In short
The FCC is proposing rules to end phone-network anonymity by requiring telecoms to collect customer identifiers (name, physical address, government ID number, and an alternate phone number) before granting service, targeting “burner phones” and potentially pay-as-you-go, SIM/eSIM, and brokered short-term service. The episode also covers police abuse of Flock automated license plate readers, arguing cops can search without warrants and use the system to stalk romantic partners.
Guests
Joseph (host); Emmanuel Mayberg and Jason Kebler (404 Media co-founders).
Guest backgrounds
Emmanuel Mayberg and Jason Kebler are 404 Media co-founders and journalists who report on surveillance and telecom/privacy issues.
Key claims
FCC proposal would force ID at service activation/renewal, increasing friction and harming privacy; critics say it mirrors authoritarian phone-registration regimes. Flock abuse is widespread enough that civil-rights groups documented 18 romantic-interest stalking cases; auditing logs enable detection but abuse often continues for months.
Notable examples
Florida officer Jarmaris Brown ran an ex-girlfriend’s plate 69 times, plus her parents’ plates (24 and 15 times), leading to arrest/discipline; Institute for Justice documented 18 cases.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroduction to Police Misuse of Surveillance
0:00 to 0:24
Learn about recent cases of police officers abusing surveillance systems.
“This is one case in one city, but as we've been reporting on Flock, we keep hearing from people in local communities around the country saying, oh, a police officer was fired for abusing this system.”
FCC's Proposal to End Burner Phones
1:22 to 3:24
Discussion on the FCC's proposal to require ID for phone purchases.
“It's called FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones by Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customer IDs.”
Impact of Identifying Phone Purchases
3:24 to 4:32
Exploration of how the proposal will affect buying phones in stores.
“but I'm not really aware of other devices that have an ID requirement to purchase, like another type of gadget.”
Consequences of the FCC's Changes
4:32 to 6:34
Analyzing how the proposed changes will affect burner phone usage.
“and maybe that's a corner store that sells, you know, some pay-as-you-go mobiles or something, or maybe it is going to T-Mobile or whatever.”
Understanding Current Phone Purchase Processes
6:34 to 10:41
Discussion about the current requirements for buying phones.
“But yeah, you know, as you say, we included the term Burner Phone because honestly, this is like a pretty complicated proposal to try to communicate to readers, right?”
E-SIMs and Travel Considerations
10:41 to 14:03
Exploration of the implications of eSIMs in the context of identity checks.
“There's the phone itself, and there's the service.”
Discussing eSIMs and Identity Verification
14:03 to 16:54
Learn about the implications of eSIM usage and identity checks in communication.
“And then you get a SIM, like an eSIM, but you don't actually go anywhere.”
FCC's Push for Surveillance
16:54 to 19:18
Explore the FCC's reasoning behind increased surveillance measures for phone users.
“Is there a stated purpose or is it just like they want more surveillance so they're going to do more surveillance?”
Impact on Privacy and Vulnerable Groups
19:18 to 21:05
Understand how proposed regulations affect privacy and marginalized communities.
“So you talked to a bunch of people for this article, just getting their reactions.”
Alternatives to Current Scam-Fighting Strategies
21:05 to 22:47
Examine alternative approaches to combating phone scams beyond user identification.
“It's going to be really hard for a lot of people.”
Show all 19 chapters
Alternatives to Current Scam-Fighting Strategies
24:59 to 26:34
Examine alternative approaches to combating phone scams beyond user identification.
“One thing I've noticed about traveling is that there's a huge difference between visiting a place and actually feeling like you experienced it.”
Alternatives to Current Scam-Fighting Strategies
26:37 to 28:03
Examine alternative approaches to combating phone scams beyond user identification.
“If you've ever read one of our stories and thought, wow, that's pretty dystopian, just remember you're still using the same internet that we just exposed.”
Alternatives to Current Scam-Fighting Strategies
28:06 to 28:24
Examine alternative approaches to combating phone scams beyond user identification.
“Plus, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee.”
Introduction to Hunting Warhead
28:24 to 29:06
Explore the podcast Hunting Warhead that delves into the business of suicide.
“who you knew was in a vulnerable state and they shot themselves, I think it is murder.”
Police Misuse of Surveillance Technology
29:07 to 31:39
Discuss a case of a police officer abusing surveillance technology to stalk an ex.
“Cops keep getting arrested for using flock to stalk people.”
Broader Implications of Flock Surveillance
31:40 to 36:19
Investigate how surveillance technology like Flock is misused by police officers across the U.S.
“A police officer was arrested for abusing this system.”
The Role of Auditing in Police Surveillance
36:20 to 42:05
Examine how auditing tools within Flock help uncover abuse by police.
“hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.”
Analyzing Flock's Transparency Tools
42:05 to 45:10
Learn how transparency tools are used to identify abuse within police departments using Flock's technology.
“quote, each surface because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform.”
The Need for Search Warrants
45:10 to 47:43
Explore the discussion on the necessity of search warrants when using surveillance technology to prevent abuse.
“I would say there's this very, very novel thing called a search warrant that maybe could be applied to something like a surveillance technology like Flock.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Emanuel:This is one case in one city, but as we've been reporting on Flock, we keep hearing from people in local communities around the country saying, oh, a police officer was fired for abusing this system. A police officer was arrested for abusing this system. And it kind of just keeps happening.
0:23Hello and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Get access to that content at 404media.co. Also, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch all of our episodes. Subscribe at youtube.com slash at 404media.co. I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are 404media co-founders, Emmanuel Mayberg.
1:05Hello. And Jason Kebler.
1:08Emanuel:Hi, good morning. Well, I don't know. You might not be listening to this in the morning. Could be anytime. We don't really have any housekeeping. So we're just going to jump straight into this week's stories. Jason, do you want to take us through this first one? Yeah, so this is your story. It's called FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones by Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customer IDs. What, I guess, what is the FCC proposing here, just to start? Yeah, as I guess I would say, I thought about this maybe a few hours after we published or a day or something, but another way to think of it is that, yes, burner phones.
1:50And we landed on that head because one of the experts we spoke to conceptualized it like that. And I think everybody knows what burner phone is. But also, essentially, the FCC is trying to kill anonymity on phone networks where you're not going to be able to go buy a phone without handing over a bunch of personal information. And to answer your question specifically, I'm looking at a quote from this proposed change from the FCC. They are asking for comment on whether, at a minimum, users of telecoms should have to provide their name, obviously, physical address, government-issued identification number, and an alternative telephone number of any new and renewing customers before granting access to the services offered by this telecom.
2:40your AT &T's, your T-Mobile's or whatever. So that's obviously a bunch of pretty dry language, but it's stark in a couple of ways in that they're asking for this very, very sensitive information, a government-issued identification number. You don't normally have to hand that over, right? When you go and get a phone number. And the second is that the consequence of that is you are not going to have, as I say, anonymity when you are purchasing a phone. It's a really, really, really drastic proposed change. And I should say that this hasn't happened yet. The FCC has published this saying, we are seriously exploring this.
3:20They wouldn't publish this if they weren't taking it incredibly seriously. And now they're asking for people to provide input. But this is what the FCC wants to do.
3:28Emanuel:Yeah, I mean, this is also like... I mean, maybe the details are in here. I'm not sure if we know them. but I'm not really aware of other devices that have an ID requirement to purchase, like another type of gadget. It's like famously, guns don't have this like in many states. Or gun care or something like that. Yeah. It obviously varies. But yeah, I guess what would this mean practically speaking? What would the process become like when you do buy a phone? Yeah. So it is a little bit unclear right now because of course it is proposed changes. But I think there's a very, very key component in that you're not going to be able to just go into a store and grab a phone.
4:24And now maybe people don't ordinarily do that. Maybe they have a contract of AT &T or whatever. but it's going to make it so much harder to do that where you're going to go into the store and maybe that's a corner store that sells, you know, some pay-as-you-go mobiles or something, or maybe it is going to T-Mobile or whatever. You're going to have to provide all of this information that the FCC wants these telecoms to hold on to. But again, this is at minimum what the FCC would like the telecoms to hold on to. Maybe they would also want to have date of birth in there. That's mentioned as well.
5:01So there's going to be so much more friction when you go and buy any sort of phone, essentially. And I know that's a really, really radical step where ordinarily in the United States, you can just walk in and you can get a phone plan. For various stories that I've needed to do things, I've gone into a T-Mobile store and I've bought a SIM card. And I've even had the representative talk to me and said, oh, here's the form you fill out, but you don't really need to fill it out. And well, that wouldn't be the case here because these telecoms will probably get in a lot of trouble if they didn't follow these new proposed changes.
5:39Emanuel:Let's talk about burner phones and what that means because I think that the term burner phone is... I pushed you to include the term burner phone into this because I think that's what people know. Right. them as. But also, just because you have a burner phone doesn't mean that you're doing something nefarious, doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. I guess, is it fair to call this a regulation that would be intended to stop the practice of burner phones? Or who would this impact ultimately? Yeah, I think it is fair to say that. I don't think it's the FCC's intention explicitly, although it will definitely impact that.
6:29And we'll talk about who will impact and what the FCC's intention is in a second. But yeah, you know, as you say, we included the term Burner Phone because honestly, this is like a pretty complicated proposal to try to communicate to readers, right? Like I filed and it's like kind of, it's very dry language from the FCC. And you pulled out the burner phone thing. And then we sort of clung to that because people understand it. And I'm sure many people hear the word burner phone and they go, Oh, yeah, it's like an anonymous phone. It's like one that I buy and I don't need to hand over ID or something like that.
7:07So that's absolutely what's going to be banned here. I mean, I'm sure some security people will say, Well, a burner phone is one that you buy with cash, but then you never even turn on at home. so it's not linked to your identity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, I get that, whatever. Here, it is much more about you're not going to be able to buy a phone without your identity. And a burner phone is one example of that. And again, I think it's just even broader in that the FCC does not want you to anonymously be able to buy a mobile device, like basically ever, it seems like.
7:41Emanuel:Yeah. I'm curious because Because I think that probably a lot of people aren't really sure what the process for buying a phone looks like. To be honest, I am not sure. I bought my last few phones directly from Apple. I don't remember giving an ID. I got my cell phone service a long time ago, decades ago. and don't remember that process. And it's been renewing for years at this point. And so I'm curious, do you already hand over a lot of this data when you buy a phone? Or what's the current state of affairs? Yeah. So, I mean, depends where you go, obviously, as you say. And then you'll go get a contract from a telecom and it's going to be something like, your billing address, obviously, which may also be your residential address, presumably, you know, date of birth, some other stuff.
8:51And that's much more so they can facilitate the payment sort of thing, right? It isn't to create this identity is linked to your phone that cops can access, although that happens all the time, obviously. We read all of these indictments and they go to Verizon or whoever and they find out who is using that phone. but it's much more about facilitating the payment. But that said, again, I've gone into various stores and just not provided the information and sometimes they will ask for it and then just say, you don't actually need to do this. But really, then you can then look at another company like Cape, for example.
9:37disclosure, I think they're going to advertise at some point. So I'll just say that. But they collect much less information. And that would impact a service like this as well. Or I don't know if ProtonMail or something launched a phone company, they would be demanding, they would be required to get information as well. So right now, you don't need to do, you don't need to provide this sort of government issued ID and stuff. And that's very, very different to, as some of the people point out, like, you know, authoritarian countries. You know, I don't think in Russia, you can get a phone basically without providing your identity.
10:13I think India has some restrictions as well. I haven't been to China in a long time, but I imagine there's similar restrictions there where in tons of different countries around the world, at the point of purchasing the phone and the plan, there is a very, very strong link between your identity and then the actual phone plan you get. And that's going to just not be the case with this sort of change.
10:40Emanuel:Yeah, I admit I'm a little bit out of my depth here, just because this isn't something that I personally have covered very much. But there's obviously two things. There's the phone itself, and there's the service. and at the moment, you can walk into Best Buy and buy an unlocked phone and just be like, I don't want service on it. And they're not going to take your ID and enter it into a government database and you can add service to it later. Same thing, you can go into a 7-Eleven and buy a track phone. I don't know if track phones still exist, but that was the type of phone that was a burner phone for a long time.
11:23Emanuel:you could go buy one at 7-Eleven. Right. And I guess you can also buy used phones on eBay. You can buy used phones from all sorts of different places. And it's like there's not an ID aspect to all of that. And so are there existing ID type stuff for the actual service? And it does sound like this is happening at a telecom level versus a retailer level. So that's not exactly a question. But I guess I just wanted to separate out the difference between buying a device and buying the service. And it sounds like this would happen at a phone level, I think. Yeah, this is much more about the AT &Ts and the Verizon and that sort of thing where if you're a customer want to be granted access to their services, that is when you would need to provide this information.
12:29That said, there's a very, very key part in the FCC sort of questions. When they publish these requests for comment, they say, this is what we're proposing. This is what we're interested in. And this is the reason why. But they also will just literally list a bunch of questions like, are there cybersecurity concerns? Are there privacy concerns? Should we do this? Should we do that? One of the questions is, should we require this for both post and prepaid plans, as in somebody with a phone contract, but then also somebody just getting a SIM card and putting credit on it, what we call pay-as-you-go in the UK?
13:11So they're clearly exploring both of those as well. So although, yes, it's not going to necessarily directly impact buying the track phone itself or going to Best Buy, if you actually want to use that as a mobile phone, which presumably you do, even if you go buy a SIM card or credit or you do buy a contract, that is when you're going to have to provide government ID. And that's going to impact a lot of different people. Yeah.
13:40Emanuel:Sorry. This is a hardball interview because I'm going a little off script here. I have a lot of questions now that we're into this. When I travel, I buy an eSIM. I use something like Aerolo or Olafly. There's just a bunch of different companies that do it. And the way that it works is you land in a country and you open up this app and you are like, I'm going to be in this country for seven days. And then you get a SIM, like an eSIM, but you don't actually go anywhere. It's never, in my experience, like the countries that I've traveled to, they haven't collected my identity as far as I know. I enter my name and stuff for the purposes of the app, but they're not taking my passport.
14:25Emanuel:They're not taking my driver's license information, things like that. Is there anything in here about eSIMS? Is this out of the depth of your actual reporting at this point? Am I just randomly asking you things that are not in the article? No, no, no. It's good. Two things. That reminds me when I went to Singapore a while back. And to use the airport Wi-Fi, I had to give over my passport. So they wanted to link my Wi-Fi activity to my identity, which was obviously nuts. And I had to do it for various reasons because I really needed Wi-Fi at that time. crucially because I don't think I had a mobile phone.
15:05I think I had an iPad. So like, I need to use this Wi-Fi, otherwise I'm pretty screwed. So maybe I should have done the E-SIM thing. That said, I don't think E-SIM was specifically mentioned, at least not in the parts I read. That said, I don't think it would have any difference to a physical SIM rate. I don't think the FCC cares if AT &T or whoever, or even like a smaller MVNO, a mobile virtual network operator that sits on top of these other networks. I don't think they care if like a foreigner comes to the States or whatever, or a tourist, and then they use an app like you're describing, but to get service in the US or whatever.
15:48The FCC doesn't care if it's a physical SIM or an eSIM. They just want to have that identity, presumably. So I don't think there would be a meaningful difference between eSIM or physical SIM or anything like that. I don't have numbers in front of me, but I feel like so many contracts now are just eSIMs. I mean, yours is presumably an eSIM right now, right? Well, all iPhones in the United States
16:14Emanuel:don't have SIM card slots anymore for several years. Yeah, so they are eSIMs. I guess it was more the fact that there is an entire business now of... I don't even know if they would classify as MBNOs or not, but they are like brokers for the short-term cell phone service. I can see them being subject to this as well. Yeah. Because otherwise, well, I don't think the FCC would be happy with that. And there was no language in there that I saw that would exclude those sorts of services. Right, right. Okay, so you said that we're going to talk about why the FCC is pushing for this. Is there a stated purpose or is it just like they want more surveillance so they're going to do more surveillance?
17:00I mean, they say it's scammers. It's robocalls. It's that sort of thing. Where in the United States, nobody wants to pick up their phone because it's probably what? 75 % a scammer, 80 % a scammer if it's an unknown number, something like that. And that's the reason they want to clamp down on this. There's a couple of reasons. they want more friction in the first place. So scammers are less likely to join phone networks at all, which seems, I think, misguided, because if you're a scammer, you're making money. And, oh no, we have to jump through a few hoops to get some service, whatever. Okay, sure, there's that.
17:37And then there's also, well, if we collect all of this data, or the telecoms do, then there's more valuable data for law enforcement to use to investigate when there is a scam performed on this. And, well, they can go and they can look who that phone is registered to or that phone plan, that sort of thing. And I should say there's almost like extra bits for foreign users of the networks, as in somebody outside the US trying to buy AT &T service for some sort of reason, and then also business users as well. Like Robocall scammers, it's not one guy with his personal plan on AT &T or something, right, is an industrial-scale operation where these scammers are operating hundreds, if not thousands, of phones at once, and they have all of these different plans.
18:27So it's very much to do that. That said, I was kind of blown away by sort of... They said the quiet part out loud, where in the FCC proposal, they say, yeah, we want to stop scamming, we want to stop robocalls, that sort of thing. And then they also just straight up say, well, actually, it would be really good to have this data for other stuff like investigating, quote, fraud, espionage, influence operations that undermine national security, and then another, quote, address abuse in text messaging networks. So, I mean, that's like everything. Like robocalls, scams, and also every other sort of crime that we might want to investigate.
19:12essentially is the reason they want this. I'm surprised they came out and said it.
19:17Emanuel:Right, right. So you talked to a bunch of people for this article, just getting their reactions. You spoke to people at the American Civil Liberties Union. Oh my God, ACLU. What is you? What is the UN? Union? Is it union? Yes. Okay. I'm very sorry. I'm like, brain blank there. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation about this, what did they say? I was Googling just to make sure you're correct. Yeah, so spoke to Jay Stanley at the ACLU, and I think he gave a pretty on-point quote. I'll just read it. For decades, civil libertarians have looked overseas at authoritarian countries where the government requires people to register to get a mobile phone to ensure they can be tracked.
20:00We never thought this would happen here. And then the rest of the quote, but make no mistake, with this rulemaking, the government is contemplating taking away people's ability to get a burner phone, which will hurt low-income people, domestic violence victims, and anyone else who cares about their privacy. And I may be preempting one of your questions, Jason, but I think that touched on a good point, is that when people hear this proposal, they may think, oh, well, you know, it's fine. Like, I have a phone. I guess I'll provide my ID if I need to renew my contract or I get another one or whatever.
20:36This is only going to impact criminals and that sort of thing. Okay, not every person experiencing homelessness is going to have a government-issued ID which they can provide to a telecom. And if you have to provide an alternative phone number to even get a phone number in the first place, you're going to be stuck in this catholic situation where you don't really know what to do at all because you haven't even got a phone at all to even get the phone you're trying to get. It's ludicrous. It's going to be really hard for a lot of people. and then yeah domestic violence victims and survivors they may they may need to get hold of a burner phone you know a quick phone that's not linked to the identity they need to get minutes and data on it and you know maybe they don't have access to their id or something like that maybe the abusive partner took it so there's going to be a lot of sort of secondary ramifications from this sort of proposal, which are going to touch on race and class and people's individual circumstances.
21:41That means they might not be able to get a phone. They're not trying to do anything shady. They're just trying to communicate.
21:47Emanuel:Right, right, right. Yeah, I think that's an important point. Is there anything else on this one that we didn't touch on? I think it's just so wild that the FCC is proposing this sort of thing. I mean, combating scammers, I think there's going to be other ways where... I didn't really go into this, but Cooper Quinton from the EFF brought up this previous sort of proposal for clamping down on scams. So there's already work going on there, stopping the calls in the first place, maybe just fining the telcos per call or something like that. like, hey, there's a scam call. We're going to fine you for that, which is in there.
22:33But why don't you just put the onus on them, as in the telcos, for not facilitating scams and clamping down on that, rather than putting it on everybody who's just trying to buy a mobile phone, you know? But yeah, I think we'll leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about how cops just keep on using Flock for stalking. We'll be right back after this.
23:06Emanuel:You always assume you'll remember the stories. The story about how your dad met your mom. The story about his first apartment, his first job. The dumb thing he did when he was 20 that somehow became family lore. You hear some of these stories growing up and kind of assume they'll always be there. But one day you realize that if nobody writes them down, they can disappear a lot faster than you'd expect. That's why I think StoryWorth is such a great Father's Day gift. Instead of another gift that gets forgotten after a few weeks, StoryWorth helps preserve the things that actually matter. The stories you know and the stories you never have heard before.
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25:06Emanuel:You can see the landmarks, go to the museums, eat the food, and take a bunch of photos. But the moments you remember are usually conversations. Talking to a local restaurant owner, asking someone for a recommendation, talking to people at a bar and seeing where the night goes, being able to order food without pointing at the menu and hoping for the best. That's why if you've got summer travel coming up, I'd start learning before you get on the plane with Babbel. Even just 10 minutes a day can help you start having real conversations in as little as three weeks. What I like is that Babbel focuses on practical, real-world conversation.
Read the full transcript
25:41Emanuel:You're not memorizing endless vocabulary lists or staring at complicated verb charts. You're learning the kinds of phrases you'd actually use while traveling, asking for directions, ordering dinner, or chatting with locals. The lessons are really quick, they're practical, and they're created by more than 200 language experts. They've got interactive dialogues, personalized reviews, and even podcasts designed to help you start speaking with confidence. And really what I like most about Babbel is that the lessons are short, so it's easy to fit them into your day. During a coffee break, your commute, or even if you just have a few minutes before bed.
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28:48Hunting the Suicide Salesman. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
29:07All right. And we are back. Jason, this is one of your stories. Cops keep getting arrested for using flock to stalk people. So this article opens with a very specific case about a particular police officer and what they did. Tell us what happened in that case. Yeah.
29:26Emanuel:So in the summer of 2024, this cop called Jarmaris Brown, who is a cop or was a cop in Orange City, Florida. Basically, he was running his ex-girlfriend's license plate through Flock, this automated license plate reader system that we've talked about endlessly. 69 times over the course of a few months. He also ran a license plate belonging to her mom 24 times and a license plate belonging to her dad 15 times. And essentially what happened was I obtained arrest reports and affidavits and court records and all sorts of things and was able to just track the ways that he was using Flock to surveil her.
30:19Emanuel:And so this case was quite egregious. It's like, again, he searched for her 69 times in the course of a couple of months. He used some other surveillance tools that he had access to as a police officer as well. And then he also was doing this in front of other police officers. So he was like, there was one anecdote in the affidavit where he was sitting in a police cruiser next to another cop and he was searching for his ex-girlfriend. And basically the other cop was like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And he then said, I want you to help me basically confront her. And so that cop ultimately became a whistleblower in this situation.
31:09Emanuel:But according to the affidavit, he did do this stakeout. He called it a stakeout with another police officer. The abusive cop went to the ex-girlfriend's house or something. Yeah, exactly. And this is, again, this is wildly illegal. This is using surveillance technology for unapproved reasons. and it's using it to stalk someone. And this is like one case in one city. But I had been meaning to write an article like this for months because as we've been reporting on Flock, we keep hearing from people in local communities around the country saying, oh, like a police officer was fired for abusing this system.
31:59Emanuel:A police officer was arrested for abusing this system. and it kind of just keeps happening.
32:08Emanuel:And one of the really interesting things about Flock is that you don't need a warrant to use it. And so police who have access to it can just use it at any time for any purpose. There's no technical thing stopping them from searching the system. You don't need to input a warrant. There doesn't seem to be specific usage limits. And so this keeps happening where cops will search for their wife or their ex-partner dozens or hundreds of times over the course of months. And I wanted to write about that issue. Yeah, we'll talk about warrants again in a minute as well. But yeah, as you say, this issue of stalking by cops across flock is much, much, much broader than this one case.
32:59there was a recent report from the Institute for Justice, right? They're this legal body that has a bunch of flock-related lawsuits going on that sort of thing. What was that report saying? Because I feel like that was sort of the springboard and you sort of drilled into some other cases. But what was that report doing?
33:19Emanuel:Yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting because they didn't do anything special, really. The Institute for Justice is a civil rights group that is suing Flock or has sued Flock in Norfolk, Virginia, on Fourth Amendment grounds, basically arguing that cops should be required to get a warrant to use Flock. And so as they've been doing this, presumably with the press and attention and just having lawyers who are researching this company endlessly, they have come across many, many of these cases. Um, they have documented 18 cases where police have used flock to stock. Uh, they call it a romantic interest.
34:02Emanuel:Uh, usually it is an ex-partner or a current partner. Um, but, but what they did was like, this was not proprietary reporting. They basically took local, uh, news reports from around the country. And we've mentioned a few times, but like local news outlets have done a really excellent job on documenting the use of flock and the abuse of flock by police officers. And so they basically just did a survey of the news coverage that's happened and listed it in this report. And to be clear, these are cases where, for the most part, the facts are not in dispute. It's like the police officers in question are either fired, they're either arrested.
34:55Emanuel:And at least in all of the cases that I saw, the police officers admitted to the searches in question. And I think one of the reasons for that is just because the way that Flock works, it has these auditing tools where it's very clear who is using the tool and what they're searching for, which we can talk more about in a moment. But it's like the facts are not really in dispute here in any of these cases. What is interesting, and one of the reasons that I decided to focus on Jermaris Brown in Florida is that the United States' court record system is so terrible that obtaining records for the specifics of many of these cases was really difficult or impossible.
35:47And so Florida has somewhat better public transparency laws
35:54Emanuel:when it comes to court records. And so I was able to actually get the documents in a lot of these cases. But the specifics in some of the cases that have been reported, but where either the courts are still adjudicating the case or the records are not readily available are even worse than what I reported, where sometimes there's been a few cases where cops have searched the system hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. Some are more than 300 searches for a specific person. In some of the cases, there's worse details where it has led to either violence or it's led to a physical confrontation or just extended stalking over a long period of time.
36:46Emanuel:There's been other cases where police officers used other surveillance tools alongside a flock. So there was one case, I believe this was in California, but there was one case where the officer also installed malware onto their partner's phone and then track them that way in addition to using Flock. And then there have been a few cases where the police officer in question was arrested. And then as part of that, the police who were investigating them found child sexual abuse material on their devices and things like this. So in some cases, it has gone alongside quite serious physical abuse, quite serious like other hacking crimes, things like that.
37:39Yeah. And as you say, it's often part of a broader pattern with violence or more surveillance. And of course, cops abusing access to technology or data is not new. I remember the Associated Press did a really good story. I mean, quite a while ago at this point, it might have been going on like 10 years or something, but they did a bunch of public records requests looking for sort of reports about cops using internal databases to look up romantic interests. And that was completely rampant all across the country. I should say, a reader, after you published this, Jason, a reader flagged to me that Trump, I think by executive order, but the administration got rid of this database that tracks police abuses inside surveillance tech and that sort of thing.
38:28So there was a repository for this sort of thing. And that is now being killed. So this would probably have factored into that. But now there isn't going to be a central repository tracking this sort of abuse. Yeah.
38:40Emanuel:Yeah. I also want to say, this is not me handing it to Flock. We've reported on Flock endlessly and the ways that it's been abused and the ways that that company has done its business and privacy violations and the ways that it has pushed itself into a lot of different communities throughout the country. But what I will say is that it has pretty intense auditing tools built into it. And that is one of the reasons why we know about this abuse at all, which is the fact that I mentioned where if you're a cop, you basically get a login and then you use that login. And every time you search, there's a record of that search.
39:29Emanuel:And that record includes the license plate, includes the time that they did the search. It includes a quote unquote reason for the search, which we've talked about before. and so like one of the things that's happening here is like police departments when they actually go to do the investigation they can then look and say like oh this one police officer looked up this one license plate 175 times and they can then use that as like evidence that this system was abused yeah I think it's absolutely fair to say that the auditing things are really really important here right uh you mentioned the reason tab which is uh for those who don't know when we've done a lot of reporting on flock we will get these spreadsheets from police departments that have these searches right and in the reason sometimes that is as we've shown ice immigration or something sometimes is investigation or inv so it can still be super super vague like i reckon a cop could probably get away with looking up their ex-girlfriend once or twice it's when it crosses into um you know that guy searching 69 times and searching for the mother 24 times it's like obviously that's suspicious um obviously that's going to be audited and thankfully they're going to be caught that said it's not like a foolproof system, obviously.
41:00Right.
41:00Emanuel:No, and so there's a few other points I want to make on that, which is there are a lot of automated license plate reader companies and not all of them have auditing tools that are as robust as Flock has. And also, not all of them create these audit logs that are accessible to the public via public records requests. And we've talked in the past about how Flock has really tightened access to that. They basically are limiting the amount of data that is collected. And that is really concerning for reasons that will become clear in one second. So I want to talk about how a lot of these cases have been brought to light, because this is something where I asked Flock for comment.
41:48Emanuel:And Flock says that this type of abuse is rare. They say that there's like tens of thousands of cops who are using Flock. And that Flock admits that it is aware of 15 of these cases of abuse. And Flock said, quote, each surface because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform. And I wanted to say that, but then I also wanted to push back against this, which is to say it is the case that these searches can be caught after the fact via these transparency tools and things like that. But in most of the cases that I analyzed, just based on reading affidavits and reading the details and all of that sort of thing, a lot of these cases are caught only after months of abuse.
42:50Emanuel:A lot of times they're caught after hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of searches. and a lot of times they're caught by either the person who is being stalked because they're like why is my ex who is also a police officer and also has access to these tools constantly showing up at the places that i am located at like how are they doing this and they put two and two together or it's being um like caught via whistleblowers within police departments like this case with Jamaris Brown was like, another police officer was like, hey, don't do that. Cut it out. And well, that was actually crazy because basically that police officer then went to the victim and said, hey, this is happening.
43:35Emanuel:And then the victim reported it. They had a personal, they knew each other. It was kind of a very like, this other cop and the woman being stalked were friends, basically. And so that's what ended up happening. And then a super interesting thing that has happened, and it's happened in several cases, is where deflock groups, so basically these citizens groups that have been filing public transparency requests or public information requests and have been pushing to get Flock out of their towns, have found the abuse on their own. And the ways that this has happened is they're getting the audit logs via public records request.
44:19Emanuel:And then they're seeing this one police officer search this one license plate hundreds of times over the course of months. And the reason stated was something super vague, like investigation or whatever. Test, I think. Yeah, test is another one. And then, so then those groups are then raising, like filing formal complaints with the police departments and then the police departments are investigating it. And like, this is not, I mean, it's pretty astounding that these groups have been able to do this, but like, this is not how we would want like cops to be held accountable. Like it's not, it's not a proactive thing where police departments are identifying this because of Flock's tools.
45:02Emanuel:It's like happening after the abuse has already occurred. and in many cases only after the abuse has occurred for months. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. So how could this be curbed? I mean, you've done a bunch of coverage where some towns are like putting bags over their flock cameras because they're not sure the status of them and that sort of thing and then people have vandalized them and that's sort of one approach that people are doing. I would say there's this very, very novel thing called a search warrant that maybe could be applied to something like a surveillance technology like Flock.
45:43Like the idea obviously is that when a cop is about to use an invasive technology like a GPS tracker or something, they have to get a warrant to do that. And that ensures you're not doing it to your random ex-girlfriend. And the judge is going to say, sure, go surveil your ex-girlfriend. That's not going to happen. So what do you think of how this could be curbs, this stalking and abuse of Flock or license plate readers in general?
46:08Emanuel:Yeah, I mean, a search warrant requirement would be a huge, huge curb on this. And it's something that Flock has fought really vehemently. There's various court cases arguing that cops should have to get a warrant to use the system. And Flock is fighting those cases. in some cases the police department that's getting sued but flock is like participating in those cases as like a you know interested party things like that other than that it's like you know pushing back on the surveillance more broadly i think and also it's like a few people have pointed this out and i think that uh you know it kind of goes without saying but i will just say it anyway which is like police using this technology to stalk people, like individuals that they know, or like, you know, ex-partners, things like that, is super illegal.
47:04Emanuel:It's wildly abusive. It is also... There's like a spectrum of flock abuse. And in many ways, people are abused by the system all the time. As in, sometimes as part of their normal course of policing, we've seen flock being used to spy on protesters and things like this. And so it's like, that's another form of abuse that police are not, to my knowledge, ever disciplined for. And I think that it's a totally different thing, which is why I didn't include it in this article. But it's like, the problem is this technology, in addition to like a societal problem with domestic abuse and that sort of thing.
47:52Emanuel:But it's like the fact that these tools exist and don't have very many limits on how they can be used makes this like quite a bad vector for this. Yeah, I think that's a good place to leave it. All right, if you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about how Amazon is, I mean, really screwing over their delivery drivers with this new update impacting the AC in these vans, you can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. As a reminder, 404media is journalist-founded and supported by subscribers.
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We start this week with Joseph’s story about the FCC’s wild proposal to require peoples’ government ID numbers to even get a phone plan. The FCC is doing it to curb robocalls, but also said it would be useful for a bunch of other stuff. After the break, Jason tells us all about cops abusing Flock to stalk girlfriends and other people. In the subscribers’ only section, Emanuel explains how a software update is impacting Amazon drivers.
FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers’ IDs
Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People
Software Update Automatically Turns off Amazon Delivery Drivers’ AC During Dangerous Summer Heat
YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/hP53hSJSsSU
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