Flock and Awe

**Ian Krietzberg** (0:03)
These algorithms pre-ChatGPT know us better than we know ourselves. They can predict our decision making in such a way that is beyond what we would even say if we were trying to predict our own behavior. It's kind of remarkable.

**Peter Hamby** (0:20)
Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Puck's podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.
It's Wednesday, August 19th. Today, I'm joined by Ian Krietzberg, who explains the Civil Liberty's backlash to flock cameras, which are popping up all over the country, but sparking lots of privacy concerns. Ian talked to their CEO and fills me in on the camera controversy. We also talk about how democratic operatives are using chat transcripts from ChatGPT and Gemini to shape political ads coming to a battleground state near you. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.
Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome to The Powers That Be. I'm joined today by my colleague Ian Krietzberg to talk about the latest in the world of AI. He's going to talk about his interview with the CEO of the controversial surveillance camera company, Flock. Although I'm sure Flock would not like us calling them a surveillance company. There's a lot of grassroots backlash to Flock cameras around the country. They're often used by police departments and cities to track down stolen cars and the like. Ian talked to the CEO. He also talked to privacy advocates and we're going to get his take on Flock and its future. This is a multi-billion dollar company that's growing and growing. We're also going to talk about how democratic political operatives are using AI chatbots to inform the kind of ads they're making as they target voters heading into the next presidential election. Ian, good to see you, man. Let's start with Flock.
I think we need to set this up because a lot of people might not even know what Flock cameras are even though there is a tremendous amount of backlash around the country. I was just searching on Spotify before getting on here for some podcasts about Flock and like there's stories about it in Minnesota, there's stories about it in Texas, here in Los Angeles. Flock, they had a contract, I guess, with the city of LA and LA terminated that deal or put it on pause at least a few months ago. This reminds me of the early days of the data center backlash last year. Just to set the table before getting into your interview with the CEO of this company, what are Flock cameras and also what separates them from just traffic cameras that have been around for a while now? Why are people so angry about them?

**Ian Krietzberg** (2:53)
Sure. Yeah, that's a big question. I'm going to start with the point that you just made that I think is really interesting, that this feels a little similar to the early days of the data center pushback, that we're seeing just spike in surge and get to all sorts of weird places. Now, the reason I bring that up is that for some people, data center opposition and opposition to flock is supported by the same reasoning.
When it comes to data centers, you have the NIMBYism, you have, I just don't like building construction near me. It's annoying, it's loud, trapped, whatever, all sorts of issues. But there is a non insignificant portion of people who are anti-data centers, not just because they represent AI, but specifically due to surveillance concerns. So on the kind of spectrum of sci-fi futures that people are opposed to, the kind of Orwellian government has control of or government has access into data, they can surveil us all the time, they can control us through all these things.
That is very salient for a lot of people. And insofar as data centers represent that, people are very concerned. Now that same concern is our carryover to where FLOC sits. Now, FLOC has been around for a little while. They jumped onto the scene in 2017
And their fundamental pitch is, if you take them at their word, one of safety.
And the idea is, if you think about, and this is the kind of type of rosy world that these types of executives will paint, where if you think about people stealing vehicles or missing children alerts. Right? Like we get all those alerts on our phones, but there's not much you can do about it. So the idea is, if you had a network of constantly updating real-time data, and you could track, you know, not just get an alert on your phone that there was an amber alert or something, with a red Toyota or something. But if you could actually track the license plate that was associated with that, and if police could use that to find that missing person, that could be a huge boon for safety. And so that was the kind of fundamental idea, and that is what they set out to build. So there's two aspects of this, both of which freak people out, and one is the cameras. And in order to get all this real-time good data, you need cameras everywhere. And these cameras are not just taking shots of license plates, they're also taking shots of identifying information around the cars. It's not just still photos, it's also short clips, videos. And so there's a lot more information than just this colored car with a license plate.