The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

This is one case in one city. But as we've been reporting on FLAC, we keep hearing from people in local communities around the country saying, oh, a police officer was fired arrested for abusing this system, and it it kind of just keeps happening.

Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Get access to that content at 404media.co.

Also, remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel where you can watch all of our episodes. Subscribe at youtube.com/@404mediaco. I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are four zero four Media cofounders, Emmanuel Mayberg

Hello.

And Jason Kedler.

Hi. Good morning. Well, I don't know. You might not be listening to this in the morning. Could be any time.

We don't really have any housekeeping, so we're just gonna jump straight into this week's stories. Jason, do you wanna take us through this first one?

Yeah. So this is your story. It's called FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones by Forcing Telecom to Get All Customer IDs. What I guess what is the FCC proposing here just to start?

Yeah. As I guess I would say, I thought about this maybe a few hours after we published or a day or something, but like another way to think of it is that, yes, burn the phones. And we landed on their heads because one of the experts we spoke to conceptualize it like that, and I think everybody knows what burner phone is. But also essentially the FCC is trying to kill anonymity on phone networks where you're not going to be able to go buy a phone without handing over a bunch of personal information. And to answer your question specifically, I'm looking at a quote from this proposed change from the FCC.

They are asking for comments on whether at a minimum, users of telecoms should have to provide their name, obviously, physical address, government issued identification number, and an alternative telephone number of any new and renewing customers before granting access to the services offered by this telecom, your AT and Ts, your T mobiles or whatever. So that's obviously a bunch of pretty dry language, but it's stark in a couple of ways in that they're asking for this very, very sensitive information, a government issued identification number, you don't normally have to hand that over, right, when you go and get a phone number. And the second is that the consequence of that is you are not going to have, as I say, anonymity when you are purchasing a phone. It's a really, really, really drastic proposed change here. And I should say that this hasn't happened yet.

The FCC has published this saying, we are seriously exploring this. They wouldn't publish this if they weren't taking it incredibly seriously. And now they're asking for people to provide input, but this is what the FCC wants to do.

Yeah. I mean, this is also like I mean, maybe the details are in here. I'm not sure if we know them, but it's like, I'm not really aware of other devices that have an ID requirement to purchase, like another type of gadget. It's like famously guns don't have this like in in many, like in many states.

Or a gun care or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it obviously like varies. But yeah, I guess like what, what would this mean kind of practically speaking, like what would the process become like when you do buy a phone?

Yeah. So it is a little bit unclear right now because of course it is proposed changes. But I think there's a very, key component in that. You're not going to be able to just go into a store and grab a phone. And now maybe people don't order and they rarely do that, maybe they have a contract of AT and T or whatever, but it's going to make it so much harder to do that where you're going to go into the store and maybe that's a corner store that sells, some pay as you go mobiles or something or maybe is going to T Mobile or whatever, you're going to have to provide all of this information that the FCC wants these telecoms to hold on to.

But again, this is at minimum what the FCC would like the telecoms to hold on to. Maybe they would also want to have date of birth in there that's mentioned as well. So there's going to be so much more friction when you go and buy any sort of phone essentially. And I know that's a really, really radical step where ordinarily in The United States, can just walk in and you can get a phone plan, you know, for various stories that I've needed to do things, I've gone into a T Mobile store and I've bought a SIM card, and I've even had the representative talk to me and said, oh, here's the form you fill out but you don't really need to fill out, you know, and well, that wouldn't be the case here because these telecoms would probably get you know, in a lot of trouble if they didn't follow, these new proposed changes.

Let let's talk about burner phones and what that means because I think that the term burner phone is, like, I pushed you to include the term burner phone into this because I think that's what people know Right. Like them as, but also, burn just because you have a burner phone doesn't mean that you're doing something nefarious doesn't mean that, you know, it's necessarily bad. I guess, like, is it fair to call this a like a regulation that would be that would be intended to stop the practice of burner phones or sort of like, who would this impact ultimately?

Yeah, I think it is fair to say that. I don't think it's the FCC's intention explicitly, although it will definitely impact that and we'll talk about who will impact what the FCC's intention is in a second. But yeah, you know, as you say, we included the term burner phone because honestly, this is like a pretty complicated proposal to try to communicate to readers, right? Like I filed and it's like kind of it's very dry language from the FCC. And, you know, you pulled out the burner phone thing, and then we sort of clung to that because people understand it.

And I'm sure many people hear the word burner phone and they go, oh yeah, it's like an anonymous phone. It's like one that I buy and I don't need to hand over ID or something like that. So that's absolutely what's going to be banned here. I mean, I'm sure some security people will say, well, a burner phone is one that you buy with cash, but then you never even turn on at home, so it's not linked to your identity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, I get that, whatever.

Here, it is much more about you're not going to be able to buy a phone without your identity. And a burner phone is one example of that. And again, I think it's just even broader in that the FCC does not want you to anonymously be able to buy a mobile device like basically ever, it seems like.

Yeah. I'm curious because, like, I think that probably probably a lot of people aren't really sure, like, what the process for buying a phone looks like. To be honest, I am not sure. Like, I I bought my last few phones directly from Apple. I don't remember giving an ID.

I don't I like got my cell phone service a long time ago, like decades ago and sort of don't remember that process. And it just like, it's been renewing for years at this point. And so, I'm curious, like, do you already hand over a lot of this data when you buy a phone or like what is the what's sort of the current state of affairs?

Yeah. So I mean, depends where you go, obviously, as you say. And then you'll go get a contract from a telecom and it's going to be something like, you know, your billing address, obviously, which may also be your residential address, presumably, you know, date of birth, some other stuff, and that's much more so they can facilitate the payment sort of thing, right? It isn't to create this identity is linked to your phone that cops can then access, although that happens all the time obviously. We read all of these indictments and they go to Verizon or whoever and they find out who's using that phone, but it's much more about facilitating the payment, right?

But that said, again, I've gone in to various stores and just not provided the information and sometimes they will ask for it and then just say, you don't actually need to do this. But really then you can then look at another company like Cape, for example. Disclosure, I think they're going to advertise at some point, so I'll just say that. But they collect much less information and that would impact a service like this as well or I don't know if ProtonMail or something launched a phone company, would be demanding they would be required to get information as well. So right now, you don't need to do.

You don't need to provide this sort of government issued ID and stuff. And that's very, very different to, as some of the people point out, like, you know, authoritarian countries, you know, I don't think in Russia you can get a phone basically without providing your identity. I think India has some restrictions as well. I haven't been to China in a long time, but I imagine there's similar restrictions there, where in tons of different countries around the world, at the point of purchasing the phone and the plan, there is a very, strong link between your identity and then the actual phone plan you get. And that's gonna just not be the case with this sort of change.

Yeah. I admit I'm a little bit out of my depth here, just because this isn't this isn't something that I personally have covered very much. But there's obviously two things. Like, there's the phone itself, and there's the service. And, like at the moment, you can like walk into Best Buy and buy up an unlocked phone and just be like, I don't want service on it.

And they're not going to take your ID and enter it into a government database and you can add service to it later. Same thing, like you can go into a seven Eleven and buy a TracPhone. I don't know if TracPhone still exists, but that's that was like the type of phone that was like a burner phone for a long time. You could go buy one at at seven Eleven.

Right.

And, you know, I guess, like, you can also buy used phones on like eBay. You can buy used phones from like all sorts of different places. And it's like that there's not a an ID, like aspect to all of that. And so like, is there a is there is there are there existing, like ID type stuff for the actual service? And it does sound like this is happening at a telecom level versus like a retailer level.

So I mean, that's not exactly a question, but I guess I just wanted to separate out the difference between like buying a device and buying the service. And it sounds like this would happen at a phone level, I think.

Yeah. This happened this is much more about the AT and Ts and the Verizon and that sort of thing where they, if you or a customer want to be granted access to their services, that is when you would need to provide this information. That said, there's a very, very key part in the FCC sort of questions. When they publish these requests for comment, they say, this is what we're proposing, this is what we're interested in, and this is the reason why. But they also will just literally list a bunch of questions like, are there cybersecurity concerns, are there privacy concerns, should we do this, should we do that?

One of the questions is, should we require this for both post and prepaid plans, as in somebody who have a phone contract, but then also somebody just getting a SIM card and putting credit on it, what we call pay as you go in The UK. So they're clearly exploring both of those as well. So although, yes, it's not going to necessarily directly impact buying the Trac phone itself or going to Best Buy. If you actually want to use that as a mobile phone, which presumably you do, even if you go buy a SIM card or credit or you do buy a contract, that is when you're gonna have to provide government ID. And, you know, that's gonna impact a lot a lot of different people, you know.

Yeah. Sorry. This is a hardball interview because I'm going a little off script here. I I have a lot of questions. Now, now that we're into this, like, when I travel, I buy an eSIM.

I use something like, you know, Arilo or Olafly. There's just like a bunch of different companies that do it. And the way that it works is like you land in a country and you open up this app and you are like, I'm going to be in this country for seven days and then you get a SIM, like an e SIM, but you don't actually go anywhere. It's never in my experience, like the countries that I've traveled to, they haven't collected my like, identity as far as I know. Like I enter my name and stuff for the purposes of the app, but they're not taking like my passport.

They're not taking my driver's license information, things like that. Is there anything in here about eSIMs? Is this is this out of the depth of your, like, actual reporting at this point? Am I just like randomly asking you things that that are not in the article?

No. No. It's good. Two things. That reminds me when I went to Singapore a while back and to use the airport Wi Fi, I had to give over my passport.

So like they wanted to link my Wi Fi activity to my identity, which was obviously nuts And I had to do it for various reasons because I really needed Wi Fi at that time, crucially, because I don't think I had a mobile phone. I think I had an iPad. So like, I need to use this Wi Fi, otherwise I'm pretty screwed. So maybe I should have done the ESIM thing. That said, I don't think ESIM was specifically mentioned, least not in the parts I read.

That said, I don't think it would have any difference to a physical sim rate. Like, I don't think the FCC cares if AT and T or whoever or even like a smaller MVNO, a mobile virtual network operator that sits on top of these other networks. I don't think they care if like a foreigner comes to The States or whatever or a tourist, and then they use an app like you're describing, but to get service in The US or whatever, the FCC doesn't care if it's a physical SIM or an eSIM. They just want to have that identity presumably. So I don't think there would be a meaningful difference between eSIM or physical SIM or anything like that.

You know, I don't have numbers in front of me, but I feel like so many contracts now are just eSIMs. Right? Yeah. I mean, yours is presumably an eSIM right now. Right?

Well, all iPhones in The United States don't have SIM card slots anymore for like several So they, yeah, so they are eSIMs, I guess, like, I guess it was more the fact that there is like an entire business now of, I would imagine I don't even know if they would classify as MVNOs or not, but they are like brokers for this the short term cell phone service, like

I can see them being subject to this as well. Yeah. Because otherwise well, I don't think the FCC would be happy with that. And there was no language in there that I saw that would exclude those sorts of services. Yeah.

Right. Right. Okay. So you said that we're gonna talk about why the FCC is is pushing for this. Is there a stated purpose or is it just like they want more surveillance so they're gonna do more surveillance?

I mean, they say it's scammers. It's robocalls. It's that sort of thing where in The United States, nobody wants to pick up their phone because it's probably what 75% a scammer, 80% a scammer if it's an unknown number, something like that. And that's the reason they want to clamp down on this. There's a couple of reasons.

They want more friction in the first place. So scammers are less likely to join phone networks at all, which seems I think misguided because if you're a scammer, you're making money and oh no, we have to jump through a few hoops to get some service, whatever. Okay, sure, there's that. And then there's also, well, if we collect all of this data or the telecoms do, then there's more valuable data for law enforcement to use to investigate when there is a scam performed on this and well, they can go and they can look who that phone is registered to or that phone plan, that sort of thing. And I should say there's almost like extra bits for foreign users of the networks as in somebody outside The US trying to buy AT and T service for some sort of reason, and then also business users as well.

Robocall scammers is not one guy with his personal plan on AT and T or something, It's a industrial scale operation where these scammers are operating hundreds, if not thousands of phones at once, and they have all of these different plans. So it's very much to do that. That said, I was kind of blown away by sort of they said the quiet part out loud, where in the FCC proposal, say, yeah, we want to stop scamming, we want to stop robocalls, that sort of thing. And then they also just straight up say, well, actually, it would be really good to have this data for other stuff like investigating fraud, espionage, influence operations that undermine national security, and then another address abuse in text messaging networks. So I mean, that's like everything, like robocall scams and also every other sort of crime that we might want to investigate essentially is the reason they want this.

Like, I'm surprised they kinda came out and sell it.

Right. Right. So you talked to a bunch of people for this article just kind of getting their reactions. You spoke to people at the American Civil Liberties unit. Oh my god.

ACLU. What what is you? What is the UN union? Is it

union? Yes.

Okay. I'm very sorry. I ran blank there. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation about this. What did they say?

I was googling just to make sure you're correct. Yeah. So spoke to Jay Stanley, the ACLU, and I think he gave a pretty on point quote. I'll just read it. For decades, civil libertarians have looked overseas at authoritarian countries where the government requires people to register to get a mobile phone to ensure they can be tracked.

We never thought this would happen here. And then the rest of the quote, but make no mistake with this rule making, the government is contemplating taking away people's ability to get a burner phone, which will hurt low income people, domestic violence victims, and anyone else who cares about their privacy. And I may be pre empting one of your questions, Jason, but I think that touched on a good point is that when people hear this proposal, they may think, oh, well, you know, it's fine, like I have a phone, I guess I'll provide my ID if I need to renew my contract or I get another one or whatever. This is only going to impact criminals and that sort of thing. Okay, not every person experiencing homelessness is going to have a government issued ID which they can provide to a telecom.

And if you have to provide an alternative phone number to even get a phone number in the first place, you're going to be stuck in this calf grass situation where you can't really know what to do at all because you haven't even got a phone at all to even get the phone you're trying to get. It's like ludicrous for it's going be really hard for a lot of people. And then, yeah, domestic violence victims and survivors, they may need to get hold of burner phone, you know, a quick phone that's not linked to their identity, they need to get minutes and data on it, and you know, maybe they don't have access to their ID or something like that, maybe the abusive partner took it. So there's going to be a lot of sort of secondary ramifications from this sort of proposal, which are going to touch on race and class and people's individual circumstances. That means they might not be able to get a phone.

And like, they're not trying to do anything shady. They're just trying to communicate.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I think that's an important point.

Is there anything else on this one that we didn't touch on?

I I think it is just so so wild that the FCC is proposing this sort of thing. I mean, combating scammers, I think there's gonna be other ways where I didn't really go into this, Cooper Quinton from the EFF brought up like this previous sort of proposal for clamping down on scams. So there's already work going on there, stopping the calls in the first place, maybe just fining the telcos per call or something like that, like, hey, there's a scam call, we're going to fine you for that, which is in there. But why don't you just put the onus on them, as in the telcos for not facilitating scams and clamping on that rather than pulling it on everybody who's just trying to buy a mobile phone, you know? But, yeah, I think we'll leave that there.

When we come back after the break, we're gonna talk about how cops just keep on using flock for stalking. We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back. Jason, this is one of your stories.

Cops keep getting arrested for using flock to stalk people. So this article opens with a very specific case about a particular police officer and what they did. Tell us what happened in that case.

Yeah. So in the summer of twenty twenty four, this cop called Jarmaris Brown, who is a cop or was a cop in Orange City, Florida. Basically, was running his ex girlfriend's license plate through Flock, this automated license plate reader system that we've talked about endlessly. 69 times over the course of a few months, He also ran a license plate belonging to her mom 24 times and a license plate belonging to her dad 15 times. And essentially, like what happened was I obtained arrest reports and like affidavits and court records and all sorts of things, and was able to just kind of track the ways that he was using flock to to surveil her.

And so this case was quite egregious. It's like, again, he searched for her 69 times in the course of a couple of months. He used some other surveillance tools like that he had access to as a police officer, as well. And then he also was doing this like in front of other police officers. So he was like, there there's one anecdote in the affidavit where he was sitting in the police cruiser next to another cop and he was searching, for his ex girlfriend.

And basically, the other cop was like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this? And he he then said, like, I want you to help me, basically, like confront her. And and so that cop ultimately became a whistleblower in this situation. But according to according to the affidavit, like, he he did do this like stakeout.

He called it a stakeout with another police

that went to the ex girlfriend's house or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, this is again, this is like wildly illegal. Like this is using surveillance technology for unapproved reasons, and it's using it to to stalk someone.

And this is like one case in one city. But I had been meaning to write an article like this for months because as we've been reporting on flock, we keep hearing from people in local communities around the country saying, oh, like a police officer was fired for abusing this system. A police officer was arrested for abusing this system. And it kind of just like keeps happening. And one of the kind of like really interesting things about FLoC is that you don't need a warrant to use it.

And so police who have access to it can just use it at any time for any purpose. Like there are no there are no like technical thing stopping them from searching the system. You don't need to input a warrant. There doesn't seem to be, like, specific usage limits. And so this keeps happening where cops will, like, search for their their wife or their ex partner, like dozens or hundreds of times over the course of months.

And I wanted to write about that that issue.

Yeah. We'll we'll talk about warrants again, in a minute as well. But, yeah, as you say, this issue of stalking by cops across flock is much, much, much broader than this one case. There was a recent report from the Institute for Justice, right? They're this legal body that has a bunch of flock related, lawsuits ongoing that going on that sort of thing.

What was that report saying? Because I feel like that was sort of the springboard and then you sort of drilled into some other cases, but like what was that report doing?

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of interesting because they didn't do anything special really. Like, the Institute for Justice is a civil rights group, that is suing FLAC or has sued FLAC in Norfolk, Virginia, on fourth amendment grounds, basically arguing that, cops should be required to get a warrant to use flock. And so as they've been doing this, like, presumably with the press and attention and and just like having lawyers who are researching this company, like, endlessly, they have come across many, many of these cases. They have documented 18 cases where police have used flock to stalk.

They call it a romantic interest. Usually, it is an ex partner or a current partner. But but what they did was like this was not proprietary reporting. They basically took local news reports from around the country. And we've mentioned a few times, but like local news outlets have done a really excellent job on documenting the use of flock and the abuse of flock by, police officers.

And so they basically just did a did a, like, a survey of the news coverage that's happened and, and listed it like in this report. And to be clear, these are like these are cases where for the most part, the the facts are not in dispute. It's like the police officers in question are either fired, they're either arrested, and, like, at least in all all of the cases that I saw, the police officers admitted to the searches in question. And I think one of the reasons for that is just because, the way that FLoC works, it has these auditing tools where it's very clear who is using the tool and what they're searching for, which we can talk, more about in a moment. But it's like the facts are not really in dispute here, in any of these cases.

What is interesting and one of the reasons that I decided to focus on Jamaris Brown in Florida is that The United States' court record system is so terrible that obtaining records for the specifics of many of these cases was really difficult or impossible. And so Florida has like somewhat better public transparency laws when it comes to court records. And so I was able to like actually get the documents in a lot of these cases. But the the specifics in some of the cases that, have been reported, but where either the courts are still like, adjudicating the case or they their the records are not readily available are, like, even worse than than sort of what I reported where sometimes there's been a few, cases where cops have, like, searched the system, like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. Like, some are more than like 300 searches for a specific person.

In some of the cases, they there's like worse details where, you know, they it has led to either violence or it's led to like a physical confrontation or just like extended stalking over a long period of time. There's been other cases where police officers used other surveillance tools alongside of Phlox. So there were there were there was one case, I believe I believe this was in California, but there's one case where the officer also installed malware onto their partner's phone, and then track them that way in addition to using FLoC. And then there have been a few cases where the police officer in question was arrested. And then as part of that, the, you know, the police who were investigating them found like child sexual abuse material on their devices and things like this.

So in some cases, it has gone alongside, like, quite serious physical abuse, quite serious, like other hacking crimes, things like that.

Yeah. And as you say, like, it's often part of a broader pattern with violence or more surveillance. And of course, you know, cops abusing access to technology or data is not new. I remember the Associated Press did a really good story. I mean, quite a while ago at this point, it might have been going on like ten years or something, but they did a bunch of public records requests looking for sort of reports about cops using internal databases to look up romantic interests and like that was completely rampant all across the country.

I should say a reader after you published this, Jason, a reader flagged me that Trump, I think by executive order, but the administration got rid of this database that tracks police abuses inside surveillance tech and that sort of thing. So there was a repository for this sort of thing and that is now being killed. So this would probably have factored into that, but now there's there isn't going to be a central repository tracking this sort of abuse. Yeah.

Yeah. I also want to say, this is this is not me handing it to Flock like we've reported on Flock endlessly and the ways that it's been abused and the the ways that that company, has done its business and sort of like privacy violations and the ways that it has like pushed itself into a lot of different communities throughout the country. But what I will say is that, it has like pretty intense auditing tools built into it. And that is one of the reasons why we know about this abuse at all, which is the fact that I mentioned where, you know, you if you're a cop, you basically like get a login and then you use that login and every time you search, there's a record of that search. And there's a and that record includes the license plate, includes the time that they did the search, it includes like a quote unquote reason for the search, which we've talked about before.

And so, like one of the things that's happening here is like police departments when they actually go to do the investigation, they can then look and say like, oh, this one police officer looked up this one license plate a 175 times. And they can then use that as like evidence that that this system was abused.

Yeah. I think it's absolutely fair to say that the auditing things are really, really important here. Right? You you mentioned the the reason tab, which is for those who don't know when we've done a lot of reporting on FLOC, we will get these spreadsheets from police departments that have these searches. Right?

And and the reason sometimes that is as we've shown ICE immigration or something. Sometimes is investigation or INV. So they can still be super super vague. Like, I reckon a cop could probably get away with looking up their ex girlfriend once or twice. It's when it crosses into that guy searching 69 times and searching for the mother 24 times.

It's like, obviously that's suspicious. Obviously, that's going to be audited and thankfully they're going to be caught. That said, it's not like a foolproof system, obviously. Right?

No. And and so there there's like a few other points I want to make like on that, which is there are a lot of automated license plate reader companies and not all of them have auditing tools that are as robust as Flock has. And also not of not all of them create these audit logs that are accessible to the public via public records requests. And we've talked in the past about how Flock has really tightened, like access to that. They basically are limiting the amount of data that is collected and that is really concerning for reasons that will become clear like in one second.

So, I wanna talk about how a lot of these cases have been brought to light because, this is something where I, like, ask Phlox for comment and Phlox says that this type of abuse is is rare. They say that there's, like, tens of thousands of cops who are using Flock and that, you know, there's that Flock admits that it is aware of 15 of these cases of abuse. And Flock said, quote, each surface because of the transparency and accountability features deliberately built into our platform. And I wanted to say that, but then I also wanted to push back against this, which is to say, it is it is the case that, like, these searches can be caught after the fact via these, like, transparency, tools and and things like that. But in most of the cases that I analyzed just based on like reading affidavits and reading the details and and all of that sort of thing, a lot of these cases are caught, like, only after months of of abuse.

A lot of times they're caught after like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of searches. And a lot of times they're caught by either the person who is being stalked because they're like, why is my ex who is also a police officer and also has access to these tools constantly showing up at the places that I am located at, like, how are they doing this? And they put two and two together. Or it's being, like caught via whistleblowers within police departments, like this case with Jermarus Brown, was like another police officer was like, hey, don't do that.

Cut it out.

And well, that was actually, like, crazy because basically, like, that police officer then went to the victim and said, hey, this is happening. And then the victim, like, reported it. They had a personal they, like, knew each other. Was kind of a very, like, they like this other cop and the the woman being stalked were friends basically. And and so that's what ended up happening.

And then a super interesting thing that has happened, and it's happened in several cases, is where D FLOC groups. So basically these, like citizens groups that have been filing public, transparency requests or public information requests and have been pushing to get FLOC out of their towns have found the abuse on their own. And the ways that this has happened is they're getting the audit logs, via public records request. And then they're seeing like this one police officer searched this one license plate hundreds of times over the course of months. And the reason stated was something super vague, like investigation or whatever.

Test, I think in some Yeah. Is another one. And then so then those groups are then raising, like, filing formal complaints with the police departments, and then the police departments are investigating it. And, like, this is not I mean, it's it's pretty astounding that these groups have been able to do this, but, like, this is not how we would want, like, cops to be held accountable. Like, it's not it's not a proactive thing where police departments are identifying this because of Flock's tools.

It's like happening after the abuse has already occurred, and in many cases, only after the abuse has occurred for months.

Right. Yeah. That makes sense. So how could this be curbed? I mean, you've done a bunch of coverage where some towns are like pulling bags over their flock cameras because, you know, they're not sure the status of them and that sort of thing and then people have vandalized them and that's sort of one approach that people are doing.

I would say there's this very, very novel thing called a search warrant that may be applied to something like a surveillance technology like FLoC. Like the idea obviously is that when a cop is about to use an evasive technology like a GPS tracker or something, they have to get a warrant to do that and that ensures you're not doing it to your random ex girlfriend and the judge is gonna show this a judge is gonna say, sure, go surveil your ex girlfriend. That's not gonna happen. So like, what do you think of like how this could be curbed, this stalking and abusive flock or, know, license plate readers in general?

Yeah. I mean, a a search warrant requirement would be huge, huge, curb on this, and it's something that, you know, flock has fought really vehemently. Like, there's various court cases arguing that cops should have to get a warrant to use this system and Phalak is fighting those cases. In some cases, the police department that's getting sued, but Phalak is like, participating in those cases as like a, you know, interested party, things like that. Other than that, it's like, you know, pushing back on the surveillance more broadly, I think.

And also it's like a few people have pointed this out and I think that, you know, it kind of goes without saying, but I will just say it anyway, which is like police using this technology to stalk people, like individuals that they know or like, you know, ex partners, things like that is super illegal. It's wildly abusive. It is also there's like a spectrum of flock abuse and in many, ways, people are abused by the system all the time. As in sometimes, as part of their, like, normal course of policing, we've seen flock being used to, you know, spy on protesters and things like this. And so it's like, that's another form of abuse that police are not, to my knowledge, like, ever disciplined for.

And I think that it's like, it's a totally different thing, which is why I didn't include it in this article. But it's like the the the problem is like this technology in addition to, like a societal problem with domestic abuse and that sort of thing. But it's like the fact that these tools exist and don't have very many limits on how they can be used makes this like, quite a quite a bad vector for this.

Yeah. I think that's a good place to leave it. Alright. If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying four zero four media subscriber, we're gonna talk about how Amazon is, I mean, really screwing over their delivery drivers with this new update impacting the AC in these vans, you can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co.

We'll be right back after this. Alright. We are back in the subscribers only section. Emmanuel, this is one you wrote. The headline is software updates automatically turns off Amazon delivery drivers AC during dangerous summer heat.

So what's what's the news here? Like, what's happening with Amazon drivers AC? And then we'll go into a bunch of context as well.

So Amazon drivers have a variety of vehicles that they use to deliver packages. There's really quite a wide range from things that look like old US postal service trucks, personal vehicles, vans, but on the higher end are these electric Rivian vans that Amazon is pretty enmeshed with now as a company. Rivian is just like one of those electric vehicle companies that popped up after Tesla. It was struggling for a while, and then Amazon made this huge investment by buying, I don't know, like 50,000 vehicles or something for its fleet of delivery vehicles globally, and you can see these all over the world. You probably have seen these in your neighborhood, and it's an electric vehicle.

It's much newer. It has all these bells and whistles of of new vehicles. But with that, I suppose, comes the ability to monitor and control how the vehicle is behaving via software. And I woke up one morning and was looking at a place where these delivery drivers talk online, and they were all talking about how it's summer and it's getting pretty hot. The vans get notoriously hot during delivery, and just as the summer was really heating up, they got this software update that they discovered was automatically turning off their AC after they were no longer in the van for a certain amount of time.

That is an issue because the way these people actually work is they'll drive to a certain block or a part of town and get out and deliver a bunch of packages on foot. And you can imagine in the in in the summer, under the sun with no shade, the van gets extremely hot very fast, and the only way to combat that after you're out in the heat delivering packages is you leave the AC on so you have, like, a cool place to return to. And if the AC automatically turns off, that obviously doesn't work. And that could be not just annoying, but potentially potentially dangerous. We've seen Amazon drivers pass out while delivering packages.

There's been like, the Teamsters who are a gigantic union, and the The U UPS drivers are are are unionized with them. That was like a whole point of their latest contract negotiation is to make sure that they have proper AC in their vans because it again, notoriously, these delivery vehicles get very hot.

Yeah. Before we get to the sort of the the other stuff and the the other things that we've covered on Amazon, do do we have more or any specific sort of the timing? So like you park your car, your Amazon van, you go out and deliver, like do we know when it shuts off? Is it like ten seconds, thirty seconds? Is that clear or is it just some sort of time?

Yeah. Let's get into that. I wanna say first that I'm gonna be vague about some things because Amazon drivers are talking about this and are talking about how to deal with this, and because I don't want Amazon to, like, find them and interrupt their attempts to deal with this, I don't wanna mention where they're talking about this, and I don't wanna mention some of the details about what they've been able to figure out about how this software update works. That being said, Amazon has said on the record that if an Amazon driver is not in the van and the door is open, it will turn off the the AC after between thirty seconds to ten minutes depending on some some other some other things, and that's where I'm I'm being particularly vague. So, yeah, that's kind of like it's between thirty seconds and ten minutes is is the is the time period we're talking about.

It's about the door being open, and I've heard from some people, frankly, extremely annoying response and, like, inconsiderate and just ignorant about how these people work. It's like, well, what's the big deal? Just close the door. And I don't know. Open your eyes and look at, like, how USPS drivers deliver the mail.

They drive with a door open. They don't

have a door.

I mean, sometimes they have a door and it's open, and sometimes they don't have a door and it's just like, that's how you deliver. It's it's like you get a big sliding door that you have to push close and push open, and you have to do it like every minute. And then alternatively, you're you're just like, you know, hopping out of the van and hitting a few houses at once. So you're you're gonna you're gonna be out of the out of the car for, like, a couple of minutes at least. These Amazon drivers are not being lazy or, I don't know, stupid about how they work.

They know how they work. They're hustling. You know what I mean? It's just like, I don't know if you've seen these Amazon drivers. They're hustling.

There's a lot of incentives to them to work extremely fast, and that's a system that's set up by Amazon. So they're they're just trying to, like, play into the into the system that they that they were put in.

Yeah. Well, what's some what are some of the other things that we've covered about Amazon drivers? I don't even mean just at four zero four, but maybe a motherboard as well. Like, we've edited a bunch of coverage. I think I'm thinking mostly of the pee bottle one.

You know, I I was obviously gonna bring up the pee bottles when I do you guys notice them just like walking around? Do you do you see them?

Amazon drivers?

Yeah. I know the pee bottles. I see them all the time.

I see them time. All the It's just like I'm I'm just like, it's a feature of, like, modern life now. It's like it's sort of like when Juuls were really, really popular. You would just see, like, these little Juul cartridges everywhere, and you're like, oh, the landscape of the world has changed because of this device. Like, there's this new type of litter, and it's like, I think I see one like every other day.

There's just a bottle of pee on the side of the road, and I was like, yep. It's like, here you go.

Sorry to spell it out, but for those who don't know, what did we report above board? It was like drivers reporting that they have to pee in bottles because otherwise they get they get dick points or something. Right?

Well, they don't have access to a bathroom and they don't have time to stop and find a bathroom because they're hustling and trying to meet their quotas. Yeah. And it was very funny at the time. And it's very funny. The reason I ask is, like, what we did is, like, we published a story saying that Amazon drivers are doing this, and then Amazon, it's like, this is not happening.

This is not true.

That's what the company told you. Yeah.

We published a story that's like, here are the pee bottles. It was like people sent Lauren Gurley, who was covering Amazon for us, like dozens of pictures of, like, their pee bottles, and they have it comparatively easy. It's like, obviously, as a guy, you can easily pee into to a bottle. And then for women, it's like a whole it was a whole other thing where it's like you have to get these tools that allow you as a woman to, like, pee on the go into a container. Yeah.

And just like, yeah, unreal, very bad. That's the that's the that's the pee aspect of it. And then I think around the same time, this was just right as the UPS union was fighting about this, and Aaron Gordon who was covering the covering the USPS for us and was in contact with all of the USPS workers, they were just melting in their in their in their delivery vehicles. The the USPS trucks, a lot of them didn't have air conditioning at all, which is crazy because it gets like you can, like, fry an egg on the on the dashboard of some of these vehicles. Like I said, UPS negotiated to, like, retrofit or update their fleet to have AC because of this.

And Amazon, I should say, comparatively, you know what I mean, like, has a more modern fleet and has made quite a big deal out of trying or, like, having best practices about keeping its drivers and workers across its workforce cool because it's not just the people in the in the delivery vans. It's also people in warehouses that are not always air conditioned that we're passing out in the heat. They make quite a big deal out of like, we do everything we can, and we send alerts to our workers to take a cooling break. And it's like, well, you're not gonna be able to, like, take a break and cool down if your AC constantly is shutting off as you're doing your job, and you're not allowed to just, like, you know, take the time you need and keep the van cold. And and yeah.

You're not parking that van for fifteen minutes to Right. Chill and just like, okay. I can cool down for a that's just not how Amazon works. Yeah.

Yeah. Also, sorry. One more thing. Yeah. Just like the structure of this, and this is like always the the way that Amazon gets slippery about issues with its delivery drivers is it's been a while since we talked about this, but there's like Amazon, the the monolith, and then Amazon contracts the delivery operations to several other local contractors across the the country called DSPs, and they manage their employees.

And these contractors that are employing the the delivery drivers, they're meant to be held into a standard, but as you can imagine, it's all these small operations, and there's, like, a lot of variability in, like, how well they treat their their workers. So Amazon is like, we have all these rules, and this is how we keep people safe. And then if anything goes wrong, they're like, well, you know what I mean? It's not us. It's these contractors that are not abiding by the rules, and it's their problem, not us.

Right. Very convenient. Yeah. Alright. We will leave that there, and I'll play us out.

As a reminder, four zero four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to four zero four Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is produced by Alyssa Midgaff.

Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for this podcast. That stuff really, really does help us out and, of course, tell a friend. This has been four zero four Media. We'll see you again next week.