AI-powered Flock cameras are logging where you drive, when you drive, and who you're with — all day, every day, without a warrant and without any suspicion you've committed a crime. And the establishment press can barely bring itself to call it anything worse than a "controversy."
This isn't a controversy. It's a constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight.
The Deseret News laid out the core problem clearly: Flock's AI system "creates a graph of where you go and who you associate with, all day, every day, regardless of whether you're suspected of committing a crime." The Supreme Court already ruled in Carpenter v. United States that the government needs individual warrants to access cell phone data. Flock's comprehensive vehicle-tracking database is more intrusive than the dragnet warrants, DUI checkpoints, and stop-and-frisk policies the Court has already curtailed. If your phone location data is protected by the Fourth Amendment, your physical movements tracked by a government-funded camera network should be, too.
The Los Angeles Times reported that rogue cops are already abusing the system — using Flock cameras to stalk "wives, girlfriends or ex-girlfriends." That's not a hypothetical. That's what happens when you give law enforcement a tool that tracks everyone and accountability is an afterthought. One San Diego protester showed up to a City Hall meeting in a Darth Vader costume and told officials "we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the Rebel scum." The joke wrote itself.
The pushback is real. An activist group called DeFlock maintains a searchable map of more than 135,000 Flock cameras nationwide, and 132 cities have canceled their contracts. The LAPD has already been forced to stop using Flock-collected data, according to the Times. Americans are waking up.
The Deseret News' other columnist offered the tired line: you already carry a smartphone and companies sell your data, so who cares if the government photographs your car? This is the worst argument in American politics. Private companies tracking you to sell ads is a nuisance. The state tracking you to build a case file is a threat to liberty. Benjamin Franklin had it right: "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox admitted the approval process for the Stratos data center project was "not good." Data centers and surveillance infrastructure are becoming election-deciding issues. Good. Politicians should have to answer for greenlighting the surveillance state.
The real question isn't whether Flock cameras solve crimes. The question is whether Americans still believe the government needs a warrant to track you — or whether we've just decided the Fourth Amendment is inconvenient.
