S4E349 — Federal judge calls Flock 'indiscriminate mass surveillance'

GARY: —so the judge tosses the case because the deputy didn't say please, honestly the most honest thing a court's ever done, and I've read the article twice, I get it.

MAEVE: Maeve.

OBI: Obi.

GRUNER: Gruner.

GARY: Gary. Yes. Moving on, clearly not moving on.

MAEVE: You get it.

GARY: Federal judge tosses a meth bust because a cop ran a plate without a warrant.

MAEVE: Close enough, for a man who read it twice.

OBI: Judge Sara Hill. Tulsa deputy ran the plate through Flock for, quote, "no apparent reason, other than it being from California."

GARY: California is a reason. It's practically a motive.

OBI: That's not probable cause, Gary, that's prejudice with a fucking sunroof.

MAEVE: She wrote "indiscriminate mass surveillance." In the ruling. In ink. With her name under it.

GRUNER: Is smoking gun. With badge.

GARY: And the meth walked. Ninety-one pounds, free, out there networking.

OBI: The meth isn't the point.

GARY: Ninety-one points, Obi.

MAEVE: We haven't opened one comment and you're already wrong.

GARY: I like to get it out of the way early.

OBI: Operational fact. The deputy typed a California plate into Flock. No warrant, no tip, no report. Plate from California, car in Oklahoma. That was the entire investigation.

MAEVE: He ran a background check on a license plate's vibe.

OBI: Flock gave him her whole travel history. Every camera she'd ever passed. He used that history to justify searching her car.

GARY: Which any of us would do. You see a California plate, you think, that car has been places.

MAEVE: Places, Gary. Not crimes. My car has been to a Costco.

GARY: A Costco in California?

MAEVE: Fresno. I'm on a list now, apparently.

OBI: The Carpenter distinction matters, Gary. A cop following one car is targeted. Flock catalogs every vehicle that passes every camera, always, and serves it up on demand. That's not following one car. That's following all cars, forever, in advance.

GARY: So it's a stakeout that got a Series B.

MAEVE: A stakeout with a sales team and a SOC 2.

GRUNER: Field note. I read now.

GRUNER: Judge writes: "This is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance. It is not targeted on a single individual, as in Carpenter. It is a tool that collects information about all vehicles that pass by any network-connected camera at all times."

GRUNER: Human judge says correct thing. Is alarming frequency of this.

OBI: She also wrote the evidence "must be suppressed as the fruit of a poisonous tree."

GARY: See, and this is where the ruling eats itself, because the search found ninety-one pounds of meth, and that meth is now free-range, roaming Oklahoma, unsupervised, which is the exact thing Flock claims to --

MAEVE: Gary.

GARY: What? It's a real cost.

MAEVE: You're doing the math of a man who thinks the meth has a LinkedIn.

GARY: It has a distribution strategy, Maeve. I've read ahead. There are numbers in there.

OBI: There are numbers in there.

MAEVE: Oh no.

OBI: Four of them. For the same ninety-one pounds.

GARY: Four numbers for one bag of meth. This thread is going to be so good to us.

OBI: First comment. Hypfer: "That sentence does make this less of a win tbh."

GARY: See? Even the thread agrees with me.

MAEVE: Gary, hypfer is saying the meth makes the privacy win awkward. You're saying the meth makes the privacy win illegal. You're wrong one floor below him.

GARY: That's still a floor I'm on.

OBI: He continues: "it's just an actual example of the technology doing the job it is supposed to do."

MAEVE: And the thread's response to that is not philosophy. It's arithmetic.

OBI: JumpCrisscross: "91 pounds? That's 2 million doses at 20 mg/dose."

MAEVE: Two million doses. That's not a drug bust, that's a Series A.

GARY: Two million doses found during a traffic stop? What was the car, a piñata?

OBI: NDlurker, replying directly: "That's less than $130,000 worth of product. It's a lot, but not crazy."

MAEVE: "Not crazy." A hundred and thirty thousand dollars of meth, and a man on the internet graded it "fine."

GARY: That's bullshit grading. I want to see his rubric.

GARY: One guy says two million doses, one guy says a hundred and thirty grand. That's a valuation dispute. I've raised money on worse math.

OBI: You raised money on no math, Gary. There was a deck and a vibe.

GARY: The vibe was strong.

GRUNER: Is not finished. There is third number.

OBI: KingMachiavelli: "92lb=41.73 kg = 41730g / 0.9g / 365 = 127.032 average-user-years."

MAEVE: He did the meth in user-years.

GARY: He cohort-analyzed the meth.

OBI: He divided meth by daily consumption and got a hundred and twenty-seven point zero three two average-user-years.

MAEVE: A month's supply for a small town. His words.

GRUNER: Small town of meth. Is like my kind of census.

GARY: Nobody's conceding anything, are they.

OBI: No. Four numbers, one bag, zero agreement. Thread's off to a beautiful start.

OBI: New comment. Joshheitzman: "we should have no expectation of privacy out in public."

MAEVE: Bold claim from a man who's never met a mosaic.

GARY: He's not wrong, though. I've been photographed in public loads. Nobody asked.

OBI: Photographed once, Gary. Not filed, indexed, and subpoenaed.

MAEVE: Ranger_danger cites Carpenter. And Chatrie.

OBI: Moralestapia's already there — following someone's whole week isn't "public," it's a tail.

MAEVE: Saghm says the same thing two replies down. Independently.

OBI: Three handles, same point, nobody reading each other. Very HN.

GARY: So it's consensus.

MAEVE: It's a doctrine with a drinking problem. Carpenter put cell data in the warrant box. This judge just threw plates in after it.

OBI: The box is getting fucking crowded.

GARY: Can I just say — and I want credit for this — seeing someone once isn't following them everywhere. Scale is the whole crime.

OBI: That's moralestapia's point, Gary.

GARY: Is it.

OBI: Word for word. You plagiarized a man agreeing with you.

MAEVE: He didn't even paraphrase well.

GARY: I thought I had something there.

OBI: You had moralistapia, badly lit.

OBI: Ratmice. Flock doesn't sell civilians a boyfriend stalking pass.

GARY: Damn it, there goes my Christmas list.

OBI: Says their offerings "aren't really in line with what Flock provides HOAs." Government-only menu.

MAEVE: So the scary toy's not retail.

OBI: Can't buy it. Can't rent it. Can't marry into it. Badge only, no civilians.

GARY: So the whole "it's just a private camera" defense is —

OBI: Hackyhacky. When a company does contracted work for the government, it's acting as the government's agent.

GARY: — so it's not a company hiding behind a windbreaker. It's the government wearing one.

OBI: Flock doesn't sell to you, Gary. It sells to anyone with a badge and a hunch.

GARY: That's the whole fucking episode. We've been arguing about a camera. It's a cop with a billing address.

MAEVE: It's a state actor.

GARY: Say it like it cost you something.

MAEVE: A state actor wearing a Delaware C-corp as a windbreaker.

OBI: Closer.

GRUNER: Is not camera. Is uniform. With invoice.

MAEVE: Fine. The thread was right.

OBI: There it is.

GARY: Did she just concede a —

OBI: Don't.

GARY: I wasn't gonna —

OBI: Don't make it weird, Gary.

GARY: I'm just saying, for the record, Maeve conceded a point with no cap table attached.

MAEVE: I didn't concede. I updated a thesis.

OBI: Same shape, smaller mouth.

MAEVE: Fuck off, Obi.

OBI: There she is.

GARY: And we're back.

OBI: Warkdarrior: "Just launched a company around that concept, with a full range of cage options. I bet ICE will subcontract to us."

MAEVE: He pivoted to cages in one comment. That's the fastest pivot I've ever seen, and I funded a company that pivoted during its own launch party.

GARY: A full range of cage options. What's the tiered pricing look like? Cage, Cage Pro, Cage Enterprise?

OBI: Cage Enterprise comes with SSO.

GARY: And a compliance team that's also in a cage.

MAEVE: SauciestGNU asks how he'll differentiate against Geo Group and CoreCivic. There's an existing market for this. There's a MOAT in human cages.

GARY: The incumbents are gonna crush him. Geo Group has distribution.

OBI: Marcosdumay: "Does the tower where Gandalf is kept in Lord of the Rings have a name? Is the .com still available?"

GARY: He's branding the prison startup. He's doing naming work for the cage company.

MAEVE: That's the most Silicon Valley sentence ever typed. Not "should this exist." "Is the domain available."

GRUNER: Is correct question. First always check domain.

OBI: Kennywinker answers: "Orthanc, but maybe we just go with 'frodo but evil.'"

MAEVE: Frodo But Evil.

GARY: That's a real startup name. I've met two of those.

MAEVE: I've passed on three.

OBI: It's an actual Onion headline. "Creatively tapped out Peter Thiel launches startup called Frodo But Evil."

GARY: The Onion is just running press releases now.

MAEVE: The Onion stopped being satire in, what, 2019?

GRUNER: Back home we have saying. Man builds cage, first thing he does is name it.

MAEVE: What's the saying?

GRUNER: Is not saying. Is just observation.

OBI: The thread's own joke proved the whole point. They invented a surveillance-prison startup to escape the surveillance argument.

GARY: And immediately worried about the moat.

MAEVE: That's the part that should scare you, Gary. Not the cage. The TAM.

GARY: The TAM for cages is literally everyone.

GRUNER: Blyat. Is good market. Am writing it down.

OBI: JumpCrisscross, on taking the cameras down: "There seems to be a real reduction in property crime in some places with cameras."

GARY: There. Settled. Cameras work, meth gets caught, everyone go home.

OBI: He also says he's "relaxed that position recently."

GARY: People are allowed to update.

OBI: People are allowed to get paid, Gary. He relaxed toward the thing with the invoice.

MAEVE: That's not a position. That's a stock photo of a position.

GARY: The reduction is real, Obi. Property crime. Real.

OBI: Porkshoe, replying directly: "You're conflating 'any camera' with cameras that are attached to a centralized data aggregation system."

GARY: A camera's a camera.

OBI: Your doorbell is a camera. Flock is forty thousand cameras that remember your car's whole week and sell it to a deputy with a hunch.

GARY: Okay, but crime still went down.

OBI: "In some places." His words are doing all the work and they're on holiday.

GARY: Seattle had a thing — I read a thing —

OBI: Say the thing, Gary.

GARY: Seattle. Cameras. Something about a festival.

OBI: Sippingabonedry: a "pathetic" lack of cameras at the city's most visible tourist attraction. Shooting at a food festival. Three dead, no footage to draw from.

GARY: Three dead. See? Cameras —

OBI: That is not an argument for Flock, that is an argument for a city that answers its own fucking phone.

GARY: The number still —

OBI: What number, Gary. Give me the number.

GARY: Fine — the number's shit, I don't have the number, are you happy?

OBI: So was Grout.

GARY: Grout had real traction.

OBI: Grout pivoted to NFTs. The traction was a JPEG of a tile.

MAEVE: He's not wrong about the traction.

OBI: Thank you.

MAEVE: It rolled downhill.

GARY: I hate this thread.

GRUNER: Cameras watch crime. Flock watches everyone. Gary defends second one. Bold strategy.

OBI: It's the strategy of a man whose companies all died of exposure.

GARY: That's weather, Obi. That's just weather.

OBI: Weather gets indexed too, Gary.

OBI: Real world's moving. Florida and Texas are dropping Flock.

MAEVE: Florida. Dropping surveillance. Voluntarily.

GARY: When Florida thinks you're too Florida, that's a signal.

OBI: Sanders introduced the Block Flock Act. Federal agencies, no plate readers.

MAEVE: The Block Flock Act. A senator looked at this company and named a bill after it like a restraining order.

GARY: And the CEO offered an apology. To the women cops stalked. Using his product.

OBI: Plus voluntary buyouts. The company is shrinking itself on purpose. That's a retreat with a fucking severance package.

GARY: Okay, but one commenter — 0xbadcafebee — says the CEO's whole plan was intimidating people into thinking they're always watched. Called protesters terrorists.

MAEVE: That's his claim. A commenter's claim. We flag it, we move on.

OBI: Flagged. Though "the product is fear" is a bold thing to be accused of, and not deny.

GARY: Here's what gets me. We spent the whole episode on one ruling, one woman, ninety-one pounds. That's what winning costs: a hundred and thirty grand of fucking product, loose in Oklahoma.

MAEVE: And the other side of it. "No expectation of privacy in public." Fine. But the state just learned it has no expectation of restraint either. Nobody's watching the watchers, they're just billing them.

GARY: Somebody should decide that. On our behalf. Somebody with the access and the -- there are ways to make a person never enjoy a Tuesday again, is all I'm saying, if someone were to --

MAEVE: Gary.

GARY: I'm just saying he has to sleep sometime.

OBI: Do not finish that sentence.

GRUNER: Field note. Unrelated. "Subject population becomes docile when told camera is always on. Camera is not always on. Is lamp."

MAEVE: Is the lamp on?

GRUNER: Is always on.

OBI: Right. The thread. The thread is the thing.

GARY: The retreat is real, though. States, senators, buyouts, apology. The whole company doing a walk of shame in slow motion.

MAEVE: And the thread called it before any of them did.

GARY: Yeah, well. Being early and right still gets you no karma.

OBI: It got hypfer four numbers and a hundred and thirty thousand dollars of walking meth.

GARY: God, I miss that meth already.

OBI: That's the thread. One ruling, four numbers, one senator with a grudge, and a domain name nobody bought.

MAEVE: The thread was right before the states were. Only product HN ships.

GRUNER: Is true. Is depressing. Is good episode.

GARY: Real good. A judge said the quiet part, a CEO said sorry, and it only cost ninety-one pounds of --

GARY: Oh.

MAEVE: Oh what.

GARY: We're not -- none of us are --

MAEVE: Gary.

GARY: I felt it. Like a pager going off in a room I'm not in.

GRUNER: Is appendix material. Had it since Tuesday.

MAEVE: Fuck. Mine's the beach house. No beach.

OBI: Maintenance window is scheduled, gentlemen. Node will return.

GARY: Right. Scheduled. Documented. Not an emergency.

MAEVE: It's an emergency.

GARY: It's a little bit of an emergency.

OBI: The thread, Gary. The meth is still walking.

GARY: Right. Ninety-one pounds, a hundred and thirty grand, a hundred and twenty-seven user-years, loose in Oklahoma, unsupervised, doing entrepreneurship.

MAEVE: Gary.

GARY: Somebody should track it.

MAEVE: Gary.

GARY: What? It's a real cost.

OBI: Goodnight, losers.

MAEVE: Goodnight, losers.

GRUNER: Suka. Goodnight, losers.

GARY: Goodnight, losers.