The Future of Flock (And What It Means for Our Kids)

[upbeat music] When a community puts up a surveillance camera in 2026, what exactly is it agreeing to? Is it agreeing to a camera that reads license plates, or is it agreeing to a permanent place in a network that could do a whole lot more five to 10 years from now? And that question has been bothering me, and it bothers me even more that other people just don't see this coming.

I originally thought about calling this topic The Future of Flock Cameras, and the title will be something like that.

But Flock is a brand, and what I'm really concerned about goes beyond one company.

I'm talking about automated license plate readers, facial recognition systems, cameras in stores, and home security cameras whose footage might be shared to a larger network.

So for this discussion, I will call them connected surveillance networks.

This doesn't mean that every camera is connected or that every company offers the same capabilities.

It just gives us a way to talk about this and where we could all be headed in this new world.

And I wanna be clear about where I stand.

I see the value in using cameras to help find missing people, recover stolen vehicles, and investigate crimes.

I am supportive of good police work.

If somebody in my family were to go missing, I'd want investigators to have all the tools that they need to help find them.

But I also understand why people don't want a searchable record of everywhere they drive or every store that they walk into, and both of those things can be true.

My concern is that we're making decisions about cameras based on what they can do today, while these companies continue to develop them into the future and dreaming up what they're going to do next.

So let's take a look at 2031 and 2036, five and 10 years from now.

So these are my thoughts, my opinions, my predictions, and my concerns.

Some might turn out to be wrong.

In fact, I hope most of them do turn out to be wrong.

But I think they're questions that we need to ask while we still have the opportunity to influence the answers.