WSJ What’s News - Flock Cameras Are Spreading Across America. So Is the Backlash.

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

P.M. Edition for Aug. 25. National affairs reporter Kris Maher discusses how the AI surveillance company has become the target of bipartisan anger. And Canada retaliates against U.S. tariffs with some of its own. Ottawa-based reporter Paul Vieira says the tariffs are strategic—they target products from states in play in the U.S. midterm elections. Plus, Dolly Parton has died. The songwriter behind hits including “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You” was 80 years old. Pierre Bienaimé hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Canada unveils new retaliatory tariffs on U.S. seafood, steel, and other products. Plus, flock cameras are spreading across the U.S., and so is the backlash. Something that's so interesting about the opposition to the technology and the company is that it does span the political spectrum. And Dolly Parton has died at age 80. It's Tuesday, August 25th. I'm Pierre Bietamé for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Alex Oslo. This is the PM edition. of what's news, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. In the latest development in the escalating trade dispute between Canada and the U.S., Canada says

it will put a retaliatory tariff of up to 50% on U.S. products. Those include steel, aluminum, motorcycles, chainsaws, and processed cheese. The tariffs affect about 7% of what Canada imports from the U.S. WSJ reporter Paul Vieira talked to us from Ottawa. He says the tariffs are an attempt to exert political pressure on American politicians ahead of the midterms. For example, Canadian officials have targeted roughly 200 seafood products for tariffs. Why is that important? Because Maine could be a source of a lot of these seafood products.

And it so happens that Republican Senator Susan Collins faces re-election in the midterms. That Maine race could tip the balance on who, controls the Senate. Canadian officials also said that the duties they are set to impose are designed to protect domestic market share for firms directly impacted by President Trump's 50% levy. The new Canadian tariffs apply to about $20 billion worth of goods, and they don't take immediate effect. Canada is not going to impose these retaliatory tariffs until September 8th, the Tuesday after Labor Day. So in theory, there could be the possibility of a restart of talks between the two sides. But based on a lot of the rhetoric we're hearing, it just appears that the sides are too

far apart and both sides would have to put some proverbial water in their wine to come to the possibility of an agreement. Meanwhile, President Trump is threatening to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America. In a social media post, Trump says he's considering the change because the U.S. doesn't expect to be, quote, doing much business with Ontario anymore. Canada's industry minister, Melanie Jolie, had a response to that. We'll always call it Lake Ontario. Period. CIA director John Radcliffe made a surprise visit to Moscow today.

It was his first publicly known trip to the Russian capital. He spent about four hours there before leaving. The reason for the visit wasn't immediately clear. The CIA declined to comment. And in health news, the U.S. has reported its first measles deaths of the year. Pennsylvania officials said today that two people died in the state after they got measles. They weren't vaccinated. The U.S. declared measles eliminated more than 25 years ago,

but in recent years, cases have surged as vaccination rates fell. Thousands of people have gotten sick. The Journal has learned that securities regulators are investigating the trading of situational awareness. The AI-focused hedge fund suffered billions of dollars in losses last month before selling the bulk of its portfolio. The SEC has sought information from banks that provided financing to the fund. A spokesman for situational awareness says the company will cooperate with any regulatory request. In earnings news today, Dix's sporting goods shares sank more than 30%.

The sports retailer warned of lower profits for the year, saying consumers weren't spending on footwear. That comes after a $2.4 billion deal for Foot Locker about a year ago. A Morgan Stanley analyst had a pointed question for Dick's management during the company's earnings call today. I guess the first question simply is what's changed since we were sitting here 90 days ago and you were raising guidance and speaking very optimistically about both Dix and Foot Locker. Thanks for the call, Simeon, and thanks for being so direct. First of all, we continue to be very excited about our business, and I think everybody should know that. That was Dix executive chairman, Ed Stack.

He then said the sneaker market is full of inventory, and rivals are slapping on discounts. That's pressured footlocker to do the same. U.S. stocks edged higher today. The three major indexes all climbed by less than 1%. Meanwhile, oil prices and bond yields fell. Coming up, we've got the revenue number that Anthropic plans to tell investors it could theoretically make one day,

and it's big. That and more after the break. There are 120,000 flock cameras across the U.S. Among other things, they scan passing cars license plates. And the company behind them, Flock Safety, says they give police a powerful tool for catching criminals. Nine years ago, we founded Flock with one mission, build safer communities. But these cameras are also making a lot of people angry. No Flood City!

No Flock City! No Flock City! No Flock City! from activists in a group called D. Flock to cybersecurity researchers and politicians on both sides of the aisle. Wall Street Journal National Affairs correspondent Chris Marr joins me now. Chris, Flock's cameras are in nearly every U.S. state, as you report. They've signed a bunch of deals with police departments, businesses like retailers. But it's not like surveillance cameras are some new thing. How is Flock different?

So Flock is technically an automated license plate reader company. And it's different from other kinds of things. surveillance cameras because it really is focused on vehicles. They are capturing about 20 billion license plates per month. They're also capturing all kinds of identifying markers. They're capturing dents. They're capturing bumper stickers, the make and model of a vehicle, whether it has a gun rack, bicycle rack, all sorts of things. And AI technology enables searching through vast quantities of data to identify individual vehicles. So you were in Atlanta where flock is based and you went to an event put on by critics of the company. What did you hear there?

Critics are saying that this violates people's privacy rights, that people who are innocent shouldn't have their information scooped up by police departments or businesses and put into a database that police and others can search. I went to a forum that was put on by D.Flock, which is an opponent group, that has a website that tracks the precise locations of flock cameras across the country. And there were speakers. One of them happened to be Ben Jordan, who's a cybersecurity researcher, who has done pretty intensive studies of flock cameras. including ones he purchased legally. And he found a way to get into the system simply by pushing buttons on the camera. In another case, he was able to find a way into live flock cameras through the internet.

So no hacking involved. He was able to just find a way in, which anybody could have done. Flock's CEO, Garrett Langley, said that he was grateful that Jordan had found these vulnerabilities, that they've been patched, and that they affected a very small percentage of the company's cameras.

Police departments are a big customer for Flock, But you report that there's also been allegations of abuse there? Many police departments say this is a really powerful tool. They're very supportive of it. But there have been police officers who have been found to have misused the Flock system. They've effectively stalked a partner or a wife or spouse. It's a little bit difficult to figure out how frequently this is happening. But it clearly has happened.

Flock has admitted this. And my conversations with the CEO was saying that it's the company's own audit logs that are uncovering this misuse. In some cases, police departments have terminated their officers if they've found them to be misusing or abusing the system. And what about lawmakers? What kind of pushback are we seeing from them? At the state level, we've seen a number of states pass legislation to limit the data retention, how long the information can be kept, how it can be shared, whether it can be shared across state lines. Something that's so interesting about the opposition to the technology and the company is that it does span the political spectrum. In Congress, the bills have been introduced.

introduced by Republican lawmakers, but Democratic lawmakers also are supportive of investigating and reviewing this technology and perhaps reining it in as well. Chris Marr covers National Affairs for the Wall Street Journal. Thanks, Chris, for joining me. Thanks so much. Companies going public often estimate their total addressable market to show investors how much room they have to grow. And in the case of Anthropic, that number could be eye-boggling.

The journals learned that the company behind the Claude Chatbot is likely to tell investors that its potential revenue opportunities are above $30 trillion. That would top the $28.5 trillion estimate from SpaceX earlier this year. Anthropics plans are still being discussed and the figures could change. It's expected to unveil IPO paperwork in the next few weeks that could set it up to go public as soon as September. That, of course, is Dolly Parton. One of the country's greatest artists and a beloved cultural icon, Parton's family says she died today in Nashville.

She was 80 years old. Pardon was a prolific songwriter. She put out more than 50 studio albums with total sales over 100 million worldwide. Jolene released in 1973 was a number one country hit, but it only grazed the pop charts. Pardon had visions of reaching a wider audience. It was 9 to 5 that secured her status as a crossover superstar. She wrote it on the set of the movie, same name, that was also her screen debut in 1980. Parton was also a philanthropist, and the head,

of her own entertainment empire. Her ventures worth more than $500 million include the Dollywood Theme Park in Tennessee. It draws more than two million visitors annually. She was known for her work ethic and her humor. Oh, I know you're thinking, Lord, sick or well,

that girl's always promoting something. Well, that's true, but that's how you get it done. Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946 in a two-room cabin in Pittman Center, Tennessee. Her parents were sharecroppers and she was the fourth of 12 children.

Pardon reflected on her origins in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters in 1978. I wanted more than to just be a farmer's daughter, even though I'm proud to be. I just wanted pretty things. I wanted money to buy the things that I had always been impressed with as a child. I wanted to, I guess, to be a star.

And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Danny Lewis with supervising producer Taldei Arbell. Signing off after my 9 to 5, I'm Pierre Bienn-May for the Wall Street Journal. What a way to make a living. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.