Billionaire John Paulson said he would work with Elon Musk to cut federal spending, particularly by reducing green energy subsidies, if appointed Treasury Secretary under Trump’s administration.
Paulson shared these comments during a Tuesday interview with The Wall Street Journal. “All of these tax subsidies for solar, for wind, inefficient, uneconomic energy sources. Eliminate that. That brings down spending,” he told the media outlet.
He specifically mentioned targeting green energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, which he referred to as the “Green New Deal.”
A staunch Trump ally and major donor to his 2016, 2020, and 2024 campaigns, Paulson is also a trustee of the conservative Manhattan Institute, chaired by fellow Wall Street executive Paul Singer. Trump has named Paulson a possible Treasury Secretary if he wins the 2024 election.
Paulson’s stance mirrors Musk’s, who claimed he could slash at least $2 trillion from the federal budget.
“Your money is being wasted,” Musk said at a Trump rally on Oct. 27 at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook.”
The $2 trillion target amounts to nearly a third of current spending, with the federal government spending $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024, according to the Treasury Department.
Trump mentioned that he asked Musk to lead the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aimed at auditing U.S. federal agencies. Musk replied on X, saying, “I can’t wait. There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go.”
Neither Trump nor Musk has provided details on the specific programs they would cut.
Musk, like Paulson, is a prominent Trump supporter, campaigning with him, donating nearly $120 million to a pro-Trump super PAC, and pledging $1 million to voters who support free speech and gun rights. On Monday, Philadelphia’s district attorney asked a state judge to block Musk’s $1 million giveaway, calling it an “illegal lottery scheme.”
The Treasury Secretary manages federal finances and tax laws, often engaging with Wall Street, business leaders, and foreign dignitaries.
Paulson is among several candidates being considered for the role, alongside Scott Bessent, founder of Key Square Group and a Trump ally on Wall Street, former trade ambassador Robert Lighthizer, and former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton.
Paulson said that if nominated, he would not anticipate pushback from the Senate.
“I have good relationships with senators on both sides of the aisle. The review process is a rigorous process. That’s a hurdle that would have to be crossed before we get to the Senate. I think once we cross that review process, I wouldn’t expect opposition.” he told The Wall Street Journal.
The economy stands as the top issue for voters in the 2024 presidential election. A Gallup poll found it is the only topic over 50 percent of registered voters rated as “extremely important” in shaping their decision.
With less than one week until Election Day, polls report a close race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in seven key battleground states, with Trump holding a slight national lead, according to RealClearPolitics.
A key benefit of investing in dividend-paying companies is that dividends typically grow steadily, with well-established firms often increasing payouts annually.
Dividend Kings are companies that have increased their dividends annually for more than 50 years.
Dividend Royalty
Altria Group offers the highest dividend yield at 8.18%. Formerly known as Philip Morris, the American corporation is one of the world’s largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and medical products for treating smoking-related illnesses.
Altria is followed by Universal, another tobacco company. The leading global supplier of leaf tobacco offers a dividend yield of 6.5%.
Northwest Natural Holding ranks third in our list. The company provides natural gas service to approximately two million people in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
Genuine Parts and Northwest Natural have the longest dividend-raising streaks on our list, both at 68 years.
Learn More on the Voronoi App
To learn more about personal finances, check out this graphic on the cost of the American dream in 2024.
Nearly half (48 percent) of Generation Z voters and 23 percent of U.S. voters overall have lied about their voting preferences this year to people close to them, according to a recent Axios Vibes survey conducted by The Harris Poll.
The poll, which surveyed 1,858 registered voters online between Oct. 22 and 24, found that 58 percent of overall voters say their preferences are a private matter, with 33 percent saying they aren’t close to certain family members due to different political beliefs. For Gen Z voters—aged between 18 and 27—that number is 44 percent, and for Millennials (aged 28–43), that number is 47 percent.
The survey found that those who came of age during the Trump era are seemingly more sensitive to perceived social pressure and judgment from friends or family.
“There’s a new privacy emerging here, where it’s far more convenient to either lie or not talk about it,” said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll. “The new social etiquette is to be like Switzerland: Why do you want that heat?”
Among Generation X voters, those born between 1965 and 1980, 17 percent said they had lied to someone close about who they were voting for this year, while 6 percent of those born before 1965 said the same. Another 22 percent of overall voters said they would potentially lie about their voting preferences this year.
Across the political spectrum, 27 percent of Democrats, 24 percent of Republicans, and 20 percent of independent voters said they’ve lied about who they are voting for.
The survey did not ask respondents why they had lied or to whom they had lied.
Gerzema said the toxicity of political polarization has pushed many Americans into self-censoring or lying about voter preferences to maintain social, familial, and workplace relationships. Those raised on smartphones tend to be more averse to social or workplace confrontations over politics and may lie about who they’re voting for to avoid an awkward altercation, Gerzema said.
The Axios Vibes survey also found that 30 percent of men had said they lied about who they voted for compared to 17 percent of women, suggesting that some could be silent supporters of either Trump or Harris amid social pressure to vote for either candidate.
The survey found 40 percent of voters said they’re waiting until election day to vote, in case there is a change in the final week, with 8 percent saying it would be a “gut decision” at the voting booth.
The economy remains the key concern among voters when choosing a candidate, according to a Gallup poll released on Oct. 9. It shows that 52 percent of voters, surveyed in the last two weeks of September, said that the economy was “extremely important” when determining their choice for president, while another 38 percent saw it as “very important.”
“No Signs Of A Turnaround”: Alumina Prices Near Record As Global Supply Chain Snarls Mount
A squeezed global aluminum supply chain has sent the price of the metal’s critical ingredient, alumina, to the brink of a new record high on Wednseday of $707.59 a ton, nearly eclipsing the 2018 high of $707.75.
Since the mid-point of the year, supply chain snarls and production disruptions in major alumina-exporting countries have sparked shortages. Countries critical to the aluminum supply chain include Guinea, Australia and China.
Mounting supply chain woes from the West African country of Guinea, a top source of seaborne-traded bauxite that supplies over 70% of China’s imports, come amid continued trade disputes with local government customs officials.
Meanwhile, Australia, another large producer of bauxite and alumina, has seen exports move lower on climate change policies and sliding natural gas supplies.
“There are no signs of a turnaround in spot alumina prices within this year,” Gao Yin, an analyst with consultant Horizon Insights, said who was quoted by Bloomberg, adding that aluminum inventories at Chinese smelters have been declining, but “the market hasn’t considered output cuts as a base-case scenario yet.”
Data from Fastmarkets shows alumina prices are back to near-record highs of around $707 a ton.
Earlier this week, UBS Dominic Schnider told clients that increasing supply chain concerns surrounding “bauxite and alumina” and another round of Chinese stimulus “have provided underlying support for higher aluminum prices.”
Schnider said, “Supply challenges on the bauxite and alumina side (site closure, force majeure, and export blockages) from Australia to Guinea are likely to be a key issue into the year-end.”
Morgan Stanley recently told clients that stresses were materializing in the global aluminum supply chain, with China facing challenges in alumina and bauxite supply.
Just imagine what happens to aluminum markets if and when China fires the mega bazooka stimulus package…
The European Union has warned its “citizens” (the slave class) to prepare for a nuclear disaster. A report on the matter further warned that households under rulership should also be prepared for cyberattacks and the use of chemical weapons.
A report published on Wednesday by former Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, says that EU citizens should start stockpiling three days’ worth of goods in order to be ready for various potential disasters, including a nuclear conflict. The initiative is part of the EU’s push to make the bloc more resilient in the face of supposedly mounting threats, ranging from natural disasters to a major military conflict, according to a report by RT.
The report encourages EU households to stockpile “basic self-sufficiency” goods that would last for at least 72 hours for fear of potential shortages in case of “armed aggression through conventional means” or other hostile activities such as “cyberattacks or the use of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.”
Warnings of a nuclear war or disaster have been circulating for years, and so far, nothing has come of it other than fear. This seems like it may just be a way to panic the slave class and inject more fear into an already scared public.
“One click can switch off power grids and plunge whole cities into the dark,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the presentation of the report.
The report also calls for long-term financial and military support for Ukraine.
“Member States should strengthen their cooperation on European defense, jointly investing more to close long-standing gaps in our military and defense industrial readiness,” Niinisto said.
It also blames Russia for the warning issued by the bloc.
“Given the increasing use of sabotage by hostile third countries, notably Russia, it is an area where internal security and military security are very much interlinked,” the report noted.
Niinisto also urged to “strengthen EU intelligence structures step-by-step towards a fully-fledged EU service for intelligence cooperation.”
This means the ruling class seeks full obedience and compliance with its demands.
China Urges Automakers To Stop Investment In EU Countries Amidst Trade War
As we have reported over the last year, EU authorities have been doing everything in their power to stifle EV production based in China, fearing that the lower cost models coming from the east are warping the European market and putting domestic producers at a disadvantage.
Now as part of its ongoing jousting with European regulators, China is now telling its automakers to pause investment in EU countries.
China has instructed its automakers to halt major investments in European countries supporting higher tariffs on Chinese-made EVs, according to Reuters. This follows the EU’s new tariffs of up to 45.3%, implemented after a year-long inquiry that split the bloc and provoked Beijing’s response.
During an Oct. 10 meeting held by China’s Ministry of Commerce, automakers like BYD, SAIC, and Geely were advised to pause large investments in countries backing the tariffs. Foreign carmakers attending the meeting were also encouraged to invest in EU nations that opposed the tariff plan, while exercising caution in those that abstained.
SVOLT, linked to Great Wall Motor, will close its German subsidiaries and lay off staff, according to a source.
Poor EV sales and financial pressures have driven Chinese battery maker SVOLT to shut all of its European operations, including its Frankfurt office, according to the same report.
The Reuters report says that the move suggests “the government is seeking leverage in talks with the EU over an alternative to tariffs”.
Which makes sense because hours before this news broke it was reported that the European Union was sending officials to Beijing for further talks to explore alternatives to tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
Reaching a deal to replace the new tariffs remains complex, with plans still in development but the two sides are examining a “price undertakings” agreement to regulate export prices and volumes as an alternative to tariffs.
Bloomberg writes that after eight rounds of talks, the proposals on the table still fall short of EU standards, including WTO compliance and enforceability requirements.
Negotiators have recently made progress, considering ways to simplify terms for potential price undertakings, particularly for new EV models not yet exported. One focus is preventing cross-compensation, where EV pricing deals might be offset by sales of hybrids or other goods.
However, another challenge is China’s insistence on a single umbrella deal for all manufacturers, managed by a national trade group representing key exporters, like SAIC Motor and BMW Brilliance.
Recall, we wrote just days ago that Chinese EV makers were having a bang-up end of the year regardless. China’s major EV makers ended Q3 stronger than last year, with solid deliveries reducing the need for discounts.
South Korea’s Chip Output Drops For First Time In 14 Months Amid Slowdown At Samsung
Concerns over the stability of the artificial intelligence bubble intensified this week.
Advanced Micro Devices released a disappointing earnings report on Tuesday, revealing slower-than-expected growth in AI sales. Adding to the uncertainty, Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, reported overnight about uninspiring demand for advanced chips in mobile devices and PCs.
The largest takeaway from Samsung’s third-quarter earnings report was an underwhelming performance in the company’s chip division, posting a surprise drop from the previous quarter. At the same time, overall profit was marginally higher than Wall Street estimates. Also, it saw smartphone sales slowing by the end of the year and only increasing by about 1% in 2025, despite the hype surrounding AI-enabled smartphones and other handheld devices.
In addition to company-level developments, new data from South Korea’s chip manufacturing base shows that production fell in September for the first time in 14 months—yet more troubling signs showing the AI boom cools.
Nationwide semiconductor production slid 3% in September, a sharp reversal after they gained 11% a month earlier, according to data released Thursday by the government statistical office. The growth in shipments also slowed to 0.7% from 17% in August.
Still, inventory levels showed stockpiles continue to be worked through at a rapid clip, as they declined 41.5% from a year earlier in September. The numbers paint a picture of an industry that may be cooling gradually as demand for memory chips peaks out.
South Korea’s chip production is viewed as a proxy for global chip demand because these components are used in a wide range of electronics, from smartphones to servers to automobiles. Given the hype around AI adoption from phones to computers, this week’s news from AMD, Samsung, and now South Korea’s chip base could be symptoms of a cooling bubble. Certainly not the headlines chip bulls want to see.
The United States is days away from a portentous presidential election that, however it turns out, promises to leave around half the nation believing that catastrophe has been narrowly averted and the rest believing that all is lost. Desperate hopes and apocalyptic fears suffuse the electorate. Significant swathes of the right and left – especially among the intellectual class – believe that the other side is dishonest, wicked, and bent on overthrowing democracy in America. This tendency to loathe those in the rival political camp presents an overriding threat to the nation.
To endure, a rights-protecting or liberal democracy needs citizens who regard themselves as engaged in a common enterprise. They must share a language. They must respect basic moral and political principles. They must take pride in their nation’s accomplishments while facing up to and correcting their country’s flaws by upholding the best in the nation’s traditions and heeding justice’s enduring imperatives. They must trust that as they generally follow society’s written and unwritten rules, so too will others. And they must partake of a broad commitment – that receives expression in the exercise of toleration and civility – to securing a freedom for each consistent with a like freedom for all. Otherwise, democracy will dissolve into authoritarianism as citizens lose the ability to cooperate in nurturing their communities, maintaining a prosperous economy, and protecting their equal rights.
Seeing themselves as engaged in a common enterprise can be a challenge for citizens of a rights-protecting democracy. That’s because rights and democracy encourage individuals – and the groups to which they belong – to go their own ways. Endowed with differing abilities and dispositions, free citizens develop distinctive interests, hold a diversity of opinions, and pursue happiness in their own manner.
To preserve unity within this diversity, rights-protecting democracies must educate citizens about their common enterprise. That common enterprise consists in large measure, citizens must learn, in maintaining a political order that enables individuals and families – and the associations they form – to disagree peacefully and even productively not only about ordinary public policy but also about ultimate questions concerning moral excellence and the path to salvation.
A rising challenge to America’s common enterprise stems from adamant calls to discard the Constitution. The formal crystallization of the country’s dedication to equal liberty under law, the Constitution – its premises, operations, and goals – is permanently open to discussion. But instead of arguing about the interpretation of this or that constitutional provision and rather than debating schools of constitutional jurisprudence, prominent progressive voices increasingly condemn the Constitution as a whole. To take one conspicuous example, Harvard Law School Professor Ryan D. Doerfler and Yale Law School Professor Samuel Moyn argued in the New York Times in “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed” that to save democracy we must “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Leading members of the so-called “new right” – a loose association of national conservatives and common-good conservatives – join, in effect if not intent, progressives in repudiating the Constitution. Self-styled “postliberal” conservatives identify classical liberalism as the root cause of America’s moral, political, cultural, economic, and national-security woes. But the Constitution – which seeks to secure the unalienable rights affirmed by the Declaration of Independence through limited government grounded in the consent of the governed – is steeped in classical liberalism. Consequently, the new right’s attacks on classical liberalism make common cause with progressives who wish to rid the country of the Constitution.
Against the enthusiasms for overcoming the Constitution, eminent conservatives maintain that recovery of the Constitution’s underlying political theory and its judicious design of primary political institutions can avert the crisis of democracy in America. These conservatives tend to be steeped in history and political philosophy, ancient and modern. They are disposed to support former president Donald Trump without disregarding his shortcomings. And they are well represented in “Democracy in America: a symposium,” which appears in the New Criterion’s October issue.
Embracing its responsibility as a journal of arts, letters, and the larger public interest – and as a leading publication of thoughtful conservatism – The New Criterion addresses head-on the central issues. In his introduction to the symposium, magazine editor Roger Kimball argues that democracy in America confronts a “siege” that has been gathering momentum for more than 15 years. “Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, followed by the incomprehensible victory of Donald Trump,” writes Kimball, “has radicalized and emboldened the Left.”
In its emboldened radicalism, Kimball argues, the left has combined in a single indictment the contention that Trump aims to institute despotism and the accusation that the Constitution undermines democracy and subverts the common good. The proof that our Constitution is anti-democratic and dysfunctional, progressive intellectuals contend, is that it allowed Trump to win election as president once and may do so again.
In contrast, the contributors to The New Criterion symposium maintain that a principal source of the nation’s ills is the disparagement of, and departures from, the Constitution. The contributors highlight the spirit of liberty under law that animates the Constitution and the structure of government by which it maintains freedom. Inspired by Tocqueville’s 19th-century masterpiece, “Democracy in America,” they also stress such non-governmental supports of freedom as family, faith, civic association, liberal education, and the moral and intellectual virtues.
In “Our Athenian American democracy” my Hoover Institution colleague Victor Davis Hanson argues that contrary to the Constitution’s design – and notwithstanding progressive complaints about democracy’s demise – the United States has embraced, to the detriment of freedom, a purer form of democracy. In its classical form – direct rule of the people – democracy lacked checks on majority will. Indeed, “there was never an Athenian effort to guarantee the rights of the individual against the state,” writes Hanson. “That idea only arrived in the Middle Ages, when it was embodied in Magna Carta, and it later figured prominently in the European Enlightenment and the foundation of the American Republic.” While members of America’s founding generation quarreled vociferously about proper constitutional limits, they were all but unanimous in believing that formal constraints on legislation, executive action, and judicial authority were crucial to the protection of individual rights. Hence, argues Hanson, “the greatest threat to the republican system of the United States may well be the efforts of Washington bureaucrats and agencies to destroy some 236 years of constitutional checks and balances and the political customs that have evolved along with them.”
In “Tocqueville vs. progressive democracy” Daniel Mahoney, professor emeritus at Assumption University, agrees with Hanson that progressive conceptions of democracy subvert the basic rights and fundamental freedoms on which the American experiment in ordered liberty rests. That’s in part, argues Mahoney, because progressive conceptions of democracy incorporate highly partisan positions that erode the habits of heart and mind necessary for self-government. These include antipathy to tradition, particularly traditional views about religion and sex; preference for cosmopolitanism mixed with distaste for patriotic nationalism; and celebration of self-creation combined with disparagement of self-restraint, honor, and duty.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow James Piereson contends in “The Washington octopus” that the current strife between the people and the elites in American reflects the old “conflict between ‘country’ and ‘court’ parties” that marked 18th-century politics in Britain and America. Like the court party, contemporary progressives endeavor to direct citizens’ lives from the capital city. Like the country party, many on the right today want to preserve, consistent with basic rights and fundamental freedoms, local control over local affairs. Reformers, argues Piereson, must reverse the concentration of power in Washington built up over decades owing to FDR’s New Deal, post-World War II national-security demands, and LBJ’s Great Society. For starters, he proposes transferring elements of the federal bureaucracy out of Washington – relocating, say, the Department of the Interior to “Montana, Idaho, Utah, or the Dakotas” and the FBI or the Department of Education to “Kansas City, Wichita, Dallas, or any number of other cities.”
In “Tocqueville’s limitations” Claremont Institute Fellow Glenn Elmers offers a friendly corrective to the great Frenchman, who understood equality as primarily a “sociological force” fueled by a passion to level human affairs. In contrast, America’s founders viewed equality in terms of formal rights that must be institutionalized. A return to equal rights under law, argues Elmers, would limit contemporary managerial elites’ schemes to shift power from the people to federal bureaucrats in Washington. This would hinder the capital city’s imposition on the nation of versions of equity and social justice that seem to many ordinary people neither equitable nor just.
Confronting what he regards as the progressive juggernaut, Kimball concludes “that conservatism has three main choices.” The first, “outright surrender,” is dishonorable. So is the second – “the dhimmitude of the well-pressed but housebroken Right that exchanges its pampered place on the plantation for political irrelevance.” Accordingly, Kimball opts for the third – “the perhaps paradoxical option of what we might call Alinskyite conservatism, after the canny left-wing activist Saul Alinsky.” It “eschews the quietism of surrender for the activism of what Donald Trump calls ‘winning.’”
The activist option aimed at winning is preferable provided two conditions are met. Activism must revolve around the energetic defense of constitutional essentials. And winning must signify the restoration of a common enterprise to secure the liberty under law that is the enduring promise of rights-protecting democracy in America.
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.
LOS ANGELES—As police across California crack down on illegal street racing, takeovers, and sideshows, technology companies are marketing new surveillance tools to meet the demand—prompting questions about the implications for privacy rights and Fourth Amendment protections.
In the Bay Area and Los Angeles, where incidents have become increasingly brazen and violent in recent years, often drawing hundreds of attendees and overwhelming police, agencies already rely on planes, drones, and automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras as they aim to reduce the risk to first responders.
And they’ve begun to see results.
On Oct. 25 in the Bay Area, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) reported the seizure of 16 vehicles that had been involved in two separate takeovers a month prior. Officers couldn’t reach the center of the sideshow before it moved to another location, but they collected video evidence from cameras placed around the Bay Bridge. That led investigators to a list of vehicles, allowing them to request seizures orders from a judge.
Armed with these technologies, CHP officers sent to Oakland to crack down on illegal sideshows and rising violent and retail crime have seized more than 2,000 stolen vehicles since February.
And a controversial surveillance system used by police to detect gunshots and fireworks is now being remarketed as a tool to listen for the sounds of illegal street racing, takeovers and sideshows—like screeching tires—according to an Oct. 23 announcement from Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that leases surveillance systems to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the United States.
Audio detection offers an additional angle that can be integrated with existing camera networks and analytics, which Flock said in its announcement will provide a “deeper layer of insight, enabling [police] to track repeat offenders and analyze patterns linked to sideshows.”
When the cameras mounted at intersections are used in conjunction with audio detectors, the analytics system generates a report that lists vehicles, ranked by frequency, near confirmed shootings, fireworks, sideshows or takeovers, according to the company.
The selling point is that the AI-powered system identifies patterns nearly instantly that would typically take hours or days for humans.
The newly reconfigured technology raises old questions about the balance between privacy and public safety, which civil rights groups have already been litigating—in the courts and in the public sphere—for years.
For critics, the deployment of such technologies is part of a long march, a stealth encroachment on constitutional rights that has accelerated in the years since 9/11.
“Some of these are mass surveillance technologies that shouldn’t be permitted to operate in a democratic society,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Epoch Times. “We don’t watch everybody all the time, just in case somebody does something wrong somewhere.”
Technologies like Flock’s cameras and audio detection devices, mounted at public intersections throughout the country in an increasingly dense network, raise questions about the “boundary between what can be done in today’s technology and what should be done,” Stanley said.
According to a February 2020 report by the state auditor, nearly all of California’s law enforcement agencies already use surveillance cameras that automatically read and report license plate data along with other details of the vehicle, time, and location.
These typically use infrared cameras to read license numbers and feed them into databases, but some cameras, like Flock’s, can capture more than license plates—things like car color and make, as well as small identifying details.
According to Flock’s website, police departments in New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Louisiana are among those already using the company’s Raven system for gunshot detection, which the company claims is 90 percent accurate in identifying gunshots.
Accuracy Claims
Various reports have called such claims into question—including a May annual review by the City of San Jose, which initially found around half of alerts were confirmed to be gunshots, with around a third being false positives. After some adjustments to the system, the confirmed number went up to nearly 80 percent.
Critics argue the tendency of acoustic gunshot detection toward false positives can put people at risk, for example by sending police to a location expecting gunfire where there are innocent people. Such technologies can also record human voices, which law enforcement agencies have used in court.
“As is so often the case with police surveillance technologies, a device initially deployed for one purpose (here, to detect gunshots) has been expanded to another purpose (to spy on conversations with sensitive microphones),” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on the intersection of civil rights and digital technology.
Some cities have canceled contracts with Flock or similar providers after analysis revealed disappointing results.
A 2021 investigation of Flock competitor ShotSpotter found the acoustic gunshot detection system generated more than 40,000 dead-end deployments in Chicago in less than two years, with the vast majority of alerts turning up no evidence of gunfire or related crime.
The Champaign Police Department in Illinois last year opted not to renew its contract with Flock after results fell short of marketing claims. Data obtained by local journalists showed 59 out of 64 alerts were “unfounded,” with 21 of those likely caused by fireworks.
“To date, the system has not yet lived up to performance expectations, including misidentifying some sounds—such as fireworks or a vehicle backfire—as possible gunfire,” a police official told CU Citizen Access.
Flock did not offer an estimate of accuracy in its announcement of the Raven systems repurposed to listen for vehicular chaos, nor did it respond to an inquiry about how many communities use Raven to detect the sounds of street takeovers. But other media have reported at least two Bay Area law enforcement agencies are already using it.
Cameras that read license plates and microphones that listen for gunshots have been around for decades, but in recent years, California municipalities have expanded their surveillance networks—and rapidly developing AI-powered technology is adding an unprecedented accelerant.
On Oct. 22, the San Diego Sheriff’s Department announced plans to install 60 additional cameras in unincorporated areas, adding to five cities that have already used them with “significant investigative success,” including solving homicides, kidnappings, vehicle theft, burglaries, and assaults.
Nodding to privacy and data security concerns, the Department said it has implemented “strict protocols,” including adherence to Senate Bill 34, state legislation from 2015 that regulates how data is used, stored, and shared, and requires regular audits to ensure compliance. San Diego keeps ALPR data for a maximum of one year unless it is being used in ongoing investigations.
Earlier this year, San Francisco installed 400 ALPR cameras, and Oakland, in partnership with the California Highway Patrol, installed 480 Flock cameras that read license plates and other identifying details.
“When we’re talking about car break-ins and car theft … when we’re talking about sideshows and some of the other issues that have happened in our city, automatic license plate readers can play an invaluable role in helping us to track some of the perpetrators of these crimes and hold them accountable,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at the time.
In some California cities, police can now also access private security camera networks if neighbors grant them permission.
For example, Sacramento currently has 809 cameras registered in a program that allows people to register their cameras with the police department, which lets investigators know where the camera is and request video evidence in case of an incident. Businesses and residents can also choose to “integrate” their cameras, giving the police department direct, live access to the feed.
And “real-time crime centers” in major cities across the United States already combine these modalities. Last month, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department opened its first center in Agoura Hills, and LAPD plans to open multiple in the coming months.
These centers can tap into license plate readers and existing cameras at intersections, as well as footage from private cameras if businesses or residents allow it.
Citing low staffing levels and rising crime—including 50 car burglaries across the course of a single weekend in one L.A. City Council District—an LAPD report to the Board of Police Commissioners cited “an acute need to explore new measures, like the use of technology, to mitigate these impacts and improve the department’s response to crime.”
Privacy Regulations
In an April memo, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said the “crime-fighting cameras” installed at Oakland intersections would protect privacy by limiting data storage to 28 days and not disclosing footage to third parties beyond other law enforcement agencies, while complying with recent bulletins from the California Attorney General’s office outlining state law that governs data collection, storage and use, including SB 34.
Police can use ALPRs to match license plates with those on a “hot list” of known offenders. But even if they don’t match, the data is still stored in a database, prompting questions about how it is protected and used.
The ACLU raised this issue in a 2013 report titled “You Are Being Tracked,” noting that the readers “would pose few civil liberties risks if they only checked plates against hot lists and these hot lists were implemented soundly.” But the networked systems store the compiled data, not just license plates of vehicles that generate hits.
The “enormous databases” of motorists’ location information that are created as a result, and often pooled among regional systems, are often retained permanently and shared with little to no restriction, the report argued.
The 2020 state auditor report found that while most California law enforcement agencies use the technology, “few have appropriate usage and privacy policies in place.”
The report looked at four agencies—the Fresno and Los Angeles police departments, and the Sacramento and Marin County sheriff’s offices. All of them accumulated a large number of images in their ALPR systems, but most of those did not relate to criminal investigations.
For example, 99.9 percent of the 320 million images Los Angeles stored at the time were for vehicles that were not on a hot list when the photo was taken.
And according to a Sacramento grand jury investigation, a vast ALPR system deployed by the county’s sheriffs department and city’s police departments couldn’t distinguish between cars used for criminal activities and those operated legally.
“And we subsequently learned that both the Sheriff’s Office and Sacramento Police Department have been lax in following state law regarding how ALPR data is shared with other law enforcement entities,” the report said.
In fact, the investigation found that those departments regularly shared license plate data out of state, which is prohibited by SB 34.
In an emailed statement, the California attorney general’s office told The Epoch Times such technological tools “are helpful in deterring and investigating crime, serving both to prevent wrongdoing and ensure accountability for those who violate the law,” but that they must be used with “the utmost respect for ethical and legal standards.”
The attorney general’s office said that recently it has been working with local agencies “to ensure that they are using ALPR systems for their intended use.”
4th Amendment Concerns
A federal lawsuit filed Oct. 21 against the use of Flock’s surveillance network in Norfolk, Virginia, alleges the city is violating Fourth Amendment rights by tracking “the whole of a person’s public movements,” thus amounting to a search.
The City of Norfolk gathers information about “everyone who drives past any of its 172 cameras to facilitate investigating crimes,“ and in doing so, ”violates the long-standing societal expectation that people’s movements and associations over an extended period are their business alone,” the complaint states.
With all of this done without a warrant, the complaint continues, “This is exactly the type of ‘too permeating police surveillance’ the Fourth Amendment was adopted to prevent.”
Flock released a statement to media countering that Fourth Amendment case law shows license plate readers don’t constitute a warrantless search because they photograph cars in public, where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, and case precedent in numerous states has upheld the use of evidence from ALPRs as constitutional without requiring a warrant.
Jay Stanley, the ACLU policy analyst, noted courts are still in the relatively early stages of grappling with these technologies.
“But courts have also made a number of rulings that sweeping surveillance technology is not consistent with the Fourth Amendment. … I think that automatic license plate readers raise a lot of the same concerns that the Supreme Court addressed in some of the big privacy cases in recent years,” he said.
Among those are United States v. Jones, in which the government tracked someone’s vehicle with a GPS tracker without a warrant for 28 days, subsequently securing a conviction with the resulting data; the court held that such constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment. Previously a lower court had ruled the data was admissible because the suspect had no reasonable expectation of privacy when his car was on public streets.
And in Carpenter v. United States, the court held that acquisition of a suspect’s cell-site records—historical location data from cell phone providers, obtained without a warrant—constituted a Fourth Amendment search.
“When you have enough license plate readers out there, it becomes tantamount to being tracked with a GPS. And so it raises the same issues that the court has already ruled on,” Stanley said.
He suggested that communities need time to digest these technologies and their potential consequences before adopting them at such speed and scale.
“Communities need to decide whether they want to allow the police departments that serve them to have the new powers these technologies convey and whether they’re even effective at reducing crime and ultimately making communities a better place—which is the whole point of law enforcement and government,” he said.
Watch: DC Begins Boarding Up Ahead Of Election Over Social Unrest Fears
Washington, DC authorities are hardening security for potential social unrest after next week’s presidential election. With four days remaining, workers have been busy boarding up government buildings and retail stores with plywood.
“Work crews have begun covering up the windows of buildings and stores near the White House as the election comes down to the final week,” DC resident Andrew Leyden wrote on X.
Work crews have begun covering up the windows of buildings and stores near the White House as the election comes down to the final week. pic.twitter.com/d29CAEq0QS
Leyden posted a video on YouTube of himself riding around on a bike near the White House complex, showing the various buildings being boarded up.
In the video’s description, he wrote, “When there is a threat of civil unrest, these landlords cover their windows, much like you do when a hurricane is coming.”
“We do expect the Capitol complex to be much more hardened,” DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said last week, who was quoted by Axios. She told residents to be “flexible” as demonstrations and detours emerge.
The ultra-hardening of security around and near the White House might be preparation for a possible Trump victory. With far-left corporate media outlets pushing ‘Trump Nazi,’ ‘Trump Hitler,’ and ‘Trump fascist’ rhetoric nonstop ahead of the election, this hate speech propaganda could certainly fuel leftist radicals to become violently unhinged if Trump wins next week.
Rosie O’Donnell has completely lost her mind and says she needs more meds to deal with the election. pic.twitter.com/GQ5eNIsnXi
A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey showed that most Americans are somewhat worried about social unrest after or during next Tuesday night’s election results.
Ohio Rep. (D) Greg Landsman told Axios that even as September approached, security was “preparing in a way that is very different from what has happened in the past,” adding, “I had never seen anything like it.”
