Benn Jordan on Flock, privacy, and the new surveillance backlash

Today, I’m talking with Benn Jordan, musician, YouTuber, researcher, and investigative journalist. You might know Benn from those first two titles — he’s got a prolific discography of experimental music dating back decades. But in the last couple of years, he’s become a high-profile face in the creator and media spaces for his work investigating Flock Safety, the maker of automatic license plate readers and the software that powers them. Benn recently testified in front of Congress, at a hearing the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism held, dedicated to Flock and other ALPR systems. This hearing felt like the culmination of months and months of growing criticism and bipartisan backlash against Flock — all of which is taking a shape similar to the pushback against AI data centers. Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here. This has led to major fallout for Flock. Hundreds of cities, counties, and other local governments have begun canceling contracts, and Flock is now under investigation by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. Last week, Reuters reported that Flock plans to cut about 18 percent of its workforce. So of course I wanted to dig into all of that with Benn, not just because he played a role in that, but because he’s also become in some ways the face of a new front in the broader debate about surveillance and privacy. A point you’ll hear Benn make is that he doesn’t actually hate Flock as a company — he thinks its posture toward critics has been a colossal PR failure that made it low-hanging fruit, while competitors like Axon and Motorola quietly build the same kind of networks. Instead, Benn now talks to Flock directly, including to its CEO Garrett Langley, and reports security vulnerabilities to the company when he finds them. (As a side note: we have also invited Flock’s CEO on the show; Garrett if you’re listening, we would love to have you.) Benn says his outreach to the company is an olive branch he’s extended to Flock as part of his goal of working toward real, tangible solutions to surveillance overreach, rather than part of a crusade to tear one single company down. That’s a real theme throughout our conversation: that Flock and other high profile names in surveillance are just part of the problem — our real focus should be on the interlocking relationship between private industry, government, and law enforcement that prioritizes secrecy over transparency. We never voted for an insecure network of cameras on every street corner, and we’re certainly not being asked if we’re comfortable with access to this network being given to police officers with a penchant for abusing it. So Benn sees his work on YouTube and with other researchers, civil rights groups, and journalists as an accountability function that forces this conversation to the forefront. And so far, it’s working. Okay: Benn Jordan on Flock, privacy, and the new surveillance backlash. Here we go. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Benn Jordan, you’re a musician, YouTuber, and researcher. Lately you’ve been an investigative journalist. You are a witness in Senate hearings. Welcome to Decoder. Thanks for having me. I’m a huge fan of yours. It’s just a delight to have you here. A lot of people in the Verge audience know you as a musician, but lately you have been relentlessly focused on Flock cameras, which are automatic license-plate readers (ALPRs). You recently testified in front of a Senate hearing on those cameras and the surveillance they enable. Give us a sense of your background. For people who don’t know you or haven’t been following you for years, where did Benn Jordan come from and how did you end up being the person who makes videos about Flock? I’ve been a musician my entire life, pretty much. I’ve also always been kind of a hacker, or somebody who is that type of person who always takes stuff apart. If I get a product that wants me to pay for a service that’s already in the product, then that’s a puzzle I want to solve and I get excited about it. But a lot of times that blends into investigative journalism as well. With the Flock stuff, it’s just that I live in Atlanta, which has more Flock cameras than anywhere else per square mile. About two years ago I started noticing them. I thought they were traffic cameras or something like that. Then I started looking into what they were actually doing and then started looking into things like security vulnerabilities. More than anything, everything that’s happening right now in the public, in the news, has to do with people just figuring out that these have existed the entire time. A lot of my focus now is on the lack of transparency from the government, because the companies are always going to make money and try to make as much money as they can, especially if it’s from taxpayer money. But in this case

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