Flock Employee Calls Cops on Reporter Filming Them

Flock Safety wants to record millions of Americans—but apparently no one is allowed to record it.

The disturbing double standard was revealed Tuesday by Atlanta News First, which found itself in a load of trouble after one of its investigative reporters stopped on the side of the road to film a Flock Safety employee upgrading one of the company’s cameras near his house.

Brendan Keefe—a Peabody, duPont, Murrow, and Emmy award–winning journalist—pulled ahead of the Flock Safety site in a marked press van, donned a high-visibility vest, and began snapping pictures. Almost immediately, the Flock Safety employee chucked his equipment into his truck and fled the site.

Keefe tried to tail the vehicle, but his efforts were interrupted by the Milton Police Department, which sent out three police vehicles after the Flock employee summoned them.

“I work with Flock Safety and I’m getting followed, harassed, pretty much, taking video and pictures,” the employee said in a 911 call obtained by the local news network.

When the operator prompted the employee to provide his name, he opted not to, claiming that he didn’t “want them to hear my full name” on the call “when they get it.”

Taking pictures and videos in public spaces where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy is protected under the First Amendment. But Flock Safety’s close relationship with police departments across the country seems to have afforded the company protections beyond the scope of the Constitution.

“When you are lawfully present in a public space—such as streets, sidewalks, and parks—the First Amendment generally protects your right to photograph or film anything in plain view, including federal buildings and law enforcement,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Flock Safety deployed its first mass surveillance camera (which was, at the time, an Android phone placed inside a waterproof box) in Atlanta in 2017. Since then, the company has deployed tens of thousands of cameras to record and document the movements of everyday Americans, regardless of whether or not they’re suspected of a crime. That data is then sold to law enforcement agencies, offering them a seemingly infinite portal into the potentially consequential habits of their countrymen.

In April, the company—and its business model—were valued at $8.4 billion.

In most cases, the cameras were installed without community consent. The company has repeatedly defended its product, claiming that the cameras have provided more safety, and that the cited abuses stem from the way that police use their data, rather than the collection of the data itself.

“Ultimately, I would argue that the whole community is our customer,” Flock Safety chief communications officer Josh Thomas told Atlanta News First.

“Why can’t I opt out? Why can’t the spouse or ex-spouse of a police officer opt out of this kind of data collection on their movements?” asked Keefe.

“Why can’t a person opt out?” repeated Thomas. “It’s because if your car gets stolen, if something were to happen, moreover the government requires you to have a license plate.”

“It’s plain viewing information,” Thomas continued, missing the bitter irony of the situation. “Why can’t you opt out? You can, if you want to opt out of society.”

Elon Musk’s super PAC is stealing voters’ personal information—again.

The billionaire technocrat’s America PAC has launched an aggressive advertising campaign directing them to Vote Safe, a website claiming to provide users with information they need to “vote with confidence.” But all the while, the site is secretly collecting some information of its own, Judd Legum reported Tuesday on his substack Popular Information.

Any visitors to the site will unwittingly hand over their full name, birthday, home address, email address, cellphone number, IP address, browser, location, voter registration status, and district, not to mention every link they click on and every page they look at.

The website previously had a privacy policy barring America PAC from sharing this information with advertisers, political organizations, or third parties, but it removed that language last month. Now America PAC is permitted to sell or share your personal information with “our business partners.” That personal information includes not only where you are registered to vote but also the “inferences” the data makes about you.

The business partners include Facebook, Google, X, an advertising firm called the Trade Desk, a tracking company named Increment Data, and Iterable, an email and text-massage marketing company, among others.

In the last week, America PAC has spent more than $180,000 promoting Vote Safe, Legum reported. Musk has pledged to spend more than $100 million on the midterms.

This isn’t the first time Musk’s America PAC has pulled this grift. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the former billionaire bureaucrat poured $800,000 into digital advertisements to target voters in key battleground states. In certain states, users reported that the supposed voter registration website collected their information without ever referring them to register to vote.

Musk also waded into murky legal waters with his direct mail scheme. In Georgia, residents received partially pre-filled absentee ballot applications from Musk’s America PAC, in violation of state law. Members of the Georgia State Elections Board voted to issue a formal letter of reprimand to Musk’s America PAC—but it seems that nothing happened after that.

Despite the technocrat’s pledge last year to stay out of politics, his America PAC is planning to once again direct its efforts toward door knocking, direct mail, and digital advertising during the midterm elections.

The Trump administration is moving to strip a rule barring private equity officials from engaging in “pay-to-play” schemes with government officials.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to revoke Rule 206(4)-5 under the Investment Advisers Act, arguing that it chills employees’ political speech. The regulation, known as the “Pay-to-Play” Rule, bars investment advisers from getting paid to advise government clients for two years after making a political contribution to certain officials and candidates.

In the 16 years since the rule was implemented, it has only resulted in a handful of penalties. The proposed change comes after private equity spending increased in 2024, and flipped toward Republicans.

SEC Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda released a statement last week arguing that the “blanket ban” had functionally undermined advisers’ constitutional rights. “Many investment advisers found it easier to simply prohibit all political contributions by their employees, thereby chilling speech and conduct otherwise protected by the First Amendment,” Uyeda said.

But the rule was intentionally written to be broad in order to address the difficulties state and local prosecutors had in proving quid pro quo deals, Axios reported Tuesday.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins also released a statement last week supporting the proposal, claiming that the rule “discourages full participation in the electoral process through contributions to candidates.

“People should not have to choose between their political-speech rights and a job in a particular industry,” he said.

If approved, the change will unleash a flood of bribes to public officials, and even invite private equity to pay tithes to President Trump himself.

The Department of Homeland Security is running a police unit that uses Americans’ financial records to predict whether they could commit crimes and is turning over their names to local police.

404 Media reports that the DHS’s Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams, or PITT, are feeding intelligence to local law enforcement, who are then pulling people over who are not suspected of any specific crimes. In one case, a PITT unit analyzed the financial activity of Kyle Olson, who was driving across Montana. Local police pulled him over, claiming that his license plate was obstructed. He was later charged with a DUI, according to the publication.

The documents from that case are what led to 404 Media’s discovery. Olson was provided a DHS document explaining the rationale behind his traffic stop, written by Border Patrol Agent Matthew Phelps, who is assigned to the “Spokane Sector Border Patrol Targeting & Intelligence Division (TID)—Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team (PITT).”

Phelps wrote that his job entails reviewing “law enforcement–sensitive databases,” including financial activity, to build intelligence before the government hands it over to local police. Phelps handed over “information contained within law enforcement-sensitive systems suggesting financial activity patterns commonly associated with illicit narcotics activity,” the document states. He handed it over to Montana Highway Patrol, who pulled over Olson.

“It was relayed to me by U.S. Border Patrol targeting analyst Matthew Phelps that he had identified a vehicle that had indicators of possible narcotics trafficking,” wrote Sergeant James Beck of the Montana Highway Patrol. Olson had marijuana edibles, marijuana cuttings, and butane hash oil in his car from his job at a licensed cannabis farm in California, which he was transporting to his home in Wisconsin.

At least one PITT unit is based near Spokane, Washington, and patrols the U.S.-Canada border, while another is based near Laredo, Texas, near the border with Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which is also part of DHS, already uses automatic license plate readers, and those are integrated into the agency’s predictive policing tactics.

The concept is ostensibly to find people who may have already committed crimes, but 404 Media didn’t find any instances of this occurring. Instead, the government seems to be using predictive policing to create pretexts to pull over and detain people. Border Patrol refused to answer the publication’s questions about what financial activity it’s monitoring, and if it had a warrant to pull over Olson.

A CPB spokesperson told 404 Media in an email that “U.S. Border Patrol uses intelligence-informed analysis and planning to support national security operations, allocate resources, and help identify potential threats and bad actors to public safety. These efforts are conducted consistent with applicable law, policy, privacy protections, and oversight requirements.

“For operational security reasons, we do not discuss specific analytical methods, data sources, targeting criteria, investigative techniques, system capabilities, or deployment details. Public disclosure of such information could compromise law enforcement operations and investigations as well as creating safety risks for agents and the public,” the statement said.

The units raise a number of disturbing questions about whether the Trump administration is obtaining data illegally, then using it to illegally charge people with crimes. The Trump administration has shown numerous times that it’s willing to flout the Constitution, and in this age of mass surveillance, it doesn’t seem to feel limited in any way.

A Georgia National Guardsman was arrested earlier this month in Washington after he allegedly pulled a loaded gun on a fellow guardswoman on one of the city’s busiest streets.

Specialist Zion Mitchell, 21, was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, according to an arrest affidavit filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

The heated exchange took place in a black van, stationed outside of a Popeyes on northeast H Street, where six other members of the National Guard bore witness.

The victim, who was not identified in the affidavit save for a detail connecting her to New Jersey, told investigators that the original disagreement was over hairstyles, and whether their respective ones followed current Army regulations as set by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. At one point, Mitchell allegedly told her he would “slap the Jackson 5 out of you.”

The victim was seated shotgun in the vehicle, while Mitchell was in the row just behind, to her left. After a fiery back-and-forth, the victim said she heard what she could only describe as hearing a “holster click.” One of the witnesses then accused Mitchell of having “almost shot” them in the hand, according to the affidavit.

The victim did not know until other National Guard members informed her after the fact that Mitchell had drawn his weapon and pointed it at her.

One witness confirmed that Mitchell’s weapon was loaded at the time, with a round in the chamber. Another told authorities that the victim had previously shared that Mitchell frequently threatened women, and that the two of them had allegedly not gotten along since she rejected his advances.

Thousands of National Guard members have been patrolling Washington’s streets since Donald Trump ordered their deployment to the supposedly crime-addled capital last summer (violent crime in Washington is at a 30-year low, according to federal estimates).

Guard members told NPR last month that they felt Trump had “exploited” the National Guard. The seemingly pointless mission—which has amounted to little more than installing a military presence in the city—had left such a bad taste in the mouths of some members that they questioned whether they should fulfill their duties at all.

“If we continue down this path, where this kind of ‘presence patrol’ mission becomes the new definitive image of the National Guard, it’s going to completely rebrand everything that was noble about the National Guard into being mundane at best and threatening at worst,” one guard member told the public radio syndicate.