The Anti-Flock Revolution

Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMan, editor-inchief at the Mises Institute. And joining me today are two of our contributing editors. We've got Tho Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And this week we're going to talk bit about a few different topics if we have time to get to them all. We're going to start off talking about flock cameras and privacy and state power in terms of surveillance. But before we do that, we got a couple of things we want to promote. We got event coming up and we've also got a giveaway that we're right in the middle of. Right though, >> that we are we are continuing the year of Rothbard by giving away a bunch of Rothbard books in for the month of August. We've got the case for a 100% gold dollar. Uh great money mini book on uh sound money right there. I know one that that Dr. Serno regularly references in some of his work. Uh you can find that at mises.org/giveaway. It's the same ready link for all the giveaways we've been doing this year. Uh so please feel free to take advantage of that great opportunity. And on the event side um in September uh 20 uh the September 12th we'll be in Greenville, South Carolina discussing why government schools don't want you to understand economics. I got a great great lineup for that. uh kind of focusing on an education issues which a big topic right now. So that's going to be a great event in South Carolina. And then supporter summit will be here before you know it October 22nd to the 24th in San Antonio, Texas, a place I have not been before. Um, so very excited always to see our great supporters um at an event like that where we will be celebrating 100 years of Rothbard with a a special guest uh Judy Shelton who's been doing a lot of interesting work on uh gold and its place in the current financial system as well as other great speakers for that event. So that'll be coming again at uh October 22nd through the 24th in San Antonio, Texas. >> All right. Well, I don't know if you've noticed this, but uh I don't know, my feeds, I don't think mainstream media covers it much, but uh the surveillance state seems to have been taking it up a notch in recent months with the proliferation of flock cameras. I first I didn't even know what this was until a couple of years I saw that the city council was starting to vote on issues like uh flock cameras and then I had to read an article to understand what this even was. remember it was an issue of uh the mayor was really gung-ho on getting more flock cameras even though the city council was a lot less enthusiastic. It seems uh that it was easy to lobby the mayor on this and get him to uh embrace whatever it was the surveillance state wanted him to do in terms of putting up more flock cameras around the city of Denver. I I don't think I've really seen one in Denver. I guess I just haven't been looking. I did see one uh up like in a northwestern suburb not too long ago. It was in like a shopping center uh on one of those little roads that took you to the shopping center, I suppose, you know, where there's lots of crime. And uh I just I find it remarkable a lot of the discussion that's that's now taking place in social media about this. People are cutting them down and being prosecuted. uh people are are making very uh what should be considered obvious observations which is as if a camera gets cut down, it's all the police take out all the stops to investigate it, right? They're like out there. They're uh they're they're searching for fingerprints. They're making announcements publicly about how they need to catch the person who dared get in the way of these surveillance cameras. And people point out if you had your home robbed, something stolen from you, the police wouldn't put forth even a tiny fraction of that effort in catching the culprits. And it always reminds me of what Rothbart said uh about the state in terms of who it always seeks to punish the most, right? The state the state always concentrates on punishing people who get in the way of state power which is why there's always so much emphasis on traitors or on people who are subversive on anyone who maybe steals or destroys government property that's always the priority. Mere destruction of private property, violence against private citizens, that's not nearly as important to uh the government and you're lucky to ever see your property ever again. But meanwhile, we got all of these forensics people from the uh the police out there uh devoting immense amounts of resources to catching someone who got in the way of one of their surveillance cameras. So, I don't know if you guys have seen similar things and it kind of just raises the issue of why why should we care, right? Aren't these aren't these cameras in public spaces? Isn't it a matter of if you're not doing something wrong, you have nothing to fear? Uh, are you seeing some reaction to this? And Connor, I saw that you had a column, right, on the fact that we're we're seeing blowback. We're seeing resistance to the flock camera surveillance state. So, yeah, let's just start with you, Connor, then. Um, and and get a sense of what your observations have been on this phenomenon so far. >> Yeah, I guess what's struck me the most, which is what I wrote the column about, is just how much backlash there is out there because Yeah. And and I am generally sympathetic with the critics of these cameras and I agree with a lot of the uh points about how this could really be used um to violate our freedoms, but to me it's also like in the scheme of things, it's not it's not at the top of my list of threats to our liberty. And yet people are really really worked up about it. And that's kind of what I was trying to dig into a bit. And my overall conclusion is that it's not really about the cameras specifically. It's the fact that people have lost complete faith in institutions and in our elites. And so when there's this new technology being rolled out and it's being sold to the public as this very important thing for keeping us safe, a lot more people now are immediately thinking of all the ways this could be used by people that they hate in power who they feel hate them. I think rightfully so in a lot of cases to violate their freedoms. And that's just been a very I think healthy development that really like if you look back at the Patriot Act, I was I was too young to follow that at the time, but looking back and learning the history of all of that, people did not have that mindset um at nearly the same rate back then. It seemed there was like people genuinely thought that the government is doing this because they want to keep us safe and prevent another attack. And so they just there's just trust there. They trust that this is being done in my interest. And then it's only later down the road when they accept, oh wow, it wasn't. Turns out it was in the interest of the state and I was duped. And it's just a cycle you see over and over again because you can't really roll things back as effectively. It's it's a lot better to stop it at the time. And so I guess I am pleased to see from my view that is significant progress. the fact that people are so up in arms that no, it's not even really like people are upset about there's a number dozens of cases of uh documented cases of of abuse of government officials and police officers using um these cameras or really it's there's the cameras, but the real powerful thing is the searchable database that um you get access to as a client of Flock and that we can get into the specifics a little bit later, but yeah, the point being there has been some abuse, but it really seems seems like the thing that's driving people to this level of backlash is the potential for abuse down the road. It's this view that people are just assuming correctly that this will probably be in the hands of my political enemies and that should be considered. And so I I just thought that um you know I'm writing a weekly column on misus.org. Most of them are not particularly happy. Um so it was nice to to sit back and be like hey this is progress. you know, there's still issues and um it's not like everybody agrees with us and everything. I'm not saying that at all. But on this one front, people have a much healthier mindset about this new surveillance technology that's being and really it's kind of striking how much I I think Flock was founded. I don't remember it was back before the pandemic, but it's really the last two years that it's just exploded everywhere. You can see the map. They're just all over the place. So, as this is being rolled out, I just I think it's worth pointing out and reflecting and celebrating the fact that yeah, people are are finally looking at this somewhat correctly that okay, that this is not it's not just a given that this is going to be used for our safety and that this is all being done in our interest that maybe there's something else going on. >> Yeah. So, do you think that right that that is good news? I mean, is that part of the reason? Oh, abs. Absolutely. It's been interesting here locally where I'm at in Florida. For one, we just had a major primary and concerns over flock cameras um ended up being a pretty loud opinion in, you know, one of the loud issues in some of those races. Um we've also seen a lot of, you know, a lot of local activists, a lot of local concerns on this issue. So, this is something that's been um increasingly, you know, getting into the mainstream of of normie political conversation, if you will. um here at at a local level. Um now I do think there's there's you know valid questions to have about you know the the you know nuances that come with the demand for security services right like you know a you've got a local um a tourist town that has a population of you know 15,000 residents but you get millions and millions of people that come through peak tourist season and then you've got a city with the same amount of local residents and you don't have the same sort of tourist revenue. what you need to do for for you know stopping violent crime. I think there's there's a room for a valued conversation there. Um the problem is there's flock cameras in both right and so this is something that has been popping up u I think across the country in various different demands there because there is there's this very interesting subscription model that flock use to sell itself to local governments. um the vast uh uh complexities and uh abilities of the AI component, the the the license plate reader component. Um I had someone who's seen some new uh vendors popping up in broader municipal services and just the extent to which uh the combination of AI and cameras on roads. I'm not in, you know, this the flock static position, but you know, the way that they can use this to to, you know, automatically build a code enforcement cameras, all sorts of stuff that is happening as a byproduct of the massive increases in um in AI. uh you know that the sentiment the the backlash um the push back from residents is I think definitely a healthy component to responding to the the you know excesses that we've seen and and it's that the partisan side of that I think it's interesting because this is very much a bipartisan event and so you definitely have again the the the consequences and the earned scars as a byproduct of co uh era enforcements as you know one of the top talking points when people have concerns about how this will be tapped in the other side I I know in certain blue cities. It come com combined with immigration concerns um you know or that that's a whole different sort of of concern there that you know people that were concerned about uh uh uh you co lockdowns you know probably are not going to fit overwhelmingly with that. So, so it's something that hits on both sides of the eye nail that that goes to this broader this deeper distrust of large institutions at large and particularly I think given when you have these sort of things like you know any sort of argument that flock is is a private company you know Ryan I know you've made this point on on a variety of different topics is that you know any company who's you know pretty much their sole buyer is government agencies you know whether it's federal governments down to local governments I mean these these are not private governments in the traditional sense. And so when you have this combination of private components that protect certain aspects of uh local control or local transparency issues combined with a all of its funding coming from, you know, government sources, you kind of you can you can often get kind of the worst of both worlds. Um from that that point of view, of course, you know, if if again if we're dealing with private roads, a lot of this these conversations kind of work out for themselves. um and and dealing with this sort of aspect like the surveillance of of Disney World is very different than you know Main Street uh uh you know Opal like Alabama right um but I the backlash you and I think this taps into a much larger issue which is just you know we've seen it with with AI topics generally with data centers etc is that you there is a a growing backlash uh again that transcends traditional ideological lines to anything that has the perception of big um and and everything that comes with you know the the recognition of the abuse use of ser services like this particularly connected with political power going forward that you know it's very much a sort of broad kind of folk libertarian uh dynamic that I think is going on right now which I think is interesting even given that the traditional libertarian label um is something that neither neither side of the aisle is particularly favorable favorable upon right now but that that inherent backlash is very much I think deeply rooted with again broad parts of the public right now >> before we go on yeah let's let's look let's talk about just briefly that issue about oh they're a private company. This is one of the most absurd things that people will try to do. Look, if your company overwhelmingly serves government clients, you're a government entity. You are essentially uh something that uh could not be in any reasonable and meaningful way considered private. I remember this was an issue with the Dominion voting machines. >> They've changed their name a couple of times because they have such terrible, right, brand recognition. Same with like uh uh the she the company that had that hires the mercenaries, right? They're now like at their third or fourth name or whatever. Um but it's the same with with Dominion where they were being sued and they're like, "Oh, we're a private company. You can't sue us." What a bunch of BS, right? Their only clients are government agencies. They have no private sector purpose whatsoever. And if we were serious about that thing, if we were serious about real accountability, we would make it clear that I would say every state should pass laws saying that if more than 10% of your revenue comes from government clients, all of your records are subject to open records requests just like any state agency, right? You could submit here in Colorado's Kora, right? Colorado open records act. you can submit and even if you're like a charter school or something like that, you can get information about their board meetings, about their funding, about all that sort of stuff. Dominion should all of their records should be accessible to the public. Flock, all of their records should be accessible to the public and oh that hurts us with our competitors. Too bad because you're already anti-competitive because you're receiving government funds. So all of these companies should basically be considered open books and this appeal to them being a private sector companies is just a complete load of BS. And it's a shame that some people fall for it. >> It sometimes makes it even worse like in this case because and like we're the mechanisms specifically of the flock cameras that we're talking about. They're not just cameras, they're license plate readers. So they're set up on streets. They scan cars that pass. They look at the license plate. They register the make and model and any kind of distinguishing characteristics, dents, bumper stickers, anything like that. and it logs that in a timestamped and searchable national database. And that kind of national database of basically all these checkpoints, if that was purely a government entity, that would never be constitutional. Like that they would have so many limits to that kind of thing. But because they essentially just outsource all this to a private company, like you said, they they're able to just get completely, you know, those limits don't apply anymore and they're able to do a lot more. So yeah, and then then this oftent times gets turned around against libertarians like this is what we're advocating for. We just want more private companies to be doing all of this when no like to the point that I think you both kind of alluded to. It's the monopolization of the service. It's the monopolization of roads, the monopolization of the protection service that's the real core of the problem. It's not that oh cops are a little inefficient so we need some private companies to come in and you know outsource all of this you know rights trampling. That's not what we're saying here. But yeah, it's it's not just mere merely that they're it's wrong to call them private companies. They can actually make the problem worse. >> It is interesting too cuz like um uh again this goes back to the the the value of the public backlash component of it in particular. Um but but also it's kind of an interesting thing because you know the the the the buyers of this are government entities but there a lot of their uses is local. So there there's a little bit more of a feedback mechanism at the local government rather than through the f federal government. And so it is interesting that as a result of the backlash there have been some tweaks to the policies in terms of how long that they hold the data right I think it's it's now down to I think roughly a week or at least so they claim um and and so again this goes to the component of it is that the backlash you know has shaped has has already you know resulted in requiring uh uh uh drawdowns on certain aspects of these services already. Though it is also interesting is you get kind of get this male routine where like you you'll have a company you'll have a a government um that will remove the the flock brand and just replace it with another government supplier right then and there was like oh my mission solved. We we've gotten rid of flock and now we just replace it with like their closest competitor in this regard. So you still get those kind of routines in there too. Um the the legal component though I I think is is interesting because there there was a Supreme Court case um this year dealing with um the geo fencing component of of data searches and um tree versus the United States and the Supreme Court actually ruled as a 6-3 ruling um that said even though this these were held by private companies I think it was Google um in in this context or a major player within this context um the Supreme Court actually upheld that uh individuals maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy even with these privately held records for their use of in criminal investigations. And so I do think that that is you know obviously you know it's like oh well the Supreme Court's going to take care of all this like that's that's certainly not the reason line but but it is interesting that um you know that that was already struck down in in a a very recent ruling and how this dynamic of the increasingly privatized AI state um you know what barriers will be enacted with these new changes going on right now. Um so again maybe that's more of a silver lining and in a brighter spot there than than we're used to in certain things. Um but it it is interesting that certain the use of these databases as an extension of um you know government investigations there has been a little bit of of legal backlash as well beyond just the popular backlash which I think is interesting. >> Yeah, it does appear in in many cases to be an attempt to muddy the legal waters and basically do an end run around the bill of rights by oh it's a private company it's not really the government doing this. Uh there are few things more embarrassing than these libertarians who like go out there and they like defend a governmentf funded private monopoly as some sort of uh private sector lazy fair thing at work. I remember Eric Prince the Blackwater guy out there was uh he he quoted Hayek in some interview or something and the usual pathetic libertarians are like falling all over themselves. Oh, we quoted Hayek. He's a hardcore lazy fair libertarian and all Eric Prince's whole career is stealing from the taxpayers to fund his government funded private corporations. And so the guy could right by the very definition the whatever it is that he contributes to the economy was stolen first from the taxpayer. So it's basically just like the government in terms of it doesn't produce anything on its own. It's simply a redistribution of wealth from the taxpayers to this government sponsored entity. The fact that it's not uh officially and on paper part of a government agency doesn't mean it's private, doesn't mean it's not taxpayer funded. It's amazing how many people you'll meet though who don't even appreciate this, right? It's amazing how many people are employees of like Lockheed building bombs for the defense department. Imagine themselves as private sector workers. They're not at all. They their whole careers are based on stealing from the taxpayers. They are taxpayerfunded people. No less so than the lady who works at the DMV, but they'll mock like the lady that works at the DMV. Oh, these inefficient government employees. Meanwhile, us taxpayer funded engineers, we're extremely efficient, even though there's no market mechanism there at all. They're just freeloaders. So, it's it's it's amazing how much of a wall there is kind of in some people's brains between what should be obvious in terms of if you're taxpayer funded, you're basically government. Um and without that there's no real market feedback uh whatsoever. So yeah, keep that in mind when we're talking about flocks. Nothing private about it. Give me a break. Uh but back to the whole issue of why are people upset about this? I wonder and you mentioned CO a little bit though, the issue of um would people be as concerned about flock if it weren't for the COVID experience? Right? Cuz imagine I remember back during the lockdowns and it was like everybody stay at home. Don't go out unless it's essential travel. I remember I'm like screw it. I'm going to go drive around the city and I'm going to look for like an open coffee place or something. I'm going to just I just got to get out of here. I'm going to go chill. I'm going to drive to the mountains and stuff. Right? And just imagine if there were flock cameras everywhere back then. This was only six years ago, right? And they were all reading your license plates and compiling data on all of your movement. How much easier would it be for the government then to send someone out to knock on your door? How come you were driving out into 50 miles away from your home this day? Did you have a good reason to be driving? What were you doing? Then issuing a citation for violating the stay-at-home order. That would be effortless for the government to do uh given current technology and where it's going. And I think we really understood under COVID that the government absolutely would love to imprison you in their own home if they could get away with it, if they can enforce it. And things like flock cameras make it a lot more economic and easier from the government's perspective to enforce that sort of thing. So I think maybe some people remember that and they just know that what is considered doing something wrong, right? Oh, if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. Yeah. Well, what happens when they decide that leaving your home is doing something wrong? Now you have something to fear. So, it seems that that is a fully rational fear for people to have. Of >> course, we saw it play out firsthand. I mean they they weren't using you know flot cameras at the same size and scale at that point but they were using phone data and you had governments able to use this was a globally you know a global phenomenon is that you know it was relatively effortless for the state to utilize you simply phone data out there as a way of tracking anyone violating co curfews and co restrictions and etc etc. So that's that's kind of the scary thing is that like you know for the most part we've already been living in this world which now kind of have a very public face and you know the you know when you see the you know the solar panled camera out there and you know the road that you've traveled your entire life and and you know just as a constant you know reminder I think that that that is an element of of this as a visible representation um you know the you know traditional you know big brother sort of uh u staples of uh of any you know high school uh English uh curriculum. Um I I think that plays a role there. But I I do think that co CO was an amplifier but you know this is a broader trend across the board that you know the the breakdown of public trust generally in big institutions happened before co I think co was a massive massive amplifier for this. I think the radicalization of a lot of people on these topics generally and I I think that this is really it it I think flock is often really a symptom of the similar sort of backlash like as I alluded to earlier of concerns about data center construction about the use of AI um and and I I will say like I think when it comes to some of these you know these these broader uh technological innovations and some of these sort of stuff I think there's an element of um uh I think I think there's there's holes that you can poke into some of the concerns when it comes to some of the the AI related aspects to it. Like I don't think every mass concern is explicitly valid when it comes to some of the resource uses and things like that. Um but regardless of that, the reality is that that sentiment is out there and growing and it stems from a a deeper distrust of big institutions at large. And again, this is not isolated to one political movement. This is not isolated to one political party. it's not isolated to one part of the country is that there's a list of grievances, a list concerns, a list of anxieties that are broadly based right now. Um, and again there there are some trade-offs like you know that it it creates opportunities for for all sorts of reforms that are are anti-state. It can lead to all sorts of very bad ideas um becoming more popular as well like you know these sort of temperaments are are not I think uh uh you know binary in nature. No big social changes I think usually are. Uh but it is the broad nature of this and the lack of of credibility I think anyone has right like if if I don't I don't think you can imagine someone who has broad populist credentials if you will go out there and make the case for this issue and massively change people's minds. Um and so like I think that is again that's that's probably a good thing. Um but I think this goes to just how deeply and ingrained this is. And I think this this is partly you know I think you know the the economic anxieties that people have. have I mean there's so many uh uh uh broad deep uh uh just visceral concerns that broad parts of the population have things that have been brewing and growing and have have left unresolved um um for decades now really um that have brought to the point where any major change is looked at with significant distrust by large broad parts of the country. Um, and I think it speaks more to where America is as a society as much as it is the specific issues of, you know, the specific debates over explicit applications here and there. >> Exactly. Yeah. These are symptoms of a much deeper phenomenon that has been around for a long time. Yeah. And I agree with that. like you you see it before co I think co the the the regime really overplayed their hand with that because I think before that it not that it was insignificant like this is kind of how these things work but it was still kind of constrained to the real like ideological types of people the people that sit around and think about this stuff but co seems to be where a lot of people that don't care don't care about politics at all really seem to have gotten radicalized and then I think also there's just something Yeah and you're you're right to bring up like the books we read in English class there's There's something about cameras, like these black cameras that you can see on the street that I just think we're just primed to view as like this Orwellian that is big brother. And so the optics are uh pretty terrible. Like I think VO could actually make um some progress just I don't know changed up how these things looked there. Like it kind of looks exactly like we're all warned from a young age to view totalitarianism when it when it finally, you know, rears its head. it's going to look like these cameras. And um that those kinds of things really matter, especially for the people in the margin, those that are um not they don't really follow this stuff too closely, but they'll they'll notice that and then they'll kind of start talking. And those are really like the the people when it we're talking about like actual societal change that those kind of politically apathetic people are the ones that like actually drive. It's when they wake up that crazy changes happen. And yeah, and then that's such an important point too that like this does create opportunities for positive change, but there are real risks with this kind of thing, too. And I I really I would encourage everybody to go read um Ryan, your article today about the French Revolution, I thought was an excellent um you laid that out really well that yes, okay, there were problems with the old regime. Um, and yeah, and some of the first instincts of those that were revoling were good and there was like some progress made, but things can get hijacked and then suddenly you're in a situation that's far worse than what you were in before. There's real potential. We often we we talk all day about all the problems with our current system, but man, things could get a lot worse than what we have right now. And so I just think it's so important that those of us that kind of get it on these specific issues and that deeper stuff are just as loud as we possibly can be because I as whatever chaos is coming down the road as a result of these deeper uh this deeper phenomenon we're talking about it it'll be a lot worse if nobody's you know saying the truth. Well, and something that comes to mind in this particular issue is, and this has been like a longunning, I remember this like a John Burch Society bumper sticker back in the day is like, you know, keep your sheriff local and and I I think this is a natural byproduct of the gradual federalization of law enforcement at the local level, right? I mean, people typically typically trust their their sheriff a lot, you know, higher much much more than they would you trust the, you know, the FBI director or or, you know, some some Fed, right? Right. I mean I mean Fed is almost universally used as a slur, you know, in in common parliament for a reason. But the problem is there's there's no trust that what happens and and nor should there be. Um because we we know explicitly the opposite is true. But there's no trust that okay well you know you might trust your local law enforcement better. You might you might even know you know the the you know your police chief or deputy and you know they're a nice guy. You you know you play little league with their you know your kids play little league together. Everyone knows that the the local anything local government, local law enforcement can can have access to go can be utilized effortlessly by the feds. And then we also saw and this is with the co example played made made very explicit the weaponization of local government for federal edicts or or you know federal edicts laundered through states. Um and then and then also just you know the use of federal powers going against you like protesting you know schoolboard moms, things like that, right? So like we have seen the the the the Washington's abuses of local entities for for decades now you ramped up significantly with 911 everything ranging from your bank to your local sheriff's office was now quasi federal embassy um you know this is the natural byproduct and so if if you know is there any any way and and the problem is I don't even think you could you could ever create a firewall right that that would satisfy the concerns that exist right now to prevent federal abuses you know for a local societ you know, for for a local community that might otherwise give more of a benefit of the doubt to local government because enough of these abuse has been going on. It's become so mainstream and and you know, that is just the scenario that the federal government has created for all of society. Um, again, not that I'm not saying that everyone believes this. There's still plenty of people who would, you know, never question an FBI officer or anyone has a shiny badge, you know, regardless of what city they're from. Um but again I think the the growing broad awareness of the centralization use of these technologies is something that is it's it's a you know it it is a a you know part of this you know I think broader folk mind libertarian mindset that I I think is you know outperforms um other things >> well and combined with the knowledge that they would use their power and their surveillance power to crack down on peaceful people you've got that on the one hand right remember during COVID. They were sent like in some states they were sending sheriffs to take down everybody's license plate because they were going to illegal church services and we're going to track down those people. So easy to do now. Also, there's data showing that people who go to church on a weekly basis are much more right-wing and socially conservative. So, how easy then to simply use your videos and AI to compile a nationwide database to people who go to church every week and are therefore more likely to be right-wing and thus in the mind of left-wingers to be more violent, to be more antisocial, to be more paranoid because that's how the left-wing mind works, right? Is religious people are crazy fanatics. So, let's just make a database of all of those people. We can keep track of where they're going. So coupled with knowing that this if the state thought they could get away with it, they would absolutely do that and they may be able to get away with it in not too in the not too distant future. At the same time, while this huge surveillance state in order to keep normal people in line, you got methheads wandering all over your neighborhood. You got like violence, you got non-stop vandalism, thievery, violent crime, rapes, car thefts, and everything. And it's all beyond the ability of the government to crack down on it. The government cannot control this crime. They cannot keep a tent city from popping up 50 feet uh from where your children play, but they can certainly keep track of regular peaceful people. And you see that also in a lot of some of the uh the videos that have popped up in recent days about cops going to people's houses and harassing them because the flock camera incorrectly believed that the suspect had stolen a package off somebody's porch or was traveling somewhere that they were thought to have committed crime. It was all shown to be false that the flock cameras were uh read misreading the license plate and they were wrong. The cops go to this house. Who's the suspect always? It's like some like suburban mom, right? Because that that's always the cop's target. It's the the people who offer no threat, the people who are who are going to be submissive to the police, the people are going to do what they're told. And meanwhile, you got methheads out there on the street. That's that requires actual effort to deal with these people. So, we know that on the one hand, they're going to crack down on you, law-abiding suburban mom, and on the other hand, they're going to let violent crackheads just do whatever the hell they want on city streets. So that's that's the world we live in. >> Well, that also feeds >> the the the power grabs later, right? Like the the whole flock thing is being sold as a necessary thing for them to find missing children, to, you know, find vehicles for all these different reasons. And it's just the same pattern over and over again that the state monopolizes protection services and then fails and then their failure becomes an excuse to intrude more into our lives over and over again. So it's like and you always have to balance between like on the spectrum of like pure nefarious to like an accident that's just useful and then there's kind of like a Darwinian like cycle dynamic there. It's somewhere in between there. But like there is at very least not an incentive to actually clean up the cities when you have this kind of monopolistic model because it just gives them more room to then yeah yeah set up all these cameras and sure that may on the margin help them a little bit with the services they're supposed to provide us but that really serves their interest because now if any you know people you know they start violating stay-at-home orders or they want to organize some protest like the Canadian truckers now the state has much better tools to go and shut that down or at least monitor it than they would have if they had actually just done a good job with the the service that they claimed to provide at the beginning. So yeah, it's it's there's a cyclical nature to it. It's it's quite disgusting. Well, I think it's interesting too because like one one state that I think is is not known for these sort of problems. I mean, you could find it, you know, in certain neighborhoods in in Orlando or or, you know, even Miami from time to time, but like I mean like Florida usually scores pretty well when it comes to you normie perceptions of kind of law and order, right? You know, you don't have massive tent cities. Um, even even in, you know, most of our our blue areas, right? you know, it is it is, you know, seen as a fairly, you know, you that that they they provide decent um you know, law enforcement services in even in tightly dense areas. And yet even in a state like Florida that has again far better reputation on this than you know the examples you can play into San Francisco um again the the flock situation was so uh uh picked up u in in polling so effectively um the backlash of it that pretty much every candidate running for governor um had to make some sort of lip service to on a communicating some sort of of reigning in regulation in some cases outright banning of flot cameras as part of their campaign to a Republican constituency, right? So, so a a particular demographic that you would expect to be less concerned about the the abuse that would be more law enforcement heavy um even, you know, again, and I'm not I very much doubt this comes from, you know, some sort of profound constitutional, you know, views for for most of these folks. But I as much as just opportunistic polling, um you know, that was something I think has was one of the to takeaways I took from just this broader statewide dynamic here because again, a state that should have been more less concerned about some of these aspects of it, it still resonated deeply with a large percentage of the electorate. Um, and again, now how much this actually translates is a different question, right? We can talk about okay growing distrust. We can talk about how it polls. We can talk again, I think there's probably a massive asymmetry between those who are passionately pro- flock versus those who are are skeptical, right? I I think the constituency of passionately pro- flock is, you know, largely, you know, law enforcement officials and and, you know, you directly connected folks, whereas there's a growing populist backlash there. Uh, is that stopping the spread throughout the country? Um, there's you can point to a few examples here and there, but I I bet you there'll be more flock cameras in six months than there are right now. Um, so so how much is actually stops the proliferation of it as we acknowledge this broader cultural backlash? Um, I I I think that is worth being a little a little skeptical of. what are the abilities to reform and innovate so you see less of the Orwellan cameras and you know now it's disguised as something else and you don't have that that visceral component to it does does this sentiment die down if it's less explicit in your face can a rebranding of it lull people to be less concerned than they were today right and the way that we see certain people move on from hot button issues you know I don't want to paint overly a rosy picture about this backlash to it um but it it is very much a real thing and and and it's not confined to, you know, our traditional circles or even the people that were, you know, the most concerned about the Patriot Act. I mean, this is this has hit, I think, a broader level there that you're seeing opportunistically political signals that reflect a much broader concern over this issue even in areas of the country that you might, you know, be less uh likely based off of other traditional measures. Well, just another sort of dichotomy that I find interesting is the fact that we live I don't know if this most people are aware of this right maybe in our circles they are the standards for classifying information at the federal level have greatly expanded right now it's very easy for the federal government to basically declare any information that comes through it as top secret classified not for the public consumption and we all know at this point that classified information. The process of classifying is there to just avoid embarrassment for the government. The the idea that everything that's classified or top secret is uh essential wartime type information that the quote unquote enemy can't know. Everybody knows that's that's just simply not the case. That is there because politicians just don't want to deal with people knowing what the government is up to. And so while it's becoming easier and easier to keep official secrets, the assumption is that you're not allowed to keep any secrets. So that as government action is more and more secret, more locked up, more out of public view, your life should be open to examination by any hack low-level police sergeant or beat cop who just decides he wants to search your background and and find out where you live and do whatever you want. And of course, we we hear about all these cops that basically are stalking women using uh flock cameras and that sort of database. as someone put it, right? These cops, they see a hot woman and they immediately go and search the database to get information about her so they can stalk her. Now, you can say, "Oh, well, that's just a small percentage." True, but what other what other abuses are happening elsewhere? And by the way, why can't we put cameras in government offices? Right? This sometimes would get discussed where um gee, if you got someone on the clock, if someone is collecting a paycheck, shouldn't they then be open to surveillance? Shouldn't we get to see what they're doing all day? Uh I don't know. It seems like not such a terrible argument to me. And I was someone who worked a government job for a long time. I often thought, what if there was a camera in here? It would be the most boring show ever because it would be mostly we working on Excel. Uh and I rarely talked to my co-workers. So there wouldn't even be any uh any gossip or anything to overhear. But you know, right, so many of these government employees, they just waste all day. They're surfing porn in many cases. We got so many cases of that sort of thing happening among government employees. They don't want to be watched, but they want to watch you all the time. And and it's this asymmetry that I think a lot of people are aware of that you're not allowed to know anything about what your elected officials, let alone what bureaucrats are doing. But they're storing databases, films, uh, of you, metadata about everything you do everywhere you go. And that just seems to be the new reality of of what life in America is now and most of the world as well. Anytime that the government can afford this sort of infrastructure. Well guys, I think uh we've run out of time on this episode. Man, there's some stuff we could talk about in terms of economic data. Uh, >> headlines. We're gonna we're gonna have to come back to this next week or the week after because as we are meeting uh we're talking about we're looking at uh just this this manipulation of interest rates that's going on in the administration. the the stock buybacks, just these blatant naked attempts to suppress interest rates as the national debt soarses past $40 trillion as just 24 hours after Bessant intervenes from the administration to try and suppress interest rates, they're now higher than they were before his intervention. So, I'm assuming that every time he does a new intervention, the amount of time that has to go back before people catch on, that has to go by before people catch on will get shorter and shorter. So here it took about 24 hours for the markets to erase everything that Besson did in terms of suppressing interest rates. It'll probably take about 12 hours next time and then 6 hours and we'll be down to about 5 minutes to go by that uh the Feds will buy up a bunch of uh bonds to try and suppress the interest rate. It'll go down for two or three minutes and then it'll skyrocket back up. the the bond vigilantes are are doing their thing and the the federal government just looks more and more like a basket case operation just they're behaving like Bolivia, right? They're do you doing all these little things to try and keep uh the uh the currency from losing its value to try and keep people from abandoning the uh the government totally in terms of lending the money in terms of doing that sort of stuff and yeah we got a ways to go till we're at Bolivia levels but that's the trajectory and you can see it in all of the shenanigans now that they're trying to do through the Trump administration. Uh, so we'll we'll have to look more closely into that and I think talk to talk about just what a fun fun topic this this could be going forward. >> I think we call that a a teaser in the biz. >> Yeah, keep if you're not paying any attention to the bond markets right now. Check it out. Uh, but you apparently probably know more than the government knows because Besson just today was saying, "Well, there was a spike in the oil price and we don't really understand why." Uh, so I I'm guessing anyone with an IQ above 95 can guess why the oil price is going up, but this is beyond Besson's understanding. Of course, he's probably just lying. He probably knows why. He just has to pretend to not understand why, but anyway, that's that's where we are. All right. Well, thank you guys for joining me today. Uh, yeah, I'm I'm very intrigued to see where this issue ends up uh in terms of just Fourth Amendment juristp prudence, in terms of populist blowback. Uh, I'm always fascinated to see people knocking down these uh these cameras. I'm very fascinated by the idea of will there be jury nullification? Well, will simply juries refuse to convict these people for knocking over these these cameras. That's how the American Revolution worked after all is they simply couldn't get convictions in America after a while uh in terms of uh assembling juries to convict people who engaged in disobedience against the state. So, lots of lots of interesting potential um disobedient sort of activities going on here going forward. And of course, they would only get worse if the economy tanks. So, it'll be uh uh it'll be a sight to behold, I think, if things continue on their current trajectory. So, thanks guys for joining me today. Uh thank you everyone out there for listening. We'll be back next time with more. So, we'll see you then.