Sen. Hawley Concerns w/ Flock Safety Cameras

Nigel (0:00)

You're listening to The Hammer and Nigel Show. Hello, my name is Nigel. Jason Hammer is out. Jerry Lopez is in. You can find him on social media at Indy Spenglish. He's been given his ex-account back. Didn't know what he did to deserve to get it yanked.

Jerry Lopez (0:20)

Yeah, the man tried to stop me, can't hold me down.

Nigel (0:23)

He is back. Flock cameras. Let's be careful how we say that word, Flock. The Flock cameras are a very controversial subject, not only here in Central Indy, but all across the United States. These are basically the license plate readers that have helped stop crime, helped find criminals, helped find people that have committed violent crimes. But also, there's been like IMPD officers, a lot of them, that were abusing the reader technology for the license plates that are all... There's five in custody right now, Jerry, five IMPD officers. Nobody more pro-law enforcement than The Hammer and Nigel Show. I hate talking about it. I'm sure Rick Snyder from the FOP hates us talking about it.

And I get it, but it needs to be discussed.

Where are you at with Flock Cameras? And then we're going to get to this thing from Senator Josh Hawley, which is even more disturbing. But five IMPD officers, one is a former officer, that are all in custody for abusing those privileges.

Jerry Lopez (1:43)

A former officer because they resigned, right? That's why they're former.

I mean, I think it's important for people like Rick Snyder, for us, for other people that back the blue to call this out, because these are not representatives of the police that we want on the force anyway.

Nigel (1:57)

No.

Jerry Lopez (1:58)

So these people need to be called out. But this is just the beginning. And this is just IMPD.

I venture to say this is happening across cities, across the country.

Nigel (2:07)

Well, Senator Josh Hawley, who out of Missouri, says that Flock Camera Safety Cameras, they, the company, Flock Safety Cameras, admitted to him in a private message, they are saving images of everyday American people inside their vehicles. And they could search those images by people, not just by the license plate.

Jerry Lopez (2:33)

Wow.

Josh Hawley (2:34)

Really quite extraordinary. Flock's cameras can even recognize whether people are in the images. And in fact, Flock admitted in a letter to me ahead of this hearing that you could search their database based on people's images. You could ask to search people, images that had people, images that are scanning the inside of the cars. I mean, this is really quite extraordinary. Flock is not the only player in this field, of course.

Jerry Lopez (3:01)

That's scary.

Nigel (3:02)

I come on this show and I say, look, the IMPD isn't watching you. They're not keeping track of you. They're not, nobody's following you. But at the same time, as I say that, there are multiple IMPD officers charged with abusing the license plate reader technology.

And now you hear Senator Josh Hawley say that the actual company that makes this crap, I say crap. I just I'm not calling him a crap because I think there is good use for them. But he's saying in private messages, they save images of pictures of Americans, not just the license plate. You can search them up by picture. I don't even know how you would do that.

Jerry Lopez (3:50)

So but here's the thing, right? So that's now a change that I've made just now in this conversation, because when I hear Flock, I think license plate. Oh, they're going to see your license plate.

Nigel (3:58)

Yes.

Jerry Lopez (3:59)

But you're telling me some. This is completely hypothetical. Some officer on some place could put in his ex-girlfriend's photo and find out everywhere she's going.

Nigel (4:07)

That's exactly what Josh Hawley was saying.

Jerry Lopez (4:10)

That's completely different, Nigel.

Nigel (4:11)

It's not just a license plate.

Jerry Lopez (4:14)

That's scary.

Nigel (4:15)

It's not just a license plate. You could search by photo.

Jerry Lopez (4:20)

I mean, so let's take it a step further. We've had police officers, unfortunately, here that have been caught up in child stuff. What stops somebody from now using this? This is scary now when we're going to image tracking of people in real time.

Nigel (4:35)

I think we're going to see these things go away eventually. They've already have in Florida, in Fort Wayne. There's parts in Florida, the Ron DeSantis, the governor there said, hey, we're not dealing with this stuff anymore.

I don't necessarily want to see them go away. I want to see the people that are abusing the privileges to go away. And these five people, five... Imagine ruining your life, because you want to look up what your girlfriend's doing.