kinds of complicating factors that make this dynamic something that's hard to report on. So if you know anything, let me know.

Topping

For any defense lawyers listening, what's your email, Jessica? Your Signal?

Burbank

On Signal: kaburbank.77.

Topping

There we go. Encrypted. One thing I do find interesting is that of all the sources that you've interviewed that are opposed to this mass surveillance, it seems to cross ideological lines. There have been some liberals, some conservatives, and some libertarians. Who do you find is pushing back, and why?

Burbank

Yes, it's people who care about freedom, and some of them identify as Republicans, conservatives, or right-wingers. There are libertarians, leftists, and even liberals. It's all over the place, but it's people who really do value privacy, not because they have anything to hide, but because you should have a reason to need to search someone's person, and so I think it's just people who can see a world where this is not used to keep people safe. People who have maybe read like 1984. People who kind of imagine Big Brother watching us all the time and understand that the ruling class has been trying to sort of quell uprisings among the masses. So a lot of people that I've talked to have been on the receiving end of state power or corporate power being misused. Genuinely, I think that's the only consistency.

And so now imagine a world where that power is misused, and they have data on everywhere you are all the time and what you're saying. That's terrifying. And so I think, unfortunately, it might take a lot of people being made uncomfortable, or knowing someone who's been on the receiving end of the abuse of corporate or state power, to get them to really take seriously this issue of mass surveillance. And I think we all worry that it might already be too late, that our phones are all listening to us, our cameras are always watching us, and that there are enough Flock contracts out there that are not getting canceled. I don't really see it that way. There are some municipalities that are, thanks to public backlash and a collection of data on what Flock is actually doing once they get their cameras up, covering the cameras with trash bags in the meantime while they wait for Flock to take them down while they cancel the contract. So I don't really see it as too late. I haven't lost hope.

Topping

That's good to hear. I know some of it has come from your reporting lawsuits that are filed in various counties trying to cancel these contracts. In Scarsdale, specifically after your reporting came out, they ended up canceling that contract, so it didn't go through, but it sounds like residents there are still suing, because, like you mentioned earlier, they want to know where those cameras were going to be placed and why. Can you talk me a little bit through that lawsuit and where it stands?

Burbank

Yes, so this lawsuit was Josh Frankel submitting a Freedom of Information Law request, so it's not a lawsuit between Josh and Flock; it's a lawsuit between Josh and the village of Scarsdale over whether the public has a right to know the locations of Flock cameras. And there are all kinds of weird legal nuances in this case. The law is just so wild that, to me, this should be a conversation about why the public should have access to this data, and why should they not? Instead, it is, is this data deliberative or factual legally? Deliberative would mean that the village is going back and forth trying to decide where the cameras go, and it's a part of an interagency process, which means that Flock, for this exemption, for the information to be kept private, would have to be sort of acting as a government agency or a consultant for the government. So, are they a vendor selling cameras or are they a law enforcement consulting firm? That's at the heart of that question.

But it is factual information, is what the NYCLU, who's taken the case, would argue. It's just, "We're going to put the camera here; here's the address." So they're trying to withhold it because they want to be sneaky about where the cameras are, and they don't want to disclose it to the public because there might be a future when they do have cameras, and they might be so small they're undetectable. So to cancel a contract and continue fighting it was wild, and I really do think that statement by the police chief, DelBene, is the most telling one.

Topping

What was his statement afterward?

Burbank

As a part of the lawsuit, he said that he expects the trend of this technology getting smaller and smaller to continue, and so that means the cameras will become so small that maybe they're undetectable by someone who's going to commit a crime and get caught on the camera. And so if they establish this precedent that the village or town or municipality discloses the camera locations, then anyone can just look them up and avoid them when they do their crime, which is a wild argument. And to me, the village fighting this, who is this serving? Does DelBene really care about setting that legal precedent, or is it Flock that really wants this lawsuit to be fought? What's the level of communication between the village and Flock to this day?

I have a lot of questions about that, because the moment they announced DelBene was appointed as police chief, the next morning was his first email with Flock, and that was months before April when they voted for the contract. So the fact that they treated it like an urgent matter is wild, but this was even before he took office—a month before he actually took office as police chief, he's already talking with Flock. So I have a lot of questions about that.

Topping

There's a paper trail that this conversation was a lot longer than it seemed to the public.

Burbank

Exactly. Months longer. And they said that they couldn't disclose this to the public because materials were not ready. They had months to just say, "We're thinking about a contract with Flock." There's no material you need to provide. "We're having conversations about adopting mass surveillance in Scarsdale."

Topping

Yes, I love that. This Frankel guy is not letting his boot off the neck, so to speak. He's like, "I don't care that the contract was canceled. The conversation's not over. I want to know all the information that went into it." And I think that's important to say, "Hey, you can back off," but like you mentioned, what's going to stop this from happening in the future? "I want to know everything that went into it."

Burbank

Yes, Josh is all in. He's all in on Flock. He knows every story about Flock all over the country. I got another one this morning. I'll show you this. This is wild. There's a new lawsuit in Westchester County. It's a class action for 1.6 billion license plate scans, and it's the Westchester County Real Time Crime Center, which is what they call these when they're viewing the livestreams and the ALPRS and stuff—real time-crime centers. Look at this logo. That's the logo of the Westchester County Real Time Center. It's an eyeball. It looks like Sauron from Lord of the Rings. What are we doing?

Topping

What graphic designer did they hire? Scarsdale is in Westchester County, and it looks like this lawsuit was on behalf of four women who were suing to stop the use of these license plate readers. They said it's a warrantless and indiscriminate surveillance system. One of the plaintiffs had their license plate captured 2,400 times. So even though this contract was canceled in Scarsdale, clearly, the cameras are still in use, presumably in other towns in this county. Widespread.

Burbank

Yes, absolutely. And I think maybe Josh can get in on the lawsuit, because they did rely partially on one of his initial FOIL requests. So I think it's an interesting approach, and I appreciate that the ACLU, the NYCLU, and the Institute of Justice are just coming at this from every angle. That's what you've got to do in this legal environment, where you never know what judge you're going to get. So you just have to keep trying and approaching this from every possible legal angle. Because it might seem obvious to all of us that this is just a Fourth Amendment concern or a right to privacy concern, but approaching it this way and trying to have remuneration for people that have been affected, that's what you have to do. And Daniel Lambright on this case is actually one of the same attorneys that's handling the Scarsdale case around the camera location lawsuit.

Topping

Okay, he's going to be an expert on all angles of this.

Burbank

Yes, I interviewed him recently. You can watch it on my YouTube.

Topping

Absolutely. It is just mind-blowing to me how ubiquitous these cameras have become everywhere. If someone's just walking through an average American suburb or city, what are the chances that they are being tracked by a Flock camera, and they don't even realize it?

Burbank

Yes, unfortunately, they're pretty ugly. They're egregiously ugly, so you might see it. But the other thing that Flock has done is they have this public-private partnership startup where they have a ton of money allocated towards putting their cameras on private property, like local businesses and parking lots. So they're paying to spread their surveillance network, so it's pretty high. And I've talked to people who would prefer to stay anonymous that have hacked into Flock cameras and have seen that it's not the case that Flock is just detecting license plates. Flock software was able to distinguish even between a dog and a cat. So they say we don't use facial recognition technology; we're just analyzing the car. Then why is the tech coded to identify the difference between a dog and a cat? Clearly, they're detecting people, and all it would take is someone with a live feed view to apply facial recognition software to that footage. So, even though Flock doesn't provide facial recognition software, that doesn't mean their camera network can never be used with facial recognition software.

Topping

Wow, okay, there are a couple of aspects to this. So, number one, how does this source know that it's distinguishing, say, between a dog and a cat? I thought about this earlier, because when we talked about the Texas sheriff's deputy who looked up "female seeking an abortion," how did the cameras know that it was a woman in the car, or is it literally keywords that you can search in the database? Do you know how it works?

Burbank

Yes, that one I could imagine they're seeing who the car is registered to. So if they pull the license plate data, they're pulling in the system the name and gender and details about the person who the car is registered to. But it's possible, and Flock doesn't answer questions about this a lot, that a part of the blueprint is like, is the person driving the car seem like a woman based on our AI software? Because if they're able to identify specific scratches and bumper stickers on the car, I can imagine from my years of doing data science that it wouldn't be too difficult to distinguish between a likely woman and a man.

Topping

Well, thank God we have all these cameras preventing dog and cat crime in our city. They're tracking that. And it's also concerning that presumably a normal citizen can hack into these cameras. It's helpful for investigative purposes, but if you can imagine it was for other ones, it's clearly not as secure as they say that they are.

Burbank

Right. There's been an interesting series of reporting by a few journalists, like Electronic Frontier Foundation and 404 Media. Ben Jordan has been doing a lot of the hacking, and Flock does these interviews saying that, "No, that's not true, that's not possible, that didn't happen, and if it did, it would be illegal for them to have done that, so they didn't do that," which is really convenient. But Ben Jordan has recorded from beginning-to-end footage of him hacking into these cameras, and I've met pretty young hackers that get into the cameras. There are people who buy them off eBay, actually—an actual Flock camera—and then they take the SIM card out of them, which is important to do, because if you do not, it will ping and show that you have it. Because if you're buying one of these cameras off eBay, you don't know how the seller got it; you would presume they got it legally, but that might not be the case. You don't know; it's eBay. But really young hackers have gotten into these pretty easily with some rudimentary computer science skills.

Topping

Wow, so it's literally a SIM card on the cameras that's holding the data. It's not uploaded remotely, like through cloud technology?

Burbank

I don't know if "SIM card" is the right tech word. Tech isn't my specialty. There's like a little chip or something—I think it is called a "SIM" that allows it to connect. So theoretically these are illegal, but if you had a jammer, you could prevent the Flock cameras from sending data. But also, if you can hack into the Flock system and you're a foreign government and you wish ill upon a municipality in America, you could cause a lot of harm. This is an actual security concern, which has prevented a lot of hackers from sharing the extent of the data they have on Flock, and there are people all over the country that are doing this work and not publishing on it because they think that if they do publish on it, then it'll get in the hands of someone who's a bad actor who will use it against us. And so a lot of these issues have been explained to local officials, who have then gone on to vote to continue contracts with Flock cameras. They know the security vulnerabilities.

Topping

Insane. So even though these hackers are hacking into these cameras—obviously, that's illegal—they don't want to expose how this is done because there are people who have bad intentions and they don't want to expose the gaps in the system.

Burbank

Exactly, yes.

Topping

So, if these cameras do become universal in communities across America, what do you think that that would change about everyday life? Even assuming they're not abused, even if they're operated exactly as promised, what do you think the implications could be?

Burbank

I think people are going to spend less time in public spaces. We already have so few third spaces to hang out in in the US. We have these just atrocious, ugly strip malls, and that's it in most towns. I recently got a pair of Vadyr glasses, which are these really big glasses that prevent the sort of infrared light from coming through that scans your face with facial recognition technology. I think people would end up wearing stuff like that everywhere all the time so that they're not constantly being tracked and genuinely going out in public as little as possible. It would be a reason for me to stay in a rural area versus moving into a city, and a lot of people can't afford to move, to live somewhere else, to get out somewhere where you're away from these cameras, and so they would be stuck. I think we would see the level of policing that we see in Andor, Star Wars sci-fi films.

A part of what Flock is doing is developing—and they have contracts with municipalities for this already right now—a drone first responder program, so if someone reports a crime or calls 911 or they see a crime on these cameras, a drone flies out with a camera to start filming at the scene of the incident. So if a camera catches someone doing something suspicious, or someone is flagged in the system, as in, you see them on a camera or their vehicle, send a first responder there. That level of mass surveillance policing is not that far away from now. Actually, Dunwoody just expanded their drone first responder program while I was at that city council meeting.

Topping

It is so dystopian. You gotta send me the link to those Vadyr glasses.

Burbank

I told them they need to get like a Jackie O, more fashionable style.

Emily Topping

Yes, exactly, or maybe '90s-style ones. It's a great point about how this ties into the fear of being in public, and I think we've seen it already because of how we tend to surveil each other these days by filming everything in public. People often worry that they're going to end up on social media unaware, and it's prevented a lot of socializing. To have that on a mass federal scale is terrifying.

Burbank

Yes, it's like at the beginning when iPhones were the thing to have at the function—a nice function, a good party, everyone has their iPhones out. We're Snapchatting everything. It's on our Instagram stories. Now, it's like you hear about fancy parties in LA or something, and everyone has stickers over their phones. It's become like a luxury to not have the cameras constantly on you. That feels like where we're headed.

Topping

I know. You read all these think pieces about why no one is in the club anymore. They don't want to get filmed.

Burbank

Yes, you can't be a drunk little freak anymore. Because of Flock.

Topping

That's what Flock is taking away! How much do you think that fear in general plays into this whole thing? Have you seen "Neighbors" on HBO, the docuseries?

Burbank

Yes!

Topping

Oh my—okay. I was watching this, and that show is horrifying. It's like a perfect little microcosm of America. You have this obsession with private property, guns, stand-your-ground laws, and of course, cameras, which people all have pointed at each other in this case at their neighbors. For people that don't know, it's a show—how would you describe it? It's a docu-series that follows a bunch of disputes between neighbors in America. But I felt like a huge overarching theme I noticed is this fear and paranoia, which I think a lot of Americans can relate to. "If I don't surveil my neighborhood, people are coming to hurt me. If I don't have cameras protecting my property, people are coming out to get me." And I feel like that ethos kind of explains why people are supporting surveillance. Because it feels like protection, even when the reality has shown that it's often not.

Burbank

Yes, totally. I think Ring cameras play a lot into this, for sure. Those became so big and normalized. I remember reporting a story for TYT, and it was about a kid who had a whip and was whipping the door of a Black child's home. It was like, who are this kid's parents? This is obviously sort of a racially charged event, and people were mad that I had blurred the child's face. They were like, "Show his face." And it's like, it's not his fault he grew up in a racist family and has racist parents. He's a minor. I still have hope one day for him to overcome his upbringing.

But, yes, people feel this animosity towards each other, and I think a part of it is our culture that's been forced upon us to live in such an individualist society, to the point where there is a lack of community, and you're skeptical of your neighbors. Surveillance absolutely plays into that. If you think that you should have a camera on your front door to the sidewalk and be monitoring it and getting notifications when something moves in that vicinity, that's wild. That's wild. I don't think I want to live in a world like that, and we have to think about this as women going out and about at night.

You make this decision within yourself where you're like, "Am I going to live a life based on fear, knowing the statistics and constant threats, or am I going to just decide to like walk home because it's a nice night out?" That's becoming a decision people make all the time. Am I going to live in constant fear because I'm fed all these stories about how horrible people are, or am I just going to get out there in the world and choose not to have fear dictate my day-to-day actions? But there was this meme of a donkey that is tied to a traffic cone. The donkey thinks that it can't move. It's like, "Oh, I've been tied up," and it assumes it's tied to a pole or something, but it's just a traffic cone. It could easily walk and knock it over, and that's like life under authoritarianism, mass surveillance, fascism, or whatever because you think that there's this restriction imposed on you, because you think you're always being watched, because you think that there is punishment. You restrict your own actions, and so there doesn't actually need to be any real policing or violent force pushed onto you. You just do it yourself. And so that fear is almost a greater tool than the actual cameras will ever be. And in a way, the cameras are necessary to produce that fear.

Topping

Yes, it's a great point about the Ring cameras. I find them so horrifying. It's so funny. Whenever I'm scrolling on TikTok or Reels, or whatever, any cutesy little caught-on-Ring camera thing, I won't let myself smile at this because this really freaks me out! Often when it's like, "Can you help me find this guy, this Amazon worker, who dropped something off and was really nice about it?" or "Help me find this UPS man," I'm like, "Why are you filming him? Maybe he doesn't want footage of him online." I find it really horrifying.

Burbank

Yes. Oh my god, and all the heartwarming stories of, "Oh, we left out snacks and water for the Amazon delivery guy." This is not a feel-good story. Amazon owns Ring, okay? And how about instead of "we're leaving out water for the Amazon delivery or UPS drivers," we actually support these drivers having a right to air-conditioned vehicles? I think we covered this story together at some point back in the day about delivery drivers passing out from heat exhaustion.

Topping

It's not a cute story. "I'm leaving little mini Gatorade bottles outside like it's a stray dog." I understand that is an act of kindness, but perhaps we could give them mandatory breaks and air-conditioned vehicles. It's absolutely insane. I think actually "America's Funniest Home Videos" now, which I thought was canceled decades ago, but I recently saw it on TV, it's now all Ring cameras or internal surveillance cameras in people's houses, which also kind of freaks me out.

Burbank

Wild, just wild. Get out the old JVC. "America's Funniest Home Videos" is supposed to be filmed like this.

Topping

Right, with that kind of camera. Well, thank you so much for joining me here today, Jessica. This has been a really fascinating conversation. As a closing question, I was going to ask you, as municipalities and counties across the US are thinking of signing these contracts with Flock—if they haven't already, which, as we've discussed, many have—if you could force every mayor, city council member, and police chief to answer one question before installing these Flock cameras, what would that be? Or what would you force them to consider first?

Burbank

Make sure that there's a clause that allows you to terminate without any liability or punishment, and I think that's the biggest one. For any reason, this contract could be something you decide you don't want anymore, and Flock being able to sue to keep their millions of dollars in cameras up, if elected officials and the people don't want it, is just mind-boggling. So, right to termination. My first question would just be, are you sure? But the right to terminate the contract and then have some kind of protection over these searches. So I think a 30-day period of data retention. You should not be retaining this data indefinitely. And establish clear terms with what Flock has access to within your data, because they give really vague answers on that. So, terminate, data retention, and Flock access to the data that your town collects.

Transcript edited by Patrick Farnsworth.