It seems that Flock cameras have sparked another debate that feels a whole lot like the fight over data centers. And while Flock cameras are not currently equivalent to China’s social credit score apparatus, the infrastructure could very well help create one here in the U.S.

Because a government cannot build a comprehensive behavioral-control system without first building the ability to identify, track, connect, and retrieve information about ordinary citizens. Flock supplies part of that capability via large-scale, searchable vehicle-location data.

According to Flock, it does not, nor has it ever, used facial recognition technology. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t in the future — that could literally be one update away. And this surveillance is always on, y’all. It's recording everyone, not just "suspects." The database is created first; investigative relevance is determined later.

Flock is essentially a surveillance infrastructure layer. It doesn’t assign citizens a behavioral score or automatically punish them. But it creates another searchable data point about our movements that could eventually be connected with other data. Our phones already collect an enormous amount of information about where we go and what we do. Flock adds another dot to the board if someone in power ever decides to connect those dots.

And that's where my concern about China's social credit system coming to America kicks in. Not because Flock is that system........

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