FLOCK Cameras. Good for law enforcement, bad for individual civil liberties.
The allure of Flock Cameras and the reason for their widespread adoption is that they are legitimately useful for solving crime. For example, missing persons, fleeing suspects, and warrants. However the widespread adoption across the country, and the network of data that is being compiled is the problem.
I’m going to lay out four reasons why FLOCK cameras are a battle worth fighting and why they are a step in the wrong direction.
1. Peter Thiel, founder of Palantir. Despite online rumors, Peter Thiel does not own Flock Cameras, and Palantir does not have a data sharing agreement with them. His firm, The Founders Fund, invested in FLOCK along with several other firms in 2018, and again 2025. Peter Thiel just relocated his family to Argentina, seemingly to escape the AI surveillance state he helped create with systems like Palantir and FLOCK. If the man behind the machine is escaping with his family to a different country, why should our families be subjected to that same technology and surveillance
Peter Thiel moved to Buenos Aires.
— Jack’s World 🌎 (@itsjacksworld) May 29, 2026
He already holds a backup passport in New Zealand and applied for another in Malta. A man who could set up a Plan B anywhere on earth.
He chose Argentina. He pulled his kids out of the US and enrolled them in a local school.
Far from the… pic.twitter.com/HQPZk9UmKK
2. Lessons from California. I spent the first 41 years of my life living in California. I moved my family to Wyoming because I firmly believe in the principles that exist in Wyoming; freedom, individual civil liberties, and self-reliance. After having watched what happened in California I can tell you with conviction that issues like FLOCK are worth taking a stand on. When incursions happen against your civil liberties, they don’t come in big moves. They come in small moves that are always justified as being for the “greater good.” Looking back a decade or two later, you scratch your head and wonder, “What the hell happened?” That’s how you end up with background checks for ammunition purchases as they do in California. This is called, “death by a thousand cuts,” and the frog in boiling water analogy is accurate. In California I saw this primarily around gun rights, taxes, and voting, although it permeated pretty much every aspect of life in California.
3. 23 and Me. If we look at what happened with the genetic testing company, one can draw a parallel between FLOCK and 23 and Me to understand the risk. Founded in 2006, by 2025 the company had over 15 million worldwide customers which equates to a massive dataset. That dataset was breached in 2023 when the personal information of 6.9 million users was exposed. The company subsequently filed bankruptcy, restructured and offloaded the dataset to a third party non-profit. It is impossible to anticipate what is going to happen with all that data 10 or 20 years down the road. We should be concerned.
https://www.hipaajournal.com/6-9-million-23andme-users-affected-by-data-breach
4. Local Control is good. I have had very limited touch points with the system as it is owned by the Town of Jackson and operated by their Police Department. In the interactions I have had with it, I haven’t seen any red flags or any activity that would raise people’s concerns. They operate it with tight control. The concerns with the system are about the broader network and the use of the data by folks other than the local agency.
In 2025 the Wyoming State Legislature addressed the issue of sanctuary cities by creating legislation banning officials from enacting policies to create them. The state legislature should step up and take the lead on the issue of mass surveillance.
Creating new legislation to address the issue of mass surveillance is the path forward and would make Wyoming a leader on this issue.
-Eric Snow for Teton County Sheriff, WY
