The Backdoor Police State: Unmasking the Flock Camera Controversy & Mass Surveillance with Christopher Bruce

The Thomas FreeMe Show: From Prison to Prosperity!

On 'The Thomas FreeMe Show,' host Thomas FreeMe and guest Christopher Bruce expose the growing threat of mass surveillance through automated

Key takeaways

• Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are being used to log every movement of vehicles across the U.S., creating a pervasive surveillance network.
• Law enforcement personnel have abused ALPR databases for unauthorized tracking, stalking, and personal investigations.

Main topics

• Flock Safety's automated license plate reader network
• Mass surveillance and privacy violations in America

Notable quotes

"Every single mile that you drive, an uninvited passenger is logging your movements."

"They stole my kid at three days old... That's how it got started."

Conclusion

The episode underscores the urgent need for public awareness and legal action against

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Thomas Freemey Show, the place where we break down the systems, challenge the status quo, and empower you to take back your freedom. And of course, I'm your host, Thomas Freemey. Speaker 3 (0:15) Be Speaker 1 (0:25) sure to hit subscribe and mash the bell. Speaker 2 (0:34) So today, I want you to think about your daily routine. Driving to work, dropping off the kids at school, pulling into the grocery store parking lot, heading to a private medical appointment. You're just living your life. But every single mile that you drive, an uninvited passenger is logging your movements. Automated license plate reader cameras, specifically. The massive network deployed by companies like Flock Safety are tracking, recording, and storing your location data. And now that we truly understand as American citizens what this Flock Safety system is, the pushback is growing louder because people are realizing that simple undeniable truth. We do not want to be surveilled. Even worse, what happens when the very systems built to quote-unquote keep us safe are weaponized or left wide open? Going into recent investigations that have exposed how law enforcement personnel have exploited these massive databases to track, stalk, and spy on citizens for personal reasons. Running unauthorized searches thousands of times over. It's a backdoor police state operating in plain sight and everyday citizens are saying enough is enough. This is the absolute limit. So today's conversation, we're diving deep into the flock camera controversy. And joining me today is a man that goes by the name of Christopher Bruce. And this is a man who is not afraid to look at the hard truths of this institutional overreach and stand up for liberty. This is what Christopher has been doing in the second half of his life that he will explain to what got him into that. Speaker 2 (2:40) But before we jump into that conversation with Christopher, I want everyone listening to know that you are not powerless in this. And because of this rampant abuse and invasive tracking, a major nationwide proposed class action lawsuit, Schultz versus Flock Group Inc., has been filed against the Flock Group. This lawsuit targets how. The Flock network of over 120,000 automated license plate readers enables massive data exposure, weak security features, and unvetted tracking. The proposed class covers anyone in the United States whose vehicle and location data has been captured and collected by Flock systems since January 1st of 2024. If you want to find out more information about this lawsuit, check your rights, or see if your data has been swept up in this nationwide dragnet, you can look up those details on legal research platforms like classaction.org, where the Schulte v. Flock case is being tracked. With that being said, let's get into it. Christopher, let's talk about what is really happening on our streets and why Americans are drawing a hard line in the sand. And what was it that got you involved in this fight? Speaker 3 (4:05) Okay, well, let me tell you that any fight that I get into always involves government. And every government action usually involves me fighting. So essentially, how did I get into this? Well, pretty much the same way I got into just about every other governmental fight. They kicked me hard in the shins one day and stole my wife's only child. And essentially, it was just a natural progression from there. Basically, you fight one thing, you start. learning more things, you start fighting more things, as you might know. Essentially, as I discover things that I don't like or agree with, I just end up fighting. And that's just about everything that government does. So if you're wanting to know how I got into it in a nutshell, essentially, they stole my kid at three days old, said I was a neglectful parent. How you find somebody neglectful in three days is beyond me. For one thing, and essentially, I'd raised three boys into their 20s, and they were all doing great. So how am I neglectful now? But neither here nor there. They terminated my rights in six months. Two months after that, in a hearing I instigated where I called 40 witnesses on my behalf, they ruled on the record of the court they should have never taken my kid, and they had no reason to in the first place. 11 years later, I'm still fighting to get her back. That's how it got started. Now. Along the way, you learn things, like I said, things that you never even thought about looking into. You just start looking into everything. And pretty soon you just the rabbit hole goes way deeper than we could ever imagine. And you just keep going and you keep going and you keep going and you keep finding new things to fight. And that's how it all got started. Speaker 2 (6:10) Well, got it. So now. When we roll around to these these flock cameras, what what was it that particularly took your interest in it that made you go to the extreme that you're going through now? OK, well, Speaker 3 (6:27) in Speaker 2 (6:28) that case, Speaker 3 (6:29) I had done quite a bit of research into the credit system over in China. I had watched that progress from. We're just going to put up a few cameras extra into, okay, now we're going to monitor everything you do and everything you do is going to affect your social credit score. And this is something I was looking into way back in, oh, I don't know, 2018, I think, is when I first noticed the social credit score system. Speaker 3 (7:05) Obviously, things like that always start with giving government a little more, giving them a little more, giving them a little more leeway into doing what they're doing and to fight. Essentially, you start giving them more and they just take more and they run with it. So I see this all turning into, yes, a different political system, but the same results. usually occur. You give them all the tools they need to turn it into a surveillance state, and it just becomes one. So yes, as soon as I saw that starting... I said, no, this has got to quit. And how it started for me was personally was that I noticed that police cars were running up on my license plate immediately and then just reading them and getting all the information they needed to possibly pull me over. I noticed this about four or five years ago. A policeman came up on me, read my plate and immediately pulled me over for what he said was. one of my two license plate lights had gone out. I said, well, I noticed that you didn't give me a ticket for that. So what was the reason for that? What was your decision to pull me over? Well, one of your license plate lights was out. Well, then why didn't you give me a ticket for that? Well, it seems obvious to me that the whole purpose of that is to cover up the fact that they are able to just drive up on you, start reading your license plate and bring up your whole history so that possibly we can pull you over for anything we can imagine. Well, then it turned into license plate readers. And now it's gone on to more cameras here, more cameras there. And now we've got a whole system already set up. So, yeah, you know, as soon as I started seeing it unfolding, yeah, I had to do and say something about it. It's kind of like you start seeing the signs of something coming up and you know what it's going to turn into eventually. So you want to kind of nip it in the bud early. And, you know, they did this to me in the city next door to us, too. And that pulled. police officers said to me, oh, we can pull you over anytime we want to for any reason we want to. And that was enough for me to write the city attorney and say, what is this? Now you can just pull over people without probable cause or a reason to pull them over now. Well, yeah, and everybody here seems to get along with that idea. Not me, pal. And I guarantee you, everybody that got a ticket, they don't feel the same way. You know, you can say we didn't do anything wrong, so I don't care if you pull us over. We didn't do anything wrong. We don't have anything in our car, so you can search our car. We know how that goes. And to see it in action and the way they're doing it and the way they're just shucking all of your rights to the side, then you start waking up to what's really going on. It's a progressive awakening. And I believe a lot of people have been victims of the same things that I have. And when you start waking up to that, you start telling all your friends about it. You start telling your... friends what happened, how they did it. Pretty soon, a lot of people start getting angry. And I believe the same thing happened with Flock. Once people started figuring out what was really going on with those, once they started seeing all the mistakes they were making, you know, this person ended up with a stolen vehicle. Oh, but the license plate was read wrong. You know, that's the kind of thing that people go, oh, wait a minute now. This can't go on. So. Yeah, it kind of turns into a big burger after a while. Speaker 2 (11:13) Right. And so getting into that, you know, we ask who is Flock? What is Flock? For the people who know and understand what's going on with the system, but may not understand what the company is. So to give you a rundown. The founder and CEO of Flock Safety, his name is Garrett Langley. Speaker 3 (11:39) Now, Speaker 2 (11:39) before Flock, Langley says that he has built two technology companies prior. And his own account of Flock's origin is tied to experiencing the problem of crime and being convinced that better technology and better evidence for police can result in less crime. He was he was involved in a crime in his neighborhood out there in Atlanta. He knew that crime was bad in Atlanta. And he wanted to do something about that. And that is that's commendable, right? We all understand that we don't want crime to occur and things of that nature. And he founded Flock in 2017. The company started with a relatively straightforward proposition to use technology to help communities and law enforcement obtain better evidence when crimes occur. And now this company has grown into a massive public safety technology company. And that's where the story starts to get interesting because Flock has announced now that