“I'd like to bring people back towards solutionism because, you know, I don't want surveillance at all, but we don't live in Benjordistan. We live in a democracy. And a lot of people are okay with it to some degree.”
Decoder with Nilay Patel · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Jordan, who has spent the past year exposing security holes in Flock's license-plate cameras, says compromises like open, unchangeable audit logs and a DMV opt-out could have been made cheaply a year ago. Now trust is gone and some people are destroying cameras, and he wants to steer critics back toward fixes.
Transcript
…ethical, and legal matter, but we're nowhere close to that. And it just feels like all that is pouring fire on the conspiracy theories in a way that you're in the center of the storm here. I'm wondering if you can find a rational set of policy outcomes here that tamps down on those flames. My
so, like a year ago, or a little over a year ago, when my first video on Flock came out, if the company's response and the government's response to it was, okay, audit logs are now going to be open and they're going to exist
…down, your kids are going to go missing. Like just that, that type of thing. Now, how can you fix this? Like now, people are just destroying cameras, right? And now people are just threatening executives of these companies because that's what they do when they get taken this far out. And so that's my big problem now: I'm trying, like, really, if I have any goal in this or any dog in this fight, I'd like to bring people back towards solutionism because, you know, I don't want surveillance at all, but we don't live in Benjordistan. We live in a democracy. And a lot of people are okay with it to some degree. Most people are not okay with it from polling I've done. Most people are not okay. With it, if it doesn't involve a warrant. But yeah, I think that somewhere, somewhere along there, there's a solution where nobody's happy, but everybody's content. And I'd like, if I could do anything right now, it would be bringing people back towards a path where a solution can be found.
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