Stop the Surveillance
Is Flock sharing your community's data with ICE?
Let’s start by calling out the nuclear elephant in the room: our president threatened genocide yesterday, and so many of us spent the day anxiously waiting to hear whether World War III had in fact begun. The fact that the world got a 2-week reprieve — again, from genocide — doesn’t erase the damage that did to our minds and bodies. In fact, it really just means that we get to go through this all again in 13 days.
In moments like this, we’re desperate to make a difference. To take action that actually matters. There’s so much that we can’t directly affect, from the war in Iran to the Epstein files to ICE to the tech billionaires who are surveilling us at all times.
But if you’ve followed Red Wine & Blue for a while, you know where you can make a real difference: in your own community.
This week we were joined by Erin and Dave, two of Katie Paris’ neighbors. Along with a few other members of their community in Shaker Heights, Ohio, they’ve been working together to stop the AI surveillance company Flock from sharing their data with ICE.
It’s a complicated issue! There’s the technical side of it — how exactly does Flock work and how are they sharing data with ICE and Border Patrol? It’s also tricky on the advocacy side. How can we know if Flock is sharing our data with ICE and what can we do to stop it? Neither the federal government nor the tech billionaires who own Flock have exactly been upfront about it. (What a surprise!)
Erin and Dave broke it all down and explained what we can do if we’re worried about Flock in our own community. A great place to start is https://deflock.org/, a crowdsourced website where people have been sharing where cameras are located all across the country.
From there, you can find people in your community who are also concerned about this issue and push for change on the local level. It’s important to advocate on the federal level for changes to ICE and Border Patrol, but you can actually have a conversation with your local city council member or chief of police. After all, they’re part of your community too.
Erin, Dave and Katie all agreed that as scary as everything feels right now, it’s been empowering to talk to their local leaders about Flock... and of course, become better friends along the way.