by Andrew Muller,The New American:

From Los Angeles to New York, from the deep South to Midwest suburbs, more than 80,000 AI-powered cameras are actively surveilling nearly every American as they commute to work, walk their dogs, and drive to church. The company behind it, Flock Safety, is claiming to fight — and even prevent — crime, but the reality is more sinister.

Flock and companies like it are building the foundation for a surveillance state that would make George Orwell blush. They are accomplishing this by installing high-tech AI cameras on every street corner, positioning them in every neighborhood, and even launching AI eyes in the sky through a drone network.

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The company, founded in 2017 with an evaluated value of $7.5 billion, exists to aid law enforcement and “stay ahead” of any threat “big or small.” More than 5,000 law-enforcement agencies use the tech in 49 states (Alaska being the outlier), according to Flock’swebsite, which it boasts represents the “largest public-private” surveillance network.

Garret Langley, Flock CEO and co-founder, says the company’s objective is to eliminate crime — all crime. In aninterviewwithForbes,Langley explained that Flock’s “full mission is that we genuinely don’t think that crime should exist…. We think that with technology, with people, with policy, crime can be a thing of the past.” In other words, with enough spyware and surveillance, every movement can be monitored.

Flock’s objective frighteningly resembles the plot of the 2002 dystopian filmMinority Reportstarring Tom Cruise, in which the fictitious “PreCrime” division of the police department predicts and stops crime before it ever takes place.

Flock AI cameras are not simply license plate readers. Units run 24/7 and detect the “fingerprint” of a vehicle, such as the make and model as well as characteristics such as color, dents, scrapes, broken windows, and even bumper stickers. All this information is then stored in Flock’s AI brain.

With Flock cameras, data can be collected by private individuals and companies; law enforcement and corporations can receive alerts from the cameras in real time; data is stored in an AI cloud accessible nationwide rather than on a native drive managed by local law enforcement; and, perhaps most significantly, Flock cameras gather personal vehicle characteristics rather than simply the license plate number. Plus, many cameras are equipped with gunshot detection technology to geolocate individuals operating firearms.

Langley explained that the system is so precise that you can ask Flock’s AI brain, Freeform, to find a Ford F150 from the 1990s with a racing stripe and rust on the hood, and it will find the vehicle immediately.

Source: SGT Report