On with Kara Swisher - Flock Cameras, Meta Glasses and the Surveillance Backlash

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Flock Safety, the company that makes the automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras used by over 7,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies, is facing a public backlash against surveillance tech. Nearly half of Americans surveyed in an August poll said they opposed ALPRs. The opposition is part of a long-simmering mistrust of big tech and concerns over privacy and data security.  Kara speaks with a panel of experts about how the backlash to Flock and street surveillance cameras squares with the boom in wearable tech and AI-powered smart devices. Plus, they discuss – and question – the usual framing of a trade-off between privacy and security. Jason Koebler is a co-founder of 404 Media. He and his colleagues have been reporting on Flock for the past few years.   Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice and is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant.” She’s also the author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Victoria Song is a senior reviewer for The Verge and author of the Optimizer newsletter. She specializes in emerging technologies in wearables, health and fitness and XR. Questions? Comments? Email us at [e-mail] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People want to protect their babies. They want to believe that they're giving their children the very best. Also, you cannot optimize naps. Sorry. You really can't. You can't. And also, babies aren't doing many crimes. Leave the babies out of it.

No crime and babies. And if they are, we'll take care of that one baby. Very clever baby. Hi, everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Fox Safety, the company that makes the automated license plate reader, or ALPR cameras used by over 7,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, is on the receiving end of a public backlash against surveillance tech. According to the Washington Post, nearly half

Americans surveyed in an August poll said they opposed ALPRs. But the opposition is part of a long-simmering mistrust of big tech and concerns over privacy and data security. Today, we're talking with a panel of experts about how the backlash to flock and street surveillance cameras squares with the boom in wearable tech and AI-powered smart devices and what's at stake in the trade-off between privacy and security. This is one of the most important topics of the day around tech, is what these companies are collecting, what they're doing with it, and what you need to know to protect yourself. You are a guinea pig to these companies who are only interested in shareholder value. They are not interested in you. They're not interested in protecting you.

you. They're interested in using you because they are at heart, repacious information thieves. This is a word Walt Mossberg used decades ago, and it remains even more true in the age of AI where they need more information to serve their corporate purposes. Jason Kebler is the co-founder of 404 Media. He and his colleagues have been reporting on flock for the past few years, along with other amazing reporting they do at 404 Media. Dr. Sophia Umoja Noble is the David. O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is the director of the Center on Resilience and Digital Justice and is the recipient

of a MacArthur Genius Grant. She's also the author of Algorithms of Oppression, How Search Engines, Reenforce Racism. Victoria Song is a senior reviewer for The Verge and the author of The Optimizer Newsletter. She specializes in emerging technologies in wearables, health, fitness, and XR. Our expert question today comes from one of my favorite journalists, cybersecurity experts, and author Nicole Pearl Roth. So stick around. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business takes everything you've got. And a lot of the tools out there that are supposed to make your life easier just aren't great at talking to each other. And that means you end up having to toggle between a dozen different apps and services just to keep the lights on. Enough of that. Now there's

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New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Jason, Sophia, and Victoria, thank you for coming on on. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me, too. So many of us, obviously, willingly share personal data with technology every day, all the time, from smartphone apps, smartwatches, fitness rings, doorbell cameras, yet flock safety's automated license plate reader,

which has been around a while, these cameras, have sparked a remarkable public backlash. Given how embedded data collecting tech is in our lives, I'd love to each to talk about why flock has become the breaking point. And what's the fear or concern at the heart of it? Because everyone's been carrying around since smartphones, surveillance devices, for a long time. Jason, you go first, then Sophia and then Victoria. Yeah, it's a great question, and it's one that I've thought about a lot recently.

I think that flock has become this avatar for people to push back against surveillance that they know that they're subjected to. I think that a lot of the things that you mentioned are consumer products where people are getting some sort of trade off. Like, they feel like they can't necessarily opt out of having a smartphone or opt out of social media. But here they have these, like, very public cameras that are showing up in their neighborhoods. They're driving around and they're saying, what is this? And there's actually a place for them to push back against it, which is their local city council meetings. I think it's very hard for an individual person or a small group of people to push back against

meta or Google or, you know, these big tech giants, but you can show up at a city council and say, what are these cameras, I don't want them, and yell at the mayor, yell at the city council. Right, a lot like data centers, the way they're articulating AI through data centers. There are issues with AI in a lot of ways because they're physical, right, standing in their communities. Safia? Yeah, I think that's true. Jason's got it right. And also, we see them disproportionately installed around our cities. So I think, you know, these are, again, very clear signals about who is the target of surveillance in a much more direct and visible way. The other thing is that, you know, this kind of promise of security and surveillance, which is the

way they're sold. But of course, you know, these broken windows theories, these ideas that, you know, if we kind of put visible improvement into our communities, it will produce crime, we actually see that these are used to ensnare and entrap people. And that is actually how people relate to them. In some ways, it's like the over-policing that black and brown communities and working class and poor communities have been used to, only now it's permanent. And it's actually difficult to evade. Right. Victoria? Yeah, I think it's basically to what Jason's point was, like these consumer devices that you give up your privacy for, you're getting a personal benefit out of it. With a smart watch, you are getting health data or, you know, these tech ads are always saying that the Alba Watch is going to save your life or something like that.

With the meta glasses, you might get cute footage of a pet or your kids. With the flat camera, you know that there is no benefit to you. You're just being watched and it kind of makes you feel like a subject instead of the person in control. So I think that's a big aspect of it. And then another aspect is I think there's an increased amount of distrust for the person behind the other side of the camera than in previous years. Like we used to believe that tech was going to improve everything. And now with the backlash against AI, with the backlash against all of these devices that want to know an increasing amount about you, I just think people are just increasingly distrustful of those things.

And those things are combining together. So, Jason, you and your team at 404 media have been covering flocks since 2024, and your reporting prompted congressional inquiry of a company last year. 404 reporting shows that flock camera has been used to help ICE and surveil no King's protests. Please say flock camera networks have enabled them to solve thousands of crimes, including car thefts, missing persons, and abducted children. Explain people what flock cameras do, how long they've been around, and how they're connected to the network

and how the data is stored. Yeah, so flock cameras are automatic license plate reader cameras, which is the technology that's been around for more than a decade now. But what Flock did was they essentially networked these together using artificial intelligence. That is the big differentiating factor of Flock from its competitors where they put them at intersections or on the street, and when you drive by it, it essentially takes a photo of your car

and adds it to a database that can be queried by the police at any point, and there's no warrant requirement for that. But basically, whereas in the past, if a police department had these ALPR cameras, they could only search the cameras in that individual town. Right now, flock is in 40% of the United States, and in many cases, cops are able to search not just the 15 cameras or 20 cameras that are in their town, but thousands in their state or more than 100,000 across the entire country. And so, you know, it's a very diverse country.

where the local needs are different in different places. And I think what happened was cities were signing up for this thinking, oh, we're going to use this to find missing children or stolen cars. And they woke up one day and realized that it was being used by cops for states over to search for undocumented immigrants or to search for a woman who had an abortion or buy cops to stock exes, things like this. And I think that's part of the backlash is that I think a lot of cities entered these agreements with flock without sort of understanding that they be part of a network, right?

Exactly. And the data is stored. How long? Well, it was 30 days. Flock has recently made some revisions where they're going to recommend that it's stored for seven days at a time. That is not mandatory, I believe, but that they're sort of pushing cops to have a seven-day retention period. Right.

But doesn't mean people couldn't copy the material, correct? That. And then also, I mean, you could query it kind of over and over again over time, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the companies responded to the reports of abuse. and the guardrails, this is only a shorter data timeframe? Well, they've done a few things, and I think that that's the big thing, is that flock built this network by sort of going town to town, city to city,

saying, you know, buy our technology. A lot of these were pitched as pilot programs or were bought using police discretionary funds, meaning it didn't go through like a formal city council approval process. In some cases, it did. But I think a lot of people woke up one day and said, what are these cameras? When did they get here? Like, how did this all occur?

and there have been all of these cases of abuse, and Flock has made some revisions. They've tried to reduce the length of time that the data is retained. They've tried to do automatic auditing for anomalous searches, meaning if a cop is searching the same license plate over and over and over again, that might mean that they are stalking someone. But what happened was the company didn't anticipate these problems ahead of time. And so it's fixing it now, and now it's saying, what's the problem?

Like, why are you mad at us? Right. Well, it reminds you of Facebook. Like, I didn't know people were going to do that. Amazon's Ring, one of the largest home security camera companies in the U.S., has been criticized in the past for its relationship with law enforcement and the company ended its partnership with Flock earlier this year. Ring is now updating its technology, aiming to prevent third parties from viewing

customers' home security footage without their consent. Victoria, is this latest move just a response to Flock-induced surveillance anxiety, or is something else happening? I think it's just a lot of different companies at the same time are kind of dealing with this. Like, I just saw the Apple event yesterday, and, you know, the first thing they did was they were talking about privacy and how that relates to the new Apple Watch audio intelligence features. And I really feel that a lot of that messaging was in response to the backlash, not only from flock, but also from the meta glasses that have been around people calling those pervert glasses and everything. So I do think that by and large, because we're moving into AI, being pervasive in our lives, and AI only really works if it knows everything about you.

And so these companies are hungry to learn more about us from all of our devices. It kind of creates this new tension that people are aware of, like, oh, the AI is coming for my job. AI is also coming from my personal data. AI is coming for every aspect of my life. And so, you know, you have a pretty big public backlash against it. And the companies have this, you know, incentive to push that on you and to kind of lull you into a sense of like, no, no, no, well, we care about your privacy. But, you know, after decades of feeling like, no, you don't care about our privacy, it's a little too little too late. Absolutely.

We'll get into meta-glasses later, by the way. The technical term is creeper glasses, not pervert glasses. But Flock's mission, according to the company, is to, quote, eliminate crime with a principled framework that protects privacy and promotes objectivity. Sophia, given what you know about algorithmic bias, which we'll get more into in a moment and the way these systems are built, what do you make of this statement? Yeah, I mean, I think that the underlying logics of so many of these systems is about using historical data to determine where hotspots are of concern.

And, of course, we know that communities of color, black communities in particular, have been over-policed. In fact, the invention of policing is really about the monitoring of black people in this country all the way back to the kind of origin stories of the slave trade and the practice of enslavement, the system of enslavement in the United States. And so when you think about the kind of historical data that is used, and this is this, you know, predates flock and ring with software like predepole, we know that using these kinds of systems to, you know, predates flock and ring with software like predpole, we know that using these kinds of systems to, predict where crime might happen is really about trying to contain and control different kinds of people and communities. And that has been historically kind of around racial discrimination and redlining and containment. So, you know, I see these as kind of a newer generation of these kinds of technologies. Again, you see them overrepresented and used to predict where

crime might take place, and usually that's about particular types of crime as well. Right, right. The past information should base your future choices in that, you know, more black people are in jail, therefore they must be more criminal, which is not true. It's just they're more arrested. That's different, which is a different thing. So if you have more arrests in certain communities, then you're going to have algorithms that are going to predict to go there to do more policing and more watching. So Jason, 4-4 reports that, while many Flock cameras are designed to track license plates, the company's

AI-enabled condor cameras, these names they pick are just astonishing, track people. Where are these cameras deployed and how are they being used? Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really important thing because Flock has spent a lot of the last month sort of saying, no, we just take static pictures of license plates.

We're not tracking people, which of course, if you're tracking cars, you are inherently tracking people. But Flock also has this entire software layer called Flock OS that allows cops to pipe in footage from any of their surveillance cameras, whether that's a flak-owned camera or another one. And so they have these condor cameras, which are PTZ cameras, which is pan-tilt zoom, meaning their video cameras, high-deaf that can, you know, pan-tilt and zoom in.

They actually exposed some of these to the internet late last year. And so I went and walked in front of some of them in Bakersfield, California. And basically, like, these cameras, they zoomed in on me as I was walking my dog across the street because they detect people. They are on bike paths in suburban Atlanta. They're at street fairs. They are not just on public roads, but also at pools, at community centers on pedestrian walkways, things like this. And it all sort of pipes into this flock OS system that cops can monitor in real time. It's all designed to kind of pair with their license plate product and that sort of thing. Right. So it's not just that. They want to look at everything, essentially. They want

constant surveillance, essentially. So I just spoke with, to speaking of that, tech executive and investor Chris Larson, who I'm sure you all know, he funded a surveillance network in San Francisco that's been credited with lowering crime in the city. It was an actual problem. He says he understands concerns about surveillance. Here is a clip. I totally get it. I think this is going to be the issue of the day because it's a tradeoff, always public safety and privacy. And San Francisco is really good on this, right? So they're not just doing surveillance and looking everywhere. and trying to see if somebody's doing something wrong. It's when you get a report of a smash-and-grab incident or a strong-arm robbery,

then a drone is going to be sent over there. That's what they do, but I get it. You know, people are still uncomfortable because it could change. So at what point do you think the potential harms and abuses of surveillance tech outweigh the benefits, Victoria and then Sophia? I mean, one problem I have is the idea that these are infallible and accurate. They're not. Like, I think there was a case.

with a flat camera where a woman was thrown for 13 days in jail when she was innocent and she had receipts. And they were like, no, no, no. This system basically said you were it. And so this whole premise of that you're trading off your privacy for your security and your safety is based on the idea that these systems are infallible and accurate and it's always going to catch the right person. And that's just not true. And so, you know, I just have a real problem with this tradeoff being so one-to-one in these tech guys' mind. Sophia? Yeah, I mean, picking right up on what Victoria is saying, just to take it deeper, we actually

know that when these facial recognition systems are deployed to people of color, they are less accurate. In fact, they are most accurate when white male faces are captured and are captured, and they have the least efficacy on black women's faces. And you can kind of go across that racial continuum to see the way. way in which, in fact, people have been wrongly incarcerated, and we have a lot of research now on the lack of reliability of these kinds of cameras. So, you know, this idea that we can scientifically somehow solve these problems through surveillance is really untrue. I mean, there are

many reasons also why we have smash and grab in cities and why we have crime in cities that aren't about because we don't have the perfect surveillance state. And so I think that, you know, the question is really about the underlying. causes or root causes, rather than making an incredible amount of money off of drones and flock cameras using the pretext of crime to do it. Exactly. We should note that Flock told 4-4 media that its products do not have facial recognition. It has no facial recognition of technology and development.

Atlanta, where Flock is based is one of the most surveilled cities in America, but local news reporting suggests the number of crimes people consider solved is not meaningfully increased despite an increase in the cameras. that's according to data collected by the FBI. Jason, how should we evaluate the efficacy of surveillance cameras based on that data? Because in some ways, right, look, if some robbery's happening and a drone can see it and the police could get there faster and more efficiently, not the worst idea in the world. Yeah, I think that's the crux of the issue or sort of where I've gotten myself to at this point,

where right now it's become a battle of the anecdotes, where it's like flock cameras have been used to surveil immigrants at the behest of ice. They have been used to, as we discussed, surveillance abortion, but then Flock will say, well, it was used to save this missing child. It was used to find this murder or that sort of thing. I think what's really hard to do

is to determine the actual causes of crime or a crime increase or reduction. It's like we live in a very complex society with all sorts of socioeconomic factors that lead to a crime happening or not or a crime being solved or not. And so Flock has sort of repeatedly picked anecdotes, as well as, like, they paid for a study a few years ago that said that they were

responsible for solving 10% of all crime in the United States, which is an absurd claim. And also, I spoke to the researchers who did that and said, this is not what we actually said. So it's sort of like, pick your scientist, pick your anecdote, that sort of thing. I think for me, the big issue with this is that this technology network has been built out by a private company. without the sort of robust public discussion that we're having right now. And now that we're having the public discussion, I mean, very, like, everyone is talking about flock. It's a huge topic on social media. It's huge at every city council meeting. The companies and the police are saying, what do you love criminals? Do you love crime?

Like, how could you want to take this down? And I think it's just something where there was not the initial sort of due diligence done before deploying this sort of technology. Very much like data centers. NDAs, just let's build them. Let's not tell you about these things. It's a very, it's a similar tactic by a lot of these companies. Let's get it out there. And then by the time they're out there, you know, ask for forgiveness rather than permission, essentially. We'll be back in a minute. Support for the show comes from Framer. Your website is the public face of your business, but that means any blemishes, typos or ugly designs are showing up loudly and in high-deaf, not exactly. leaving a great first impression. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. It's an enterprise-level solution powered by agents that provide premium hosting, enterprise-grade security, and 99.99% uptime

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purposes only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities. Let's take a step back and talk about how bias is woven into the tech behind the cameras and throughout tech more broadly. To via your book, algorithms of oppression examines how algorithms are neither neutral nor objective, as they say they are. You studied Google search at the time, and a related research, computer scientist, Timnit, Gephru, and Joy Bullenweeney, both of whom I've interviewed many times, found racial and gender biases in AI and facial recognition software. Break it down for us. How exactly are the stereotypes built into the AI training data? To me, it's the old computer thing, garbage in, garbage out. But talk a

little bit about that? Yeah, sure. I mean, I've been on the case since 2010, you know, kind of first publishing about this in 2012. And I will say that back then, even the word algorithms was not a part of our everyday lexicon. It just wasn't for everyday people of the way it is now. And we think of these technologies as being purely about math, mathematical computation, and the systems designers, the software engineers themselves, still want to hold on to these ideas. But the truth is that if you take something like in the context of a search engine trying to index the web and you use something like hyperlinking as a way to signal what's important. If this website is linking or pointing to this website and enough of that, those kinds of things are happening,

then that means it must be credible and legitimate. so it goes up in the page ring. And, you know, what you have is a massive network of computers and websites that can be optimized by those who have the most money. So in the case of the study that I did, I found that when you did queries on black women, black girls, Latino girls, Asian girls, you know, the majority of their representation, misrepresentation of them was pornography. So you could get a fair representation for certain communities when you did search. And part of that is because the porn industry was able to optimize those keywords more powerfully than any black women or girls or Asian or Latina girls could do. And so you have this kind of tension between

thinking about ad tech where industries that have a vested interest in trying to kind of surface what they want to the top of the pile is in play. But you also have designers who are not testing and not thinking about certain ideas and certain communities, certainly of a social nature. And so they also design technologies that are incredibly easy to manipulate. And of course, we've seen this even in the case of back then when I was studying, again, 15 years ago, if you did keyword searches on Jews, you would get Holocaust denial sites, anti-Semitic sites, you know, right there in the first page in the first couple of. of hits. So the way in which these things happen is you have the convergence of ad tech, people and actors, bad actors who can optimize content with what we call the metadata, the description about the websites, along with being able to pay more to Google to optimize their content. They're willing

to pay to have more visibility. You have minoritized people who cannot compete with that. And then you have an overlay of an idea that what's happening here is neutral and objective. And you have this kind of as the cultural overlay where people relate to it. Right, right, right, because most of those people have financial incentives of porn industry particularly. But also other industries too. I mean, you know, if you think about this incredibly flawed, and of course racial stereotypes and gender stereotypes, misogyny are also a huge part of the internet. So if you are indexing the internet and you have no standard or value by which to evaluate, let's say, evidence-based research against a subreddit that's, you know, a neo-Nazi thread or a misogynist threat or something in the

manosphere, you actually put those things all up equal to each other in that level of engagement. Yeah, yeah. I once had an argument with Larry Page about, he said all news is the same. I go, the New York Times is not the same as the National Inquirer. You do know that. Like, it was a weird, like, well, just put them all up. And I'm like, no, because you're then waiting the National Enquirer. It was, it was an astonishing. It's a bit of a bit. It's bizarre. I'll never forget it.

Victoria, you recently wrote about META's smart glass rollout. Again, another product they had not thought about or done any anticipation of any possible consequences and said the company was playing its cards all wrong. First, explain the controversy on META's facial recognition software internally called name tag. What are some of the biggest privacy issues and how has the company responded? And I will know, yesterday, META tried to give me a pair of Raybans. I have a pair, but I was like, and no, I don't want that anymore. But talk a little bit just so people understand the issues. And, you know, the good applications seem to me creepy, but possibly delightful. Yeah. So name tag, you know, it wasn't a thing that

Meadow put out there. There was a New York Times investigation that found that this internal document from Meta where they were saying, oh, we'll roll out this facial recognition feature at a time where privacy advocates are distracted by political turmoil. And so, you know, everyone latched onto that, and it was like, excuse me what? Like, you clearly don't have great intentions there. And, you know, 4-04 has done great reporting about spotting these meta-glasses on customs and border patrol agents. And so a lot of people are like, oh, so you're telling me that the government could facially recognize me wearing these glasses. Meta kind of had some executives come out and be like, no, no, no, no, it's meant to be a closed system on

Instagram. And, you know, it's based on your contacts. You get to define who these people are. that wasn't widely disseminated. And then Wired came out with their own investigation, and they found that META had silently shipped the code for this name tag feature to millions of devices out there and secretly walked it back after all of that. And once the backlash was huge because, you know, no one wants to feel like they're walking down the street and an ordinary pair of meta glasses is like identifying them a couple years ago. there were these college students who modified a pair of metaglasses so that they could instantly docks people based on existing facial recognition database that are out there. And, you know, it's, creepy. It's just creepy to have the idea, especially if you're a woman, that you're walking down a street and a pickup artist could be looking at you and finding out your name and your address, pretending that they know you. And it can be quite scary, especially since-

They also disable the lights that are supposed to meant they can disable that it's taping. So for the longest time, META's privacy policy was don't be a jerk. Also, we have this singular LED light that will signal to everyone that you're recording. Well, this LED light can not only be tempered with in multiple ways, both by software and physically by drilling into the light. It's very easily washed out by bright sunlight. So you're outside, you're walking, it's daylight. I have pictures on the verge.com where I have the light on and you really can't notice that it's there. I've had men. Many people in testing, I'll be like, can you see this privacy light? And they're like, oh, you know, it's really easily washed out. We're in bright sunlight or we're indoors even. No one's really noticing it. A true story. I was at a Vanity Fair Oscar party, and Sergey Brin walked in with Google Glass.

And nobody would talk to him. This was many years ago, maybe a decade ago, when they were putting out Google Glass. And he came up to me and goes, no one's talking to me. I wonder why. I go, you fucking creeper. Like, what do you think? These are celebrities. They don't want to be, you want to tape people?

well, I'm not doing it. I'm like, yeah, but how do they know? Like, it was really, it's sort of the mentality from the beginning that this is a good thing to be able to identify people. Yeah, and it's just like there is a disconnect between what people know the limitations of the devices are versus what they can actually do. Online, you see a lot of people go, oh, I don't want to be recorded 24-7. Well, the reality is that these glasses only last about 30 minutes of continuous recording, and that's if you've got them charged all the way up. But in the future, and there has been on this, Meadow wants these devices to be super sensing or recording 24-7, in which case there's a lot of sensitive situations that opens people up to...

404 media reported earlier this summer how police were using Flock feature called freeform to track people, not just cars, which they had claimed that was what they were doing. Again, Flock has said its products do not have facial recognition. But, Jason, how does free form work and what are the characteristics people or search for? I mean, you were walking your dog. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, this freeform search does use the automated license plate reader system. So, again, Flock says this just takes static images, but it's not just a static image of a license plate.

It's an image of a car. And for a while, they did roll out video as well. What free form searches is essentially Google for cops. Victoria brought up earlier this woman who was arrested in Florida, who served 13 days in prison. What happened there was the cops search for a black SUV. And so rather than actually having the license plate in question, they typed in black SUV. And her car was flagged by this system. She was near the site of a hit and run accident that killed three people.

The cop showed up at her house and arrested her on these manslaughter charges. Her car was not in any accident whatsoever. She was not involved. She just happened to be nearby. This can be applied to searches for people. So you could search protests, signs. like someone holding a sign. You can search for different types of bumper stickers.

You can search for a dog, for example. And so if there's a report of a dog bite or something like that, a cop could search any dog that passed by one of these flock cameras. Another thing that flock likes to bring up is that these cameras are not always recording. They are motion activated. And so they're only recording when something happens, which is essentially the same thing when anyone or any car drives by. And so that's one of the things with this company is that the type of

technology started off being maybe not so advanced, but they've been adding features left and right. They are experimenting all the time. And once a city is sort of locked into a contract, it's like they're getting all of these upgrades and cops are experimenting with them. Of course they will. Yeah, it's become like the first thing that cops do is they go to flock anytime there's a report of a crime and they're like, I'm going to type it into the system and see what it comes out. Yeah, it makes their life easier in that regard, less policing and more surveillance. Every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here is yours. Hi, everyone. I am Nicole Proleroth, the cybersecurity journalist and author of This is How They Tell Me the World Ends about the Cyber Weapons Arms Race. I have covered everything from the Snowden Files to the recent Chinese cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure.

And more recently, I've been tracking North Korean efforts to secure remote IT work at U.S. companies on my podcast to catch a thief. I am also actually a flock customer, our street set up flock safety cameras after we were broken into. But perhaps more than anyone in the neighborhood, I'm also acutely aware that we are creating an ambient surveillance network where the people getting caught in these dragnets never opted in and really never have a way to meaningfully opt out. So the big question I would ask of each of you is what information should companies simply never be allowed to collect in the first place? And what is the single most important rule you would put in place before this infrastructure becomes impossible to unwind? Thank you so much.

Sophia, you go first, then Victoria, then Jason. You know, this is an interesting question because I also can personally relate to this, having had a vandalism at my home, and how would we respond? And, you know, our choice was to have a closed system where we could know what was happening around us, but that did not feed to law enforcement and did not trigger the cops coming and, let's say, arresting my teenage son falsely. So I think when one implements a surveillance tech for their own personal safety, that does not mean that they're entitled to surveil the entire neighborhood or everyone around them and ensnare and in trap everyone. into that, you know, I think, I thought that was the more ethical personal choice for our family. And I think these are the kinds of things that also protect my neighbors, ultimately. It's not so

much what is the message from the companies. I think it's what is the message that we carry and what are the values we carry in our neighborhoods, in our communities, you know, with our neighbors. We have an incredible community listserv and we do a lot of things to try to just look out for each other as people. And I think outsourcing that to the tech isn't particularly beneficial, not to the degree that it creates, you know, other opportunities, as Victoria was talking about, like having a conversation about what we see and how we can help each other. Right. And what would be the single most smart rule you would put in place? I think these systems should be illegal until we have done the proper vetting,

have the proper public discourse, and we have more democratic participation in whether they exist in our lives at all. At all. Victoria? So a lot of the surveillance tech I deal with is kind of on a personal level. It's wearables. I'm going to get to that next. One thing that I've been grappling with recently is the idea of my personal privacy and data

is my personal privacy, kind of similar to what Sophia was saying. I don't think that anyone should ever be put in the position to be the steward of someone else's privacy given these devices. And so that's the one thing that you consent is like the number one thing in my mind at this point in time. And the idea that I am now burdened with your privacy if we just happen to be sharing a physical space is a heavy burden. And it's really kind of turned me off the supposed convenience or benefits of these devices. The number one rule, I think, is that we cannot leave it to private companies to make these decisions. We do need regulators and we do need place.

to weigh in and chime in because what happens when you have a pair of glasses that is your primary seeing device and you go into a court and the court is like, well, we've banned it and you're left without a seeing device that is vital to you navigating the world. Are you then obligated as an individual to carry two backup seeing devices on you at all times when glasses cost a billion dollars in the in the U.S., especially if you're visually impaired? So it's like we need to be having, like Sophia said, a very public discourse and one with legislators. And we cannot leave it to these private companies to decide. And I think it's laudable.

They were trying to sell it as a device like the metaglases for veterans who can't see or blind people who can't see and things like that. It's life-changing for them. But those people too deserve privacy. Those people too deserve a higher standard. So I have a little bit of an issue with people using this as using accessibility. as a shield. Jason? Yeah, I mean, I think facial recognition should be a non-starter, but I think more broadly than that, like automated enforcement using these technologies where

right now the big difference is that we used to have human beings watching surveillance footage, getting it after the fact, that sort of thing. Now you have an AI watching this footage at all times, and you have a network that is a lot larger than it's ever been. And I think that we really risk criminalizing a lot of like frivolous behavior. I think that we are marching towards a place where it is very difficult to exist in public without running afoul of some local ordinance or small crime. And I think that. That's Larry Ellison's goal. It is.

I know exactly what you're referring to. And that, I mean, that's the goal that some of these people imagine. This is for people that don't know. Larry Ellison said it's good to have them because then people behave. Exactly. Except the person who never behaves. I think we are starting to see surveillance systems affecting behavior, especially. with metaglass and things like that.

Like, the guy on my softball team wore them the other day. I didn't know he was wearing them. He had a home run and he turned them on. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm being recorded. I didn't even know. And you sort of don't know how to react in that moment. It's bad enough with cell phones, but you can see them coming in a lot of ways.

And then I think that there should be a warrant requirement. And I think that, you know, a lot of cops and the companies say that this will make it the technology not viable. But, you know, there's been studies done that the average warrant takes something like three minutes to process. Like this can be a very streamlined process, but I do think that adding that little bit of friction will prevent a lot of abuse. It appears to be a non-starter for flock and companies like it. It's something that they don't want to talk about.

And it's something that they fought very heavily against. They say, please regulate us. But then you say, okay, warrant requirement. And they shut down. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Built. You work hard for your money, but usually there's no one around to pat. you on the back or hand you a cookie when you pay your monthly housing bill. No one except

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So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyles is a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel. about Gen Z. It's undeniable that they're changing national politics.

Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats.

This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher, Rachel Jambaza, joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science, and I keep saying, like, young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Let's shift to the consumer angle. Victoria just referenced about wearable tech by some estimates nearly half of Americans own a wearable device. But a recent report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that most wearables lack basic transatlantic. transparency reports and key privacy features.

Victoria, you argue that after smartphone, quote, tech companies have decided they should live on and eventually in our bodies. So is more valuable and implantable tech that captures your biometric data and inevitability? And how is personal data that's collected on these devices used? Just for myself, I don't wear the aura ring anymore. I've shifted to a regular watch, not a digital watch. The phone is probably the one thing that is with me all the time. So talk about this briefly.

So basically, you know, these devices are constantly like sampling your biometrics, like a smartwatch, for example, is constantly measuring your heart rate. It's measuring your movements. And it all gets fed into algorithms that are proprietary and are different depending on which company you're using. And they'll use that and feed it into an AI increasingly now that gives you personalized insights. And the idea is that eventually you'll get personalized medicine. And this is kind of an interesting concept, sort of. But it requires so much data, and these companies are getting increasingly invasive. So they're increasingly tying up with CGMs, which are continuous glucose monitors, because metabolism is a thing that they want to get into.

They want to track your hormones. And so they're asking you to pee into a cup and use your pee data in some way. They want to measure your sweat through your feet for a scale. And all of these things are supposed to create a picture of you. So you have better health data. That's the benefit that they give to you. But it's also just like, well, they want all that information so they can serve you targeted ads. They want all that information so that they can serve their advertisers in some ways.

And it's similar to how the flock camera is saying, like, crime is something that will solve and will give you all this convenience. It's going to save your life. So it's a pretty compelling thing. But, you know, as we're seeing, they're not just health trackers anymore. They're going to be ambient. listening devices that are just on your body all the time. This new Apple announcement.

Yes, the audio intelligence announcement, which is just, you know, it's making people feel a certain way because it's one thing to save your life if you're in a car crash or if you fall down. It's another when it's just like, oh, is your Apple Watch listening to me at all times? Right, exactly. What is the transcript that's being generated? And, you know, Apple has released a white paper, some support documents that said there's no audio that's being saved, there's no playback, there's attribution stripped from all of these high-level summaries, there's no transcript. And it seems like they're trying to preemptively address some of the privacy concerns there, but it's also just like it changes the behavior of people now.

And these are the people who just changed like Ontario to like America, just pointing that out. ridiculous people they are. Apple, by the way, just unveiled its new AI watch that always listening feature that takes notes of aware of conversations through the day. Turn it off, everybody. Just turn it off. There's no need for you to know that. It's at least opt-in, so it's not on by default. So if you don't ever want it, you don't have to. If it was a Facebook one, it would be on by default. So go Apple. Good for you, Apple. The New York Times recently reported that NANET and other startups offering smart baby monitor systems, tending benefits like optimized nap predictions. According to Times reporting,

the wearables market is approaching $100 billion, a huge potential in the baby tech sector. Sophia, you worked in tech and advertised before entering academia. Talk about the rise of baby tech and what's the risk-benefit analysis that parents should consider for hooking up a newborn with a smart monitor. I have four kids. I have used listening monitors on them, but increasingly, as I had more children, less and less monitoring happened over time. And so, Certainly, there's been a lot of reports of people hacking into it, et cetera, et cetera, these sort of nightmare stories. Talk a little bit about newborn baby tech.

Yeah, I mean, so much of this wearable tech is snake oil. And I think that's one of the things that people really don't understand. I mean, even in a hospital, you know, we remember during COVID that the oxometer can actually accurately read the levels of oxygen among African Americans or more melanated people. So the science is faulty on a lot of the premises as Victoria is getting at. So imagine putting the faulty science on a newborn baby. I'm going to tell you that there's not a lot of research on newborn babies, just as there is not a lot. If you think about clinical trials and the kind of scientific basis of how research is done in medicine, it's mostly white men. So the entire like premise here that we somehow are going to know more and be more. effective in a medical intervention context is patently false. And we know this. To me, you know, when you think about babies and talk about people who can't consent to being entrapped into these systems. And of course, many, many parents over the last decade, as they've been

quitting Facebook, have also been taking their children off the internet for very important reasons because your children shouldn't be on the internet. Their faces shouldn't be on the internet, not just for the way in which their images are used for child sexual exploitation, materials and child pornography. But I think, you know, babies like crime, like the things we're talking about health, are such an emotional trigger for families. People want to protect their babies. They want to believe that they're giving their children the very best. And that, what a pernicious kind of craven marketing ploy to use. I mean, that is really, they are the option. of manipulation for parents and people who are caretakers of children.

Also, you cannot optimize naps. Sorry. You really can't. You can't. And also, babies aren't doing many crimes, I've noticed. Babies aren't crimes. No crime in babies. And if they are, we'll take care of that one baby.

Very clever baby. The only time I've used technology monitoring, and it's on the opposite end for elderly people, my mother was falling a lot, and I allowed a fall camera in the thing because it was hard, you know, because she fell so much. And so in that case, I found it useful. I made certain they had an on-off switch for it. Um, wearable technology can help empower people. It can. And devices like Apple Watch can help doctors and patients detect conditions like atrial fibriolation. I used when I had a stroke. It was very helpful. But that utility depends on collecting, again, an increasing amount of detailed data. Victoria and then, Jason, how should people weigh those

benefits against the privacy risks. And where should the line be drawn that these devices collect, retain, and share? And is any company doing it right? First, Victoria, than Jason. Well, that's a lot of stuff. But, you know, I will say that one thing that we do at the verge in our reviews is we haven't agreed to continue section at the end of each review. And we talk about the terms and conditions you're agreeing to. And I always say that if you're very sensitive to your private health data, you do not want a wearable device. I say this as the wearable lady because it's not just, you know, your device, you buy it. That's one set of terms and conditions and privacy policies. You have to connect it to your phone. That's a separate set of privacy terms and conditions. And then, you know, all of these things,

they're saying, oh, connect to Strava, connect to these other third party things. Those have their own separate terms and conditions. So when you're connecting through these APIs, you are agreeing to that third parties, possibly less rigorous privacy terms. standards. So there's no way to really stop and contain the privacy of your health data. HIPAA exists, but it's woefully inadequate and has been outdated for wearable technology since its inception. So, you know, you can't really rely on those things. And what I generally tell people is that these devices are constantly bombarding you with more metrics, more things to become anxious about. And what you really have to do is come in with a very strong goal if you haven't health issue that, again, if you have had a stroke, if you have had a heart condition,

I continually test CGMs because I have messed up metabolism and I'm trying not to have full-blown diabetes, even though it's in my family history. So there's like a certain terms of engagement that I have set for myself. And, you know, I've talked with my own editors about what level of invasive technology I am willing to test for myself and what I will not test because an increasing number of these companies want my blood, and I have to sit with that about all the blood draws that they want to take from me. And by that, extension, consumers, these are very serious things that these companies want to learn from you. So it's like, do you have a condition that needs to be monitored? Are you chronically ill for those people? Wearables can be very empowering.

It can help them regulate their day and their energy. There are specific wearables that are out there to help them with that. If you are someone who is hard of hearing or low vision, there are certain tradeoffs there that will make your life more autonomous, more independent, and that's great for you. But if you are an average person, sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is not engage with these devices. It's to listen to your own body. And, you know, I always say wearables are only meant to monitor long-term trends. You can, like, ignore it most of the time and still be fine. You know when you've had a good night's worth of sleep. You generally do if you're healthy. In the series I did for CNN, I would talk to Zika Manuel,

And we were talking about the oaring, and he goes, you know when you don't sleep well. You don't need it to tell you that you didn't sleep well, which is interesting. So, Jason, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I was just going to say, like, there's a reason why people use these things, which is they're very convenient. And I think that they almost kind of, like, insidiously enter your life where you get them for one reason, and then, you know, new features are added, that sort of thing. I think often about TSA pre and clear and all these things that we do at the airport to save

a few minutes, like, or to not have to take our wallet out. that sort of thing. And I think every person needs to sort of make their calculation like what they're comfortable with and what they're not comfortable with. I think that one of the things that I try to do in my work is focus on how we can push back for better regulation of these technologies. And I think Victoria raised a super important point that every surveillance device, or whether it's a wearable, whether you're buying a ring camera, these sorts of things, they connect to other systems. And I think that once you don't have any idea, where your data is flowing, that's when I start to personally get very uncomfortable with it.

And you ask about companies that you trust. I mean, I think that they don't have a perfect track record, but I think Apple at least nods to privacy a lot. And they do a lot of things like on device, things like this. Like you can control where the data is going often. Yeah, unless they get your device. It's in there. Exactly. And that's the other thing is like, I mean, the only way to be absolutely safe is to like opt out of society entirely. And I think that that is not feasible for most people. I think also with something like a ring camera, it's like maybe your family is okay with you having a ring camera,

but is the people who deliver packages to your house, is the gardener. You're sort of opting other people into these ecosystems, and I think people need to consider that. Let's end by looking at the shift around public attitudes. I have taken all these things off my house, which is interesting because I don't have an aura ring anymore. I'm moving to analog watches again.

I still, of course, have the phone. Apps and products routinely encourage users to share more personal information exchange for better experience or improved product. There's a sense that you're contributing to making something better by sharing your data. They ask you that all the time. Would you like to share to help us improve our systems? Sophia, what are their arguments to companies used to persuade us to surrender our data? And how valid are those arguments? Everyone has gotten that pop up, for example.

Yeah, I mean, I think that the more that these technologies are embedded into our public institutions, into our jobs, you know, into kind of authority conferring legitimizing spaces, the more people feel they cannot resist or they feel that someone has vetted these things for them or their livelihood is dependent upon them. So I think that's one of the challenges is the public is, for example, deeply suspicious of generative AI and large language models. And yet, when they go to work, especially the more they're working in kind of like white collar jobs, they're being forced to use these kinds of things. And so I think the companies have been smart to try to really triple down on enterprise level engagement. And of course, we have things like, which we haven't even talked about,

surge pricing and predictive pricing and things that happen. You know, now you're in the grocery store and you're paying more, I'm paying more than Victoria is paying, you know, for the same bag of carrots. Like all of these kinds of things, I think, are, thankfully, the verge and 404 media have been powerfully covering and helping us understand, investigative journalists, understand what the stakes are. But the companies are really gamifying. You know, they're either going through our jobs or they're kind of gamifying, making these things seem fun and interesting and, like, you don't want to be left behind. I mean, we see these ads all over L.A. for friend.com, you know, the friend necklace that, oh, okay, we can.

could just do a show on friend. I mean, from hell. So, you know, the wearable necklace that tracks every single thing you do in all your conversations and somehow that's cute and comments on your life. So I think, you know, we just have to get smarter and smarter about this. Our instincts in the public that these things are not what we want are the right instincts. And I would just say that people have ways to resist. One of the most powerful things that people can do, if you have a pension or you have a 401k or you have any way to direct your money out of surveillance tech, that is something you can and should do. We're doing that as professors right now in the UC. We have a massive campaign going to take our pension money out of surveillance tech.

There should be pressure on CalPERS and Calsters and all of the different pension funds, because that's actually where these companies get the money to make the terrible things that are either going to put us out of work or make our lives more difficult. So we need to also, you know, feel more agency and power in speaking back to and cutting off the flow of capital into these dumb ideas. I would also stress that they're saying, if you give your data, it'll be better. It's their business. They can figure out a different way than stealing from you. The last question for all of you, the Electronic Tier Foundation recently released a two-part guide to online safety and doxing, which is ways to reduce your overall footprint along with steps

to take if you're in the midst of being ducks. Ultimately, a lot of people don't feel and control their personal data. A lot of it you can't opt out of unless you want to just live out in the woods and grow your own vegetables, which maybe you might want to do soon about the vegetable part. But what will it take to convince people that their actions matter when it comes to protecting their privacy? Because in fact, they do. And I've said that this popular backlash against surveillance tech and data centers is a proxy for anger toward tech oligarchs, billionaires, AI, a number of things. Do you think that? we're reaching a moment when backlash can lead to actual systemic change or political movement

and changing our relationship with tech and consumers. I doubt it. I sort of go more with different European regulators, one of whom told me we're trading convenience for control of our lives. So I'd love each you to sort of reflect in a big picture. Do you think there is a movement? Because I feel it with my older sons. They are veering away from this stuff in a way that is social media, tracking and things like that, much more so. than people that are older them. But do you feel like it is one of those moments where we want to renegotiate our relationship with tech?

Jason, Victoria, and then, Sophia, you can finish and have the last word. I absolutely do think that there's a movement there, like you identified. I started becoming a tech journalist right before the Edwardsodin Revelations of 2013, and that was a big moment. I mean, there were not huge changes in privacy then, but it was very top of mind. But I've been covering surveillance and privacy ever since then. And I've always looked at it as this very niche thing that a lot of people care about very deeply,

but that the masses either don't understand or don't get out of bed to talk about. And with this flock and AI data center backlash, I mean, I log on to Instagram and the videos I'm seeing there are people talking about it. One, a lot of them are very informed, like getting into the nitty-gritty. And two, a lot of them don't have 10,000 views. They have 10 million views. And, I mean, that's a difficult way to assess. popularity, but I do think you are seeing people show up at city council meetings. You're seeing city councils cancel these contracts. And you're also seeing attempts by the people who are opposing

flock to make this a more universal discussion about surveillance technologies in general. And so, you know, their powerful interests sort of on the other side, like there's a lot of money on the line for these companies, AI companies especially to have us use this technology and to have data-centered proliferate and all that sort of thing. But I do think that there is a very concerted backlash right now. And I do think that politicians are starting to listen, whether that leads to meaningful change or whether it leads to, you know, like packaging it up around the edges and getting shoved down our throats anyways, I think that kind of remains to be seen. But I'm feeling a bit more optimistic than I have in quite some time just because of the

amount of energy that we're seeing right now. Yeah, I just want to bring up the example of Google Glass, the original version, and the current backlash that we're seeing with Metaglasses, the public absolutely has a say in whether these things proliferate. Because what happened with the Google Glass, people were ripping them off each other's faces. And then you don't want to get into a situation where you're in danger. I see this incredibly violent language that my readers and people online say with these pervert glasses where it's like, oh, going to rip them off each other's faces. And I'm like, don't do that. That could be not so great for you. But at the same time, you know, my coworker Mia Sato wrote a story about how people are harassing retail workers with these glasses. And one thing that I found super encouraging was the retail worker was so smart and he said meta stop recording.

So people can do things to make these devices unattractive. And that will force companies to either adopt a less evil way of implementing that. We've seen that with Apple with these new audio intelligence features where they're saying. So it's not going to do this. It's not going to do that. We're trying to make it attractive in a more private way because there is this public backlash. So yes, I do have hope. They're certainly not going to do it on their own. Trust me. They're not going to do it on their own. So people do have to say very loudly, we don't like this, do better. So I do have hope there because we killed smart glasses once. This is very fragile. I'm still a

skeptic. I'm not, it's not inevitable that smart glasses have to be a thing. Do you know where the video will go in your AirPods? That's where it's going. Much more. So I'm just telling you. It's FYI. That's where it's headed. Sophia, you get the last word. Well, I've got to say I've been in this conversation for a long time, too. And I definitely think that the way everyday people are talking about these issues is so different than it was in 2010 and 2012. So I'm extremely hopeful. In fact, what I see is unions are starting to come to the table and they're bargaining over the use of AI and the job.

That is go, go harder, do more on that. We are seeing all over Europe, in particular, a complete divestment from U.S. big tech. I mean, nation states are talking about we need to get our governments and our citizens off of Microsoft. So these are very big global. shifts. And in fact, there's a whole new renaissance for Linux, if you can believe it, or people having the server at home, keeping things local, figuring out how to make mesh networks.

We see new kind of Bluetooth networking, just very interesting kinds of what we might think of as fringe now, but moving toward more and more toward the mainstream because people do love tech, but they want to do it in ways that are not so consequential. And of course, the more that people learn about Palantir and what it means to have these kinds of companies as the infrastructural backbone of where all this data converges to create digital profiles that determine how you can move. I mean, social credit, people worry about what China is doing. We should be worried about what the United States is doing.

So I think that these are much more mainstream conversations than they were a decade ago. And I'm grateful that we're able to have these conversations. This conversation will reach a lot of people. And there are practical ways, again, that people can move their money out of surveillance tech. They can bargain over those things on their job. They can confront the school boards and the schools where their children go and get this predictive AI out of the lives that are kind of where these technologies will overdetermine what is possible for us and for our futures. Yeah, I do believe there is for the first time. I agree with all of you that there is suddenly a lot of anger.

It's a lot of reasons. converging and it would be really nice if our regulators would listen to people, which they don't do most of the time, instead of get bought and paid for by these companies. Anyway, I really appreciate it. It's really important to understand surveillance and to have a good attitude towards it. In some cases, it can be helpful in most cases. It is helpful only to these tech companies. And I really appreciate your continued work, all of you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Today's show was produced by Nishat Kurwa, Michelle Alois. Catherine Millsop, Megan Bernie, and Madeline LaPlante Duby. Special thanks to Lisa Soap, Jim Mackle,

Manolo Moreno, and Anika Robbins. Our engineers are Fernando Aruta and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, we won't have to follow you. If not, your creeper glasses won't save you from Silicon Valley's surveillance, Panopticon. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Caraswisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.