From “technocracy.news”
Flock Group is the ultimate disruptor in the surveillance market. A monster company that has grown from zero in 2027 to over $8.4 billion in less than 10 years. The fact is, Flock wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Y Combinator, which gave them their seed/startup money in 2017 and then mentored/coached them on how to run a startup company, Silicon Valley style. And who was the President of Y Combinator at the time? Sam Altman, who soon thereafter co-founded OpenAI with Elon Musk. ⁃ Patrick Wood, Editor.
The CEO of Flock Group, the Atlanta-based maker of AI Flock cameras and other surveillance tools, went on Fox News over the weekend to defend his Orwellian company against the massive public backlash that has been gaining steam for months, to the point where some Americans are vandalizing and chopping down the ubiquitous Flock cameras that blanket more than 6,000 U.S. cities and towns.
Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told Fox News on Saturday that he hopes there can be a national “compromise” that allows the AI spy cameras to continue operating while also honoring people’s right to privacy.
In classic limited hangout form, Fox News again let itself be used as a propaganda organ, conceding that Americans are fed up with Flock but then allowing this sinister company’s CEO to have the last word and come across as a man who seems sympathetic to Americans’ desire to retain their privacy rights.
Fox writes:
“Automated license plate readers, known as Flock cameras, are used by law enforcement in dozens of states to record vehicle data that can aid criminal investigations, but residents in communities with the cameras have raised concerns about privacy and potential misuse by law enforcement.”
For starters, these Flock cameras are not just reading license plates. They are picking up everything about your vehicle that makes it unique to your ownership and tracking it everywhere, creating a storable digital footprint of your travels.
Flock also has cameras that watch walking paths, biking paths, public parks and commercial parking lots. Flock is even in the process of rolling out a new line of spy drones that will respond to suspicious activities citywide and notify police of exactly what’s going on, most of which is perfectly innocuous everyday life. Then there’s the Flock Raven system that listens to what’s being said through super sensitive speaker devices.
But if you listen to Fox News, it’s just license plate reading that Flock is engaged in.
Then they allow Flock’s top executive, Mr. Langley, to claim that without his cameras, our cities would not be safe. So we need to get over ourselves with our concerns about losing our Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Fox writes:
Speaking on “Saturday in America,” Langley argued the technology is vital for safety and called for compromise.
“When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise,” Langley told Fox News. “How do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?”
Flock Safety’s website describes the tools as “technology that helps communities deter crime, respond to emergencies, and investigate safety incidents.” The company’s website states that it aims to balance public safety and privacy.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JON PADFIELD
I sat down for a one-on-one interview in Atlanta last week with a true expert on the surveillance state. His name is Jon Padfield and he runs the Business Reform YouTube channel. He’s an electronic engineer by trade and spent time working at General Motors and the Indiana Department of Transportation before recently retiring and becoming an activist for freedom and privacy.
Padfield pointed out to me an obvious fact that I haven’t heard anywhere else about Flock.
The company markets itself under the name Flock Safety but that is not its legal name. That is just the name of its website, FlockSafety.com, and part of its branding. They’re supposedly all about “safety.” Langley and all other company spokespersons hammer that home in every media appearance: safety, safety, safety. They’re all about safety.
No, they are not. That’s nothing but a clever marketing gimmick that our local politicians and law enforcement have latched onto.
The company’s real name is Flock Group Inc.
Padfield pointed me to the company’s U.S. patent papers, which I looked up and, sure enough, he was right.
Flock Group’s main inventors, according to its August 16, 2022, filings with the U.S. Patent Office, are Garrett Langley and Matt Feury, both of Atlanta. And their patented product is described as follows:
“System and Method for Object Based Query of Video Content Captured by a Dynamic Surveillance Network.”
It’s pretty clear from that title that Flock Group went into business in March 2017 for the purpose of creating a “dynamic surveillance network,” not merely license-reading cameras based solely on keeping people safe, but an interstate “system” that functions as an integrated nationwide “surveillance network.”
Leo’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
In case there was any confusion, Flock clears it up in the abstract of the 2022 patent filing, where it states:
“A solution for a video surveillance system and method that leverages a dynamic geographic footprint and supports an object-based query of archived video content is described. An exemplary embodiment of the solution receives video footage from any number of unrelated sources. The video footage is parsed for content and stored in a database in connection with data that identifies the content (object class, aspects of the object, confidence scores, time and location data, etc.). Advantageously, the video footage may be queried based on content of the video footage and not just time and location data.”
You can find Jon Padfield’s highly informative videos on his YouTube channel, Business Reform, where he talks about all aspects of the growing surveillance state, not just Flock cameras. It’s loaded with tips and advice on how to outwit and evade the technocrats and their authoritarian beast system. Below is one of his recent videos.