Posted on 09/15/2026 3:29:54 AM PDT by Adder
Just as Gavin Newsom and other “COVID” tyrants didn’t abide by their own “guidelines,” Flock camera installers don’t like being watched, either. A guy named Brendan Keefe who works as a journalist for InvestigateTV got a tip from his daughter that someone was putting up a Flock camera near his home in Atlanta, GA. He went to the location to watch and record what was going on, just like the Flock cameras watch and record us. When the Flock installer got in his Flockmobile, Keefe followed, to see where he went next and to watch what he did next – just like the Flock cameras do to us. Apparently, what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander.
(Excerpt) Read more at ericpetersautos.com ...
My small beach community in n FL had three Flocks. I noticed yesterday all three are covered with a black plastic trash bag.
Does this camera read minds? Examples please.
The worst part about your post? Up until the last line it is something you can legit see here. The “if you are doing nothing wrong” crowd.
“Hut! Hut! Hutters! “ (From the article.)
AI overview: “Hutters are people who build, own, and spend their time in simple recreational shelters called huts...”
??????????
Folks, here is the issue as I see it:
This was something that became a “thing” during the Biden Administration:
The government cannot surveil you without a warrant due to pesky 4th Amendment restrictions.
But Flock can.
Granted, Flock DOES NOT legally have the power to tie “you” (who you are) to a plate they read or a vehicle with a characteristic physical appearance like dents or bumper stickers. They simply file your plate number in a database with metadata (I assume) such as make, model, year, color, sticker locations, dent locations, and so on.
And each time you go by a flock camera in your car, it reads whatever it needs to and ties dates, times, and GPS coordinates to whatever plate number you have. If it doesn’t catch the plate number, or...if you have either removed your plate or altered/concealed it, it still gets tied to a specific plate.
Law enforcement agencies or other authorized entities DO have the ability to do that lookup to find who owns a given license plate, and they can do that with NO WARRANT WHATSOEVER. After all, if they are running a plate number during a traffic stop, they cannot expect to get a warrant as the car is stopped on the side of the road, right? So they have the ability to do this kind of thing for “the greater good”.
So, a local police department or other “authorized agency” signs a CONTRACT with Flock, and they get access to the Flock database with all those juicy, “anonymous” plate number. Generally, they don’t pay per each access, they have some contract that lets them do large numbers of lookups for a given price.
So.
Law enforcement or other “authorized agencies” (which 100% would include nearly any government agency, including ones that have laws they must follow for “warrantless surveillance” so they don’t have to break any laws by surveilling your car.
Because they aren’t doing the surveilling. Flock is. And there aren’t any rules against that you know.
And here we are. Without any warrant, the FBI, the IRS, the ATF, the State and the Local Police can surveil you 24x7 without breaking any law.
During the Biden Administration, I remember they wanted to get money allocated in various budgets for the purchase of private surveillance data, and there was some “debate” about that. In the end, it was all swept under the rug (IIRC) and that was that. I distinctly remember this surfaced briefly, it caught my attention, then disappeared. (the request for funds in various budgets to purchase surveillance data such as Flock provides). They wanted a way to get around the surveillance of private citizens without requiring a warrant, and this was the way to do it.
It is an end run around the 4th Amendment protections on Search and Seizure. It is as simple as that, in my opinion.
If I am erroneous in my analysis here, I am open to correction. This is what I appreciate about Free Republic. This is my analysis, and someone may put an analytic torpedo armed with specific rationality into the side of it, and I will fully accept that as a good thing.
Honestly that is a pretty tight analysis. Thanks.
Bkmk
I am looking for holes in it-this is just me sitting in front of my computer.
I have (as all of us do to varying degrees) the vanity that I can cover the bases and think I have an airtight explanation, until someone points out...”Well, in reality, this is the situation...” and I kind of make the blank look with my face and say “Oh, yeah. I didn’t consider that...”
LOL, it is very humbling...the frequency with which that happens.
The move toward using NGOs to skirt direct constitutional limitations on what the government can do is a strategy trend that has been increasing for decades.
Stuff like this is NOT going to stop until congress passes laws strictly restricting it, or until the supreme court makes a decision specifically saying that the use of private 3rd party services is still an infringement on people’s rights!
People are so naive.
Just because we have this pesky thing called the bill of rights doesn’t mean you are protected.
It only means that if you can catch and prove government entities infringing on your rights, you can pursue (likely an uphill battle) redress
“We need to bomb the crap out of German industries.”
“No. that’s what NAZIs do ...”
Step ladder.
Garbage bag.
Zip tie.
Some assembly required.
L
Outstanding analysis. That this hasn’t become an election issue, or something reviewed by the SCOTUS is beyond me. If I were caught in a crime, and they located me this way, I’d get a lawyer to sue to have the case thrown out on 4A grounds and let the chips fall where they may.
At least the corrupt judiciary - and it is most certainly and completely corrupt - would be on record as having scuttled 4A. After that, it will take 2A to restore it.
And chainsaws.
Reality is probably worse than your analysis suggests.
One of the enlisted Marines looks at him dubiously and says with certainty something like "What? They are watching us right now..."
We are being watched and surveilled constantly "for our own good". We must assume every word we write on this forum, every web page, every mile we drive is being surveilled. It is the world we live in.
According to some videos I have seen, a battery-powered circular saw will cut through 2” aluminum tube faster than any other commonly used power tool.
All true. Damn it.
Thing is, we live in a very dangerous world, and as a result, we are caught on the horns of a dilemma:
One horn is our personal safety as citizens which these acts of dubious legality may enhance with good-intentioned efforts.
The other horn is the desire of people to use this data for personal gain or party gain.
In the end, we may try to choose as with all “horned dilemmas” to go between the horns, but may still get impaled on one or the other.
You are probably correct there.
There's part of the problem.
Government seeks to criminalize our preparation for ensuring our personal safety. In the most dangerous parts of America, carrying a deadly weapon for self defense is either extremely restricted or outright prohibited.
Government inhibits our ability to protect our own personal safety, then employs the tools of tyranny in a pretense of ensuring our personal safety for us.
It's not about "crime control", it's about "citizen control".
Agree 100%.
100%.
“the data is stored for long term retrieval”
One can easily tell a lot of data is being stored because the price of SD camera cards has soared.
Most of my SD cards are far from being filled.
The data centers alone have about as much data as the eight billion people of the world.
The US Patent Office patents can be stored on a very modest number of SD cards.
The data from my private library probably would fit on one large SD card.
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