Arizona AG on the future of Flock

0:01WBUR Podcasts, Boston. A feeling by people that they don't want their daily lives to be monitored by the state. And that's been a concern since the founding of our country. The political reckoning for AI-powered police cameras is here.

0:31It's Tuesday, September 1st, and this is Here and Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal on a whistleblower report that says President Trump's rush to restrict mail-in voting could derail the midterm elections. This system seems designed to fail. Also, advocates for national parks are worried about a Trump administration plan to privatize land in Yosemite. They say even a tiny land swap would be a big deal. If this were to happen, it would set a kind of precedent about the future of all the parks. That story coming up in about 10 minutes.

1:18But first, backlash to police surveillance is still growing. Lawmakers in Congress and several states are now investigating or restricting the use of AI-powered cameras provided by the company Flock Safety. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri recently launched one investigation, writing in a letter to Flock's CEO that, quote, Americans demand a full accounting for how their driver data is stored or sold, end quote, by the thousands of law enforcement agencies around the country that use this technology. Arizona's Attorney General has now launched her own review. Chris Mays is a Democrat and she's running for re-election this year.

2:00She told Peter O'Dowd the public backlash is part anxiety over AI and part discontent with surveillance. Look, I absolutely do think that our law enforcement in Arizona is by and large using the technology lawfully, and it has been used to solve crimes. And that's what's so hard about this issue is that we don't want to lose what's good about these kinds of cameras. But Americans have fundamental rights. and especially Fourth Amendment rights. And, you know, I personally have concerns about the fact that, you know, it seems like it's possible for these systems to be accessed by law enforcement and federal agencies outside of the state of Arizona.

2:55Right now, there are a lot of people in my state and other states that don't trust the federal government with access to this kind of data. So there are real questions about that, about how quickly and how often the data is being purged, and in general, a feeling by people that they don't want their daily lives to be monitored by the state. And that's been a concern since the founding of our country. I know your investigation is just getting underway, but I'm curious what your end goals are here. Is a potential statewide ban on the table? I mean, is that something you might support? Um, you know, I think what we want to do is do this analysis, this study, get our, get our arms around it and then take a position on it.

3:43I will tell you there is going to be legislation. We know that actually members of our legislature from both political parties are going to put forward legislation to ban flock cameras. That is almost a certainty that that legislation will be introduced. And so the question is, can we craft legislation that allows our law enforcement to continue to fight crime using technology wisely and lawfully, but also in a way that protects our Fourth Amendment rights and the privacy rights of all Arizonans? Do you think this is just good politics to get folks on your side? I think it's good public policy to talk about this issue, to provide some leadership on this issue.

4:35I wouldn't be surprised at all to see other AGs across the country start to take stands on this and start to do assessments of this. So, you know, good public policy often is good politics. And frankly, the public is demanding this and demanding more accountability of these surveillance systems. I hear you're getting a few messages there in the background. You're a busy person. Sorry about that. No, no problem at all. My colleagues at WBUR, they spoke yesterday with a former police chief from Newton, Massachusetts. His name is John Carmichael. He's in favor of the technology despite the public backlash.

5:14Let's listen. The technology is vital, I think, for law enforcement to help with their investigations. And I want to say also that a FLOC spokesperson told us that the technology has helped to recover stolen vehicles. It's even helped locate missing people. But listen, I know you mentioned there may be some value in these cameras as a crime-fighting tool. Do you worry about alienating police here? No, I think what we want to do, and I think police agencies, law enforcement agencies across the state right now are dealing with this. They've got city councils that are canceling these contracts. contracts.

5:50They've got pressure from legislators to cancel the contracts. So really what we want to do is assist law enforcement so that we can, you know, marry up the technology that we need with the privacy rights that Arizonans have. And, you know, we've had license plate readers in the past that were not AI connected. And I think that's something we could look at in the future. Chris Mays is Arizona's attorney general, a Democrat. Chris, thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

6:26We've got lots more on Flock. Check out our episode from Friday, August 28th for more. And make sure you're following Here and Now anytime for more to come.

6:39Coming up next on today's show, however, President Trump wants to make it harder to vote by mail. Courts have slowed or blocked several efforts to that effect, but a new whistleblower report says chaos behind the scenes could still affect the midterm elections. More in a minute.

7:13A newly released whistleblower report warns the U.S. Postal Service could, quote, derail the upcoming midterm election by rushing out untested technology as part of President Trump's push to restrict mail-in voting. The disclosure comes from a non-profit representing an anonymous federal government official. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal sent a letter to the Postmaster General that referenced that whistleblower report, and earlier today he told Peter O'Dowd more about it. So this whistleblower has significant concerns about this online portal the Postal Service would use for states to submit a list of absentee voters ahead of the midterm elections, what specifically did you see in that report that concerned you?

7:57I was really shocked by the incompetence in establishing this portal. This system seems designed to fail, which is consistent with the president's dislike of mail-in balloting, but it is also illegal, unconstitutional, and unconscionable. The portal has two main problems. One, it is rushed, mismanaged, and sloppy and completely untested. And second, it has a 0 % failure rate that puts Americans' rights to vote at risk. One-third of all Americans vote by mail, and all of those votes are potentially at risk. Help me understand what you mean by a 0 % failure rate. So what I'm reading in the letter, it says that when ballots are submitted to the Postal Service in large volume batches, if any one ballot in the batch can't be verified against the portal, all ballots in the batch would be rejected, which could mean up to 10 ,000 votes in the entire batch are just tossed.

9:04Senator, is that your understanding? Correct. All of the ballots have to be returned. All of the votes, in effect, are rejected. If any one of them fails to meet the verification tests, the USPS, Postal Service, matches or verifies the ballots against their lists of valid voters. In effect, they are exercising a veto power over American votes, which is unconstitutional because the right to vote is secured to the states and their systems. It's an indication that the administration seems hellbent on stopping mail-in balloting. It tried to do it through the SAVE Act, which has been blocked so far in the Senate.

9:52We've succeeded in stopping the SAVE Act, but now the president wants to do by executive order. To provide proof of citizenship for registering to vote. In some places, voting by mail for the midterms is going to start this week. So at this point, do you think the Postal Service could get a reliable portal ready in time for the election? The import of this whistleblower's profoundly important disclosure is there's no way that a reliable executive order system, this federal election ballot mail portal, can be implemented by the time that is necessary. It is a system that clearly is hoping to stop American voters from using mail-in ballot and suppress the vote.

10:41As you know, this is an ongoing legal battle. A federal judge has blocked the president's executive order for now, but it could still find its way back to the Supreme Court. If the administration prevails here, what are state and local election officials telling you they would have to do to comply? There is simply no way to comply. And a lot of the state and local officials are resisting the demands by the Postal Service and this administration for information that could be used for the verification. And the ultimate battle in the courts will probably reach the Supreme Court in the coming days.

11:24And the president says the order is necessary. He wants to prevent illegal voting by people who aren't in the country legally. If there were time to do this portal properly, would you support it to make sure that only people who are allowed to vote are voting? Even if it could be done efficiently, I'll say it emphatically, it would be illegal because under the Constitution, states have the ultimate say about who votes. And this kind of verification process is well beyond the powers of the United States postal system, which is supposed to deliver the mail, including mail-in ballots, without censoring or sabotaging them.

12:06Would anyone be confident in mail-in voting if this moves forward? If this system moves forward, which hopefully it will be barred from doing, the confidence level has to be pretty low in mail-in balloting. But I'm very hopeful that the courts will uphold the initial order from the judge in Massachusetts who has blocked it so far and that ultimately the Supreme Court will be on the side of the law and the facts which say this system is doomed to fail its purposes to suppress voting. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, thank you for your time. Thank you.

12:54Coming up, another controversial plan under consideration by the Trump administration, whether a landowner next to Yosemite can build a road that would give him private access to the national park. Peter has that story in just a minute.

13:24For many Americans, national parks are sacred to be enjoyed and preserved for future generations. But there's new reporting that the Trump administration is working to give up a small parcel in California's Yosemite National Park to a private developer in a land exchange. Anna Kramer broke the story for Notice, where she covers government and policy. Anna, welcome. And how much land in Yosemite are we talking about here? and why does the real estate developer want it? So we're talking about a quarter mile strip of land just big enough to build a small private road. It's wanted by a private developer because this developer, Kingsbarn Realty Capital, owns an 83 acre-ish plot of land just outside of Yosemite National Park on the boundaries.

14:12That plot of land is currently quite difficult to reach from the main part of the park. It's a very long drive. And if the developer was able to build a small road, they could connect one of the main roads within Yosemite National Park to the private property, creating this sort of extraordinary access to the park that's pretty hard for any private property owner to have. And just to clarify here, if this were to happen, this wouldn't be sold to the developer. It would be given up in a land exchange. How would that work? Precisely. So there are rules that restrict what the National Park Service can do with park land.

14:48Often Congress has to be involved. One of the ways that you can get around those restrictions is to do what's known as a land exchange or land swap, where the Park Service essentially appraises or values the land within the park, in this case Yosemite, that the developer wants. The developer then needs to find a piece of land that the Park Service wants that is worth the equivalent value. and then they give the Park Service that piece of land in exchange. It does not have to be directly within Yosemite National Park necessarily. The rules on the land exchange, as I best understand them, is that it must just be within the state of California.

15:23And Congress must approve that. Actually, I don't know that that's the case. My understanding here is that it would be possible for this land swap to occur without further congressional involvement. it's not clear that Congress actually does have any specific thing they can do to prevent the Park Service from going through with it if it's something that the Park Service wants to do. Okay, well, as you've reported, previous owners of this land just outside the park boundaries have tried to peel some of the national park off before, but the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the Biden administration all said no.

16:00So what's changed now? it is difficult to know precisely what the motivation is for the trump administration wanting to do this i know from my reporting from my sources that the political appointees inside the interior department do care about making this happen this is a priority for them and then we also do know that the park service until this administration has been adamant that this is a bad idea and actually so the previous developer tried to build this road during the bush and obama administrations and both of those administrations not only said no, but had to defend themselves in federal court when the developer sued to try to force them to allow him to build a road.

16:37And they won both in district court and then again on appeal. And then the new developer, when they purchased the property in 2024, went to the Biden administration and again was like, we would like to build this road. And the Biden administration said, absolutely not. Are there any connections, do we know, between this real estate developer and the Trump administration? So we know of a few possible connections in that this developer has done business deals that involve financial companies and sort of financiers that have sort of ties to the Trump administration orbit. However, we don't know precisely what the nature of a connection is between the developer and political appointees inside the Interior Department.

17:25And that's something that I'm hoping to explore further, and I'm hoping to speak with folks about what those connections may be. Well, Interior sent us a statement that said claims suggesting the department is secretly working to hand over National Park Service land to a private developer are false. It said any land exchange proposal would be subject to all applicable federal laws. What else are you hearing from inside the Park Service or the Interior Department? Absolutely. My sources tell me that inside the Park Service, there's just a lot of pressure to make this land exchange happen. It's something that the political appointees inside Interior specifically are really interested in seeing it done.

18:07And there's been a lot of pressure on Park Service staff to find a way to enable it. So if this could happen in Yosemite, which is one of the most beloved parks in the country, what could this potentially mean for hundreds of other parks across the United States? This is a question that park advocates are really concerned about. I've been hearing an outpouring of fear that this sets a precedent for what might be done in other parks. Because if you say to one developer, okay, you can have a tiny piece of a park to build this private access, What's to stop any developer anywhere in the country from saying, wait, I want to do that too?

18:44And so I think that the folks who advocate for the protection of the parks for today and for future generations, which is the mission of the National Park Service, the Park Service is required to do that, those folks are very concerned that if this were to happen, it would set a kind of precedent about the future of all the parks. Anna Kramer covers government and policy for notice. Anna, thank you. Thank you.

19:12That's it for the show today. Here and now, anytime, comes from NPR and WBR. Today's stories were produced by Ashley Locke, James Mastromarino, and Kalyani Saxena. Our editors were Todd Munt, Mark Navin, Mikaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. and here and now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. Hope your September is off to a great start and we'll be back with you tomorrow.