The KIDS Act would turn web browsing into a TSA line



Lawmakers never tire of devising new ways to undermine digital privacy and First Amendment rights, always under the guise of “protecting kids.”

The KIDS Act — the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act — is the latest piece of smug political branding and virtue-signaling to dress up heavy-handed federal overreach in the gentle language of child welfare. Lawmakers considering this legislation should ask a simple question: Could its broad and vague provisions someday be wielded by their political opponents to muzzle speech they favor?

Children deserve real and meaningful protection in the digital age. But true safety comes from empowering parents and holding actual bad actors accountable under existing laws.

Congress should reject the KIDS Act and defend the constitutional rights of all Americans.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) claim this latest “safety package” is about “empowering parents, establishing safety as a default, strengthening privacy for children and teens, increasing transparency around data brokers, and holding Big Tech accountable.”

Washington has heard this pitch before. Wide-ranging digital legislation is routinely sold as a privacy measure even when it undermines privacy.

As Taxpayers Protection Alliance research director David McGarry wrote in December, “Consensus [around digital safety legislation] remains elusive, and for good reason. The regulation of the internet is shot through with difficulties.”

The Kids Online Safety Act proves the point. McGarry observed, “Seeing the imprudence and constitutional vulnerabilities of the bill, its supporters have continuously trimmed and reshaped the legislation, each time declaring that this time — finally — the bill had been rid of its deficiencies. Each time, however, the amendments proved wanting, and further efforts to amend KOSA were undertaken.”

That analysis applies just as well to the current version of KOSA included in the KIDS Act.

Supporters claim the latest version removes the “duty of care” requirement that would have forced platforms to withhold poorly defined categories of online content from underage users. But the bill still targets broad categories of constitutionally protected speech.

Digital platforms are instructed to “establish, implement, maintain, and enforce reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” addressing supposed harms to minors, including the “use of ... alcohol”; “threats of physical violence so severe, pervasive, or objectively offensive that such threats impact a major life activity of a minor”; and “financial harm caused by deceptive practices.”

RELATED: Digital tyrants want your face, your ID … and your freedom

imaginima/iStock/Getty Images

Those terms are vague and dangerously elastic. What counts as the “use” of alcohol? Could a platform face scrutiny for allowing video clips featuring champagne toasts? Could a joke between friends be treated as a threat of physical violence? Because “deceptive” remains undefined, virtually any online transaction or promoted product could become a federal enforcement hook.

This minefield of liability makes a mockery of the First Amendment and chills expression across the digital domain.

The bill’s most insidious provision involves age verification.

On paper, the KIDS Act says it does not mandate age verification. That language sounds reassuring, but it functions as a legislative bait and switch. The bill imposes a legal standard holding tech platforms liable for content if they “know or should have known” a user’s age.

Consider the real-world meaning of “should have known.” If a company faces massive legal penalties or federal lawsuits for failing to determine a user’s age, it will feel compelled to verify the identity of everyone who logs on — children and adults alike.

That creates a de facto mandate requiring adults to upload driver’s licenses, biometric data, or government IDs just to read a news article, browse a forum, or use a search engine. Web users would be asked to hand over their most sensitive personal information to corporate databases that have repeatedly proved vulnerable to data breaches and foreign hackers.

Age verification on this scale is not a “best practice,” as the bill’s language suggests. It is constitutional malpractice.

The KIDS Act also responds to alleged online harms by expanding federal bureaucracy and spending more taxpayer dollars. It establishes a asinine array of busywork for busybodies: Federal Trade Commission and Health and Human Services studies, a four-year National Institutes of Health longitudinal study, public awareness campaigns, and a new “Kids Internet Safety Partnership” inside the Department of Commerce.

RELATED: Age verification laws do not make us safer

Waldemarus/iStock/Getty Images

This amounts to a major expansion of taxpayer-funded bureaucracy tasked with creating a “playbook” for more age verification.

Supporters will note that lawmakers stripped the highly controversial “duty of care” provision from previous versions of KOSA and retained explicit protections for data encryption. But removing the worst elements of an inherently broken bill does not transform it into good policy.

Children deserve real and meaningful protection in the digital age. But true safety comes from empowering parents with robust tools, advancing media literacy, and holding actual bad actors accountable under existing criminal laws.

It does not come from turning the internet into a surveillance state where adults must show their papers to browse the web.

Congress must reject the KIDS Act and protect both the Constitution and the digital domain.

Traffic cones and barrels are spying on you — what are they hiding?



A person who took a recent viral video caught something suspicious about several barrels next to a highway: They were watching him.

When a citizen pulled off to the side of an Arizona highway, he saw yellow barrels that are seemingly inconspicuous, but upon closer inspection, he saw they had slots carved out for multiple camera lenses.

'Often the same systems employed by state and local law enforcement nationwide.'

The cameras tucked in the barrel were pointed in both directions and had a power source plugged into them that the man in the video claimed "just goes off in the distance."

What are they?

The video has been viewed more than 1.5 million times on X, and while it is unclear exactly where the barrels are located, they match the description of setups along U.S. Route 60, east of Apache Junction, Arizona. This remote stretch over 100 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border is where is where Border Patrol authorities are setting up automated license plate recognition cameras.

As reported by AZ Mirror, the disguised cameras look so much like traffic/construction markers — they indeed are construction markers, just with holes cut out — that the Arizona Department of Transportation asked Customs and Border Protection to stop using them because they could confuse drivers.

RELATED: Big Brother on the road: Backlash grows against license plate surveillance

These are the brand new disguised Automated License Plate Reader cameras in Arizona

The large yellow plastic barrels are camouflaged housings designed to look like construction equipment

They are being deployed in remote desert areas along highways

These new camouflaged… pic.twitter.com/JuU2NXMvxu
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 1, 2026

Plate readers are often "disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels," the Associated Press wrote in November 2025.

The AZ Mirror further noted that cameras have been spotted in orange traffic cones, yellow barrels, speed trap signs, and on the backs of overhead highway signs.

The same style of barrels in the viral video appears in CBP documents and permits dating back as far as 2019, with the documents providing a breakdown of the solar-powered cameras that go inside the barrels, complete with a battery and cellular unit.

"USBP monitoring equipment will be placed in the barrel and weighed down by sand. Barrel camera will have a power supply with solar panel placed thirty feet from the white line [at the road]," read a 2019 permit.

Another set of documents showed the same technology being used in cylindrical cones typically seen for road construction.

RELATED: License plate readers or surveillance? The number of AI cameras in the US is shocking

David L. Ryan/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Why are they there?

The AP reported last year that CBP has been tracking license plates to catch human smugglers as far back as 2017 in "an area of interest or smuggling route."

"Once the investigation is complete, or the illicit activity has stopped in that area, the covert cameras are removed," a document stated.

The CBP's mission is "complex and relies on a layered mix of personnel, technology, and infrastructure to detect illicit activity while supporting lawful trade and travel," the federal agency said, per the AZ Mirror.

The statement explained that the CBP approach uses license plate readers that are "often the same systems employed by state and local law enforcement nationwide" to identify threats and disrupt criminal networks.

Border Patrol said it does not provide the operational applications of its license plate readers to the public, nor does it disclose the specific number or locations of its cameras, citing "national security reasons."

Who is monitoring them?

KOLD 13 News in Arizona, like other outlets, reported that Flock Safety cameras have been operating in Arizona regions like Sierra Vista and South Tucson. However, while these two jurisdictions ended their contracts with the surveillance company in May, Flock has operated many of the cameras being used by CBP.

The AP reported that while Flock is one of several companies used by border agents, CBP had access to at least 1,600 of Flock's license plate readers across 22 states at one time.

As previously reported by Blaze News, Flock is used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and has more than 100,000 ALPR cameras deployed in the United States.

Other camera companies being used by Border Patrol include Rekor and Vigilant Solutions. Rekor launched in 2019 with an announcement that it had recorded a whopping 30 million plate reads per week.

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MIT’s AI future scenarios range from ‘Star Trek’ utopia to human extinction



The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has identified 12 possible future outcomes of artificial intelligence — ranging from a perfect utopia to complete human extinction.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray enjoys some of them, while others are deeply unsettling.

“The libertarian utopia: AI brings prosperity and AI-driven automation replaces most human jobs. The AI is vastly more intelligent but does not interfere with humans, leaving them to co-exist in separate zones,” Gray reads.

“The egalitarian utopia,” he continues reading, “AI and robotics lead to extreme abundance. Ownership becomes obsolete because robots produce everything needed, and resources are essentially free.”

“That’s like a ‘Star Trek’ outcome,” he adds.

The next is the “benevolent dictator possibility.”


“A super intelligent AI runs the world, making decisions that are 0% corrupt and perfectly fair,” Gray says, noting that the “first three are pretty decent options.”

However, after those three, the AI starts to get a little more controlling.

“The gatekeeper: A single all-powerful AI controls all technology and prevents humans from developing any other dangerous technologies, ensuring safety at the cost of freedom,” Gray explains, before moving on to the “protector god.”

This AI is “developed specifically to defend humanity, acting as an omnipotent guardian against existential threats.”

One concerning option is the “zookeeper option,” which keeps humans in “a protected, comfortable state similar to a nature reserve.”

Even scarier is the “1984 surveillance state possibility.”

This AI would “create an inescapable totalitarian surveillance state where every action is monitored and dissent is impossible.”

“We’re almost there now,” Gray says, before moving on to the “cyborg enhancement path,” which involves humans integrating “AI directly into their bodies and minds.”

The “self-preservation replacement scenario” follows, where “AI is developed, but its goals diverge from humanity’s, leading to the eradication of humans.”

“Not out of malice, but because humans are in the way of its goals,” Gray says. “Man, I could see that happening.”

Then there is the “apocalyptic future,” which features a “poorly designed super intelligent AI” breaking free and “destroying civilization,” and “the boredom scenario,” where “AI does everything so well that humans lose their sense of purpose.”

The final scenario is the “oops scenario,” where “humans try to create a controlled AI but fail, creating something they cannot understand or control, leading to unpredictable, potentially catastrophic results.”

“So,” Gray says, “there’s a few.”

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Colorado's speed-camera traps just got way more aggressive



There’s enforcing the law — and then there’s building a system that treats every driver like a suspect the moment they turn the key. Colorado isn’t flirting with that line anymore. It’s driving straight past it.

For years, speed cameras were a minor annoyance. You knew where they were, your navigation app warned you, and if you were paying attention, you adjusted. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it was transparent. Colorado has now scrapped that model in favor of something far more aggressive — and far less accountable.

Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

The state’s new Automated Vehicle Identification Systems don’t just clock your speed at a single point. They track your vehicle across multiple cameras, calculate your average speed over distance, and automatically issue a ticket if you’re 10 miles per hour or more over the limit. No warning. No discretion. No human judgment. Just a system quietly watching, calculating, and penalizing.

Let’s call this what it is: not smarter enforcement, but broader surveillance.

Highway robbery

The rollout followed a 2023 change in state law, and what started as warnings has quickly turned into active ticketing. One of the newest stretches under this system is Interstate 25 north of Denver, where drivers moving through construction zones are now monitored continuously. The state says it’s about safety. That’s the headline. But the fine print tells a different story.

The penalty is $75 and carries zero points on your license. That’s not an accident. If this were truly about cracking down on dangerous driving, there would be meaningful consequences tied to your driving record. Instead, this looks like a volume business model — low enough fines to keep people from fighting, high enough frequency to generate serious revenue.

And then there’s the part that should concern every driver in America: The ticket goes to the registered owner of the vehicle, not necessarily the person who was driving.

That’s where this stops being about traffic enforcement and starts colliding with the Constitution.

RELATED: Illinois wants to track every mile its drivers drive — is your state next?

Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images

Blank check

The burden of proof in this country is supposed to be on the state. That’s not optional. That’s foundational. Yet Colorado’s system leans on the assumption that if your name is on the registration, you’re responsible — unless you can prove otherwise. That flips due process on its head.

Colorado Revised Statute 42-4-110.5 does not give the state a blank check to assign liability to vehicle owners in every situation. In fact, it explicitly acknowledges that the owner may not have been the driver. And long-standing legal precedent — at both the federal and state level — makes it clear that the government must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Relying on a license plate and a database isn’t proof. It’s a shortcut.

And let’s be honest: The system counts on the fact that most people won’t push back. They’ll see the fine, weigh the hassle of fighting it, and just pay up. That’s not justice. That’s compliance by inconvenience.

Legal maze

If you do challenge it, you’re stepping into a legal maze that most drivers aren’t equipped to navigate. Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

This is what happens when enforcement becomes automated: Accountability disappears.

A police officer can assess a situation. A camera cannot. It doesn’t care if traffic flow made it safer to keep pace. It doesn’t account for conditions. It doesn’t apply discretion. It simply records, calculates, and penalizes. That might be efficient, but it’s not fair — and it’s certainly not nuanced.

Mile-high spies

Then there’s the bigger picture, the one few officials seem eager to talk about.

These systems don’t just measure speed. They track movement. They log where your vehicle enters a zone, where it exits, and how it behaves in between. Expand that across highways, cities, and eventually entire states, and you’re looking at a real-time network that monitors how Americans move.

And if you think it stops at speeding, you haven’t been paying attention to how quickly technology evolves.

Today, it’s average speed enforcement. Tomorrow, it could be automated citations for rolling stops, lane usage, or anything else that can be digitized. Add artificial intelligence into the mix, and the potential scope grows exponentially. This isn’t science fiction — it’s the natural progression of a system that’s already in place.

Colorado isn’t just testing a traffic tool. It’s piloting a framework.

Stealer's wheel

Supporters will argue this is about protecting construction workers, and that’s a legitimate concern. No one is arguing against safety. But safety cannot become the catch-all justification for systems that erode fundamental legal protections. You don’t preserve public safety by undermining due process.

And let’s not ignore the tone coming from officials who promote these programs. There’s an almost casual acceptance — sometimes even pride — in the idea of constant monitoring. As if a 24/7 enforcement net is something drivers should simply accept as the cost of modern transportation.

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

Government answers to the people, not the other way around. Policies like this deserve scrutiny, debate, and — when necessary — pushback. Because once a system like this is normalized, it doesn’t get scaled back. It expands. Quietly. Incrementally. Permanently.

Colorado may frame this as innovation. But from behind the wheel, it looks a lot more like overreach.

And if other states decide to follow this blueprint — and they will — drivers across the country may soon find themselves in the same position: tracked, ticketed, and told to prove their innocence after the fact.

That’s not better enforcement.

That’s a fundamental shift in how the rules are applied — and who they’re really serving.

The Doorbell Camera Surveillance State Is Not Just About Finding Fido And Grandma

The mass surveillance state is quite literally on your doorstep in the form of a big-tech owned doorbell camera.

Glenn Beck sounds the alarm on Apple’s digital ID: ‘Control of absolutely everything’



Apple has introduced its own digital ID, which is connected to Apple Wallet — but Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is not thrilled to hear about the company's latest advancement, calling it a “very bad idea.”

“Digital ID is the first thing. Then it includes your medical records. It includes all your health — everything. It will give you access to the hospitals or not access to the hospitals. It will allow you to buy things or not buy things,” Glenn explains.

“It’ll allow you to access online or not access online. It is control of absolutely everything. And that’s in the design, and they talk about it openly,” he adds.


After the tyranny displayed during COVID, Glenn is among those most skeptical of advancements like digital ID.

“Presenting the new Apple digital ID,” Glenn says sarcastically. “Now at the TSA checkpoints in more than 250 airports all across the U.S., you can present your digital ID at TSA checkpoints and get right onto that plane.”

While Apple claims the digital ID is “not a replacement” for a physical passport, it does add an official government ID to a user’s Apple wallet.

“It does sort of sound appealing, doesn’t it? I mean, just speaking frankly for a moment,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere chimes in.

While Glenn agrees that it does “sound appealing,” he points out that the end result would be anything but.

“I have to tell you, when you start putting everything, all records, all passports — it is your one universal key, and it’s tied directly to online, where it’s tracking everything, everywhere you go, every dollar you spend,” he says. “This is just a very bad idea.”

“There’s a story … it’s called the book of Revelation. I mean, how much clearer do you have to be, where you can’t go anywhere, you can’t buy anything, unless you have the mark. I’m not saying Apple is coming up with the mark of the beast, but this is the technology that sure kind of fits it,” he adds.

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Surveillance everywhere, justice nowhere: Brown University shooting exposes the illusion of safety



A dystopian surveillance state is what so many Americans fear their country is becoming, while some have just accepted that a surveillance state is our past, present, and future.

“There comes a point where, as a society, we just end up getting used to the massive surveillance state that we live in,” Glenn Beck’s head researcher and former DOD intelligence analyst Jason Buttrill tells Glenn.

However, while we’re used to the surveillance state, it doesn’t appear to be doing its job — especially when you look at the response to the recent shooting at Brown University.

On Saturday, Dec. 13, a gunman opened fire inside a first-floor classroom at the Barus and Holley building on Brown’s campus — and the gunman remains elusive.


“If you go back to around 2021, there were people writing about how Brown University was one of the most surveilled campuses in the United States,” Buttrill explains.

“How is it we only have one picture of this guy from the back?” Glenn interjects, adding, “Apparently the one thing that will help you get away with any crime is a hoodie.”

“Yeah, wear something over your head and a coat. Apparently that foils the entire surveillance state, y’all,” Buttrill agrees. “So I guess we have nothing to worry about with surveillance.”

“And on top of that, Kash Patel, the FBI director, said that, you know, they sprung into action and they activated their cellular monitoring system to help identify the person that has now been let go,” he continues.

“Again, that’s another layer of this surveillance state that I think a lot of us should be worried about, and that didn’t do anything either,” he says, adding, “That helped give us the wrong suspect.”

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An ‘ankle bracelet’ for your car? AZ pushes new tech for serial speeders



Watch out, speed demons — the open road might be getting a little less free.

Arizona, known for its sun-soaked, sprawling highways, may soon become the first state to offer a high-tech alternative for habitual speeders: a “digital ankle bracelet” for your car.

With this new technology, Arizona may be taking the first step toward a future where cars themselves enforce the law.

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow drivers at risk of losing their licenses to keep their privileges by installing devices that actively prevent their vehicles from exceeding posted speed limits.

The proposal, spearheaded by Republican state Representative Quang Nguyen, would let drivers voluntarily equip their cars with speed-limiting technology. The system relies on a combination of GPS and cellular signals to determine the legal speed on any given road. Electronics connected to the car’s engine control unit then prevent the vehicle from exceeding that limit, no matter how hard the driver presses the accelerator.

Speed bump

For practical reasons, the technology does include an override mode that permits a temporary 10 mph boost up to three times per month, giving drivers a limited margin to react in emergencies or avoid accidents.

Nguyen estimates the devices would cost around $250 to install, with a daily operating fee of roughly $4. He has been working closely with companies that manufacture the technology, including Smart Start and LifeSafer, to ensure the system is effective and reliable. This makes me wonder if he owns a piece of the company or has stock in the company.

Under the bill, which Nguyen plans to formally introduce when the state legislature reconvenes in January, participation is optional — probably Nguyen’s earlier attempt to make it mandatory was a nonstarter.

Slow lane

Arizona is not alone in exploring this approach. Virginia, Washington State, and Washington, D.C., have already enacted similar laws. In Virginia, courts can require drivers with multiple speeding violations or reckless driving convictions to install electronic speed-limiting devices as an alternative to license suspension. Washington State has adopted a comparable program, giving judges discretion to mandate the technology for repeat offenders while monitoring compliance.

In Washington D.C., the program is more limited but aims to reduce repeat speeding among drivers with multiple moving violations. Meanwhile, Wisconsin is currently considering similar legislation.

These programs highlight a growing trend: Rather than grounding drivers entirely, some states are experimenting with technology as a way to enforce safe driving without taking away mobility. Proponents argue that these devices could prevent serious accidents while still allowing drivers to maintain employment, care for families, and perform other essential daily tasks. The technology also provides courts with a tangible tool to ensure compliance, rather than relying solely on citations and license suspensions.

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Discount Tire

Machine learning

However, critics remain cautious. Some transportation and safety experts question whether the technology is advanced enough to accurately detect all posted speed limits. GPS mapping errors, temporary speed changes in construction zones, or malfunctioning sensors could cause a car to slow unexpectedly or fail to limit speed when needed, creating new safety risks. Privacy advocates also worry about how these devices track and store location data, raising concerns about government overreach or potential misuse.

From a practical standpoint, the legislation raises fundamental questions about the balance between personal responsibility and technological enforcement. Supporters argue it offers a lifeline to drivers who repeatedly violate speed laws but are otherwise safe, while critics maintain that it may encourage riskier behavior by transferring accountability from the individual to the machine.

There’s also the question of fairness. Not all drivers have access to new technology or the financial resources to participate in a program that charges daily operating fees. While $4 per day may seem modest, over a month or a year, it could be prohibitive for some families, effectively limiting the program to more affluent drivers. Additionally, the optional nature of the program could create inconsistencies across jurisdictions, leaving some habitual offenders unmonitored while others are under constant technological supervision.

Whether the measure passes will depend not only on lawmakers’ assessment of safety and effectiveness but also on public perception. Speeding remains the most common moving violation in the United States, and habitual offenders are a persistent concern for states nationwide. With this new technology, Arizona may be taking the first step toward a future where cars themselves enforce the law — but whether that future is practical, safe, or desirable remains up for debate.

At the very least, it’s a bold experiment in road safety and personal responsibility, one that could reshape the way states think about controlling speed without grounding drivers entirely. As the legislature prepares to weigh the bill, motorists, safety experts, and privacy advocates alike will be watching closely, asking the same question: Can a car truly keep its driver out of trouble, or is this just another way to shift accountability from human judgment to technology?

Flock Safety: Is any driver safe from its AI-powered surveillance?



Buckle up, America — because if you’re driving anywhere in this country, you’re already under surveillance.

I’m not talking about speed traps or red-light cameras. I’m talking about Flock Safety cameras, those sleek, solar-powered, AI-driven spies perched on poles in your neighborhood, outside your kid’s school, at the grocery store, and along every major road.

The Institute for Justice has filed a federal lawsuit arguing that Flock effectively builds detailed, warrantless movement profiles of ordinary people.

These cameras are not just reading your license plate. They’re building a digital DNA profile of your vehicle — make, model, color, dents, bumper stickers, roof racks, even temporary tags — and logging where you’ve been, when, and with whom you’ve traveled.

And guess who has 24/7 access? Your local police, HOAs, apartment complexes, and private businesses — all without a warrant, without your consent, and often without you even knowing they exist.

Worse than you think

I’ve been warning drivers for decades about government overreach, from cashless tolls to black-box data recorders. But Flock Safety? This is next-level.

Founded in 2017 in Atlanta, Flock has exploded into a $3.5 billion surveillance empire with over 900 employees and a single goal: blanket every city in America with cameras. As of 2024, it has already deployed 40,000 to 60,000 units across 42 states in more than 5,000 communities. That’s not a pilot program. That’s a national tracking grid.

Here’s how it works — and why it should terrify every freedom-loving American.

Pure surveillance tools

Flock’s Falcon and Sparrow cameras don’t enforce speed or traffic laws. They’re pure surveillance tools.

Mounted on utility poles, traffic signals, or private property, they use automated license plate recognition (ALPR) and Vehicle Fingerprint™ technology to capture high-resolution images of your vehicle’s rear, including the license plate with state, number, and expiration, plus the make, model, year, color, and unique identifiers like dents, decals, roof racks, spare tires, even paper plates. They record the time, date, and GPS location, using infrared imaging for 24/7 operation, even at 100 mph from 75 feet away.

The data is uploaded instantly via cellular networks to Flock’s cloud servers, stored for 30 days, and accessible through a web portal by any approved user. That includes police departments across state lines through Flock’s TALON investigative platform. Drive from Georgia to New York, and every Flock camera you pass logs your journey. No warrant needed in most states.

RELATED: Why states are quietly moving to restrict how much you drive

F8 Imaging/Getty Images

Staggering scale

The scale is staggering. Milwaukee has 219 cameras with 100 more planned. Riverside County, California, uses 309 cameras to scan 27.5 million vehicles monthly. Norfolk, Virginia, has over 170 units. Raleigh, North Carolina, has 25 and counting.

Nationwide, Flock claims it logs over one billion vehicle scans per month. These cameras cost $2,500 per year per unit, are solar-powered with no wiring required, and can be installed in hours. HOAs love them, schools want them, police can’t get enough, and new units go up daily, often without public notice or approval.

Flock CEO Garrett Langley loves to brag about Flock's crime-stopping potential. But what he doesn't mention is that you’re tracked whether you’re a criminal or not.

No opting out

There’s no true opt-out for the public — every passing car is still scanned and logged — but some neighborhoods and agencies use Flock's SafeList feature to avoid nuisance alerts. SafeList doesn’t exempt anyone from being recorded. It simply tells the system not to flag certain familiar plates (residents, staff, permitted vehicles) as suspicious. The camera still captures the vehicle, stores the image, and makes it searchable; it just won’t trigger an alert for those approved plates.

Flock cameras can photograph more than a license plate — sometimes the interior of a car, passengers, or bumper stickers — but this varies by angle and lighting, and the system is not designed to gather facial images.

Privacy nightmare

This is a privacy nightmare. The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation call it mass surveillance. A small-town cop in Ohio can search your plate and see everywhere you’ve driven in Florida. Rogue officers have abused ALPR before, stalking exes, journalists, activists. Data breaches? Flock says its cloud is secure, but we’ve heard that before.

A 2024 Norfolk, Virginia, ruling initially held that Flock’s system amounted to a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant. But that decision was later reversed on appeal. Meanwhile, the Institute for Justice has filed a federal lawsuit arguing that Flock effectively builds detailed, warrantless movement profiles of ordinary people. If that case succeeds, it would be a true game-changer.

Yes, finding a kidnapped child or stolen car is good. But at what cost? This creates a chilling effect: Will you avoid a protest, a church, a gun shop, a clinic, knowing you’re being logged? This isn’t safety. This is control.

Fighting back

So what can you do right now? Start by finding the cameras — contact your police, city council, or HOA and ask where the Flock cameras are and who has access.

Demand transparency: Push for public hearings, warrant requirements, data deletion after 24 hours, and no sharing outside your jurisdiction. Support the fighters like the ACLU, EFF, and Institute for Justice. Spot the cameras yourself — look for black poles with tilted solar panels and a small camera box.

It's time to post your opinions on X, call your reps, show up at meetings — let's stop the surveillance.

Flock’s CEO dreams of a camera in every U.S. city. But liberty isn’t free, and it shouldn’t come with a tracking device.

Drop your thoughts below — I read every comment. Share this information with every driver you know. Because if we don’t fight now, soon there’ll be nowhere left to hide.

Does border security mean we’re stuck with a surveillance state?



CBS recently reported that U.S. Border Patrol is now quietly “monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide.” A network of cameras does the work of scanning license plates and grabbing facial ID information. The data is analyzed by an unnamed “predictive intelligence” algorithm.

Whatever happened to the land of the free?

The striking thing is, ever since 9/11, we all felt something like this was either happening or about to happen. Everybody knows, as the great bard Leonard Cohen sang. But what everyone doesn’t know yet is whether that sinking feeling can help us shape limits on the tech we want to deploy against others but not against ourselves.

The use of Palantir or something like it seems to be necessary to undo what the Obama-Biden revolution did.

Technologies of surveillance, identification, categorization, recordkeeping are all at their peak, and climbing. If it hasn’t happened already, we will very soon live in conditions where comprehensive, up-to-the-instant dossiers will be available on all human beings. These will later be integrated into psych profiles based on deep, personal internet histories.

True, the accuracy of these profiles will only be high if we presume a fixed human nature, devoid of spontaneity and repentance. The utility of these vast profiles will be high only insofar as our end goals are tied to a value system where material comfort and ever-increasing union between human souls and machines are prioritized. Prioritized above family, above the divine.

But more and more of us, willingly or otherwise, are signing up for that materialist, Borg-like existence.

Since 9/11, both the left and right have sounded the alarm on the “surveillance state.” Along the way, however, our demographics have undergone radical, unprecedented (some might even say suicidal) levels of alteration. We’ve imported competing tribes, ethnicities, and clans in numbers more than sufficient for those groups to wage their own little internecine wars on our streets — streets we Americans pay to upkeep in a thousand costly ways.

Why would we do this?

The answer is generally given that we Americans are no longer a people but a collection of increasingly isolated and belligerent peoples. And while some degree of regionalism has always marked the country, not until very recently did we think of ourselves this way. We can occupy ourselves with innumerable possible explanations for our increasing division, and many kill time or get paid spooling out financial, religious, historical, cyclical, and economic theories. All of these have some merit.

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But what about the technologies themselves? They seem to advance along a one-way ratchet no types of ups and downs can reverse, or even arrest. But it’s difficult to see how the tech is somehow “inevitable,” independent of human agency. Online occultists are ascribing responsibility to future entities reaching back into their past, our present day, roughly like the “temporal pincer movement” from Christopher Nolan's time-turnstile sci-fi epic “Tenet.” Easier perhaps to cobble up an explanation from human nature, economic choices, and corruption.

Regardless, we’re going to have to deal with a very real pincer situation: predictive super-tech on one side and an invidious, noncompliant, indeed hyper-fragmented population on the other.

OK. Then what should we do with the surveillance panopticon we’re building in the meanwhile? Polls vary, but even Gallup shows that in 1995, immigration was very unpopular. It made no difference. The citizenry has been remade. Acceleration of the remaking may have peaked under the Biden presidency, but even now, with leaders like Stephen Miller mincing no words about the necessity to remigrate millions, we aren’t getting very far. The use of Palantir or something like it seems to be necessary to undo what the Obama-Biden revolution did.

Meanwhile, it’s no secret that the American dream was long ago “downsized,” all but dead at present. It’s not hard to envision the panopticon moving on from unwanted and unlawful “newcomers” to the underclass of heritage American men and women bitterly struggling to survive under impossible economic conditions. They see no path because there is none. Are the men of this class, say those under age 40, going to accept such egregious limitations on their capacity to secure a living wage to offer a potential mate?

This distortion of first-world expectations is so transparent that even the U.S. Department of Labor is posting images of Rockwellian-ideal domestic existence with the accompanying text: “The American Dream has been stolen from the American People. Decades of failed policies prioritized foreign labor, offshored our jobs, and sold the American Worker out.”

Do the math: Tons of foreigners and their interest organization, plus millions of young, able-bodied heritage American males unable to form families on promised terms, plus a surveillance apparatus that has no true ideological master ... equals?

On the upside, AI-panopticon tech forged by the likes of Palantir would (you’d presume) make extremely short work of the right-coded goal to super-remigrate the 30-odd-million foreign noncitizens on U.S. soil. But wait! Regimes are changing. Palantir’s panopticon contract is sure to outlast the Trump administration. Even if we accept the ostensible inevitability of “total recall” and predictive algorithms shaping society, we don’t have much in place to backstop future abuses, even as we rush into unprecedented social, technological, and perhaps even biological change.