Utterly Flocked: Firm Deploys Nationwide Network Of Warrantless Pedestrian-Tracking Cameras

Utterly Flocked: "We-Don't-Track-People"-Firm Deploys Nationwide Network Of Warrantless Pedestrian-Tracking Cameras

TYLER DURDEN

Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based private surveillance firm, insists its cameras are not tracking people. Yet its own systems, training materials, and expanding product line tell a different story -one of a rapidly growing, warrantless mass surveillance infrastructure that logs vehicle movements, follows pedestrians with AI, and feeds data-hungry police departments across the country.

A new investigative report highlights how Flock's network - now encompassing tens of thousands of cameras - enables police to reconstruct months of travel history for any vehicle with a few clicks, no warrant required. Security researchers and activists are pushing back, mapping the devices and exposing security lapses that leave feeds openly accessible online.

DeFlock and the Scale of the Panopticon

In Boulder, Colorado, activist Will Freeman operates DeFlock.org, which has mapped over 88,000 Flock cameras nationwide. The app reveals camera locations and orientations, underscoring how pervasive the network has become in public spaces. Flock's license plate readers snap time-stamped photos of every passing vehicle, allowing historical queries spanning up to 30 days.

As security researcher Benn Jordan noted, plotting that data on a map effectively places a month-long GPS tracker on your car. Jordan, who previously discovered dozens of Flock cameras streaming publicly, described AI-driven features that zoom in and follow individuals - whether persons of interest or random passersby, Atlanta News First reports.

As we've previously reported on the battle brewing between mass surveillance tech and individual liberty, tools sold for "public safety" quietly erode Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Flock's Chief Communications Officer Josh Thomas claims the company aids in solving around 700,000 crimes annually. He disputes "tracking" characterizations, arguing the system captures discrete points in time rather than continuous monitoring.

However, Flock's own webinars contradict this:

"The example of tracking that vehicle from location to location to location," a Flock webinar instructor said.

"And you're able to track your suspect's movements," another webinar showed.

In one training video, a police officer described using Flock cameras to follow a suspect across state lines: "And we were able to track him all the way over to another state, in Kentucky."

Flock's Condor cameras go further: These pan-tilt-zoom units use AI to detect and automatically follow human movement. When confronted, Thomas maintained the company does not track people, attributing features like "Guardian Mode" to mere object detection rather than persistent tracking. Yet demonstrations show the cameras panning and tilting in real-time to keep subjects in frame.

Critics like Jordan suggest the pedestrian-tracking hardware emerged conveniently after earlier denials that Flock only captured license plates.

Jordan and collaborators found over 70 Condor cameras streaming openly online without passwords. He published the video on YouTube along with 404 Media.

"I watched a man leave his house in the morning. I watched a woman jogging alone on a forest trail in Georgia," Jordan said.

Thomas said the exposure was an accident caused by Verizon sending the wrong SIM cards with public IP addresses on roughly 60-70 devices, which were fixed once discovered. Verizon did not respond to requests for comment.

Police officers nationwide have been arrested for using Flock cameras to stalk former partners and love interests. Freeman and Jordan warn that human nature makes such misuse inevitable in a system logging everyone's movements by default. Thomas pointed to audit logs and accountability measures, but activists argue the architecture itself invites overreach.

The "Safety" Trade-Off and Pushback

Flock touts its role in preventing mass violence and solving crimes, with Thomas positioning the company on the side of those "fighting to stop" such threats. Yet more than two dozen cities, including Denver, have canceled contracts amid privacy concerns and questions over data access.

Freeman, demonstrating DeFlock's route-planning feature that avoids camera-dense paths (turning a quick 1.7-mile trip into a 14-minute detour), argues the default of logging all citizens - not just suspects - is the core problem. He plans to keep "tracking the trackers" in the absence of oversight.

This saga fits a familiar pattern of privatized surveillance creep: Companies like Flock build the infrastructure, police query it with minimal friction, and civil liberties erode under the banner of security. As similar systems proliferate, the question remains whether Americans are willing to accept a perpetual digital dragnet in exchange for promised safety.

The Strait of Famine:

The Strait of Famine: A chilling blueprint for the collapse we refuse to see

Belle Carter

“The Strait of Famine: How Engineered Scarcity and War Will Topple Nations” offers something valuable: a coherent, meticulously argued case that the famines, wars and pandemics we are witnessing are not random calamities but deliberately orchestrated events designed to concentrate power and reduce human freedom.

Reading this book feels like watching a master detective lay out evidence that has been hiding in plain sight. The author, drawing extensively on the work of investigative journalist Mike Adams and other alternative analysts, connects dots that mainstream media refuses to acknowledge. The result is a worldview that is unsettling precisely because it makes so much sense.

The book’s central thesis is that we are not stumbling into crisis—we are being pushed. The authors introduce the concept of “chokepoints”—physical, resource and ideological bottlenecks that globalist elites have spent decades creating and controlling. The Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. The Suez Canal, carrying 12 percent of global trade. The Haber-Bosch process, that single chemical reaction that feeds half of humanity. These are not independent vulnerabilities; they are deliberately maintained pressure points that can be squeezed at will.

What makes this book different from typical doomsday literature is its historical grounding. The authors trace the pattern back to the Bronze Age Collapse, through the Irish Potato Famine, the Soviet Holodomor and the Bengal famine of 1943. In each case, the story is the same: food was available, but policy choices—often explicitly genocidal in intent—prevented it from reaching those who needed it. The Irish starved while ships loaded with grain left their ports for England. The Ukrainians starved while Soviet authorities confiscated every kernel of wheat. These are not cautionary tales from the distant past; they are templates being deployed today.

The three sisters of death

Perhaps the most powerful conceptual framework in the book is what the authors call the “Three Sisters of Total War”—pandemic, famine and war—which they argue are not merely coincidental companions but deliberately synchronized events. CV was not an accident but a dry run for lockdown protocols, vaccine mandates and digital tracking. The war in Ukraine was not a tragic eruption but a calculated disruption of fertilizer and grain supplies. The looming famine in the Horn of Africa is not a natural disaster but an engineered outcome of policies that prioritize corporate profit over human life.

The chapter on “slow famines” is particularly devastating. Unlike the sudden, televised famines that prompt international aid campaigns, slow famines creep in quietly—season after season of small deficits that compound into generational catastrophe. Children grow weaker. Soils grow poorer. Communities fray. By the time the world notices, the damage is irreversible. This is precisely what is happening across broad swaths of Africa and Latin America right now and the book makes a compelling case that it is happening by design.

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Strong and shallow M6.7 earthquake hits Sulawesi, Indonesia

Strong and shallow M6.7 earthquake hits Sulawesi, Indonesia

Watchers

A strong and shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.7 hit 43 km ESE of Palu, Indonesia, at 03:27 UTC on June 16, 2026. The agency is reporting a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). EMSC is reporting the same magnitude and depth.

The epicenter was located 43 km (27 miles) ESE of Palu (population 373 218), 69 km (43 miles) WNW of Poso (population 47 477), 161 km (100 miles) N of Masamba (population 38 024), 209 km (130 miles) N of Palopo (population 184 681), and 209 km (130 miles) N of Rantepao (population 40 438), Indonesia.

16 000 people are estimated to have felt severe shaking, 165 000 very strong, 574 000 strong, 676 000 moderate, and 3.2 million light.

The USGS issued a Yellow alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. Some casualties and damage are possible, and the impact should be relatively localized.

Past yellow alerts have required a local or regional level response. Estimated economic losses are less than 1% of GDP of Indonesia.

Overall, the population in this region resides in structures that are vulnerable to earthquake shaking, though resistant structures exist. The predominant vulnerable building types are unreinforced brick with a concrete floor and precast concrete frame with wall construction.

Landslides triggered by this earthquake are estimated to have affected a significant area, with a limited population exposed.

Liquefaction is estimated to have affected a limited area, with a significant population exposed.

Iran says the deal to end the war with the US requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon

Iran says the deal to end the war with the US requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon 

JON GAMBRELL,

 Iran's top diplomat said Tuesday that the tentative deal to end the war with the United States would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon — a condition Israel has already rejected and that could sink the agreement, leading to the resumption of all-out war.

The deal, which is between the U.S. and Iran, has not been made public, and officials have sometimes offered contradictory interpretations of what is in it. While Israel is not party to the agreement, it is part of the war after joining the U.S. in launching strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. Israel has also fought the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon and seized large swaths of that country.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Israel's continued occupation of southern Lebanon would violate the deal.

"Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end," Araghchi said.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss outlines of the agreement, has said the deal does not call for an Israeli withdrawal. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would remain in Lebanon "as long as necessary."

The negotiations to end the war have been plagued by such disagreements before, leading to a prolonged but uneasy ceasefire that has failed to develop into a permanent end to hostilities and has left the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the world's energy supplies, effectively shut.

In other developments, Switzerland's foreign ministry said the signing ceremony for the deal will take place Friday at the Bürgenstock resort near the city of Luzern. Ministry officials said Tuesday that the location was proposed by Pakistani and Qatari mediators, along with the U.S. and Iran.

Pakistan has said the deal called for an end to military operations, including in Lebanon, as Iran long insisted. But Araghchi's call for an Israeli withdrawal adds a new wrinkle.

It puts Israel into a dilemma as it tries to degrade Hezbollah's military capabilities without undermining an agreement championed by its most important ally, the United States. Israel invaded southern Lebanon after Hezbollah fired missiles across the border during the first week of the war. Since then, it has expanded its military footprint to levels unseen in decades and struck targets deep inside Beirut.

Though Hezbollah has been weakened, it retains the ability to strike Israel, leaving open questions about the effectiveness of Israel's campaign.

As of Tuesday evening, Netanyahu had not seen the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran, said a person familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door details. Another person, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations between Israel and the U.S., said Israeli officials have not asked U.S. negotiators for the memorandum.

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Stress on San Andreas Fault reaches highest levels in 1,000 years as scientists await next ‘major rupture’

Stress on San Andreas Fault reaches highest levels in 1,000 years as scientists await next ‘major rupture’

JOHN ROSS FERRARA

 The San Andreas Fault and San Jacinto Fault Zone have reached their highest stress levels in 1,000 years, according to a study by researchers at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, leading scientists to wonder when California’s next “Big One” will occur.

The fault lines have reached “unprecedented levels” of stress, according to the study, which was recently published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. The study suggests that stress normally released in large earthquakes has continued to build as 160 years have passed since the last “major rupture.”

The study’s lead author, Liliane Burkhard, said the fault system is in a “critically loaded state.”

“Our results show that stress levels on multiple fault segments are now at or above the highest values seen in the past millennium and that the region may be capable of a large through-going rupture involving both fault systems,” Burkhard said. 

The study also found that the Cajon Pass in Southern California may act as an “earthquake gate,” which can sometimes block large earthquakes from striking along the San Andreas Fault and San Jacinto Fault Zone at the same time. However, the Cajon Pass could also “facilitate a joint rupture,” the study states. An earthquake simultaneously striking both fault lines would be “significantly more damaging” and affect highly populated areas of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and the Coachella Valley, according to the study.

“This is not a prediction of when an earthquake will happen,” Burkhard said. “However, studies like this are important contributions to national and global earthquake hazard research in that we are using rigorous, quantitative science to better understand the risk facing millions of people. What we can say is that the system is critically stressed, and that physics-based models like this one give us a clearer picture of the range of scenarios we should be prepared for. That information matters for hazard assessments, infrastructure planning, and emergency preparedness.”