AI, data centers, and Flock: MAGAReport 7/11/26
Issues that can unite us?
This week I was invited to the City Club of Cleveland to join a discussion with the Chief Communications Officer of Flock Safety. If you have an hour, you can check out the video here:
If you don’t know about Flock, they are a private company that leases cameras to municipalities. They are license plate readers, but also track the make, model, and color of your car along with your bumper stickers and distinguishing marks. Every time you drive past one, it takes a picture or video and records your car’s data with the time and location. Police or government agencies can then go in and search for your plate or something like “red SUV with a bike rack” and get a list of everywhere you have been seen.
I think these systems are a wild privacy invasion and an end-run around the Fourth Amendment’s protections from unreasonable search and seizure. Even if we ignore all the mistakes, mis-uses, and objectionable applications, this is still a system that tracks the movements of everyone who drives past, building patterns of our behavior with no probable cause, no oversight, and certainly no warrant.
But also, we shouldn’t ignore the mistakes mis-uses, and objectionable applications. A police officer in Texas tracked a woman who had an abortion across the country using the Flock network. Just this past week, a writer for the automotive site The Drive was tracked and pulled over by four police cars because Flock was not correctly reading the license plate of the Land Rover he was test driving and they thought it matched a stolen vehicle report. Police around the country have used Flock to track people who attended No Kings protests. Police around the country are using Flock to stalk women. If you want to read more, 404 Media has done great work reporting on Flock.
There is a growing anti-Flock movement and Flock doesn’t like it. Flock’s CEO has said that a group, DeFlock, who tracks the locations of their 100,000+ cameras are “terrorists” more akin to “antifa”.
But the people who oppose Flock are not just far-left activists. They span the political spectrum. Leftists and liberals oppose it. The Proud Boys I have contact with oppose it. And in the MAGA forums I focus on in this newsletter, they generally oppose it, too. Here are titles of just some of the discussion posts about Flock from the last two days:
How much freedom must we give up for safety. Flock is out of control.
Flock Cameras to America: We can spy on you but you can't talk about it. If you do we will sue you!
FLOCK - A disgusting procedure for a professed free society
Milwaukee sent an internal affairs detective to investigate a cop caught using Flock surveillance cameras to stalk his ex... ...but that SAME internal affairs detective has now been CHARGED with using the SAME Flock cameras to stalk people, HIMSELF!!!!! He even planted a GPS tracker
More Flock Cameras being cut down in Texas. I guess sane, reasonable people don’t like being recorded at all times as they just go about their normal, law abiding business. No reason to turn reality into an open air prison…
📷What the Flock?!🚨 Flock cameras don't just record audio & video. They spy in other ways too! Mike Adams dives deeper.
Police body cam footage in Minnesota reveals a man who reviews cars was surrounded by police because a Flock camera mistakenly said his vehicle was stolen The cameras flagged the car and the police were out looking for him, once they located him they swarmed him
Flock Camera Warning - Do NOT Let Your Community Install These - These are Not Just Traffic Cams -
Flock Cameras - Are Watching Everything YOU Do - _Big Brother's NOSE Is In Your Business
Baby saved, but NOT because of Flock. (Even if it was Flock, it doesn't justify it)
A Flock Camera is being installed right outside an Firearm seller 'Academy Sports + Outdoors’
🎥 These "Flock Cameras" are spreading like the plague...
Relatedly, this MAGA group also generally opposes AI surveillance and data centers:
A few of their comments:
They want to make sure you behave for the next lockdown. Law Abiding Citizen Stuff. Pre-Crime and Data Harvesting to sell you (consumer things), to target you (insurance things) and to stalk you (psycho things)
Hahahaha, wait until you hear about these things called “cell phones.”
those are a choice. going to a business with cameras is a choice. Driving down the highway being monitored to a database that matches your entire online history and phone while also knowing when your daughter needs to buy tampons for her next cycle isnt a choice. It isnt hard to figure out that 1984 is not the play book for a free USA.
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
We’ve been under surveillance ever since the internet was invented. Particularly when Facebook exploded.
Trump, however, is strongly supporting the AI industry, issuing an executive order that attempts to ban states from regulating AI. This has come up in the MAGA Forum discussions, too:
I’ve ALWAYS believed this [that AI is surveilling us and bad]. Sadly, [President Trump] is all for it.
He’s not the sharpest pencil
I’m not suggesting that opposition to mass surveillance is enough to fix the division in the country. However, this is an issue where there is legitimate, values-based agreement from one far end of the political spectrum to the other, and a place where we may finally see some legislative progress after the midterms.