Tag: mass surveillance

Police officer arrested after using Flock cameras 717 times to track ex-wife

A police officer faces two criminal charges after being accused of using Flock cameras to track his estranged ex-wife over 700 times while on and off duty.

Christopher Goodson, an officer in Haines City in central Florida, was found to have looked up his ex-wife’s license plate number in the Flock database 717 times between Sept. 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026, according to an affidavit. Goodson told a supervisor he had looked up his ex-wife’s car to keep track of his children’s location.

Goodson has been charged with one count of offenses against users of computers and electronic devices, and one count of official misconduct, according to a Haines City Police Department news release.

The officer has indicated that he plans to resign due to the investigation, according to police.

Goodson’s arrest is part of a growing number of documented abuses of the Flock camera surveillance system by police.

A man in North Manchester, Indiana, who has repeatedly criticized his local government and the police at town council meetings, told the press that he noticed he was being frequently followed by police. “It started to be more than a coincidence; it kept happening more and more,” Bob Sklar told WWSB. “I didn’t understand why.”

He then realized that Flock cameras were being used to track him. Sklar said he is not aware of any legitimate reason he is being tracked.

Currently, there are over 116,000 such surveillance cameras, placed mostly at intersections in urban and suburban neighborhoods.   

Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, supervisor Andy Parrish is fighting Flock camera surveillance locally and nationally through his online campaigns. 

“People are being hurt. There are young women whose lives have been changed forever,” Parrish told LifeSiteNews. “We’ve got 80 women stalked and terrorized.”

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4 Former Savannah Police Employees Arrested for Misusing Flock Cameras

Four Savannah department employees, including three former officers, were arrested after an internal audit discovered they had been using Savannah’s Flock powered license plate reader system for reasons outside of normal department law enforcement investigations. Dillard, Phillips, Rich, and Thomas, a civilian department employee, were arrested after investigators discovered their misuse of the system.

Dillard, Phillips and Rich each are charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, and one count of violation of their oath of office, while Thomas is charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, reported Fox5 Atlanta.

As the case is currently under investigation by the GBI, it will be completed by them and then sent to the Eastern Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office to be handled by the proper prosecutors. Savannah Police Chief Lenny Gunther states that his department will not tolerate such misconduct.

The real question is why Flock cameras exist at all; they are surveillance without informed consent.

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Debate Over Flock Surveillance Cameras Takes Unexpected Turn in SoCal As ‘Darth Vader’ Weighs In

Well here’s some fun Saturday night nuttery for you.

We’ve written on the ongoing debate in this country about Flock license-plate reading cameras. They’ve been used to thwart mass terror attacks — but they’ve also been used by unscrupulous law enforcement officers to keep an eye on their exes. Creepy.

One thing you might not have expected, however, is for Darth Vader to come down from space and weigh in on the matter at a San Diego City Council Public safety meeting Wednesday. I have to say, the guy’s got Mr. Vader’s breathing sounds down perfectly, and his voice work is pretty solid too.

If whoever was behind the spot was trying to get attention, he achieved his goal, because the clip has been viewed millions of times. 

His little speech was way out there, but it would seem he was using the occasion to mock the city’s 500 Flock cameras installed on streetlights. Several of the folks in attendance appeared to struggle to contain their laughter.

The council member who announced that it was his turn to speak didn’t seem to flinch in the slightest when she introduced him. “Thank you,” she said to a citizen who had just finished her remarks. “Darth Vader?”

Maybe they’re used to this kind of thing on the Left Coast:

The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the Rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers… They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this.

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The Flock Camera Backlash Is A Very Good Sign

In a year as chaotic, violent, and economically destructive as this one has been, it is interesting that, to many Americans, the great villain of 2026 is turning out to be a traffic camera.

But, indeed, we are seeing visceral, cross-partisan opposition to so-called Flock cameras—named after the leading manufacturer of these automated license plate readers—take hold in communities across the country. And that opposition is, to be sure, entirely legitimate.

Flock’s camera networks are based on the idea that, while it would obviously be illegal and unconstitutional for law enforcement at any and all levels to put GPS trackers in everyone’s cars, it would be legal for a cop standing on some street corner to report that they had seen a specific vehicle drive by if it later turned out that that car had either been stolen or used to commit a crime.

But, taking that idea that public observations are not violations of privacy, Flock and similar companies help set up networks of cameras that record and register the license plate, make and model, and identifiable details of every single passing vehicle into a timestamped and searchable national database. And, as more and more of these cameras are added to streets and parking lots all over the country, and they, therefore, get harder and harder to avoid, the data the government has access to becomes essentially indistinguishable from what they would have if there were government GPS trackers in all of our cars.

There are currently around 120,000 of these cameras across 49 states, with more being added every day. And the American people are not happy about it.

In a genuine grassroots movement spreading primarily through local Facebook groups and the like, with little coverage outside local media, concerned citizens are doing everything from pressuring local lawmakers to rescind their contracts with Flock Safety to donning masks and cutting the cameras down with electric saws.

And this opposition is starting to have some success. More than 50 jurisdictions have ended their relationships with Flock after local backlash. And, after Flock tried and failed for months to get the wider public to view organizations that track the location of these cameras as terrorists because some have used those locations to avoid, disable, or destroy some, the company announced last week that it was implementing several changes to try and defuse the public anger.

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Peter Thiel-Funded Company Anduril to Triple the Number of Autonomous Surveillance Towers Along the US-Mexico Border

In June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report that detailed how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contracted with Anduril Industries—a Peter Thiel-funded company—to nearly triple the number of surveillance towers along US borders. The report outlines the plan to increase the number of surveillance towers from 830 to 2,300 by 2034.

The new GAO report describes the “Integrated Surveillance Towers” (IST) program that currently consists of “803 fielded towers located along US borders that detect items of interest, such as people or vehicles.”

The IST program includes towers from four legacy systems, including Autonomous Surveillance Towers (AST). An AST is a solar-powered surveillance tower that the DHS says can “provide autonomous surveillance operations 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.” The towers are equipped with radar, optical, and thermal cameras.

According to the GAO report, in August 2024, DHS approved the purchase of up to 42 additional ASTs. DHS had previously approved Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) request to purchase up to 133 additional towers between 2022 and 2023. The report states that the program should be completed by March 2034, with 2,300 deployed by that date.

The GAO was established in 1921 to serve as an independent and nonpartisan agency that audits the federal government. The GAO releases annual reports on key issues and details its findings to Congress.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to digital privacy and rights, called the expansion of border surveillance a “digital dumpster fire for human rights and civil liberties.”

“It’s not just surveillance towers; drones, aerostats, surveillance vehicles, ground sensors, game cameras, and license plate readers are also part of the vast taxpayer-funded infrastructure that threatens all those who live, work, or seek refuge in the borderlands,” the EFF wrote in response to the GAO report. “This technology isn’t exclusive to U.S. federal agencies: it’s also deployed by state and local law enforcement, and even by governments on the Mexican side.”

The EFF also noted that these rapidly expanding surveillance technologies place residential neighborhoods in Arizona within the sight of the towers, making them “capable of spying on homes on both sides of the border.”

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‘Have I Been Flocked’ Website Lets You Check If Police Searched for Your Car Using Flock Camera System

A new website allows drivers to find out whether their license plate has been photographed and searched through law enforcement agencies’ Flock camera systems.

The new website, “Have I Been Flocked,” compiles Flock camera audit logs and lets users see if their plate number has been run through the Flock application by a system operator.

If a person’s license plate appears in the database, it means not only that the plate was photographed, but that someone using the Flock system actively searched the database for that plate, according to the site. Included in the audit log is the stated reason someone in law enforcement gave for looking up the plate.

The site notes several limits to what its records show. The database does not reveal when or whether a vehicle passed one of the Flock Safety cameras. Those searching Flock databases are not necessarily police officers, and appearing on the site does not mean a person was under investigation.

The database of audit logs was built through FOIA public records requests filed with 6,586 different agencies across the country. Organizers caution that some information may be outdated or incomplete.

“The dataset is incomplete; few governments provide easy access to these logs, and the records we obtain are often redacted,” organizers of the site warn.

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Cop Fired After Allegedly Using Flock Cameras to Stalk Former Boyfriend – She Abused System 166 Times

A South Carolina police officer has been fired for allegedly using a Flock camera system to check on an individual with whom she had had a relationship.

Ellie Anna Hammond, 24, was fired on Aug. 3, the Mauldin Police Department said, according to KOCO-TV.

A department representative said no comment on the action would be coming, because it’s “a personnel matter.”

Hammond was fired due to alleged misconduct between March and July, according to documents from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy.

During that period, Hammond was accused of accessing the Flock camera system 166 different times to track a vehicle that belonged to an individual with whom she once had a relationship.

Every time the system was accessed, a reason was provided, but the documents said those reasons were bogus.

The reasons were variously listed as a warrant check, traffic infraction, or welfare check.

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X Wins Australian Case Over Private Message Scanning Rule

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner wrote a rule requiring online services to scan what their users send each other. Not to act on reports, but to run detection systems across private messages before anyone has complained, hunting child sexual abuse and pro-terror material. Top censor, Julie Inman Grant, wrote it herself, under powers the Online Safety Act hands her, and breaching it carries penalties of up to $49.5 million.

Then she took the view that it covered social media platforms as well, because they let users send each other messages.

On August 12, the Federal Court told her it does not. The Relevant Electronic Services Standard “does not apply” to X, Justice Elizabeth Raper held, ruling for the platform in a case it brought in May 2025. It “would be rather perverse for a social media service…not to enable messaging or chat between end users,” X’s barrister had argued — on eSafety’s reading, having a DM function was enough to pull a platform into a rulebook written for something else.

The distinction is important because of who writes what. Social media services in Australia are covered by a code developed with the industry, X included. The RES Standard is not a negotiated code. It is an instrument the Commissioner drafts and enforces herself. The standard says it applies “to the exclusion of any industry code” — so reading it to cover social media would have let the instrument she controls displace the one she negotiated.

Raper said so directly. “I accept X Corp’s characterisation of the facts that the RES Standard has been made by the commissioner…as a standard applicable to participants in a different section of the online industry, that are specified…as ‘providers of relevant electronic services’,” she wrote.

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3D-printing enthusiast creates ‘Flock Sock’ to blind controversial cameras, shares design — slip-on cover attaches to broom handle to make it easy to put on devices placed on traffic and streetlights

Privacy concerns and multiple incidents have led many citizens to take it upon themselves to block or disable Flock cameras. They often do this either by placing black trash bags over them or by spraying paint or insulating foam onto their lenses. Now, the former can be dangerous, especially if you don’t have equipment, as you need to reach high enough to cover the camera and secure the plastic bag over it. The latter can get you into deeper trouble, as paint or foam can damage the camera. So, 3D printing enthusiast SquidInk decided to create an easy-to-use model that would take seconds to install without damaging the camera and posted it on Maker World.

While the public was initially concerned about their privacy with Flock’s AI-powered cameras, this concern eventually turned into outrage after it was discovered that some police officers had been misusing the system. There were also a couple of high-profile incidents where procedural errors led to the mistaken apprehension of innocent people. Because of these incidents, some jurisdictions have voted to remove these cameras, to the chagrin of some of their most ardent supporters. As for towns and cities that voted to keep their Flock AI cameras operational, some citizens are taking matters into their own hands and deliberately blocking these cameras to prevent them from capturing video. Note that actions like these are probably illegal and will get anyone caught doing so in hot water. Possible charges include vandalism, criminal mischief, property damage, tampering with public infrastructure, obstruction, and more.

The Flock Sock itself doesn’t encourage anyone to commit a crime. Its description says, “The Flock Sock is a slip on cover designed to help protect a Flock camera from the harmful radiation of the sun. Your city spent their very own hard-earned tax dollars scattering these cameras everywhere to keep you safe, all it cost you was a little privacy. The very least you can do is help protect these valuable civil servants from getting a bad sunburn.”

The creator also said that Flock commonly uses three different models, and that they’re working on profiles for the other two so that there’s a 3D-printable Flock Sock for every Flock camera you may find in the wild.

Aside from being easy to print, it’s also easy to use and deploy. It slides onto Flock cameras in seconds, and you can easily lift it into position with a 1-inch broom handle through the built-in adapter. They also highlighted that it’s 100% non-permanent, saying, “No glue, no screws, and zero structural changes. Because it pops off instantly with absolutely no damage caused and costs exactly $0 to revert, it conveniently avoids some of the troublesome labels that Uncle Sam might stick to you. It’s just a removable accessory.” While SquidInk recommended using ABS/ASA for its excellent heat and UV resistance, they also suggested using PLA “if you prefer your Flock Sock to develop a long term relationship with the summer heat.”

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The Trump Administration Is Building A Pre Crime Panopticon Unlike Any Authoritarian Regime Before It

As of late American citizens have been more concerned with surveillance and privacy than ever before. Rightfully so, as we see an explosion of surveillance equipment being installed across the country.

For decades, liberty activists have diligently watched and warned of the slowly encroaching mission creep of domestic mass surveillance seeping its way into everyday American life. Opposition to such violations of fundamental liberty have been one of the few causes to transcend the false left / right paradigm, with instances such as leftists opposed to the surveillance of civil rights groups during the days of COINTELPRO and conservative opposition to the surveillance of Second Amendment activists.

Even today, amid rising concerns of the mass implementation of Flock cameras across the nation, these concerns are actively creating a bridge of solidarity among the polarized political chasm.

While surveillance of the American citizenry has existed in some way for more than a century, the persistent punitive pervasiveness of such violations of privacy have been perpetually on the rise since the passage of the Patriot Act following the false flag attack of September 11th, 2001.

Interestingly enough, the provisions of the Patriot Act with all of its violations of constitutional protections had already been cooked up well before the September 11th attacks but was projected not to pass a congressional vote until such attacks took place. Indeed, the Patriot Act simply served as an expansion of surveillance authority circumventing the Constitution implemented in the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, itself only justified following the Oklahoma City false flag attack just a year prior. Simply a coincidence, surely. 

The conversation surrounding concerns about domestic mass surveillance reached mainstream dialog following the explosive revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, when leaked documents provided to journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed a sprawling network of illegal spying against American citizens through the National Security Agency’s PRISM program.

Despite Snowden’s revelations and warnings, and subsequent surveillance scandals in the years since, next to nothing has been done to curtail this campaign of illegal mass spying against the American people. In fact, it has only continued to worsen.

This brings us to today. Oftentimes in discussion of illegal mass surveillance, the cynical statist would posit a straw man argument to the likes of “What does it matter? If you’ve done nothing wrong you should have nothing to hide.” As if an all encompassing surveillance state simply exists in a vacuum. As if history has not demonstrated again and again the kind of atrocities enabled by repressive regimes who track, trace, and database their citizenry.

Mass surveillance does not simply exist to “keep an eye on people”, it serves as a tool of the state to suppress dissent, identify and silence dissidents, and centralize control over the populace.

Here at The Free Thought Project, we have warned for years about the dangers of integrating artificial intelligence with law enforcement. 

Now, it appears the Trump administration is diving head first into a Minority Report style pre crime surveillance system powered by AI to throw a digital dragnet over the entirety of the American people.

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