life comes at you fast most of it is just smoke and mirrors we're here to clear the air whether
it's the can't make this up moments or the hard truths hitting our streets in our state
we're finding the signal and all that noise no spin no nonsense just the facts the fallout and
a little bit of humor. Grab your coffee. It's time for The Morning Drip on WRTO.FM, Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to The Morning Drip for Tuesday. It is the 11th of
August. It's me, Grady D, along with Mike B.
Yeah, we took last week off because, well, reasons.
I can't really say other than that, just reasons.
So, fair enough.
Fair enough, yeah.
How was your week last week?
It was pretty good.
I think I got a few things done.
I mean, that's always good to have a productive week.
Yeah, yeah.
I had one too.
I was only like seven days late getting the billing out.
You slay me with that.
I'm like, man, I am Johnny on the spot when it comes to billing.
Matter of fact, I usually wait maybe two or three days after I do a job and then I send that invoice out.
Now, you know, of course, I have a couple of clients that are on automated invoices, so I don't even have to worry about it.
I just have to worry that they pay.
Well, I mean, I do my billing monthly.
So if somebody buys a UPS on the second of the month, I've got to remember that.
And there's a lot of times I just run out and I don't put a ticket in and I don't attach the sale of the UPS to the ticket.
So I always have to go back and stitch it together.
That's why it takes so long, because I hate doing it.
Yeah.
Are you ever concerned that you miss something?
Have you ever gone like three or four months and look back and go, dang it?
Yeah.
See, I'm not carrying a UPS or any of that equipment for very long.
It's like, nope.
It's installed.
I'll give you two or three days to make sure everything is working.
You're getting an invoice.
Oh, man.
We just don't run like that.
Yeah.
It's just the way.
I can't do these, these, uh, uh, you know, 30 day, 45 day payment plan kind of things.
You know, there's a lot of corporations that do that.
Don't get me wrong.
It's like, you know, they don't, they expect with their vendors when they get billed or
done in the old parlance that, uh, you know, they've got up to 45 days to pay.
Uh, no, sir.
You got up to five days to pay me.
Thank you very much.
You know, I don't work for free.
I'm not carrying your water for you.
Well, all my vendors are net 30, so I don't, you know, I only have to come out of pocket for it if I forget to bill it.
Which is an incentive for you not to forget.
Yeah, when the company's healthy, you just don't really care.
Yeah, I hear you. I hear you.
Well, that's a good problem to have, you know, to have a healthy company.
Yeah, I think getting caught up is more important right now than chasing money.
Yeah, no, I think that's a big part of it.
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
That's fair.
All right, phone lines are open 229-520-5957,
or you can text that same number, 24-7-365, 229-520-5957,
or shoot us an email.
The email address is morningdrip at wrto.fm.
On this day in 1938,
President Franklin Roosevelt campaigned in Barnesville
against U.S. Senator Walter George of Georgia,
who was a New Deal critic, who unfortunately went on to win re-election.
So, there you go.
I don't have anything else on this day in history.
Oh, well.
So, did you watch Dukes of Hazzard growing up?
When I caught it on TV, yeah.
Yeah, but you weren't like, you know,
got to be in front of the television on Friday night waiting for that song to start.
Just some good old boys.
You didn't, none of that?
No, you know, if I heard the song, I knew exactly what it was, but no, we didn't actually
didn't watch a whole lot of TV growing up.
Yeah, I was, there was a part of my life.
I don't know if I should be proud of this or not, but you remember the TV guide?
You used to get it every week.
I had the TV guide memorized.
I knew every TV show schedule on all the three networks at the time, eventually the fourth network.
But I didn't even need the TV guide.
You could just you could just ask me when you know what's on tonight on NBC at eight o'clock.
And I could tell you, you know, that kind of thing, probably for a couple of years.
And then I got out of that phase.
But yeah, my wife absolutely adored Dukes of Hazzard.
And I guess at the time I thought it was fine because, you know, Waylon Jennings did the song and he was a favorite of my dad's and all of that because my dad was a country music guy.
I mean, when he played in a band, that's actually, that's the kind of music that they played.
Country music's never really been my thing.
I mean, you know, until Garth Brooks came along and basically turned the industry on its head, I didn't really give a [bleep] about country music because it was always that old, there's a tear in my beer kind of nonsense.
And I just, I couldn't stand it.
But Garth came along and made it kind of hip and cool.
And of course, there's some purists out there that's like, that ain't country.
But you know what?
Music evolves.
It does.
So the connection to Dukes of Hazzard, of course, is these names kill me because I actually had an aunt whose nickname was this.
But Ben Jones, best known as Mechanic Cooter Davenport on the Dukes of Hazzard, before serving two terms in Congress from Georgia, he died this past Sunday at age 84.
He suffered a heart attack at his Virginia home.
He moved to Atlanta in 1969, appeared in 141 episodes of the Georgia-set CBS series from
79 to 85 before winning Georgia's fourth congressional district seat in 1988, and he served from
89 to 93.
His district was later eliminated through redistricting.
Oh, that sounds familiar.
And he unsuccessfully challenged Newt Gingrich for the sixth district seat in 1994.
And, of course, Duke's co-star Tom Wopat remembered Jones as a good friend and strong advocate for the best of the entertainment industry, saying he would be, quote, sorely missed, end quote.
So, yeah, Cooter.
I really thought the show was older.
I kind of just considered the entire cast dead by now.
Because, you know, when I was watching it in the 80s, Cooter was not a young man.
No.
And it's been 40 more years.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that would have put him in.
That would have put him in his, what, late 30s, early 40s at that point.
I'm not doing the math.
It's too early in the morning.
Yeah, probably around there.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't watch it today.
It's horrible.
Number one, all of the, I mean, the fact that the General Lee is running around with a Confederate flag on the roof.
You know, I just that's just part of the show.
It is part of the show.
And I'm and I'm not discounting that, you know, for the time and age of the show.
OK, that's fine.
But as societies grow and we learn that we're wrong in certain things, that's when you go
back and you look at this kind of stuff and go, yeah, that's not really good, you know,
agronography to to be running around on on a car.
But then you have to understand where it's supposed to be centered.
And well, there you go.
They redid the movie a couple of decades ago.
And time for another one.
I know, right?
Because, you know, I think we talked about the fact they're doing a new Miami Vice movie.
They've already done one of those.
But they're doing a new one.
I don't remember seeing the Dukes of Hazzard movie.
So I don't know if they did a spot on replication of the General Lee because, I mean, you know, it is several decades later and a lot of people get incensed by that emblem.
So I don't know.
But anyway.
Well, you know, we didn't watch the show for the rebel flag.
Yeah.
You know, I watched it for the car jumps and these two brothers, you just don't give a [bleep].
They wrecked so many of the same car.
I watched it for Catherine Bach, man.
Yeah, you know, I wasn't quite of the age to appreciate Daisy so much, but I'd watch it again.
I started early.
I mean, think about it.
It was 79 to 85.
So by the time it got into its latter years, I was already in my pubescent or post pubescent years.
Because, you know, in 79, I was nine.
In 85, I was 15.
Hmm. Yeah, that checks out. Yeah. So it, it was definitely. I was seven in 85. Yeah, I understand. I understand why you, you would focus more on the car jumps. Every car jump that is not, physics doesn't work that way, you know?
Well, when a car literally folds, when it hits the ground, it's not going to continue to go.
Yeah. I forget how many cars, how many versions of those they had that they destroyed whenever they would do those stunts.
Yeah. I don't know. Too many.
It's like Supernatural Baby, the one that Dean drives.
They didn't crash it that often.
No, no. But they did have a handful of them, which he has one of the original cars in his own garage.
He took it with him.
Oh, I would have to.
Yeah.
I would have too.
Well, condolences to Ben John's family.
May Cooter rest in peace.
Moving on, we have $17.5 million pandemic fraud for Georgia men have been sentenced to federal prison for filing fraudulent claims seeking nearly $17.5 million in COVID-era tax credits,
primarily through the Employee Retention Credit Program intended to help businesses keep employees on their payrolls.
Authorities say the men used LLCs registered in their own names to submit the false claims with the scheme uncovered during a Columbus organized crime investigation known as Operation Sweet Silence.
Who the hell comes up with these names?
Operation Sweet Silence.
What does that mean?
They form a committee and that committee has three months to pick one person who will come up with the name.
Oh, is that it?
Yeah.
And basically, it's day 90.
Somebody points at somebody and goes, you're it.
Yeah, you're it.
Come up with a name.
You got five minutes.
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
Suspicious IRS deposits and intercepted conversations helped expose the fraud, including discussion
of an associate receiving a 20% cut.
Oh, he should have kept his mouth shut.
The men received prison sentences ranging from 41 to 115 months, along with five years
of supervised release and orders to pay restitutions.
To be fair, I'm being facetious.
And during this time, were you ever contacted by any person or organization for your company?
Because, you know, you and I are, we are our business.
You know, we have one employee ourselves.
And yet, during this time, I kept getting emails and phone calls from companies wanting to assist me in filling out what was necessary to get these credits,
to get these money so that I could continue operating my business.
And I couldn't, I could not in good conscience do it
because I'm like, I'm the only employee here.
Does this make sense?
You know, I did take a reduction in one of my contracts
for about six months because the company got hit hard.
And so their revenue was reduced and they were like,
look, I need you to do us a solid. And I'm like, okay. Cause they were like, it's either this or
we just drop it entirely. And I'm like, okay. So I had to cut that contract in half, but I just,
I don't know, maybe I would have qualified. I really don't know, but I didn't want to do
something like that, that I thought would be milking the system when there were definitely
other companies that really, really needed it for their employees. And so, you know, we,
We may do. And then, of course, things picked up and we went back to the original contract.
But were you ever contacted by anybody about doing this?
I think I saw a few emails about PPP loans.
Yeah.
I think even QuickBooks was like, hey, we can help you out with a PPP loan.
Yeah.
And I never even considered applying. Never, never touched it.
And maybe that's what I'm thinking about. I don't I don't think those are the same thing, but.
or I guess they're adjacent.
But I do remember I kept getting stuff like that.
It's like, apply for this loan, apply for that.
And I'm like, guys, I know we're in a world of hurt right now.
And people, you know, the money is drying up, but this is ridiculous.
Don't use it unless you absolutely need to use it.
Are you saying that people should just be honest?
I mean, shocker.
It's not the American way.
I know.
Grady.
I know.
How long have you been here?
56 years.
There you go.
I know.
One of these days I might grow up and actually realize what a [bleep] place the world actually is and how bad people can be.
One day.
All right.
One more.
No, I never was offered any help in getting the COVID tax credits or anything.
I never heard of it.
All right.
Yeah, I'm not surprised that people took advantage of it that didn't actually, that shouldn't have.
And I mean that in the sense of they took advantage of it.
And I'm glad to see people being held accountable for this kind of stuff because it's this kind of nonsense right here that makes the political parties look even worse.
You know, and especially and I'm not saying that this is this is partisan because I don't I don't know what the political affiliation are of these people.
I have I have my guess, but, you know, I can't say for sure.
And it would be a controversial controversial point of view, which, you know, I'm known to have.
Yeah. But in this show, you got to stay in the middle.
I try. I try. Sometimes I fail, but I try.
All right. So Georgia began fiscal year twenty twenty seven.
That seems weird. But, you know, the fiscal years for them start in July 1st with net tax collections of two point five seven billion with a B.
in July. That's up 78.1 million or 3.1% compared with July of 2025. The increase was driven largely
by... Why 2025? Why didn't they compare it to July of 2026? Or can they not calculate those numbers
yet? Maybe they're still waiting on final figures after a year. I guess so. The increase was driven
largely by sales tax collections, which rose 10%. Corporate income taxes, which jumped more than
34%. Individual income tax collections declined 2.1%, while motor fuel taxes fell 5.4%. We know
why that happened, especially if they're tracking this last year. And so the sales tax distributions
to local governments also increased, reaching nearly $895 million for the month. Something
that's interesting, because where we live, we may have talked about this before, talking about
sales tax distributions and sales tax collections. The majority of the sales tax for Tiff County is
not even driven by people who live here because we're a pass-through and destination city.
You know, a lot of people actually come to Tifton to work. And so when they, you know,
they buy food, they get gas, they do all of those things here in Tifton. And I forget what
the percentage was, but there was a study that looked at the fact that that the sales tax,
the money that we get off of sales tax here in Tifton is driven by out of towners. And this came
about because they were looking at, you know, adding like another 1% or something to the sales
tax. I wait, it was increase the sales tax and get rid of property tax, which I thought was
interesting because then if you look at it, that means that instead of the people who
actually live here and own property supporting the school system and the municipality and
the county government, it would 100% be on everybody that bought stuff in Tifton, which
means our government would be in school system will be propped up by out of towners.
Yeah.
I mean, like the state of Florida.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, the state of Florida doesn't have personal income tax.
Yeah, because they collect enough sales tax to make it up.
But they still have property tax, don't they?
I don't know. I don't live there.
I would imagine they do.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
But this this was a let's get rid of property tax and just fund, you know, replace that loss with sales tax.
Which, I mean, for us landowners, oh God, I sound like I'm from the 1800s.
Us landowners.
You're Franklin's.
I know, right?
You're one to be talking.
Anyway, it'd be fine because then I wouldn't have to worry about paying property tax.
Yeah, you just pay more for pizza and groceries.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
And fuel.
Well, that brings up another tangent for me, and then we'll move on.
But I don't think food at all should be taxed, whether it's at the grocery store, whether it's at fast food restaurants, sit down restaurants, nothing.
I do not believe that any form of sustenance should be taxed.
And that is a heel I will die on.
OK, well, we'll let you.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I don't think it should be blanket, but.
Well, I would acquiesce to everything that is categorized as edible at a grocery store should be tax exempt, but not everything at a grocery store.
I mean, if you're buying clothes detergent, yes, you know, that's taxable, cleaning supplies.
I think if you're buying beer and Coca-Cola.
and coca-cola well the the problem the problem with soft drinks is now you're getting into the
whole why why should they be taxed over uh you know hamburger meat because hamburger meat is
actual sustenance and coca-cola is not you're saying you can't live off of a soda really
um yeah yeah i'll i'll step out there and go yeah oh damn it
oh well
nah i agree with you it does it does get a little bit more nuanced um but and there there are certain
categories if i remember correctly there are certain categories that don't get taxed from the
grocery store, but I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason because you can look back whenever I
actually went physically to a grocery store and got a physical receipt. You could actually look
and it would show you the tax breakdown and it would show you the items that were tax exempt.
I don't remember how that was determined, but what I do remember is there were some items
that were, that were still taxed that were quote food. And maybe it was potato chips and things
like that because we, you know, even we're, we've never been a family that bought a [bleep] ton of
sodas. We just, we just haven't. Nowadays, the only soda I buy is I buy, I buy, um, I buy the
smaller cans of, uh, Sprite because my wife occasionally needs one for an upset stomach or
whatever. And I buy a grape Fanta. That's pretty much it. Sometimes orange. And I limit myself to
no more than one soda a day. And that's it. That's all I drink. And see the Fantas, they're
healthier sodas. They don't have, what is it? I don't think they have sugar or they don't have
caffeine. There's one of them. I forget. Yeah. Fanta's caffeine free. Okay. That's it. That's it.
So I love I love grape. That's one of my favorite flavors. That and an apple.
But anyway. All right. So we're going to broach a subject that we've talked about previously.
We're going to play a clip from a YouTuber, longtime YouTuber.
Actually, we're going to play two clips. I broke it into two parts because it's overall about a little over an eight minute clip from one of his shows last week.
And I'm going to have a link to his, to this YouTube video in the show notes when this gets
published as a podcast. So you can go look and, you know, maybe, maybe determine that this is a
guy you kind of like and, and go from there. He moved to Georgia a couple of years ago. He's up
in North Georgia. His wife is actually running for, for a state seat up there in that area,
Lindsey DeFranco. So he covered last week flock cameras. And the reason why I wanted to bring this
up again is I went and I found, I got curious because you and I, when we talked about it last
time, I was like, I wonder if we have any flock cameras in Tifton and Tiff County. And we really
didn't know. And so I went searching last week to find out. And I wound up on the deflock.org
website, which is a legitimate website. Matter of fact, it's actually mentioned in one of these
clips. Because honestly, I think it's the CEO or one of the higher ups at Flock Safety deems this
website a terroristic website, believe it or not, because of the fact that they locate where the
Flock cameras are in your area. And so it looks like, based on the information from the website,
and as I pointed out when I posted it on the Tipton Talks Facebook page, that I have not verified,
nor do I validate this information, but we have, according to them, 16 Flock cameras
in Tift County. Now, my wife then took that posting and she put it in our Tifton Talks
group. And the number of comments that she has gotten on this has really, really shown the
ignorance of the people around here and do not understand that there is a difference between
traditional surveillance cameras, red light cameras, and these flop cameras, which are
automated license plate recognition cameras.
Yeah.
And, you know, and of course, the comments run the gamut from, well, if you ain't doing
anything illegal, you got nothing to worry about nonsense.
And they don't actually understand.
There was one person who actually said, big cities have had these for 20 years.
Flock Safety was not actually, yeah, they weren't actually founded until 2017.
And the original, the original place that flock cameras were used were at homeowners associations.
Believe it or not, they didn't actually start deploying them into cities until around 2020.
Well, good test bed.
Yeah.
Which, I mean, you could go out on a conspiracy theory limb and go, 2020, what happened in 2020?
Hmm.
And why did they start?
anyway. So this first clip is four minutes and 37 seconds. I'm going to play it and then we're
going to go to break. And when we come back, we'll play the other one, which is four minutes
and 12 seconds. So before I play the clip, you got anything you want to comment on about this
or should we just go right into it? No, I've not heard it. So. All right. Well, here we go.
Here we go. There's not a ton that people in this country agree on left versus right,
But something that we're seeing more and more people getting aligned on is [bleep] flock cameras.
And if you're someone that's, you know, maybe heard about it, but you don't know fully what a flock camera is, here's the thing.
There's a good chance that your movements have already been recorded by one.
Because flock safety is this company that makes automatic license plate readers or ALPRs, which are AI powered cameras installed by police departments, cities, businesses, schools and neighborhoods all across the country.
They capture the make, model, color, license plate numbers of the cars that pass by and the date, the time and the location of detection.
And you've got FLOC saying, hey, they're made to help communities respond to crime and safety incidents by helping recover stolen vehicles, aiding police investigations, and just so much more.
But then you've got just so many critics arguing that these are tools of just a surveillance state, with, for example, the ACLU explaining,
if there are FLOC cameras in your city, they are tracking, logging, and sharing your movements without a warrant.
Because you have this situation where when one FLOC camera detects a vehicle, that information is stored in FLOC's system and can be searched by participating in law enforcement agencies anywhere.
Not just by officials in your town or even your state,
but at any agency with a Flock contract
allowing this level of access.
And while Flock, they're not the only company
creating and deploying this kind of technology,
they are by far the most prominent and well-known.
They capture 20 billion license plate reads per month
across 6,000 communities.
And you've got the ACLU estimating
that between 80 to 100,000 of these cameras
are installed in both urban and rural areas
throughout the country.
But also, I'll tell you that by the time
that you're just even done watching this video,
there might be one or two less in this country.
And that's because of the rapid rate
that you're seeing these things getting vandalized, right?
You're seeing things like over in Avon, Colorado,
you had the police posting about felony criminal mischief
after three cameras, including a flock camera,
were knocked down and destroyed.
And the reason I bring up that one specifically
is because on the post where they asked the community
for any information, they ended up getting 18,000 comments,
but not from people that were like,
hey, I wanna help, but rather just from so many people
who were expressing their frustration
with flock surveillance
and even people actively supporting the destruction.
And then you're seeing things like a guy
in the Minneapolis area, he's gone viral
for posting videos about how he's climbed up holes
to take down dozens of flock cameras in his state.
He's even posted content teaching others how to do the same.
Then in California, he had some throwing paint on him,
others accused of straight up running them over with their cars.
And it's all over.
In Florida, they've also been hit with spray paint.
In New York, they've been sawed in half.
In New Mexico, a guy was accused of destroying multiple cameras
and then replacing them with flags.
And there, even after a judge said that she would issue an arrest warrant,
he told the local news.
You have plans to continue to take down these flock carriers?
Absolutely.
Oh, absolutely.
They are a clear and present threat to public safety.
And you should understand, this is just a small sampling of a nationwide trend, right?
This is happening in tons of states.
So not everything is so destructive, right?
You have some just trying to raise awareness that these cameras exist at all.
So you've got people like in Florida, there's this 77-year-old man who camps out in front
of these cameras in a lawn chair while holding up a big sign to block the lens and protest.
And also to highlight how widespread Flock tools are, many have turned to a site called
D-Flock, right?
And it has this interactive map tracking all kinds of automatic license plate readers.
So the site's creator telling the Wall Street Journal that overall, I don't think the government
should know where we are all the time.
And while you have the CEO of Flock
saying that he does respect some criticisms of the company,
here's also what he said about this effort
to just tell people where these cameras are.
Unfortunately, there's terroristic organizations
like D-Flock, whose primary motivation is chaos.
They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else.
And that I think is unfortunate
because we don't want chaos or I don't want chaos.
I like law and order.
So essentially, if you're not on board,
you're using this site, you made the site,
that's terrorism, organized terrorism.
And while he has since apologized, one, a lot of people just don't believe him, but also two, many believe that this response in general, it just highlights the problem here.
And in some ways, the backlash against Flock is working.
Cities, towns, and counties across the country, they have been holding these tense town halls where you have residents objecting to their taxpayer funds or other public grants being spent on these cameras.
And sometimes it works. Around 55 localities ended their contracts with Flock in the past year.
Right, and one of the things is that concerns about these cameras, they go way beyond just how freak it is that they capture and store our cars as movements.
You had 404 Media doing this report alleging that they can be used to track individual people, not just vehicles.
In claiming it, police departments have used these cameras for this purpose hundreds of times
using searches like heavyset male with black and white hat or person on skateboard.
And you had their article explaining these are called freeform searches
and allow cops to use Flock's system as though they would use a search engine
with Flock's AI and image recognition interpreting what footage and which people are relevant to a police officer's search.
And these searches, they'll go across dozens or even hundreds of networks of cameras at once.
And they're often vague enough that they end up pulling images of unrelated, innocent people.
Now, for their part, you had Flock publishing a blog post earlier this year
saying that it's not a mass surveillance tool,
insisting that, quote, Flock ALPRs do not and cannot track vehicles, much less individual people.
They also told 404 that these freeform searches are not facial recognition
and that their products do not have or use any facial recognition technology.
While you've got people doubting that, whether it be now or what they do in the future,
many also think that they don't need facial recognition tech to be alarmed.
Your alarm clock is a liar.
It says it's time to wake up, but you're still sleepwalking through life.
Stop the snooze, start the brew.
It's The Morning Drip on WRTO.fm.
We're serving up unfiltered truth, questionable advice,
and enough caffeine-fueled energy to power the entire Piedmont Plateau.
The Morning Drip, because sleeping in is for people with nothing to say.
Weekdays, only on Radio Free Georgia.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Morning Drip. Today is Tuesday. It's the 11th of August. You got Grady D and Mike B.
So before we went to break, we did part one of Philip DeFranco's commentary on Flock Cameras. Anything you want to weigh in on before we get to part two?
I mean, I got all kinds of things to say, but I'll wait.
I'm curious to see where this Philip winds up.
Okay.
All right.
Well, here we go with part two.
And so you have people like a senior policy analyst from the ACLU saying,
Much of the world hasn't quite caught up yet to how much more powerful a surveillance camera is today compared to a few years ago.
AI video analytics means that giant oceans of video data can now be searched the same way big text files can be,
including for sensitive content such as T-shirts, tattoos, and bumper stickers.
Even without face recognition,
that's a significant increase in surveillance capability.
And you also had a policy council,
the Center for Democracy and Technology,
saying that these cameras, they're like a bait and switch.
It's like being told that you're getting a smoke detector
and then later learning that it also records
all your conversations.
And understand, Phlox cameras are already being abused
by some of the police officers who use them
for personal searches like stalking exes.
Newsweek alone found examples in 12 states
where officers have been accused of misusing these cams.
And it's happened multiple times just here in Georgia,
where some officers have been charged
with violating their oath.
And they're not alone.
In Alabama, some officers have been fired
or resigned for improperly using the cameras.
In Milwaukee, an officer was sentenced
to 12 months probation after using Flock
to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner,
but apparently searching for her
over 120 times in the system.
And many also have issues with a lack of transparency
for what exactly these cameras could be used for.
Are you with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
saying that there was this one case in Texas
where deputies said that they were searching
for a woman as a missing person,
when in reality, they were using data on her
as a part of an abortion investigation.
There are then also reports
that ICE are using these cameras
for immigration enforcement.
And in California, police allegedly illegally shared data
from automatic license plate readers
with ICE and Border Patrol.
And then you also have just tons of these situations
where these cameras [bleep] up and they misread plates
and they cause confusion or even lead police
to investigate the wrong person.
Or you had Business Insider reporting
that there was one town in California
where Flock's machine learning software
misread license plates in 71% of the alerts
that it sent to officers.
If you had an employee that failed 71% of the time,
you would fire them.
That's not an employee.
That is a raccoon that somehow got into the building.
And so some of the things you'd see
He was like, in one case,
he would repeatedly confuse a nine on a plate
for an eight, falsely identifying a man's car as stolen.
He also had CNN reported on a case
where a car reviewer in Minnesota
was test driving a Range Rover
when all of a sudden an officer swarmed his car
because it was reported as stolen,
even though it was owned by Land Rover North America.
But it then got mixed up with a car in Los Angeles
with a similar plate that had been reported missing.
And according to the ACLU,
one in 10 license plate scans from Flock,
they misread the state,
and under 1% of the car scanned
are connected to any crime or wrongdoing.
And so it ends up really not being too surprising
that as more people learn about what's happening here,
there's just kind of this united hatred
no matter your political party.
He just said the likes of Nithya Raman,
the left-wing mayoral candidate in Los Angeles,
saying that the city should cut ties with Flock,
arguing surveillance without oversight
does not create public safety,
saying it tracks innocent people, enables abuse,
and puts Angelenos in danger.
And then all the way on the other side of the aisle,
you had Tucker Carlson devoting
a whole episode of his show to this.
And while he didn't offend people
who were vandalizing the cameras, he did say,
they're videos, in other words, of people
who don't feel they have any other recourse whatsoever
making one last-ditch attempt to preserve the one thing that makes them free in this or any other
country, their birthright, by the way, and it's called privacy. They don't have it. They'd like
it back. They think the Constitution guarantees it to them. Their lawmakers don't care. Their
leaders don't care. Their police departments don't care. They don't think it's to make them
safer. They understand that it's to strip them of their most basic humanity, which it is.
And so with what seems to be at least some degree of a united sentiment, there do appear to be
efforts in Congress to crack down on these cameras. And so, for example, you had Representative Thomas
Massey promising to sponsor a bill that would withhold federal money from municipalities and
police departments that deploy flock and other style cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens.
Because again, a lot of the outrage here, yes, it's around that it's happening in the first place,
but also because public funds or grants and gifts given to cities are being used to pay for these
in a lot of cases. Even though the people that the money is meant to benefit do not always want
these cameras watching them. And echoing that, you had Massey telling the Cincinnati Inquirer,
I do not think that the federal government
should be subsidizing the safety of cities
who decided to go beyond the pale
and basically turn their communities
into a version of 1984.
Saying as the constitution requires,
you have to have probable cause
and reasonable suspicion to spy on people.
You can't just spy on everybody.
And adding that the security provided by those cameras
does not justify the privacy it strips away.
Arguing you can solve every crime
if you put tags in us and tracked us everywhere
and made us all wear body cameras, but at what cost?
But with all that said, I then got to turn it to you.
What are your thoughts here?
What's your opinion?
What's your reaction?
Whether, you know, this is how you're first learning about these cameras, if you've been a longtime flaccator or even if you land somewhere else.
All right. So that was Philip DeFranco, who has been a longtime YouTuber for over 20 years now.
And like I said, I'm going to put a link to that entire episode.
He covers a lot more, but his first eight minutes, almost nine minutes of that episode from last week was this, which is the reason why I broke it up into two parts.
And the fact that the 71% being wrong is startling.
There was one incident where there was a woman, and I think she had two or three of her kids with her.
They had pulled into the parking lot.
They were going to like a Walmart or something.
And then suddenly she was surrounded by five or six police cars.
They got everybody out of the vehicle.
They made them lay face down on the pavement, and the reason why was because the Flock camera
system misidentified the tag number on her vehicle.
It was the same tag number as a motorcycle in another state that had been stolen.
So it wasn't even the right vehicle, wasn't even the right state.
But they put this woman and her kids through this horrendous, probably 15, 20, 30 minutes before they figured out that they had screwed up.
So anyway, now I will open the floor to you.
What what are your comments on on what he shared here, Mike?
I'm actually I'm not opposed to it or in favor of it.
I mean, different.
I mean, as soon as I get pulled over for no reason, because they got some information that led them somehow to a gray truck that is unmarked, I'm not going to have an issue.
If they can use this nationwide to find kidnapped children or combat human trafficking, leave it up.
There needs to be oversight.
i'm not saying any cop can just pull up and start searching but you know a lot of unsolved crime
out there well yeah but that's the problem is any police officer can pull it up and well that then
that part needs to change yeah but they're not willing to to make those changes i mean i mean
fox safety is literally coming out going hey we audit everything and we do this and blah blah blah
blah, blah. Yet, I personally, I think that if you let's take Tiff County, for instance, if the if the flock is accurate, we have 16 flock cameras here in Tiff County, then only Tiff County law enforcement should have access to view those cameras.
But the problem is somebody in fricking Texas can pull up those cameras because and they have been caught doing this.
They were they were tracking a license plate of a particular vehicle that they claimed was for.
I don't know, maybe the vehicle was stolen or whatever.
But what it actually turned out to be was they were tracking a woman across state lines because she was a native Texan, but she was going to another state to get an abortion.
That's the kind of scary [bleep] that that I don't like.
And that's the reason why I understand what you're saying.
But the problem is how much freedom are you willing to give up for safety?
Because I'm going to bastardize that quote. But, you know, that's what Benjamin Franklin basically said.
Yeah. You know, if if you give up that that freedom for security, you've basically given up everything.
And I'm not willing to do that. I mean, like like.
But so we can't have cameras. And if we can't have cameras, then then the crime may go unrecorded.
But at the same time, I can't carry a weapon to protect myself.
Well, but you can plus plus they're eating the pets of the people who live there.
So look, I'm not I'm not against surveillance.
And I think that's where a lot of people are getting confused.
I'm not against surveillance.
We've as someone inaccurately pointed out in the Facebook group, big cities have had surveillance cameras for for decades.
I'm not against that.
That's not what we're talking about here.
You know, Flock safety cameras aren't just surveillance cameras.
They're license plate trackers that store all this stuff in a database that is searchable by every person who has access to the Flock data systems.
That's the issue.
And the fact that they're unfortunately using some form of artificial intelligence, that is dumb.
That's my concern.
Surveillance is not an issue.
Look at Great Britain. I mean, they've got, what, three or four cameras on every freaking corner, but they're not Flock.
They've had surveillance for decades.
Yeah. And they figured out how to use it.
Yeah. So, again, I'm not against surveillance. I'm just against the way Flock is doing it.
No, I'm not against the way Flock is doing it. I'm against the way the police are able to use it.
But that's incumbent on Flock to be able to put in safeguards to prevent that.
So if they just go to a different surveillance camera company that isn't Flock and they have access to the same kind of data?
Well, they shouldn't.
Is that better because it's not Flock?
No.
No, it's the same people using it.
No company should be able, you know, I don't care if it's Flock or, you know, Joe's license plate reading company.
None of them should should provide the ability for cross state searching because this this is exactly what they're touting it to be.
This is search without a warrant because you're identifying data is being stored.
Flop can sit there all day long and say, we don't do this and we don't do that.
They're lying through their damn teeth.
They've been caught and they know it, but they're they're pulling for somebody else's playbook that if you say a lie long enough,
people will start believing it. All I want is, I'm not saying flock should go away necessarily.
They need to implement some controls. Any other company that's doing this type of surveillance
needs to implement controls and better auditing systems. I mean, legitimately, even at the police
level, you know, if an officer goes to do a search, he needs to get a sign off from a higher
up and then if we find that doesn't work then we have to figure out a way because ultimately
you know as well as i do that it's it's not necessarily the technology it's what people
do with it and as we've already discussed people are [bleep] it's it's nuclear power it is it is so
So, and something, a funny thing that I saw from, is it Dave, Dave Weiner, Dave?
Anyway, he's the guy who actually wrote the task manager application for Windows back in the day.
Yeah, I know that guy.
Dave's Garage, which I think is on YouTube.
I just see him on X.
Yeah.
Did you see the thing he posted about the fact that every flat camera has two gigs of LDDR3 memory in it?
No.
His point was, that's where you can get some memory.
It's DDR3.
Yeah.
We still have systems that use DDR3.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm not saying it's great, but anyway.
So, you know, we'll throw it out to everybody out there.
You know, if you want to weigh in, you can call us at 229-520-5957 or text 229-520-5957
or shoot an email, morningdrip at wrto.fm.
Tell us what you think about Flock Cameras.
And again, you know, my problem is the fact that we've got a lot of people that don't
understand.
They just, they think Flock Cameras are just basic surveillance and they're not.
They don't really know the ins and outs, which is the reason why I wanted to bring this up during the show and play this segment from Philip, because he covered it, I think, in a well-rounded format that exposes what the issues are.
Not the fact that it's surveillance, but what's being done with it and what can be done with it.
That's all.
So, you know what?
I think it's time to take one more break.
We're probably going to have to wheedle down and cover one more story when we when we come back.
So, yeah, let's get let's get to a break.
We'll be right back.
Your coffee is weak.
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Join the revolution of the caffeine addicted.
The morning drip.
Every morning on wrto.fl.
It's not just a show, it's your daily jolt of reality.
Warning, make all sudden outbursts of free thought.
Hey everybody, welcome back to The Morning Drip
for Tuesday, the 11th of August, 2026.
You got me, Grady D, and Mike B in the house.
Hey, I just saw your thing about the taxes.
The first of the month, each fiscal year, FYI 2026, year to date, 2.492 billion, 2027, 2.57 billion, Delta, 78.1 million increase.
So, yeah, it's probably a typo.
They were literally talking about 2026.
Yeah, it looks like the numbers match for 26, not 25.
I was just curious if they were comparing, if they brought up 2025's numbers to show an increase, where maybe after 26, it was actually a decrease this year.
Yeah.
So I wanted to make sure they weren't hiding anything.
Like, oh, we saw a 37% increase, but not since last year.
Right, right.
And, you know, typos, they happen.
They happen.
All right, 229-520-5957.
Again, that is the call-in number.
We're still active right now for the lines, but you can text 24-7-365-229-520-5957
or shoot us an email, morningdrip at wrto.fm.
After the broadcast, if you do call that number, you can leave a voicemail.
Just be warned, we will use it if it fits into the program.
So be careful what you say.
All right, one last story.
Americans are losing many of the places where people are gathered outside of home and work.
These places are often called third places, which include movie theaters, bowling alleys,
coffee shops, libraries, bars, recreational centers, rising operating costs, higher prices
for customers, the lingering effects of the Great Recession and the pandemic, online shopping,
changing urban development.
These have all contributed to widespread closures.
I mean, we haven't had a movie theater here in Tiff County, what, 10 years now?
I forget when it got closed down.
But it's been in the last five to 10 years it was closed down.
It's been several years.
Yeah.
The one over in Ben Hill County, they haven't had one for decades.
So, you know, it's kind of sad.
I think the best place, what, Valdosta, maybe Albany,
We're about the closest places to go to actually watch a movie now.
Not that I go to movie theaters, but...
I just go to the living room.
Yeah, me too.
I go to my bedroom.
The remaining values have also become more expensive,
making it harder for many people to regularly socialize in person.
And researchers say the decline of these gathering places has serious health consequences.
Chronic loneliness and social isolation have been linked to a significantly higher risk of premature death.
Some studies comparing the health risk to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Surveys also show most Americans now spend time with friends or acquaintances in person
only a couple of times a month, while participation in clubs and community organizations continues
to decline.
Experts argue that everyday interactions with neighbors and co-workers and even strangers
play an important role in maintaining both physical and mental well-being, and some people
are finding lower cost ways to connect through outdoor activities, skating, dancing, other
interactive events.
Researchers do say that communities still need affordable public gathering places or
spaces where people can build relationships naturally.
They warn that when neighborhoods lose these informal meeting places, they lose more than
businesses.
They lose opportunities for connection, community, and hope, and consequences that extend well
beyond individual health to the broader economy and quality of life.
Um, I've never been much to go to bars anyway. Even in my younger days, I think I only, I used to go to a place down in White Cross called Christopher's Classic. And yes, I was not old enough to get in. I was 19, but my, my fake ID said I was 24, I think.
So I guess I looked the part. I mean, I could grow a beard at 19, so nobody ever really questioned it, but.
If you kept it, you'd be closer to retirement.
No, I know, right?
I know.
But yeah, I never really did go to places like that.
And, you know, the last time I've been to a movie theater was 2002 or three, somewhere in there.
Honestly, I can't remember.
It's been that long ago.
Yeah, I don't know the last movie I saw.
I dropped my daughter off when she was in middle school, I guess, to go watch a movie with a boy.
And that's the last time I've even walked up to that door.
But I remember I was going to, I got there early to pick him up, to pick her up.
And so I had a few minutes and I was like, I have to sit here and I'll just get a bag of popcorn and wait.
That popcorn was $8.
And that was whenever the place was open.
So like the dollar was a little bit more valuable back then.
But yeah, it wasn't even that good.
You could take that $8 and go buy Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn from the grocery store.
Two boxes.
Yeah.
I mean, even to this day.
And the way we go through popcorn is I think I bought one box last year.
And I think I finished it this year somewhere along the line.
I mean, yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong.
I love popcorn.
What I don't love is that the tiny little husks still get into my, in between my teeth
and my gums.
Everywhere.
Yeah.
And before I realize it, I start wondering why I've got a particular area in my gum that
is really sore.
And then I go in there with a dental pick and I pull that out and it's like this just
enormous release of endorphins that happen.
It's like, oh my God, that's like orgasmic.
I just got this thing out of my gum.
So, but yeah, you know, and a lot of this, a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that we went into lockdown during COVID and that cut off a lot of people being able to, I mean, when they talk about third spaces or third places, because it seems that they interchange those terminologies.
You know, the first place is your home. The second place is your job. And your third place or space is usually, like they say, you go to a bowling alley, you go to a movie, you go to a bar, you socialize with friends and things like that.
And COVID didn't necessarily kill that because we were we were already starting to see a trend before COVID hit of where people were backing off.
And I don't know if it had to do with cost or if it was just changing attitudes or what have you, but COVID didn't help, you know.
Yeah.
No, it didn't.
But I think it's been on a decline since probably the 60s, 70s.
Yeah, I was talking.
go ahead because you know in the 80s i just had to be home before dark yeah and and then and you
know in the 90s and 2000s um kids weren't allowed to go outside that much because uh the kidnappings
and uh crime and and whatnot and so they they were they were kept inside plus at the same time we got
video games so we just we didn't we didn't grow up going out to to a place to see friends we just
saw friends at school um and my neighbor who didn't even go to the same school but he was there during
the summers we hung out other than that that was it yeah um so we've kind of technology has allowed
us to to be together physically much less often but um i don't know we just and it's probably
produced some introverts oh i'm sure i'm sure and you know you can connect this to work work from
home as well because even after we came out of covid a lot of a lot of companies and especially
employees realized that they could save a [bleep] ton of money by switching their insurance to
Geico. No, they could save a lot of money by not having to go into the office. And then,
of course, we started this whole hybrid, well, you need to come in a couple of days and blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, there is a separate study that can be connected to this,
I think, you know, a little bit is the fact that due to the work from home, depression is on the
rise because it's not the same necessarily. You know, you and I are talking over discord.
You've been in here when we were doing the tech show and we would actually record in person and
that kind of stuff. But, you know, a lot of people never leave their apartment or never leave
their house, but they communicate with their coworkers all day via Slack or Zoom calls and
things like that. But because that physicality is not there, that has a tendency as they're
discovering to increase depression. And I was actually talking to a friend slash client of mine
the other day who's retired. And I made the comment that, see, what is it that I told him?
I said. I'm a homebody. I like to stay home, but even I recognize that from time to time I need to get out and talk to somebody face to face.
And he looked at me and he's like, I'm right there with you. I'm right there with you.
So. Like later today, later this morning, I'm going to talk face to face to somebody at the liquor store, not for me, for my wife, she finally said, hey, I'm out of tequila.
And I'm like, well, okay, I guess I'll go take out a small loan.
I mean, I buy, I buy half gallons because it's more economical.
You take down a flock camera and get the memory and go trade it for liquor.
I don't think he cares about that memory.
It's like, I walk up like, you know, in the trench coat and I was like, hey,
you in need of some memory?
Pull it out and I've got just, you know, ram sticks all up and down.
I'm a walking multi-million dollar trench coat.
I need to do that.
Just like a Halloween costume.
Yeah.
Only nerds would get it.
I don't hang out with anybody else.
Well, I mean, that's true.
I mean, we...
And it would just be pictures I put online because I'm not going anywhere.
It's like, here's my costume.
Yeah.
There's no Halloween party.
We don't do that.
But yeah.
We don't either.
We don't even give out candy.
I mean, we actually put a, every year my wife prints out this picture of a little devil
with a candy bucket and it says, we don't have any candy.
Go away or something like that.
I don't have to worry about it.
Nobody comes out to this neighborhood.
When we first moved here, the first couple of years, and what was irritating is they
would come out here in minivans and there would be like 15 kids just pile out of the damn minivan
and run around the neighborhood and some of them didn't even have on costumes yep you know i'm like
if you're gonna if you're gonna go trick-or-treat wear a damn costume yeah don't dress up like a
[bleep] exactly put some effort into it put some effort into it man you can't go to
You can't be a lazy [bleep] for Halloween.
Exactly.
All right.
Well, that's going to wrap up today's broadcast of The Morning Drip right here on wrto.fm.
Again, phone lines are now closed, but that number is 229-520-5957.
You can call and leave a voicemail or you can text it 24-7-229-520-5957.
Or you can shoot us an email.
The email address is morningjeff at wrto.fm.
We should be back tomorrow morning around 7.30.
Again, we try to do this show Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday around 7.30 a.m.
And I say around because you know what?
It's my damn station.
I can start it whenever I want to.
As long as Mike over there doesn't beat me over the head and said, let's go.
We're in the Eastern time zone, by the way.
Yeah, we are.
We're Eastern.
We primarily focus because the radio station is broadcasting from the Tifton Media Works studios in Tifton, Georgia.
But, you know, we are a South Georgia radio station, but you can listen to us worldwide.
I hope you do.
If you missed the live broadcast, don't worry.
Go to MorningDrip.show or TiftonMediaWorks.com.
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Anyway, I want to thank everybody for joining us.
If you joined us live, if not, grab the podcast and we'll see you in the morning, hopefully
around 7.30 a.m. for another edition of The Morning Drip.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.