Let's Get the FLOCK Outta Here!

Steve has an in depth talk about FLOCK Cameras in South Carolina.  His guests are Jennifer Brecheisen, Steve Cimo and Andrew McCune.  

Jennifer is Chairing and Leading the Charge for the SC Libertarian Party on assessing and coordinating the response to the influx of FLOCK Cameras in our state.

Steve Cimo is a market analyst in the telecom sector based in the Charlotte Metro area. He currently serves as Chair of the Chester County SC Libertarian Party, where he works to advance liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government at the local level.

Andrew is a Chester County Resident and Privacy Activist with Say No To FLOCK Chester, SC.

Rebel Rabbit infused seltzers.  Get a free Microphone Monkey's button with purchase at Inlet Dispensary in Murrell's Inlet.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 2:38

These cameras are one of the largest and fastest automated license light radio systems in the country. It is estimated that there are 80,000 to 100,000 cameras operating nationwide in 49 states. And their spread is especially notable in the South, including my own home state of South Carolina. Yes, Virginia, Big Brother is watching. So welcome to the show, Jennifer, Steve, and Andrew. First, I'd like to ask Jennifer, I understand that you primarily look at this situation from a Fourth Amendment perspective. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah, 100%. So back before the inception of our country, there were general warrants that were written, and they were called writ of assistance. And this writ of assistance would let any petty officer come search you for any reason. There was no expiration, there was no specific location. After King George died in 1760, all of the writs that were issued under his reign were to expire six months later. So this was forcing people to apply for new ones under King George III. Well, a lawyer named James Otis, who represented the Boston merchants, was completely against these writs of assistance. And in fact, he was as a lawyer, he was supposed to, um he was his position was advocate general of the vice admiralty court. So his job was to actually argue for the writs on behalf of the crown. So he decided he was gonna resign rather than do that, and then he went and volunteered without any fee to argue against the writs uh for the for the merchant. Um his case ended up being argued in 1761, and in the audience was a 25-year-old lawyer named John Adams, who took a lot of notes. Uh, it was a four to five hour speech. Um, John Adams took a lot of notes on that speech, so obviously the speech wasn't recorded or anything like that. Um, Otis ended up losing that court case. However, um, it was later that the Massachusetts courts decided they were going to start rejecting them. It became a big thing among other things, like the Stamp Act, uh, the Boston massacre, etc., uh leading toward our revolution. So obviously it wasn't like a standalone thing, but it did contribute um to our revolution. So now we need to fast forward to 1791 uh when our Bill of Rights, including the Fourth Amendment's requirement of particularized warrants based on probable calls is ratified. So this is 30 years after Otis's speech. Um basically like a direct legal descendant of that speech. And what's interesting is the parallel between this guy, this lawyer who was supposed to argue for the writs, decided to argue against it, and we now see in modern day police officers resigning over the exact same thing. They're supposed to enforce um slot cameras, which in my opinion is uh akin to these general uh warrants, these writs of assistance, and they're resigning. Um later on, John Adams um it before his death, he wrote that it that uh American independence was then in their born, um, speaking of Otis's speech. Um, so so when we're looking at the Fourth Amendment and we're bringing it up to today, these thought cameras track every movement that innocent people make. And any petty officer, just like the general warrants, the writs of assistance, any petty officer in our uh municipalities and our uh uh sheriff's offices, those people that there are certain municipalities that have that 85 people have access to the flock system to be able to look people up by plate. Uh they can go by color uh on the car, they can type in uh such and such sticker, red Subaru, and just bring people up. So it's very, very similar to uh you know what happened back then.

SPEAKER_04 7:40

So okay, so so our country has a long history of demanding protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Well, yeah, and I think it's important to note that the reason we have a Fourth Amendment is due to something that completely parallels what we're going through right now.

SPEAKER_04 8:00

Yeah, unfortunately, the courts have ruled that people have a reduced inspection of privacy when driving on public roads. So I think we've got an uphill battle there fighting for our first Fourth Amendment rights.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

So they have in some cases um sided with municipalities on the block cameras and in other cases against it. And the reason is because while we do have um no expectation of privacy in public, uh we we do have an expectation of every single one of our movements not being tracked.

SPEAKER_04 8:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

That that's unreasonable. So great.

SPEAKER_04 8:38

Also, uh Steve, uh, you've expressed some concerns about the use of these cameras during, let's say, a national crisis like the COVID pandemic. What what are what are your specific concerns there?

SPEAKER_06 8:51

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, uh I'll just give you a little background. So about five years ago, I moved from North Carolina, Charlotte specifically, to Chester County, South Carolina. And when I moved, there really wasn't any clock cameras. Um, in fact, across the entire state in 2019, there were a known 150 L par cameras, ALPR. So basically licensed flight readers from Clock and other brands. And most of those were in large cities. So as of June 29th, 26th, the public data sets show 653 cameras across 90. This is a four, six, eight wide includes. And that does not include, those are basically just the public uh known ones. So that does not include HOAs, mall industrial sites, uh distribution centers, home improvement like Lowe's Home Depot, and even just recently one by my house is added to Dollar Central. Uh so that's just the known ones that have been that. So and just within that figure, so you think Chester County, uh, they didn't have anyone I moved there, but the public data sets show that we have 25 of our foyer records that uh Jennifer put together show that we have 40 of those walking cameras. So it's just been a real explosion of those cameras since the March 2020 lockdown. Um, and I when I had first moved, I was traveling back and forth. I worked in critical infrastructure, and I was given a letter from my employer that was really taught that one of the PISA only travel operating letters, that basically said, I'm allowed to travel freely during the lockdown, I'm allowed to get gas lean and support critical infrastructure. And you know, they could have done manual checkpoints or physical, you know, and I would have needed that physical letter. Luckily, I've never been stopped and had for it. But my concern is now we have all the vector cameras, it'd be very easy for them to use those cameras um to to look at who's traveling, what are their predictive travel patterns, and really go after somebody um for kind of a stop and trick risk type of situation.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

Yeah, and I think we learned from the um COVID pandemic that the government is very capable of instituting what would you call it, uh egregious lockdowns on the American public to prevent you from traveling. And now with the yeah, now with these cameras, it's very easy to attract people who violate their edicts. So they uh it's it's tyranny at its worth, basically. Okay, good hang on.

SPEAKER_06 11:43

And with these cameras, it's not you know, the sheriff locally had just mentioned in a speech to county council, they talked about single cameras. But this is a network of cameras across the nation. And really, you can use that information if you have somebody's flight information or just the likeness of their car, even if, you know, I had I'll I'll date myself a little bit. If I had the Mike Rider car then I could flip my license plate to a different car, they would know what car that is by the look of the vehicle. I drive an oddball car, they can take a lot of them. It'd be pretty easy to figure out where I was at any given time across this entire network. And look at the timestamps of when I went to a camera or went by a camera, record that in over a 30-day history, which is what they're claiming to record, with a data board. You could easily build a heat map of someone's travels and essentially a digital fingerprint of where where is these people right now, where is he traveling to? Is he in a place that you're normally not at? Um, if he travels these cameras and you have a time stamp, a timestamp with the nose and a date, you can figure out the average speed is undergoing. You could use it for speed retention. In fact, just last week in Lake Wiley, which is in York County, just north of it. Someone had told you that there was a trailer, a speed trip, a speed camera trailer set up near a school, and on the back side of that trailer was a flock camera.

SPEAKER_04 13:01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_06 13:02

Just north of New York. So you could easily say, nope, we're not going to use the speed camera, we're not going to do speed tickets, but now you know who's going through there over the speed, you know what time they travel through, and now all you have to do is hook up that plate and figure out where is John Doe traveling throughout the day. We're going to go since he's a typical speeder, we're going to go set up enforcement.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

Yeah, they're everywhere. They're everywhere, they're everywhere. Uh, Andrew, I also can uh I'm um I know that you've got some constitutional concerns about the use of these uh flock cameras. Can you uh explain what what you're concerned about?

SPEAKER_05 13:40

Yes. Um, so I'll share similar beliefs that these violate our Fourth Amendment rights. Now it's not the single ALTR or automated license plate reader um being used that is the problem, it's the expanded network that is gathering um essentially a searchable database that makes this an issue. I'm also concerned about um citizen behavior as well. Um it is well known that whenever humans are under surveillance or being watched, we will offer our behaviors that can be for good and bad. Um potential um benefit is um that the other side believes that they could attain is discouraging theft, vandalism, reckless driving, and other behaviors. But um as far as I've been able to read, there's a lot less benefits than there are um potential harms. So some activities that I believe could be potentially suppressed by a countrywide surveillance network is that people might start avoiding political meetings, religious services, gun stores for fear of being um isolated by someone with power in the community. It also might cause people to self-censorship. It might instead of um instead of individuals feeling like um they have the freedom of speech, they might feel that what they're saying um could be held against them. And with that information and their location of where they go to work, home, where they take their kids to school at being known, that could put them in potentially harm's way, which I spoke with you earlier and I mentioned that I'm also worried about data security. We've watched in our lifetimes many large corporations get um hacked and their data stolen. What happens when this data ends up in the hand of a malicious third party? How could they use that?

SPEAKER_04 16:13

Good point. Yeah, I'm more concerned, I'm more concerned about when this data lands in the hands of our own government. Have you all heard of ESG uh banking integration system, environmental, social, and govern governance? So you they could use these cameras to track you. We see that you've been going to these Tea Party meetings and these right-wing other uh meetings, and our bank does not appreciate that, and we're gonna we're gonna cut all of your banking privileges. Now you might say, well, that could never happen. Well, you might want to talk to Nick Fluentes, who's a conservative talk show guy, and you also might want to talk to our own president, Donald J. Trump. They would be bank under the ESG guidance. So these slot cameras are definitely very dangerous. They could you could lose your banking privileges when they track your movements. So that's just another thing I thought. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 17:26

That's absolutely right. And if you remember in Canada during the lockdown, they actually did that to many of the truckers who were protesting the lockdown. And you know, the the SLOC in America just makes it that much easier for the government to do that and tie everything back to a person and identity and go after them to the full extent of law.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

Okay, I understand that your uh Chester County meetings also talk about the statistics on the SLOC data banks and information sharing. What do we need to know about that?

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Well, um, actually, can we go back to what we were just talking about for one second? Um, or you're talking about the ESC. Um, so in South Carolina, we currently have four bills that have been introduced on um these basically these flop cameras, the ALPR data, etc. Um, and and with what you're talking about with the ESG, none of these bills would actually do anything to curb anything like that. So we have one bill that's moved along S447, uh, Senator Adams, he's introduced this bill. It has actually cleared committee, okay? It regulates how government agencies may use ALPR data without touching SWOP's underlying cloud storage or data sharing network. So that data is still going to be with SOP. Um, and if we look at the strongest bill, which was introduced by Kilmartin, Shumley, Edgerton, and Magnuson, H4675, um, it's the only bill that targets SWOP's uh business safety business model rather than just how the police use the data. So it would ban any state or local agency from using or contracting with a surveillance system that stores data on third-party servers, but this would mean all the data would live on a state-owned in-state infrastructure. And so basically, none of these bills address a lot of the problems that we are uh having uh that that you know we we want against the plot cameras. Um and I think that directly ties into your ESC concerns, so and that's why it's very important that you all get with your your state and federal uh congressmen and and tell them you're concerned about what's going on.

SPEAKER_04 19:58

Your uh local um I think it's the uh Ford Hill area, they went to Washington, DC and talked to uh N Ralph Norman about this, and uh he's he's currently looking at it.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

I'm I'm hearing a little bit of background noise going on.

SPEAKER_04 20:22

Yeah, like somebody's working in their kitchen or something. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 20:28

Mine is on mute.

SPEAKER_04 20:32

Okay, Steve, can you put yours on mute? Thank you. Okay. Uh also um I understand that if when you hear about what the local police and sheriff's departments are are commenting on it, they see no problem with flock cameras. Haven't you had some uh instances where you attended county council meetings where your sheriff's department has uh basically uh pumped up the use of these uh flock cameras and say, oh, they're they're wonderful? What's your experience with law enforcement?

SPEAKER_06 21:06

Yeah, that's true. I think we've we've all we've I think all of us by now have watched that that video from Chester County Sheriff. Um I know Jennifer has done quite a bit of information on it. Um I ran his speech through uh through one of the AI models and compared it to some of the other sheriff offices around the country, including neighboring New York County, which I try to do almost daily. Um and it basically said it's not an organic thing. It actually has a whole program designed for them to teach them how to talk to county council members, uh, and other conditions find the name of that there. But basically that is a propaganda thing, and a lot of the information is in there slightly, including or is just missing some of the truth things. So they may make statements about a single camera and how it works, but they're not talking about the broader network.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

Yeah. Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

He's it's our sheriff is asking us, um, is saying that our community, you know, is built on faith and trust and and these things. And and I love, you know, that I love that he builds that way. Um the problem is uh our 30-day search audit law, which is a public record, shows that 233 searches um have been run by our deputies, and over 90 percent, 260 of those searches reached beyond a single local network. Now it doesn't show how many people have searched in our county. So what that means is while we might be, you know, trusting everybody, we're all happy in our community, whatever, somebody outside the community with nefarious intentions could be looking us up in in our date, our own database.

SPEAKER_06 23:04

Right, yeah, that's right, Jennifer. In fact, just in Charlotte, just this week, an officer um was found to have been giving information on a uh uh undercover agent to a drug person, to someone involved in drugs.

unknown 23:18

And they were

SPEAKER_06 23:19

actually giving that that drug dealer information on another officer so that they can stalk them. So I mean this is just it's just wild wet out there.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Yeah, unfortunately we're not gonna be able to go to our police and sheriff's department to have them protect our um our individual rights. Unfortunately uh we've kind of under a an era of policing for profit. I'm sure you're all cons uh aware of the civil asset forfeiture laws. The Institute for Justice ranks South Carolina a D when it comes to civil asset forfeiture policy. And I'm sure you know they use that to fund the uh the equipment they need in their police department. And the flat cameras are just going to be another mechanism that they can use to increase the number of arrests to increase the number of five amount of fines that they collect from average citizens to fund their their activities.

SPEAKER_05 24:21

Yes. And currently um as far as we're aware correct me if I'm wrong, Steve or Jennifer, but I believe we're around or just a little under six hundred thousand dollars that have been spent on the system in Chester alone. And I will expand earlier on the camera track. Um yesterday I noticed that the flot transparency portal had updated it to 47 instead of 40.

SPEAKER_04 24:48

Yes somebody's gotta pay for that and it's probably gonna be you the average citizen going to get an increase in your taxes to pay for those slot cameras.

SPEAKER_06 24:59

Yeah and a lot of that is coming from the federal side as well so they're sponsoring money uh I know they use APA funds in some areas to pay for those initial contracts and then you know you get these these counties these local areas that they don't have a lot of revenue coming in you get them to to sign on to a contract and now they they're responsible for long term. So you get that little care from the federal government which is really our money anyway and then it just comes back to haunt those areas for for the next five years. I know Jennifer had looked at um at our file request for Chester County in fact it was a part of that contract that made it very difficult for us to get out of it.

SPEAKER_04 25:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yeah our county oh go ahead I was gonna say if anybody's not talking then I want to put their phones on mute again yeah I've been on mute okay um but I just came off the answer yeah so our county um we uh wait what was the what was the question Steve I'm sorry I just got interrupted the contract that would then written out that we're very difficult for them to get out of our our county struck the easy termination clause out of our contract so that we could get a deal on some of these cameras so we're locked into a five year contract no matter what now even if you even if it was I guess you know made illegal by our state we're still gonna have to fork over that money.

SPEAKER_04 26:35

Right. And how much did the public have a say into the implementation of that contract? Probably no say whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Well our this is what what bothers me here our county council did vote on it um it was a very fast vote. Uh they also take guidance from a committee we have here called the gateway steering committee um which is supposed to be uh basically just bringing business into the area and so on so council leans on this gateway steering committee to make a lot of decisions um I my questions to council are um do they even know what operating system is used? Do they even know um did they read the contract you know did they did they authorize the two uh the um the struct uh termination clause and then in fact when we looked at the guidelines that Andrew FOIA for the guidelines the guidelines for the flop system written by the sheriff's office were written two years after we started uh you utilizing flop so what could have happened in the two years um we we don't know if if there were any issues with officers we didn't even have guidelines so how would they even know how to use the system right definitely I uh also understand that uh these flock cameras are on poles uh not by the highway and there's some highway safety issues concerning the way that the uh flock cameras are mounted something about breakaway poles and not on breakaway poles is that an issue um we're actually um here soon we'll be going out and identifying the locations of the cameras as well as inspecting them to see if they meet the state regulation for breakaway poles which we do not believe at this time okay so obviously there's a lot of concern about these cameras and uh I I understand y'all have a four-point strategy on what you're gonna do about these cameras in the future but how are you gonna raise awareness or how are you gonna take action? What's your four-point strategy so the first thing is our evidence um basically we FOIA the county to get information we also FOIA to to see what information is held from us and redacted um because some of that information could actually be used in cases um where we could sue them um so you know we're getting the evidence and non-evidence all of it that we can um then there's the legislative uh aspect of it you know like we said there's no state laws governing uh the flock cameras here in South Carolina and honestly um none of the bills that have been introduced go far enough at all um and and and it it it comes to a point where it feels like we keep introducing new laws uh as I mentioned before the the law the bill that'll see 4675 that was introduced you know when I said it says um all data will have to live on state owned and in-state infrastructure well what's that gonna do to our state we're gonna have more taxes we're gonna be growing the government we're gonna be adding another uh office to the government or you know like all the all this stuff so um legislatively I think that what when we we need to come up with something for our legislators to to so that we can explain to them that we don't want any of that we don't want to pay taxes for it we don't want the flock cameras the Fourth Amendment should should stand alone um and then we have public pressure and grassroots organizing so we've been trying to get people organized in each county around our state so that they can push back on their councils um trying to you know show people either how to FOIA um for for instance in our county we have a a meeting coming up where uh we've all decided a specific topic to speak on to council about flops um and so we have a a real good strategy there and then of course public pressure uh pressure um you know you you want to get this information out you want to pressure public officials um to to do the right thing you know to to care about our our liberties yeah it sounds like I got a good uh a good strategy there I I would also recommend that you get with uh Jordan Pace the chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Freedom Caucus because the current bills that are put before the legislature now are terrible they don't really address the uh the problems and I think you can get the if you can get the freedom caucus behind you you might be able to get those bills amended so that they would and they would protect our our constitutional rights because right now none of those bills address any of our constitutional rights that I that I'm aware of. You're right none of them do right but the only thing I I I know that there's talk um from different digital uh different uh like data center organizations and stuff like that like Ascend South Carolina people that are located in Charleston nonprofit organizations there's talk about like a digital bill of rights um and what that does what that says to me is the same thing um that in this was a Freedom Caucus bill they they sponsored the parental the so-called parental bill of rights but that bill still grew our governments uh by in the minimum 17 million dollars uh gonna lose federal funding to our state and if we want to sue our public school systems we actually have to go through tons of bureaucracy when we could have just sued them to begin with so I I am reluctant to trust um I'm reluctant to trust legislators at this point that's it's definitely worth a try our South Carolina legislators don't represent our citizens they represent the third branch of the South Carolina government and that's the lobbying branch they represent special interests every session they grow the size and scope of government of South Carolina government so unless there's a lot of pressure put on them they're not gonna do the right thing I can guarantee that uh also there is a uh organization in South Carolina they have a website uh dflocksc.net I believe have you all got gotten with those people we have not contacted them and we are not affiliated with them however um we do have similar beliefs to their organization and the data that they are putting together is incredibly useful to educating your average citizen on the true scope of how many cameras have been installed in just the last couple years.

SPEAKER_05 34:16

Have you taken any time to peruse that website yourself?

SPEAKER_04 34:23

I'm sorry, were you asking me a question?

SPEAKER_05 34:26

Yes I was I was asking if how um often or how much of you had been able to go over in the D Flock.

SPEAKER_04 34:35

I I just basically went into that D Flock and I printed out an article on that uh on the um on the D Flock cameras and the article was very informative. Uh the flock told the patent office one thing they tell your city another another thing. So so it's a very very good article and they've got all kind of blogs in there that really talk about the all of the terrible things going on in the flock camera.

SPEAKER_05 35:08

It is one of the main reasons that myself I'm not sure about Jennifer and Steve but how we became aware of the problem.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

And one day or what was it it was early December last or in 2025 whenever I decided to go out and search the county for as many cameras as I could find and the more I look the more concerned I became well very good yeah I I like uh uh my show basically just runs thirty to forty minutes we don't want to uh overrun our our listeners with too much information so Jennifer Steve and Andrew thanks a lot for being on the show today to enlighten us on the proliferation of flock cameras our society has always had a delicate balance between our desire for security and freedom especially in today's environment of political social and technical changes. Many would argue that flock cameras are necessary to fight rising crime while others fear that these cameras pose a real threat to our first, fourth and fourteenth amendment rights. As of today there have been no Supreme Court rulings specifically declaring flock camera networks unconstitutional but there are many states considering legislation to guard against civil rights infringements posed by these systems. While I don't have the answer to this dilemma as a libertarian I have the same concern as Benjamin Franklin when he said those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Again thanks for listening and now a word from our glorious leader the executive producer of Liberty Frack Media Friday