Americans Hate Flock Cameras! So Why Is The Left So Silent About How They Are Being Used To Violate Our Constitutional Rights?

There is a growing national outcry to ban Flock cameras. We do not give up our constitutional rights when we get into our vehicles, and we do not want authoritarian control freaks watching us, monitoring us and tracking us everywhere that we go. This is an issue that is uniting people all over the country, and so you would think that politicians from both parties would be getting on board. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. Many top Republicans are coming out against Flock cameras very strongly, but the silence from the left has been deafening. Yes, there are a few voices on the far left that appear to be concerned about our civil liberties, but most prominent Democrats have been eerily silent about Flock cameras. Why is that?

If you want cameras to watch you everywhere that you go, move to China.

Seriously.

We don’t want to live in a surveillance state, and our Constitution is supposed to protect us from that.

To me, it is exceedingly clear that these cameras are violating our constitutional rights, and there are some politicians that are taking action.

In fact, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley just initiated a major investigation…

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, has launched an investigation into Flock Safety’s national surveillance network and is demanding to know who has access to the personal data of Americans captured on Flock cameras.

Hawley wrote in a letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley that the company has “assembled an unprecedented national surveillance network” of more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states that conducts 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong. Instead of serving discrete local investigations, as contemplated by our constitutional processes and safeguards, these camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search,” he wrote.

Good for him.

This is the sort of thing that our elected officials are supposed to do.

Flock cameras are being abused by law enforcement officers over and over again.

For example, a deputy in Richmond County, Virginia used the Flock system to track a woman that he was romantically involved with 1,639 times…

In one especially shocking incident, Former Deputy Jaquarius Yarbrough of Richmond County, Virginia, allegedly used the license plate tracking system to stalk a woman he was having an affair with 1,639 times over several months.

“What we’re talking about are cameras that are documenting everywhere your car goes,” Maass said. “There are databases where police can type in your license plate and see everywhere you’ve gone… The government shouldn’t be creating databases of movement.”

Sadly, that is not an isolated incident.

A police officer in Kentucky was recently arrested for using the system to track his ex-girlfriend more than 2,000 times…

A Kentucky police officer was arrested after authorities said he used the Flock Safety license plate reader camera system to track his ex-girlfriend over 2,000 times, marking the latest in a string of recent law enforcement officer resignations or arrests for alleged abuses of the controversial technology.

Things got so bad that the ex-girlfriend was eventually forced to file for an order of protection…

Investigators found Zahir had conducted 2,048 Flock searches from January into May to track two vehicles registered to the victim, his child’s mother, in Kentucky and Indiana, court records show.

During the period he conducted those searches, Zahir harassed the victim and made threatening comments, prompting her to file an order of protection against him, according to the court records.

This just keeps happening again and again.

According to CNN, throughout the country there have been “at least 47 instances of officers being disciplined in some way for alleged abuse of the Flock system for stalking romantic interests”…

The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm that has filed lawsuits against Flock on Fourth Amendment grounds, has tracked at least 47 instances of officers being disciplined in some way for alleged abuse of the Flock system for stalking romantic interests.

Of even greater concern is the fact that Flock cameras often create false positives that flag citizens that are completely innocent.

One police department in California actually discovered that a whopping 71 percent of its Flock alerts were errors…

Hawley said the surveillance notifications have also resulted in mistaken arrests, such as that of a Florida woman who spent 13 days in jail and faced multiple felony counts after investigators mistakenly arrested her based on a search of Flock’s network.

“Errors and false positives add insult to injury,” Hawley wrote.

He cited one California police department that found that 71 percent of its Flock alerts “were wrong” and noted the Los Angeles Police Department ended its Flock contract after an audit showed its officers had stopped 161 vehicles incorrectly flagged as stolen.

Do you want police officers coming to your door because some stupid Flock camera mistakenly flagged you?

But even if Flock cameras worked perfectly, they would still be violating our constitutional rights.

This is a point that Senator Hawley just made very aptly…

“Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote. “The Supreme Court has recognized that a comprehensive, retrospective record of a person’s movements is different in kind from ordinary observation in public.”

He is right on target.

We don’t give up our constitutional rights when we leave our homes.

But the CEO of Flock is telling us that Americans must “compromise” on their constitutional rights in order to feel more secure…

No way.

Even if Flock cameras could make us 100 percent safe, there is no way that I would ever be willing to give up my constitutional rights.

Many respected Republican leaders are choosing to take a stand, but there has been silence from many prominent Democrats.

What is wrong with them?

Why won’t they stand up for the constitutional rights of the American people?

The good news is that we are winning.

In communities all over America, Flock cameras are being turned off.

One of the cities that just pulled the trigger on such a move is Tempe, Arizona…

Of course Tempe is far from alone.

This month, a bunch of other municipalities have also said goodbye to Flock cameras…

Cave Creek, also in Arizona; Bellingham, Massachusetts; and several Texas counties are among the other municipalities that said this month they’re ending their use of Flock cameras.

Bellingham Police Chief Kenneth Fitzgerald said in a statement that during a recent criminal investigation, officials learned that a Flock feature called Free Form, an artificial intelligence-powered tool that can search video information using plain language, was available through the cameras.

“Those features go beyond what most people would think of as a traditional license plate reader,” he said. “That concerned me because I had previously told the public, based on our understanding of the system, that our Flock technology was a license plate reader only.”

I love to see this.

Overall, more than 100 cities and counties have officially deactivated, canceled, or rejected contracts with Flock Safety.

I think that an official in Hood County, Texas said it very well when he stated that “permanent, warrantless tracking doesn’t belong in a free society”…

John Shirley, constable of a precinct in Hood County, Texas, said that after county commissioners voted to remove the cameras, he would be covering them until they could be removed.

“These cameras were constantly scanning and recording regular folks just going about their day. That kind of permanent, warrantless tracking doesn’t belong in a free society,” Shirley said in an Aug. 15 post on Facebook. “By unplugging and covering them, we’re making it clear: privacy isn’t optional, and mass surveillance isn’t how we do things here.”

Yes, if we get rid of all the Flock cameras it may be a little bit more difficult to catch criminals.

But freedom always comes with a cost.

I would much rather live in a free society than a surveillance society like China where virtually everything that people do is watched, monitored and tracked by the government.

I am for an immediate nationwide ban on all Flock cameras and any other devices that perform similar functions.

What about you?

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About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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