LIVE! Podcast: Fairs, Funnel Cakes and Flock Cameras

🎙️ Live from the heart of Kenton County at the Kenton County Fair!

We're joined by Jordan Baldridge, candidate for Kenton County Commissioner, District 3, to discuss his attendance at the recent Fiscal Court meeting and the conversation surrounding Flock cameras in Kenton County.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey everybody, we're back live at the campaign headquarters for the Kenton County Democrats at the Kenton County Fair. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Uh no Cornel and Jabir yet, but uh I got those on my schedule for later.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

I got to self-serve. I'm all about the self-serve. Ready for that? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Well, maybe that's after the condom. You have to have the serve, right? So uh we have with us uh today Jordan Baldridge, Tim County candidate for county commissioner, District Three. Yes. All right, District Three this time. Um and Jordan's gonna talk about um to the fiscal court meeting last night on a pretty hot topic. And uh wanted to kind of give us an update on that and talk about this uh technology in general. So just take it away.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah, so last night the fiscal court uh was going to consider whether to uh allow the uh Kenton County police to start receiving bids for an ALPR automated license plate meter system from FLOT. Um however, once it started up, we learned very quickly that they actually removed it from the docket, but they were still gonna have a presentation uh from the chief of police uh Chief Spike Jones. Um and he did give a presentation and they also moved all of the uh community remarks to after the presentation, um, which was unusual, but honestly, I actually did appreciate it. I will give them credit for that because it did allow us to react um and for let for people to listen to the chief and understand what he was saying and the points that he wanted to make, and then still voice our opinions, uh, which it does seem to make sense because there could uh could have been some answers in that presentation, save some time.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Also could have stirred up some other, you know, controversy or ideas or concerns people had.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Yeah, yeah. So I will say um it was a bit interesting. So I had actually sent a letter to the fiscal court uh to Judge Knockelman and the commissioners, uh, basically urging them to reject the proposal. Uh just flat out, please reject the proposal. Um, but I did also give them a list of suggested policies if they wanted to have it be a more secure, more regulated system, things that they could do, um, such as like 30-day retention policy, uh limiting access, having authorization. And they did allude to having some of those policies. The chief did have a tighter framework than what HB 58, which the Kentucky State Legislature just passed, uh the Kentucky State Legislature just passed a law to basically restrict and regulate how flock deployments would be cut, uh be cutting out. So it has guidelines for how they have to deploy it, the preparations they have to do, the information they have to provide, um, and it also has restrictions on who can access. Although, if you read the law, the restrictions are not very much because really uh any corporation can get it. They can do information sharing with other government agencies, uh, and that could be within the state, outside of the state. Um the reality is that even if they restrict it and say that you can't access that, the problem is that what we've seen time and time again with Flock in different areas of the country is that they do share that data. That in that they change their terms of service. Terms of service used to say that the city or county, whoever it was who had the contract, that they own the data. Well, in the terms of service, they removed that. Flock completely removed that. So even though these counties and states might be trying to address the issue, they really can't. Because once that data leaves the state, Flock has it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

So let's just back up for this. You might not know exactly what this Flock stuff is. It's all over the news now. We had the fiscal court meeting. What is it?

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Yes. So an automated license plate reader system, uh, or Flock, uh, that's the one that everybody knows about.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Because that's like the manufacturer, right? Yes. Like the leading in this technology, right here.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yeah, they're the uh industry leader. Um, what those are are basically automated systems that use AI to read license plates. They will look at the car, the model, color, um, and basically they will look at the car and profile it to decide, okay, is this a stolen be a is this someone who has a warrant? Um, and so the argument is that this is a safety tool because it's gonna keep us all safe. It's gonna catch criminals and catch all the bad guys. Uh now there are other versions of Flock that do have the ability to pick up audio that they can listen to. Uh, they have other versions of Flock that will actually surveil people. It will scan the people in the car. It'll recognize the face, it'll do facial recognition. It also, some of them have RFID, that's the same uh technology that's in your remote control. They can use that to ping and pick up your GPS signals and other signals off of your devices in your car. So your laptop, your phone, um, your tablet, your watch, your airpods. And what they can do is that they can use that to make a profile of whoever's driving that car and create a heat map, which allows them to not only profile you, but then track your behavior around it, where you travel and how you travel and how you live your life.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Uh so it's that tracking piece, right? It's not just that they have the camera to catch bad guys. It's that tracking piece, they can literally track everywhere you go.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Exactly. Exactly. And the other issue there too is like I alluded to with the uh the data's aspect, is that you know, even if you put in a 30-day limit so that you can't track people per se, that information is still going into the AI. It's still feeding the AI. So even though if they purged it off of their storage, it's already been fed in it. So now it already has that license plate and that car and that vehicle and that person, they're already in the system. And it's gonna keep hitting them. So everybody who came out here to the fair out here in Independence, the every single person who came here got identified by Flock, or they're at least their license plate got scanned by Flock because independence is gated by Flock. A lot of people don't realize that.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah, I did not realize that. So let me ask you a question because it seems like it's all tied around vehicle, but can flock cameras again, not in this scenario, but can they be deployed and just used on streets just for pure facial recognition of pedestrian traffic and that kind of thing?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yes, yes, they can. And they can stream it. They can stream it just like it's a webcam, like what you're using right now. Right. Um, in fact, in Georgia, Flock got into some trouble because, as a presentation, they said, Oh, look, we can just go right into your cameras and show you. They opened up video to a children's gymnastics class uh where little girls were doing gymnastics to show off how pervasive, uh, and I use that word specifically, that flock could be because they are able to use that and track anyone. They can go in and look for anybody. Um, they do absolutely have facial recognition. I've deployed AI vision systems, and that's almost one of the first things you do when you're testing one in one out is you're doing facial recognition. Um, it's very simple to actually deploy. Uh, and flock is a very complex company that's been doing this for quite a few years.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

So the um So, what was the final result then of the meeting last night? They, you know, they had the presentation. Tell us a little bit about what the the general consensus was from uh the attendees there to the meeting. Sounds like it was uh somewhat overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Uh the consensus was overwhelmingly against Flock in every single way. Um I think I can't remember how many of us there were. I think there were, I think originally there were 12, I think a few people dropped out, but I think there were nine speakers. Um, and every single person was against Flock. And I do want to say thank you and congratulations to every single person who came and showed up, made their voices heard. Absolutely. Just supported the people making their voices heard. Absolutely, power of the people. Absolutely power of the people. You're exercising your freedom of speech, you're exercising your freedom to be a part of the government. Um, it was the most beautiful thing ever. I thought every single person there was more eloquent than I, which is wonderful because people were so informed and so passionate. And that's what we need in this country. That's what we need in this county is people who know what is going on and who are keeping government accountable. Um, and so despite whatever Spike Chief Spike Jones said, uh, he was not convincing. Nobody agreed. And in fact, at the end, uh Commissioner Droud asked, Is anybody for these cameras? Complete silence. Not a single person was it was a packed room. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

It was a completely packed room, standing room, or people out in the hallway.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

So there's so many things going on right now that are involving commissioners. And you're running for county commissioner, district three. We have the uh yes, the SRI issue, and we have this, we have you know data centers that can become becoming so important. And so as a commissioner, what would how would you be involved here? How would you be able to like get people involved in this so people's voices are heard? Because right now there's no transparency.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

No, there is no transparency, and we have a huge issue, especially in this county and this region, where whether it's Flock, the SRI, or maybe a potential data center that we don't know about, uh, which I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that's what they were trying to put out here. Um but all of these major issues are all the government that continually, without any transparency, makes decisions that affect everyone in this county, that doesn't, they have no accountability to the people of this county, and it's constantly about taking our tax dollars, taking our land, and giving it away to the corporate power. Now, I work for massive corporations. I work for the biggest corporations in the world, and I love my job. Um, and you know, if you're talking about the federal government, I think it's to some degree people expect corporations to be in. And, you know, whether it's some, you know, the big beautiful bill or whatever you want to call it, uh, a massive tax giveaway to corporations, you know, people don't like it, but people expect it and they understand it. But when you're talking about your local county, your local city, nobody expects to see that here. Right. And it's a lot more, again, I'll use this word, it's a lot more pervasive, it's a lot more in your face when it's your neighborhood. It's something else when it's somewhere across the country that you'll never see and you don't know that even. But when it's right down the street, when it's in Covington or right next to your farm, or along every single road that you drive through, right, uh, yeah, you see that. It's right in your face. And people are starting to wake up. And I mean, that was one thing about last night was that you had the full spectral of people show up and voice their opinions. You had a libertarian, a candidate for Congress, you had Republicans, you had Democrats, you had me and other Democratic candidates. Um, and I'll tell you what, it was beautiful. I I walked out and I shook every single person's hand that I could that spoke. Uh, and it was great to unify with people across the aisle. Um, and you know, we all really felt like it was a sense of achievement. It was a sense of of community, of brotherhood. And I will say, um, some of their ideas that the current fiscal court has really don't, they they destroy public trust and they do not build community. But the reaction to it is building community. So I guess in some uh a little bit of thanks.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

By proxy, they're building community. Thank you for uniting us against it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Well, I mean, it sounds like we may have found the uh nonpartisan issue we've been looking for, you know. I mean, privacy is huge, and that's essentially what we're talking about. Privacy and uh, you know, Fourth Amendment rights, and you know, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

And I mean, it's it's not dissimilar from the Patriot Act. Um, you know, we were talking earlier that, you know, they're gonna say that you're if you're against Flock, that you're anti-police. Or actually, uh, the CEO of Flock, Garrett Langley, uh said that people who are against Flock are terrorists. Uh, none of you are terrorists if you believe in freedom and freedom of speech and freedom of movement. Uh, every single person who came out there was the most patriotic people I've ever met in my life. Um regardless of their beliefs anywhere else. That was pure patriotism to come out uh in support of protecting everyone's freedom. Um and so it really bothers me that they're gonna play the same playbook uh from the early 2000s when I was a child and I didn't really know what was going on, but I knew, oh, hey, if you don't like the war on terror, then you're a terrorist or you're a terrorist sympathizer. No, you were actually right. Uh it turns out that after 20 years of war, we're not anymore safe. Uh, our rights have been trampled on for decades now. Um, and even the Trump administration is acknowledging that, hey, all those TSA checks that they did actually is a waste of time and money. Uh, we actually don't need all those in. Um, and that's where you're gonna eventually find out with this, is that it actually makes people less safe. Because yes, you can say, oh, it'll help me find my kid, but it's also gonna help somebody else. Look, if somebody else hacks that system, which is gonna happen, it has happened, uh, you're just putting people in more danger. Uh, there's been abuses across the country where people have been caught stalking, storting, using these cameras uh for unethically or just downright for horrible reasons. And we have to stop it. We just gotta keep it out of the, out of the out of Tank Town. Uh they gotta get the flock out.

unknown 12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

And you know, I like how you said, you know, it's different when it's local, but I think that what we're seeing at the national letter level is so much of our rights are being tipped away by executive power. Yes. We're seeing it with this administration across the board. And I think no matter what's out of that earlier on, you're seeing that. And it's trickling down to the local level where people are like, it's that's enough, not in my backyard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Hey, it is actually happening to me instead of the other person. So I'm not going to worry about it. It's not me. It is me now.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

That's right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

It's a really big yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

So, well, thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Thank you very much. I believe joining us at the fair, man. Always great to see you too and talk to you. I can't wait for the next one.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Well, what have you wanted to talk about? Your candidacy. Um, but thanks for coming to talk about something you are very well versed in. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right, thanks. Peace out.