Last month, Donald Trump was asked about Flock Safety, the company whose surveillance cameras have faced bipartisan backlash amid accounts of police officers misusing them to stalk people. At the time, the president — who spouts opinions on all sorts of things he’s clueless about — used his favorite deflectionary tactic, saying he would have an answer in about two weeks.
Well, four weeks have passed. On Sunday, Trump was again asked for his position — and he essentially gave the company his blessing.
“You haven’t talked a lot about these Flock cameras,” a member of the press gaggle said before injecting pro-Flock spin, saying “they help catch a lot of criminals.”
“I sort of like ’em because of that, because of law enforcement,” Trump said, before conceding that some people “think it’s an infringement.”
To be abundantly clear, this isn’t about people thinking their rights have been infringed upon — there’s no debate as to whether Flock cameras have been used that way. And there’s also no debating the president’s affinity for Flock: Even as some localities have taken steps to end partnerships, the Trump administration has sought to expand the federal government’s reliance on the company.
Federal agents have reportedly used Flock’s license plate readers to aid Trump’s racist anti-immigrant crusade. And Trump’s regime has reportedly taken steps to equip the U.S. Park Police in Washington with the cameras as well, even as it has pulled funding from park projects around the country.
Trump’s endorsement of Flock cameras entrenches his alignment with Big Tech oligarchs who are seeking to impose their artificial intelligence technologies on society. It also places him further at odds with the broad majority of Americans who are concerned about the threats these tools can pose.
Here, again, we see how the president’s personal interests can conflict with Republicans’ political hopes. His financial disclosure forms show he has made deep personal investments in the AI industry while in office, and company executives have showered him with money as well. These are incentives for a corrupt president to pursue Big Tech innovation, and implementation, with abandon.
At the same time, the midterms are approaching. So the president is doing himself and his widely unpopular party no favors by doubling down on his support for an industry facing increasing disdain.
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