Episode
113,000 Cameras: How Flock Built a National Surveillance Net County by County │ BardsFM
- Podcast
- BardsFM
- Published
- Aug 11, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3596
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Summary
Episode 4202 │ August 10, 2026 Congress never approved a national camera network. Corporations built one anyway — county commission by county commission, one at a time. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS Scott Kesterson maps the rapid expansion of Flock Safety's automatic license plate reader network — now over 113,000 cameras nationwide despite Congress never approving a national surveillance program — and exposes the mechanism that made it possible: companies offer counties the first year free, bypassing public hearings because sheriffs can approve donations without commission votes, then leverage near-zero churn once the poles are in the ground and the data lock-in is established, a $7.5 billion company built on the same renewal model as municipal fluoride contracts. Scott confirms that FBI preliminary 2025 data shows violent crime down 9.3%, murder down 18.1%, and property crime down 12.4%, even as 69% of survey respondents believe crime is rising nationally — a fear-driven perception gap that political incentive structures exploit, since a sheriff's career survives a privacy violation but rarely survives a preventable crime, and the episode traces the documented pattern of FBI entrapment cases like the Newburgh Four and a Portland bombing plot to warn what AI-scanned camera networks will do once they begin flagging repeated drive-bys as suspicious behavior with no discernment. The episode closes with a practical action plan: a free downloadable Citizens Field Guide under Bards FM's downloads section that walks any resident through auditing their county's ALPR data-sharing agreements, building the specific evidence needed to bring a real argument to a county commission for non-renewal. KEY QUESTIONS ADDRESSED How did a national surveillance network of over 113,000 automatic…