Podcast Club ONLINE: A.I. Surveillance or Public Safety? - The Flock Controversy
Details
A while back, we had a podcast club meeting about what we willingly give up or share with AI for information, health, or convenience in our tech-forward society. The discussion also looked at the costs and risks to our privacy that we assume in using AI. Now, unsurprisingly, the pervasiveness and capability of AI technology that is being and can be used for surveillance has grown. While CCTV has been around for decades in places like London, and we know there's very sophisticated AI surveillance in China, these levels of public surveillance of people just going about their own business hasn't been in the American ethos. This is changing. Some assert that tech like Flock cameras, which are automated license plate readers (ALPRs), is an incredible law-enforcement tool. Hundreds of thousands of ALPRs have been deployed across our country. These tools and others give police the ability to analyze extraordinary amounts of data about private citizens. This data could be misused, especially in the wrong hands. But it has solved many crimes too.
In a way, Flock cameras may be the functional equivalent of data centers: they're physical things that can be rallied against by people frustrated with AI generally. Is the vilification of Flock cameras justified or overblown? Do we want AI surveillance tech to keep us safer? Is it worth it to be tracked? Is it likely that the podcast's ominous main title "Flock is Just the Beginning" foretells our future? All this is the topic of this week's podcast, Your Undivided Attention, with host Tristan Harris and guests Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and Garance Burke.
Additionally, please watch a 2 min., 13 sec. video from the New York Times about Moscow's High-Tech Surveillance. Does Russia's tech, as depicted in the video, surprise you? Would you like it here in America?
Ferguson is a law professor at George Washington University who studies how policing technology collides with constitutional law. He is the author of the book Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance. Garance Burke is an investigative journalist at The Associated Press, where she leads high-impact projects on the intersection of technology and society. Her investigations into the global surveillance industry were part of a package that won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
PLEASE NOTE: We require that attendees listen to the podcast below before attending the meeting to optimize discussion.
Podcast:
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/flock-is-just-the-beginning-inside-the-era-of-ai-powered-policing
or
(59 min.)
AND Short Video:
For those interested in going deeper with the short video, here is a link to an optional-reading article that accompanied the video: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/14/world/europe/moscow-russia-putin-digital-surveillance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.BVE.ETwS.l1SUrJHBK3cY&smid=nytcore-ios-share
What's a podcast club?
It's like a book club for podcasts. Each week we discuss an interesting and currently-relevant episode from podcasters like Ezra Klein, Michael Shermer, or Russ Roberts. We start off as a large group and spend most of the time talking in small break-out groups, which we remix 3 times during the course of the evening. Our conversations are casual and open. We ask that everyone speak respectfully at all times, and we encourage free and concise discussion relevant to the week's podcast topic. To do this, we try to adhere to Grice's Maxims: https://bit.ly/2p4uSQm
Ultimately, the idea is to help each other think a little differently, learn a thing or two and have some fun.