Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale defended Flock, a network of cameras that uses license plate data to help police identify and track vehicles involved in crimes. On “The Will Cain Show,” Lonsdale said the technology does not have to mean unlimited government surveillance and that a “reasonable middle ground” can be found for solving serious crimes without giving the government unlimited power.

WILL CAIN: All right, now to this. Where is the line between public safety and public surveillance? Flock safety, the AI powered security camera operators trying to answer that question and walk that line responsibly. The issue though is that not all users have its cameras that live up to that same standard. And there’s a hundred and twenty thousand of these cameras nationwide, 49 states, and that’s a lot of potential for misuse. 7,000 law enforcement agencies are under contract which means access to Flock’s growing network of automated license plate readers. Now abuse of that access has been on display. There’s Georgia this week. There, three former sheriff’s deputies were arrested for using the cameras to stalk people. But on the other hand, investigators have praised the system as a valuable tool with Flock saying its technology was used in roughly 1 million investigations alone last year. In the past few months, we’ve seen headlines like these. In Ohio, a missing girl was found in less than 30 minutes after a license plate reader was used to locate the suspect’s vehicle. In Florida, where cameras helped catch a man who allegedly kidnapped two children. In Virginia, the technology was used to track down suspects tied to a string of armed robberies. So Flock’s safety CEO says the aim is a society where safety and privacy coexist. GARRETT LANGLEY, FLOCK SAFETY CEO: I think where you see most of the backlash though, it’s on misinformation. We don’t sell this data. Our customers own it. We don’t do facial recognition. We simply read a license plate as a car drives by, and at the end of seven days, if it’s not associated with a criminal investigation, the data is deleted. Last month, over 1,125 missing people and over 20,000 stolen vehicles. And if you think about a stolen vehicle, it might seem like a petty, small crime. That’s how people get to work. That’s how people drive their kids to school. Stealing a vehicle is the beginning of more likely and much more severe crime. So the results are astonishing. CAIN: Flock, though, does seem to be taking the backlash seriously. Today, they announced safeguards aimed to quash those concerns, like cutting the standard data storage from 30 days to, as you heard there, 70 days. With exceptions like records tied to an investigation, which could be stored longer. Police will also have the ability to limit what other agencies can search for, and every search must include a reason or a case number. All right. I think this is a complicated issue with pros and cons on both sides. So let’s have a debate. On one side, we have Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and on the other, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, Chad Marlow. Gentlemen, thank you both for being with us here today. Chad, let’s start with this. Let’s submit that there have been abuses, and there always are abuses with any type of law enforcement and any type of data. So I want to focus less on, for example, what happened in Georgia. I’d love to focus more on your biggest concern about Flock and automatic license plate readers and A. I. Throughout the country. CHAD MARLOW, ACLU SENIOR POLICY COUNSEL: So thank you. Well, I would say that my biggest concern about flock safety is it is a mass surveillance system, and 99 plus percent of the data that it collects is on Americans who are accused of doing absolutely nothing wrong. And that sort of tracking is offensive to all of us, regardless on where we sit on the political spectrum, because we believe we should be able to live our lives freely and go about our business without being tracked by our government. CAIN: Okay, it’s a great argument, and I think if you made an analogy to Communist China, you’d speak to a lot of Americans as they understood. Stand that society is under mass surveillance at all times. Joe, I just had the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in here in my studio, and as he was walking out, I said, Hey, what do you think of Flock? And he said to me, You know what? I’m really concerned because I don’t like that kind of power in the hands of the government. It concerns me. Of course, I want to enforce the law, but I don’t like the idea of the government having that kind of surveillance over average Americans. We know what they’ve done with that information in the past. JOE LONSDALE: You know, Will, I’m I’m supporter of the American founders as well, and our whole Constitution was about checking the power of the government. So I think it’s a healthy instinct for people on both sides to want to want to be suspicious, to want to watch the Watchers, and we have to do that. But you know, I’m also on the side of civilization. I have six young Children. This technology has caught hundreds of thousands of criminals. It’s exonerated huge numbers of innocent people, and there are ways we can use technology competently to both watch the Watchers to delete data you’re not allowed to see to delete data you’re not using and catch the bad guys. And, you know, I don’t think we should let populous voices that are extreme that lack common sense that are, you know, an ACLU’s case is an anti carceral or you have a very far left Oregon now, even their previous ACLU heads think they’ve gone crazy because they want against shot spotters against everything. And so, you know, I think we have a reasonable middle ground here where we’re really clear on the rules. We make sure it’s not abused, and we get the bad guys. CAIN: Okay, and I want to know Joe, although he’s a very successful tech entrepreneur, has nothing to do with Flock, does not own Flock. Stock is not invested in Flock, but is interested in technology. But Chad, okay, to Joe’s point, and maybe even to your own 99% of people who are walking around who might get caught in a Flock camera are innocent. But that does that not also mean they have nothing to worry about. So do we have a right to privacy as we drive up and down the streets? Do we have a reasonable expectation? We’re in plain view. And if we answer that question, don’t we balance it against the fact that it’s catching kidnappers? It’s catching criminals? MARLOW: Well, I think some of the success metrics for these technologies are overstated. But setting that aside, we do have a right to travel around in public without being monitored by our government. And the idea that only those who are doing something wrong have something to hide is entirely wrong. I’ll give you an example. Someone who is struggling with alcoholism, who wants to go to an AA meeting, but doesn’t want the government or anyone else knowing they suffer with alcoholism, may not go to that church that is hosting that 8 p.m. Tuesday night alcoholic anonymous meeting because they know if they go, their car is going to be identified and they’ll be able to figure out that they’re struggling with alcoholism. So they make the decision to not go in order to protect their privacy. And I would argue that hurts that person and that hurts our society. CAIN: All right, then last to you, Joe. The problem is, if you and I could agree, and we probably can, this has some really valuable applications. We’re catching kidnappers were catching. They caught the I think they caught the brown shooter. Remember the guy brown who assassinated a professor in some way in connection with Flock, even if it has some good applications, when is the government ever stopped at a narrow good application? It always grows and it always gets malignant. LONSDALE: So well, I 100% agree that the core of our Constitution in our society is we have to check our government. We have to watch it. We have to have rules to limit how they use these things. And you know, it turns out the technology, if you’re competent, if you have common sense, you could put those restrictions in. Everyone in the public should have a right to see how it was used. I’m totally fine with that. By the way, I’m not okay with the Flock camera getting me in trouble for jaywalking because that’s B. S. I think it should only be crimes with serious victims. I don’t want to be watched either. None of us do. But if this is going to be able to save hundreds of thousands of people and it’s going to be able to protect innocent, exonerate people, obviously you want to be able to catch the bad guys. We had a case in Austin recently where I live where someone was not caught because they turned off all the cameras until they drove into a town nearby after a horrible crime and that happened to have Flocks. So, you know, I think we’re gonna have a compromise where we watch the watchers. You’re 100% right. But I think turning it off is just anti-civilization, and it’s gonna help the criminals, which is what the far left wants here. And we should run.

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