Flock tracked me

Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Drive Cast.

I'm Kyle Taranka, Editor-in-Chief of The Drive.

And I'm Joel Federer, The Drive's Director of Content and Product.

And The Drive Cast is our weekly podcast, giving you an inside look at the biggest stories,

controversies, and people shaping the automotive industry.

Sometimes we report the news, and sometimes we are the news.

That's exactly what happened two weeks ago, when Joel published his report about being

mistakenly tracked by police via flock license plate cameras and ambushed in a strip mall

parking lot.

Which, wow, I still can't believe I'm even saying those words.

Anyway, that story has absolutely ripped around the internet, made global headlines, and it's

not even close to over.

Yeah, I've had a few busy weeks, legit.

I'm emotionally and physically exhausted.

But importantly, did not get shot, did not go to jail, and because this is me, ended

up working tirelessly and easily on the largest and most important story of my 15-plus year

career.

Which, while I was angry and naturally concerned over Joel's well-being when he called me

on that fateful Sunday right after police let him go, he was already working headlines

and copy out loud in real time.

That guy is dedicated to his craft, among other things.

Anyway, we're incredibly thankful that Joel and his wife are okay, and that his kids weren't

in the car with them when it went down.

But it's worth pointing out the reason this story hits so hard is because it landed in

the middle of a heated debate around the country about flock safety's growing network of AI-powered

surveillance cameras, which police can use to track a lot more than just license plates.

Every week, there are more headlines about one city entering a new partnership with flock,

another city ending theirs after residents push back, or people just running around and

cutting down every flock camera they can find.

Even more so than data center build-outs, the spread of flock cameras is a physical representation

of how AI and big tech are creeping into every aspect of our lives and communities without

citizens being given a choice in the matter.

At the same time, in my experience notwithstanding, I'll say, police have used flock cameras many

times over to help solve real crimes.

You might remember back in June, just a couple weeks before my incident, we had NTAI CISO

Matt Hurwitz on the podcast with me and Adam to talk about flock, Leonardo's signal trace

tech, and what all these new systems mean for the future of privacy.

What timing, right?

Now after one of the craziest couple weeks of my life, I learned a lot more about how

and why I ended up in flock's dragnet and what could be done to prevent something like

this going forward.

So today, it's flock, the surveillance state looming over America's roads and the inside

story of Joel's Grand Theft Auto Adventure.

By the way, if you like what we're doing here, do us a favor and hit us with a five-star

review on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

It really does help get the drive cast in front of more people.

Okay, let's go.

Joel, it's been a minute since we've been on the pod together and obviously what a topic

to be talking about, but hey, missed you.

It feels like forever.

Like legitimately, it makes me happy to see your face because whether I've been traveling

or you've been traveling or I've been off or you've I've been dealing with

police, it feels like every interaction we've had in the last couple of weeks is under either

duress or scrambling to get a story out or this automaker needs this.

It's kind of nice to just sit here and chat for a minute, even if it is work, Kyle, it's

nice to just sit here and chat and see your face.

Even if it's just talking about how you were almost arrested for Grand Theft Auto.

Minor details.

Minor details, minor details.

But yeah, it's crazy that this happened and it happened in the middle of this stretch

where we've been incredibly busy with a lot of other things running the drive and making

things happen.

This is just one story that we've done in the last month, but it has turned into the

biggest story we've done pretty much of the entire year.

I also appreciate the fact that you called me right away.

I take it that means if you do actually get arrested for something, I'm your first phone

call from jail.

I suppose we really should discuss, are you going to give me bail money if I call you

or should I call my dad?

I think the first call has got to be you're going to pick up and you're going to bail

me out.

How ride and die are we, Kyle?

It depends on the crimes and what the police want for you to be sprung from jail.

Fair point.

Okay, so I know literally millions of people have seen our story, have watched the bodycam

footage of you, playing it really cool by the way I might add.

I got a lot of people telling me that they were really impressed with how you handled

yourself in this situation.

But for those who haven't or just to recap, what happened?

So normal Sunday, as one does, my wife and I went to Coles.

No Coles cash, I swear.

Literally we were there for returning an Amazon box, which is the most 2026 thing ever, right?

You go to Coles, you return an Amazon box, maybe you'll buy some shampoo.

Who knows?

Anyway, I'm in a pressed car that week, I had a $155,000 Baturi, I might be pronouncing

that wrong, gold, just really need Baturi gold on like a white interior, gorgeous car,

Range Rover, stunning car, $4,000 23 inch wheels, gorgeous car.

Anyway, back out of the space by like two feet.

And suddenly I'm surrounded by four cop cars, four cops, lights, sirens, the whole deal.

You would think I'm a terrorist.

And I'm like, what is happening?

I legit told my wife I wasn't even speeding.

Like, like, you know, even in the moment, minute, moment, you got to be Joel Federer

and got to make a joke, right?

I got cops coming at me and I got, you know, we weren't speeding, dear.

Anyway, get out of the car, we go through the hole.

Are you armed?

They pat me down.

What's your ID?

Whatever.

And then what do you do?

Who owns this car?

You know, Kyle, it's complicated.

You've been pulled over a pressed car before it's complicated.

Yeah.

They never understand.

And so I literally said, you're going to watch on the press,

that you can watch on the body cam footage.

It's with my hands up, I might add.

It's complicated.

Can I explain the officers?

You can explain.

I don't know what else he was going to say, right?

By the way, like, no, you can't.

And you know, in that, in that footage, when he says you can explain, it sounded like,

you can explain, but I'm taking you in.

Like, he was, he was expecting this explanation to be BS.

You can explain, but your cousin Vinnie's plates are stolen, bro.

Yeah.

So, so I explained the whole press card thing.

I work at the drive, blah, blah, blah.

And the guy, and you like, you know, this look of what a confusion I was facing.

He's like, what's the drive?

I was offended.

And he's like, you know, I'm like motor train, car and driver,

we compete.

And he literally says, I'm not a car guy.

And I'm like, oh, I'm in trouble.

I'm in trouble.

One of the police officers supporting officers and said,

I've heard of the drive.

I'm like, thank you.

I like you.

You're the hero here today.

Anyway, once we got through the whole owns the car and I'm showing him all the

registrations, I said, what are we doing here?

Why are we here?

Like now he's realizing I'm not a threat and they're no longer a threat.

I'm like, why are we here?

And he says, well, this car is stolen in plates and we need to terminate the car itself is stolen.

I look at him.

I must have looked like him like he is from Mars.

Cause I'm like, car is owned by Range Rover.

The plates are owned by Range Rover.

Could someone have grabbed plates and changed it in a parking lot or on a truck?

Maybe sure, whatever anything's possible in the world, but like not likely,

but the car is owned by range.

Like this is crazy.

The license plates on that car were manufacturer plates from Jersey.

That's where Jaguar Land Rover is based.

And they're a weird format.

Two big numbers, 34 in my case, two small numbers, 10.

Three big letters, DTM, 34, 10 DTM.

It's very important.

Basically, as he's running the plates and figuring out whether these car,

the plates are stolen.

To be fair, the car is not stolen.

Neither were the plates.

I might add.

Another police officer and I are standing there and I said, so, so how we get here?

Yeah, the stolen plates and whatever.

But like, you know, you just see me on the street.

Like, how do we get here?

He's like, well, actually we've been tracking for days.

Flock cameras picked you up two days ago.

I was the responding officer.

He tells me this is not the main officer.

And he said, I was looking for the car.

We couldn't find it because it went into my garage.

And then we got another hit today.

We've been looking for this thing for a couple of days.

We got another hit today.

And then we found in the parking lot.

We've been using the cameras at Coles parking lot.

And we watched you the whole thing.

And I'm like, I'm sorry.

Did you say flock?

Because, you know, we just, we just had a whole podcast.

I heard of that.

We've done some reporting on that.

You might have seen it if you read the drive.

And I'm like, this is this.

If I don't get shot and I don't go to jail.

This is, this is, this is now a thing.

I was like, this is a thing.

Wait till I call Kyle on this.

Even then I was thinking of you, Kyle.

I just missed you.

And so I'm like, so then I'm like, well, okay.

So two days ago, he was like, two days ago I got the hip and whatever.

And so being Joel Fetter, I said, can I see the flock hit?

And he said, sure, no problem.

And he grabs his phone, pulls up an app, flock app, and sure as heck,

he pulls up the thing and there's two images.

One image got sent and they both got sent to the police.

One image is the full car going through the green light.

I might add full car.

And then the second is a really zoomed in image on the license plate,

which said, everyone listening, say it with me, 3410 DTM.

Yeah.

And it was like, it was high enough resolution that the 10 was clear.

It wasn't like, it's a photo of just the plate.

Like the whole photo is the plate.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, at this time, by the way, you know, I had limited knowledge,

right?

I've learned a lot in the last two weeks.

And I was like, huh, okay.

Again, I didn't know anything at the time.

And so then, and then we went through the whole thing of like calling.

They're like, can you, if it turns out I learned then I was told

that the plate had been reported stolen from a Jaguar Land Rover dealer in LA for LAPD.

All of that was wrong, by the way, just so you know.

And so we had to call the LAPD, they said, and we got to figure this out.

I'm like, what is happening?

Are we on Mars right now?

Turns out the place that we're quote stolen, I'm using air quotes here, were 3403 DTM.

What does everyone say my plate was again?

It was 3410 DTM.

10 DTM.

Totally a different plate.

But it's, but critically, critically, it's that little number in the middle,

which literally is like half the size of the rest of the characters on the plate.

That's what was different.

By the way, the whole thing was about an hour, hour and a half.

I don't remember exactly.

We clear the car, clear the plates as not stolen.

But they basically said what happened was while it was 3403,

it was entered into the system as 34 DTM.

No middle number.

No middle number, just 34 DTM.

So critically, what they told me then was where are you going today?

And I'm like, well, this is the first of many stops.

By the way, this is really important.

Husbands always listen to your wives, always listen to your wives,

because we had all these errands to run today.

And I tell the guy, yeah, we got to go to Minneapolis.

We got to go to Maple Grove.

All these errands, right?

This was our first stop.

And he said, oh, if you'd gone to Minneapolis or another city,

like they might have come at you guns drawn, like aggressive,

like different police departments have different protocols, right?

Because you're, this is a felony, like stolen car,

stolen plates, that's a felony technically.

And so they're assuming I'm an armed car thief and I'm going to run.

You know, I wasn't to be clear.

And so, you know, he's like, look, this is clear in our system.

Here's the case number.

Here's my officer name, whatever, whatever.

But the systems don't talk.

If you go to another suburb with this car,

flock cameras are going to pick it up.

They're going to spit the same thing out.

You're going to run into this over and over again.

And not every police department is going to act the same.

When is this car going to get picked up?

I said, the next day, this was a Sunday.

He said, Monday, he said, where do you live?

And I told him where I live.

He's like, that's close.

I said, yeah.

He said, go park this car.

Don't drive this car or drive it without license plates on.

And then if you pull over, you're going to pull over with no plates.

I'm like, then I'm going to have a different dance.

And then they're going to see 30, 40 Tm.

And that's a terrible plan, by the way, Mr. Sir, officer.

So I was like, all right, we're going to go park this car.

Like at this point, by the way, I already talked to the fleet.

I already talked to Range Rover.

We're just condensing an hour timeline here.

And over the coming weeks, last two weeks-ish, I've learned a lot.

But that next day, before we ever published our first story,

I asked for the police report.

It was in the police report.

I learned that it wasn't a Jaguar Land Rover dealership.

It was, and I don't know if it's Jaguar Land Rover.

I don't know if it was a media company that was working.

It doesn't really matter.

Someone had a media vehicle.

They were doing a photo shoot in LA.

They lost a plate.

Right.

Because they usually, for these photo shoots,

they take the actual license plates off.

They put on like a special plate that's for some brand or whatever.

And you know, they probably put it on the side of the road.

They put it, who knows?

They put it on top of a trash can and fell in.

It doesn't really matter.

They lost the plate.

It happens.

It really does.

They called, at the time, I was told the LAPD.

LAPD and I've gone 10 rounds.

And it turns out it wasn't the LAPD.

It was the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

Lost Hills Malibu Station.

Very nice area.

And when you report up late, lost.

It gets filed as stolen.

And the reason is because, yeah, it's lost.

But if someone finds it, puts it on a car, now it's stolen.

Sure, no problem.

Except it was entered into the system as 34 DTM.

Not 3403 DTM.

This is human error.

But a big one.

And the system didn't catch it.

And it allowed them to enter a partial plate.

That went to the National Crime Information Center database,

which is held and run by the FBI,

which is what every police department then pulls from.

It is also, critically, what Flock, AXON, Leonardo,

name an automatic license plate reader here,

pulls from as well.

Because these cameras don't have their own database.

They just pull from the National Crime Information Center database

that's run by the police and the FBI.

So if you put bad data in, what's going to happen, Kyle?

Bad data is coming out.

Just like an Excel formula.

Yeah, exactly.

And to the point the officer was making to you, like,

okay, so Plymouth Police, you have this interaction with them.

They can put it in their, whatever their internal system that,

like, okay, this guy, this plate, this is good.

But they can't correct the NCIC database on the federal level.

So when he said, you know, if you go to another town,

they're going to get flagged, it's like, yeah,

because there's no, it's like a one-way street.

Like they can't tell, only the person who filed,

or the officer who filed the original report,

would be able to correct it.

And so it's kind of just like this mistake out there,

just like hanging out there in the wild.

He literally said, you range whoever needs to call,

and they need to correct the error in the system.

Which by the way, I don't know how long,

I mean, even if you call on Sunday, you get someone to do it.

I don't know how long it takes to populate all the,

like there's so many steps involved in all of that.

It's a mess.

It's an absolute mess.

And that's where we get into everything else.

So that pretty much brings us up to when we published the first story.

But before we continue on that, I just want to say,

your poor wife was just like innocently out for a nice Sunday

of errands with her husband.

And she just gets swept up on this.

Like I think we owe Karen something here.

I don't know.

A nice manicure.

How did she handle this?

To be fair, at the time we were split up,

I didn't know.

I couldn't hear what was interacting between her and the police.

Like they separated the two of you.

They separated the two of us.

So one of her biggest things was, they asked me if I'm armed,

they patted me down, all this sort of stuff.

They never asked her if they were armed.

They never patted her down, et cetera.

I don't know if they know our marriage very well,

but she's the brains of the operation just so you're all aware.

First off, just so you know,

criminal enterprise ever borne booms out of this house,

she will be behind it.

I'm just saying.

But more importantly, I'm watching the body.

That's what she told me later.

I have since watched the body cam footage.

And it's funny because the police officer says,

you know, who are you driving with today?

She's my husband, whatever.

And then he says, what car are you driving in?

Who owns this?

Look, we have a different car every week.

This is not her job.

This is my job.

So she literally, I watched her in the body cam footage,

lean over and look at the car to see what car it says.

She's like, it looks like we're driving a Range Rover this week.

Could you imagine someone saying,

it looks like we're driving a Range Rover this week?

And he said, well, who owns that?

She's like, I don't know who the parent company,

this is such an auto journalist wife comment.

I don't know who the parent company of Jaguar or Land Rover is.

She couldn't have told you Jaguar or Tata or anything.

She's like, I don't know who owns Range Rover.

Maybe it's Range Rover.

The car is definitely owned by Range Rover.

Whoever owns Range Rover is basically what she said.

I'm like, I love you.

That's hilarious.

Amazing.

The cop is looking at her like, what is going on?

Yeah.

Well, we would all like to know what the heck's going on there.

It's okay.

So you mentioned the body cam footage.

You know, we requested that from the police under Minnesota law.

You have as the subject in the footage,

you have a right to that footage.

So we were able to obtain that.

We got the police report and we published the first story

wrapping all this up.

It went absolutely crazy.

I mean, like we had a feeling that it was going to,

because as we said in the intro,

it touched on a lot of hot button issues

and was crazy.

Just a crazy firsthand account of the kind

that like, I don't think anyone's published before.

And then we had a very interesting week after that.

So what did you learn?

How did you get in touch with Flock

to publish the followup story that we ran?

And what did they say?

I think particularly what people want to know

and what I wanted to know is, okay,

the plate entered into the NCIC was 34 DTM.

Your plate was 3410 DTM.

Like, did they just, did Flock's AI system just screw up

and ignore that 10?

Did it intentionally disregard it?

Like, give us the answers there.

Sure.

So basically I was very busy initially with all the local news

and attention that came with that

and everyone asking me to come on and talk about the story.

But in the churn of all that,

another automotive journalist reached out to me

and said that a friend of theirs works at Flock.

It's just incidentally, they've known each other

a very long time.

And that Flock had seen the story, shocking.

Flock was very concerned, shocking.

And that they had a strong interest in communicating with me

and this person knew that this person was a journalist

so they thought maybe we could connect that way

instead of a cold call.

And they said, can you get his information?

So this person being respectful and a friend of mine

said, can I share this information with them?

And I was like, you can,

and I didn't know really what they wanted at the time, right?

So I was like, you can give them my email.

I mean, this guy's got, you know, everything in mind.

But I was like, you can give my email, we'll start there.

Someone in PR reached out to me and they said,

we're so sorry, we saw the story.

Our executive would love to speak with you

about what happened.

And I'm like, sure.

Like, I got 99 questions for this person, right?

At the time, I didn't know who the executive was gonna be.

They connected me with a gentleman named Josh Thomas.

He's the chief communications officer at Flock Safety.

We hopped on the phone, we've had many calls.

And he was, he's been nothing but nice.

He's been nothing but answered all my questions.

He never was defensive.

He hopped on the phone.

The first thing he says, I'm so sorry.

Like, like this was, this was a bad outcome.

This was a screw up.

Thank God your kids were in the car.

I'm sorry, which that is what you want to hear, right?

Like you want to hear someone take ownership and say,

I'm sorry.

And that this shouldn't have happened.

But then of course, naturally I go into the questions.

How did this happen?

Like it was very clear.

I have a plate.

This is 3410 DTM.

That is not 34 DTM.

And I understand that it was a misprint into the system.

So it's not looking for 3403 DTM.

I get that.

But my play is not an exact match.

How did this happen?

And basically in many different scenarios and conversations

we had that, A, bad data in, bad data out, right?

Like any LLM, you go to Anthropic Claw,

you put bad data in, you get bad data out.

More importantly, he explained to me the police,

the reason they want this set up this way,

and the reason it's set up this way today,

is, you know, a lot of times you don't have full information

to work off at first off, right?

So like partial plates or whatever,

because Sun Eyewitness only sees the firstly letters

or whatever.

So basically the police want this set up to basically get

an alert, a hot alert off the list, right?

It's a match.

So the system was telling flock, go look for 34 DTM.

That's what the system told flock

and flock has been built to do in its current form.

So we went looking for 34 DTM.

And it found 34 DTM.

I had a 34 DTM plate.

It just happened to also have a 10 on it.

Nowhere in the code or the system is it written

and see if there's anything else.

See if there's a catch.

See if there's anything.

It's just written, find 34 DTM.

If found 34 DTM, it did its job.

It found what it was asked to find.

It then spit it out to the cops.

Mr. Thomas explained that this is supposed to be

a human interaction loop,

just like any other AI LLM system, right?

A human enters stuff into AI or LLM to tell it to do something.

AI does it and then it spits out results

and you're supposed to verify and check it or whatever, right?

So it spit out the photo, alert,

it sent it to the police and he said, they got the photo.

They should look at the photo.

There's a 10 on it, right?

They can put 34 10 DTM into the system.

They didn't.

He's not wrong.

They didn't.

He is accurate.

He's also accurate that flock was told to go look for 34 DTM

and it did and it found it and spit it out.

That said, I asked him, it saw the 10.

I saw it in the photo, right?

And he said, yeah, because he saw the photo, right?

They went and looked at this.

And I said, why can't it be programmed to literally say,

well, there's an and.

There's something else, right?

There's a 10 and there's a flag there.

And he basically said, that's not how the police want it set up

today with the machine learning.

That's not what they're asking for.

It's very clear it could be set up that way, right?

And they've already talked to the FBI about how to give more.

First off, before I even talked to him,

they had talked to, according to Mr. Josh Thomas,

they already talked to the LA, well, he said LAPD,

but I'm sure he meant the LA Sheriff's Department, right?

About who entered this, how did it get into the system wrong?

They said they already talked to the FBI and the National

for the NCIC database to understand when it gets put in there wrong,

how can we understand that it's wrong?

And more importantly, what can we provide then an officer

for context of like, this isn't an exact match.

It's not a direct match that this is a match

of what you asked us to look for,

which would kind of be like a hybrid, right?

So like it would still spit out the result of 34 DTM.

I found it, but it would give a match and say,

by the way, there's also a 10 on here,

a flag, a kind of thing, right?

So he said they talked to the National,

the FBI about the NCIC database,

how to provide context to the police of what the result is

to provide more information if it's a partial or whatever.

And then of course, he basically said,

you know, I want to talk to you.

I wanted your feedback.

I wanted to understand your experience

because you know, a normal consumer,

they don't hear about this.

I understand what he's saying.

Like the systems program, the way that the cops want it to be,

and that's what they have decided is most useful.

And you know, it's basically assuming that there is good,

valid data in terms of a complete license plate

or a correct license plate going in.

And therefore it's going to just go after that combination of characters.

And I mean, it's worth noting that it has happened in the past.

I mean, Flock's been around for a few years now.

There have been cases where it does actually misread the plate

and like messes up a digit or a number.

And then, you know, someone gets stopped incorrectly like this.

And so what he's saying is that that didn't happen here.

It actually was intentional that it ignored the 10

because that's what it set up to do, which I hear that.

And I'm like, why wasn't it something from the beginning

that they had a system in place where it could say,

this is close to a match, this or this is an actual match?

Like it seems like a very easy distinction to program in.

And the fact that they didn't is kind of mind boggling to me.

I mean, like I said, he literally,

I'm going to quote him now because I have a story up.

The way the law enforcement likes to use these tools

is if any of the characters that they have put into these hot lists

get read, they want to get these alerts.

And then he also said, now what we try,

this is him speaking about Flock, right?

We try to train officers to do is do what you said,

which is to verify the 34 DTM is what I'm looking for

and what I'm seeing is 34 10 DTM,

which by the way, I'm getting ahead of ourselves.

I also talked to the Plymouth Chief of Police, Eric Fadden,

about this because to Mr. Thomas's point, police did get a photo.

It had 10 in it.

They saw the real car before I was even at the car,

like while I was in Coles, which had a real plate on it.

And so I naturally asked Chief Fadden a bunch of questions

and I'm getting ahead of ourselves.

But I agree with you, Kyle, whether it just doesn't get hit,

whether it the cops are asking for it to be this way,

then to Mr. Thomas's point, working with the FBI and the NCIC

to provide context of like, fine, this is a hit of what you want.

But by the way, there's more info here, like flag it, circle the 10.

I don't really care, but you saw it, this in the image.

And he didn't deny this all happened.

He said, I'm really sorry.

You thank God your kids aren't here.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I bet he's very glad your kids aren't there

because I think you would be a lot less cool about this

if your kids had been in the car.

And he's right that if police had just done that final check

and been like, wait a second, there's a 10 on this license plate.

That's not, that doesn't actually match.

Then maybe this whole thing could have avoided.

Maybe they actually wouldn't have stopped you.

They would have run that plate, realized it wasn't related.

And none of this would have happened.

But it does, I don't think like personally,

it doesn't make me feel any better just for the position to be,

well, the system is designed like this and it depends on a human

to make sure ultimately in the end that it's not being misused

or that it's being used correctly.

I don't think that's the sales pitch they're giving to these police departments

when they set up these partnerships.

I don't know the sales pitch.

I'm not saying this definitively.

I just based on the way that we've seen flock cameras be used and misused.

I think there is a belief and an assumption out there on both sides,

civilians and police that like, oh, this thing is just doing it.

Like this thing is just finding things that we need to see

or we were looking for and when it flags it, that's it.

And I know that in the story, we put a quote in there from Thomas,

or Mr. Thomas, Josh Thomas, that an alert from flock

is not probable cause for a stop.

Like that is their position as a company.

All they're doing is just saying, hey, over here,

this thing you're looking for, it might be here.

But at the same time, it's like humans aren't perfect,

machines aren't perfect.

And you had a really strong statistic in the story as well.

Josh claims it's 99% accurate.

Well, if they're doing, what is it?

20 billion reads a month.

20 billion, they're reading 20 billion license plates a month

and all across America.

That's 200 million errors it's making.

We don't have any actual statistics on how many of those

200 million actually lead to a stop.

It's probably a lot less, but a lot less of 200 million

could still be hundreds of thousands, right?

And it's probably less than that.

Even tens of thousands is a lot.

So this is not a situation where to me,

and I think to a lot of people listening to this explanation,

really makes anything feel like, okay, well,

they'll figure this out.

Josh did say that your feedback that, hey,

there should be a way to flag flocks of a system

for flagging partial matches and complete matches.

He said that was, quote, fair feedback.

Agreed, agreed.

Agreed.

Look, this is a private company that is a service.

Just like so many things in our lives that are tech-based,

right, like iCloud and all these things.

And the reality is you opt into all those,

but you don't opt into this.

Like I'm not opting in as a Plymouth resident to now,

now I can have my voice heard.

I can go to city council and all these other things,

but I'm not opting in like I am on an iCloud

and hitting a little tick box.

But what I will say is that as a private company,

every company's got ethics committees.

Every company has committees that run and do decisions.

It's up to them to absolutely make some decisions

about how their tech is being allowed to be used,

just like there's differences between how,

what Anthropic will allow with Claude versus ChatGDP

and then OpenAI and with Gemini.

We've seen it play out in our government.

Guardrails need to be put in place internally,

but also like the Audemars license plate

reader laws in the state of Minnesota, fun fact.

They currently say the 2025 version,

if you go to the website, it doesn't get updated to 2026,

but those laws were actually enacted

and put in place on August 1st of 2015.

Just so you know, fun fact,

the next month the iPhone 6S came out.

That's crazy, that's crazy.

And that's a great point

because automated license plate readers

of some kind, license plate cameras,

like it has been around for a while.

These are not new technology.

What's, yeah, what's new is the influence of AI

speeding up the way that these things can be read.

And you know, using a database

that may or may not have perfect data in it

to literally broadcasting nationwide alerts

or to send out a nationwide hunt, basically,

for this combination of letters and numbers

that can like, it can find immediately.

And you know, the point of flock being a private company

is an important one because this is, you know, function,

before the police obviously use tools

made by private companies

and they have for decades, right?

They name a tool, like police don't make their own tools.

But I think there is a feeling out there

reflected in the response to this story

that police are outsourcing the work

they used to do to a private company.

And that private company, who controls it?

I mean, we know who controls it,

but like, there should be laws in place

that very, very specifically say

what flock can and can't do, how it works,

and just like, this is a part of our infrastructure now.

And it is under the control of a private company and people...

Private companies.

And people are really, really desperate

for more transparency there.

And that's what we're not getting.

I mean, I do give Josh a lot of credit

for reaching out to you and knowing that we had

written a story that made them look not great.

No props to him for speaking openly about it at least.

But I don't think anything he said

really puts anyone's mind at ease.

I don't know anything he was gonna say

that was gonna put my mind at ease.

Let's be honest, right?

I appreciate that I'm sorry.

I appreciate like a human being calling me

and not being super, super defensive

and being like, you know, just, you know,

I don't care about you.

And he reached out, he apologized.

And at a human level, who for being like,

not the worst human in the world, I appreciated that.

Like I appreciated it.

That said, I'm not sure what he could have said

that was gonna make me feel better, right?

Like it all happened at the end of the day.

More importantly, and this goes beyond flock

and we discussed this, but we never even touched this.

I've just learned so much.

We didn't discuss this on the last podcast

about the topic and now I've learned so much.

You know, forget laws.

Right now, we have a state by state law

that is governing how long the data

for this kind of stuff can be kept.

It's a patchwork.

So certain states can keep the data up to 30 days.

Some can keep it in 28, some keep it seven,

some keep it 100.

And then I got 99 questions of like, okay,

so if a state can only keep it for seven,

but another state can keep it for 100,

and the state that can keep it for 100

requests data from the state that only keep it seven.

Who, what happens then?

There's so many different scenarios that aren't edge cases.

Why do we not have federal, to your point,

this is federal infrastructure.

This is governance.

We need laws.

This is data that is being stored

of, I mean, essentially where people are going.

They're whereabouts.

And there's a difference between

drag net life, the matrix, and public safety.

I don't know where that line sits.

As a parent, I'll tell you,

I can see a scenario in the world where these would be,

if I had my hair on fire and I needed my kid back,

because some awful human did something awful,

I would be willing to throw away a lot of forthright,

forth amendment rights to have people get life back.

But that's a very specific scenario,

right, as a parent.

And a lot of people are parents,

and that's not a scenario every day.

We do have rights.

There's a constitution.

I do want to mention, I talked to,

as I mentioned earlier, the Plymouth Police Chief,

Eric Fadden, he didn't deny anything.

Like, by the way, he was very keenly aware.

The whole Plymouth Police Station knew exactly what happened

within 12 hours.

I called the next day to get the police report.

Whoever the secretary, front desk worker,

I'm not sure, titles or whatever,

but whoever answered the phone at the Plymouth Police Station

that Monday morning, I didn't even need a case number.

She knew exactly who I was.

Oh, it's Joel.

And she knew, oh, everyone at that police station

knew Joel Federer, the drive,

and I think they were all bracing of like,

oh boy, we got a problem.

And it was more the July week.

So I think by Wednesday or Thursday,

when nothing came out, they're like,

maybe we're the clear, whatever, the next week, bam.

But he basically is like, our police screwed up.

There's 8,000 plus unique license plate combinations in the US

in terms of formatting.

There's 50 different states.

They didn't see the 10.

He's like, if I pulled up behind you at a stop light,

forget flock for a second, and I looked at the plate

and I missed the 10.

He's like, I looked at the photo, the 10 was really small.

If I missed it, I put 34 DTM in the system.

You and I would have had the same interaction.

He also said, if you're driving down the road,

I definitely would have missed that 10, right?

He's like, that's human error.

He said, my cops didn't pull their guns.

I watched the body.

He was very clear.

He watched the body cam footage.

I'm sure they were bracing.

My cops were courteous.

This is what police chief Eric Fadden told me.

My cops didn't pull their guns.

My cops were courteous.

My cops gave me time to explain everything.

And he's like, my cops did everything right.

By the book, I was proud of their behavior and what they did.

The outcome wasn't obviously perfect.

Human error led to this.

He said, flock did his job.

Flock did what it was requested to do is what he also said.

He had no clue.

I talked to Josh Thomas.

So that was interesting to hear that.

And he apologized.

He said, I'm sorry, this happened to you.

You know, he was nice enough about it,

but he was just like, it was one step away from shit happens.

Yeah.

Well, even that is, I also give chief Fadden credit for reaching out to you

and saying openly that like, or that you reached out to him.

Yeah.

I reached, Josh, hang on.

Flock reached out to me.

I absolutely reached out to the Plymouth Police Department,

but he was ready.

Like he knew who exactly who I was when I came to him.

He did not reach out to me personally.

Well, then I give it, then I don't give him credit for that,

but I give him credit for saying openly, like there,

I think there are a lot of police officers and chiefs of police out there who feel like

there's every reason in the world to not admit that police can make mistakes.

And he is correct that they followed the book.

If they had just seen the 10 and noticed the 10,

then again, this wouldn't have happened, as Flock said.

But it is also true.

And I think some, there had been a few responses,

few comments on the story and all the places it spread.

That are fair that like this license plate format from New Jersey is kind of messed up.

Like why is that number so much smaller in the middle?

And it is true that a police officer just sees a plate,

is curious why there's this New Jersey plate in their small town and wherever in America,

and just misses the little number in the middle,

types in 34 DTM, it comes up as stolen.

They're going to pull it over.

Like that could have easily happened without Flock's existence or involvement

or a partnership with that agency.

And so, you know, New Jersey, come on, you guys, what are you doing with these plates?

Something else I want to address that has been brought up many times

by friends, family, commenters across the internet.

And it's not in any of the stories I didn't address it,

but since we're here, I will.

You know, a lot of people said four cops, four cop cars,

the boxing pin thing, super necessary.

What, why, right?

Like they could have just pulled you over.

They could have just had one,

one someone said they should have a cop walk up to you when you're,

came out of coals and said,

hey, can I talk to you for a minute?

All these things, right?

I did address it with G-Fat.

And I was like, the boxing pin, the whole four cops, the whole shebang, right?

Like I'm a fugitive and a terrorist of the state.

What's the deal?

And he was like, look, you have to understand, statistically speaking,

this is a felony.

The plate was registered stolen.

We didn't know if the car was stolen.

Statistically speaking, you're armed and you're going to try and run.

If we pull you over on the road, you're going to try and run.

If we box a pin, you, you can't leave.

And if you look at the body cam footage,

when the cops got out of the car,

the cop that asked me, are you armed?

They're a leading officer.

He was behind his door a little.

So like had I been armed and had I tried to shoot him.

No, he was ready.

He was ready for anything in that moment.

You can tell.

That was the scariest part to me because he calmed down pretty quickly

once he realized he weren't armed.

But when he actually got out of the car,

like he assumed the position where if he needed to,

he could have taken out his gun and fired over the open door.

Like that's, that's just what they do.

They didn't know I wasn't an armed car thief.

And so that, but I, a lot of people have asked the question,

four cops, four squad cars, boxing pin, like,

why not just pull you over on the road?

Like you have a broken tail light.

Why not just, you know, walk up to you and talk to you

and the answer is, because what they thought was an issue

is a felony and they thought I was probably armed

and going to try and run.

That's, that, that is legitimately the answer.

So I just wanted to address, since I hadn't answered that question,

that keeps coming up.

Yeah.

I mean, it really, really is a comedy.

I would say a comedy of errors, but none of this was funny.

It was a cascade of errors that led to this,

both human errors and I would say,

technical errors on the part of flock,

just not expecting something like this to happen,

not anticipating this and setting up a system

away in a way that it could happen.

And then in continue, we'll continue to happen

until they get that police report corrected in California.

I do.

It's my understanding that that police report is corrected,

but I don't have proof of this.

It'd be nice if the LA Sheriff's Department

actually called us back.

We're still waiting for that.

Yeah, they won't respond to me.

It's weird.

Yeah.

How about that?

So where do we go from here?

Like what, what is, what is next?

So, I mean, where do we go from here?

So multiple things, right?

So two nights ago, actually,

two nights ago when we were recording this,

I'll just say July 14th,

like half a month after this happened,

the city council in my city had a city council meeting.

There was no forum, a resident who,

thank you for reading the drive.

Hopefully you listen to this.

Saw the story was concerned and,

and brought it up in the, in the forum.

And the mayor and council members were like,

we'd like to see your report.

Eric Chief, Eric Fadden apparently is

the safety director of the city.

Weird.

And he was there.

Weird.

And he's like, yeah, I'm all aware of this.

Also weird.

And he said, we were already preparing a report

for this council.

Weird.

And the council was like, well,

maybe we need to look at the flock set up in the city.

There's 18 cameras today.

And they said, we should look at that.

So flock is already being discussed in our city right now.

Since then, LAPD has,

I want to use air quotes here,

canceled the contract.

I, I think the reporting was really strong on this

and everyone gave me a lot of credit,

which I really want to be clear.

What happened was actually,

they signed the contract in 2023.

I looked all this up.

It was set to expire last week and they didn't renew it.

And they're going to review the contracts,

conditions and terms.

And no one has reported and or said,

whether if they don't replace flock,

renew with flock,

whether they're going to go with another system, right?

Like, like, like there's no saying they won't go with Leonardo's

or, or, or Axon systems.

No one's saying they're not going to have automatic license plate readers.

They're just saying,

we did not review the current contract as it's written flock.

That's all that happened.

Well, in LA, I can tell you,

given how people are cutting down street lights

for copper wiring or whatever, like there's,

I think they'd have a lot of trouble maintaining that network here.

They probably have already.

So it wouldn't,

it probably makes sense that they decided to go with something else.

Eric Fadden, Chief Fadden,

told me that obviously they learned a lot

about New Jersey license plate formatting, right?

They had, they had a whole seminar.

They had a whole seminar now.

Probably had a whole seminar for a story went live

or after about the formatting of those small little plates.

So if I should happen to have a New Jersey press car,

maybe this won't happen again.

And I guarantee if anyone pulls me over,

they're going to know my name in that department.

But more importantly, obviously,

I hope, hope that every police department in the nation

somehow has seen this story, I would hope,

and is going to triple check the,

when they enter a license plate in the system, it's correct.

Personally, I don't understand

if you go and pay your taxes and do anything in the system,

you can't mistype,

you can't put a social security number in and mistype it.

It'll kick it back.

There's, so you can't type in a login

with the squiggly mark in the wrong place, right?

So the fact that you can type in an incomplete

license plate number into our system is absolutely,

I understand mixing up and typing in the wrong plate number.

That's one thing.

But not having a complete license plate number in the system

is mind-boggling to me in the year 2026, right?

Just tells me how archaic the system is.

Josh Thomas told me that before he and I even talked,

they talked to the FBI who managed the NCIC,

they talked to the LA police that were in charge of this.

They've obviously talked,

I'm assuming that they've reached out to the police,

but I don't really know.

And they're looking at this,

and now I've given them the feedback of like,

dude, your system should not allow, in my opinion,

a partial read.

And if you're going to allow a partial read,

it needs to be flagged.

And he did mention like, he brought up the talking to the NCIC

and the FBI about how do we give a context

if it is a partial read along with that read

to the officer and we flag it.

Like whether you're just putting a circle around

those numbers, the 10, that would do it.

If you wrote a note, I don't really care what you do,

but the officers should have gotten flagged

or highlighted in this scenario.

If you're going to give them a partial read,

that there was more on that plate to make sure they sought.

And I'm hoping that Flock will take that and run with it.

That was my takeaway too.

As wide as the story spread, as heated as this debate's

getting around the country, I don't think any single story

is going to end the spread of Flock

or cause a massive pullback in the part of law enforcement.

They like this tool.

This tool has proven useful to them.

They're going to keep signing on to it.

What needs to happen, and it sounds like

the conversations are happening,

is that Flock and these agencies,

they just need to figure out how to work together more.

They need to update on the government side.

A lot of these systems need to be updated.

They're very antiquated, as you pointed out.

And Flock needs to be more aware of how officers

are using it and very proactive in training people

or just being honest.

Guardrails, adding those guardrails

to prevent these cases from happening.

I mean, this is only in the last few years,

as we said, that Flock has been a thing and has really spread.

And so we're in the early stages of this,

and it really needs to evolve as quickly

as these cameras are spreading.

The laws really need to evolve.

We need laws and regulation,

and whether it's how they're being used,

what kind of day is being spit out,

who has access, how long it can be stored,

all of these things.

We need laws and regulation that are uniform.

Here's open, here's open.

That's it for this week's episode of The Drive Cast.

Thanks to Flock, the LA Sheriff's Department,

and the Plymouth Police for handing us

the easiest scoop we've ever had.

Joel, for keeping us cool in a tense situation,

our editor Tyler Mark, and thank you for listening.

We'll be back next Wednesday.

Be sure to check out TheDrive.com

for our full coverage on this topic and a whole lot more.

Subscribe to one of our fine newsletters.

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where we have a lot of cool stuff coming up with Kyle.

That's right.

We'll see you next week.

Bye, everybody.

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