Benn Jordan thinks the surveillance problem is much bigger than Flock

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Nilay Patel (1:44)

Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief for The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking with Benn Jordan, musician, YouTuber, researcher, and investigative journalist. You might know Benn from those first two titles. He's got a prolific discography of experimental music dating back decades. But in the last couple of years, Benn's become a high profile face in the creator and media world for his work investigating Flock Safety, the maker of automatic license plate readers and the software that powers them. Benn recently testified in front of Congress at the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism at a hearing dedicated to Flock and other ALPR systems. To me, this hearing felt like the culmination of months and months of growing criticism and bipartisan backlash against Flock, all of which is taking shape similar to the pushback against AI data centers. This has led to major fallout with Flock. Hundreds of cities, counties, and other local governments have begun canceling contracts and Flock is now under investigation by Republican Senator Josh Hawley. Last week, Reuters reported that Flock plans to cut about 18 percent of its workforce. So of course, I wanted to dig into all of that with Benn, not just because he played a role in it, but because he's also become in some ways the face of the new front in a broader debate about surveillance and privacy. The point you'll hear Benn make is that he doesn't actually hate Flock as a company. He thinks its posture towards critics has been a colossal PR failure that made it low-hanging fruit, while competitors like Axon and Motorola have quietly built the same kind of networks. Benn actually now talks to Flock directly, including to its CEO, Garrett Langley, and reports security vulnerabilities to the company when he finds them. By the way, we've invited Garrett Langley onto Decoder. Garrett, if you're listening, we would love to have you. Benn says his outreach to the company is an olive branch, as part of his goal, working towards real, tangible solutions to surveillance overreach, rather than part of a crusade to tear one single company down. That's a theme you're going to hear throughout this conversation, that Flock and other high-profile names in surveillance are just part of the problem, that our real focus should be on the interlocking relationship between private industry, government, and law enforcement that prioritizes secrecy over transparency. We never voted for an insecure network of cameras in every street corner, and we're certainly not being asked if we're comfortable with access to this network being given to police officers with a penchant for abusing it. So, Benn sees his work on YouTube and with other researchers, civil rights groups, and journalists as an accountability function that forces the conversation to the forefront. And so far, it's working. Okay, Benn Jordan on Flock, Privacy, and the New Surveillance Backlash. Here we go.

Ben Jordan, you're a musician, you're a YouTuber, you're a researcher. Lately, you've been an investigative journalist. You are a witness in Senate hearings. Welcome to Decoder.

Benn Jordan (4:26)

Well, thanks for having me.

Nilay Patel (4:28)

I'm a huge fan of yours. It's just a delight to have you here. I think a lot of people in The Verge audience know you as a musician, but lately you have been relentlessly focused on Flock cameras, automatic license plate reader cameras.