From Caitlin Clark to Flock Cameras: Are Humans Losing Control?

This week on Two Nobodies Who Know Nothing, Wes Tankersley and Robert Watson tackle three topics that are becoming impossible to ignore:

🎥 Flock Safety cameras and the growing debate over privacy vs. public safety. Where should the line be drawn between protecting communities and creating a surveillance state?

🏀 Caitlin Clark and officiating in sports. As replay technology continues to evolve, should cameras have the final say, or is the human element part of what makes sports great?

📱 The power of first impressions in today’s media. From viral videos to breaking news, how much context are we really getting before opinions are formed?

Join us as we dive into technology, media, sports, accountability, and the challenges of balancing convenience, privacy, and trust in a rapidly changing world.

👇 We’d love to hear from you:
 Would you trust cameras more than people to make important decisions? Let us know in the comments!

🎙️ Don’t miss our other shows:
• Shaping Success Treasure Valley – Conversations with entrepreneurs, business leaders, and changemakers across Idaho.
• One Drink Wednesday – Live every Wednesday with great conversations, current events, and plenty of laughs.

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Patreon.com/westankersley

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

And we are back. What is up, everyone? Welcome to Two Nobodies Who Know Nothing with myself and Robert Watson. This happens every Monday at 7 o'clock Pacific time. It's an awesome oh actually, you know what's funny? Yeah, it is 7 o'clock Pacific time. It's I might be wrong, actually. 7 o'clock Eastern time. I'm terrible with time. You know that, Robert? These stupid time zones, because you're in central, I'm in mountain, and we have to talk about the two time zones that neither of us are in because that's where people watch it. So there you go.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Well, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Hey, I uh you may have something that you want to talk about, but I had a special request from one of our listeners, uh Jay Finning, my good buddy, who helps me with a lot of my technical stuff. But um I wanted to ask your thoughts on this because this is kind of a thing that's going on um in the United States that we see a lot about. And you know, it's hard to not realize that there might be some misdirection going on because there's a lot of things going on on the political scene, and sometimes they stuff these things out there in front of you and make you think about this rather than that, you know. And um one of the things we've been talking about lately is these flock cameras. And I don't know if you're aware of what they are, but they have these cameras that are supposed to be for license plate reading, and they use them a lot of times to find, you know, like do an Amber alert or whatever, and they find these people driving down the road and they'll look up their license plates and they'll figure that out. But there's this big controversy right now, and it's happening here in Idaho because I hear about it all the time in the local news, but these flock safety cameras is what they're calling them, they're using them to find these license plates and things like that, but they're finding that they're using it for other things, or they're saying that they're using it for other things, and that it kind of goes against what they should be using them for. And I don't know if you ever watched uh I think it was the third Batman, second or third Batman, but they have this big old giant screen and they're tapping into every single camera that is up on you know all around the world, and they're showing where everything is to try and find this villain. And so it's kind of crazy the way that they're doing it, but they're using these cameras for things that they're not supposed to be used for, according to them. Have you heard about this?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Yes. So there's a show on Peacock uh called Capture, and it is a show about um deep fakes in the ability, and so what this is is the UK, and the UK is a very surveillance state, meaning they have cameras basically everywhere. But the idea is not every meaning, everywhere is there's still holes in the system. So they're talking about how this is used, and then they're talking about what happens when you deepfake the cameras. And so, what's what is considered testimony in a courtroom? Is it a video that can be deepfaked, or is it eyewitness testimony, which you know is subject to you know missing things? What is considered evidence? And so we're in the position of asking ourselves what kind of state do we want to belong, belong in. So this is when you will start aligning yourself with the ACOU, for example, because the ACOU is one of the ones pushing back on these flock cameras because they're basically saying, like, we're entering a surveillance state. Because if you can access the information, then your intent is not an issue. Access is the issue. Right. So you can use it for whatever the hell you want to, but the reality is that you I mean, for lack of a better word, people have cameras that they use for wildlife, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

That are can be used to do what? Protect your property. Because the wildlife cameras detect motion. Right. And so you can mispurpose or repurpose any device for uh other intent. Um, having the information out there is the point. We had this pushback in Texas because they had cameras that were basically giving you tickets for running red lights, and they were giving you tickets for and you know, state by state, I mean, excuse me, not state by state, but city by city, municipality by municipality, started pushing back against this because the people said, no, no, no, no. If you legitimately catch us, then you legitimately, but we're not going to do this surveillance thing. So there was a big pushback against it. And again, it's the same thing you have to ask yourself, do you trust someone with that access?

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Right. Yeah, and I think that that's the big thing. It's like if you think about it, what could they do? So if they start, and I think this is the overreach scenario is like if they can do this, what will it turn into? What can they do with it? But one of the things that they argue a lot is that, you know, your phone's already doing this. There's all these other things that are doing this. At what point do they decide that enough is enough or when they're going to do something about it, right? Because I I give I'll give you an example. I was, I can't remember what it was I was looking at, but like it happens all the time, right? You looking at something, or you're talking about something with your with, I was talking to my dad about something, and then all of a sudden, boom, it's on my it's on my phone and Facebook. It's like, you don't think your phone's listening? You don't think that, you know, like your information is out there. You think that sorry, I'm looking at what Joel Sandy's like, with great power comes great responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Yes, I saw it too, and he caused me to laugh too.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Nice and it's a hundred percent true though, because they have this power to do whatever they want. And I think that a lot of people think that, well, what what do they have to why do they want to look at what Robert Watson or Wes Tinkersley is doing? Like, what have you done to make that happen? And so there's two sides to it, right? There's okay, well, they don't have any reason to look at you, but they could. And if you did something wrong, they've caught it and they're gonna they're gonna use it against you. Now, is that you know a violation of your rights, or what is it? What are we talking about here? How can they do this without telling you that they're recording you, you know?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Well, and you see that in your crime dramas now. They basically ask, you know, uh, hey, what cameras were operating? Um, because remember, let's flip it around. Let's assume for the sake of argument the police come knocking at your door and they say, Hey, do you know anything about your neighbors' trash cans being thrown in the street and their mailbox and their house broken in? Do you know anything about that? And you're like, No. And they say, Well, one of your one of your neighbors reported you being there. And you're like, number one, I was asleep. And and and I then I can say, Well, you know what? Their neighbor, they have a they have a they have a camera there. So then they pull the feed up and it's not you. So the flip side of it is it can also be as a mechanism of protection with saying, hey, not only did I say I wasn't there, there's document of proof, I wasn't there. So flip side of that, the problem I have is is the manipulation and and Joel's putting it 9-11 in the Patriot Act expanded the government's ability to surveil. Um is that a useful skill? Sure. I mean, you know, I come from the intelligence side of the community. A lot of information is available, meta information is available, other things. Is it helpful? Is it hurtful? Is it whatever? You know, listen, it's just it's about the intent of the party using it.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yeah. Yeah, like are you using it? And these are I pulled it up right before, but this is kind of some of the things that they're talking about is like um, you know, privacy and mass tracking, cameras tracking, vehicle movements, capture visible vehicle details, uh color mix, stickers damage, uh stores searchable for 30 days. Activist warn it creates a pan panopic infrastructure. I don't know what that word is, but uh, you know, that monitors everything. That's why we're two nobodies who know nothing, but panoptic, which means that I guess like the complete area of what it is. Um database misuses. Police officers in multiple states have been filed or fired for criminally charged of abusing the network. It runs personal searches tracking romantic partners or spying on acquaintances. Um, erroneous or outdated data with the system has led to major incidents, including police pulling over and detaining innocent drivers or journalists at the gun at gunpoint. Um I mean, I guess the big thing is is like, is there a broader reason for them having such a problem with this? Because it's something that has happened for a very long time. You know, people talk about their identity being stolen. Well, you stick your compute or your credit card information or social security number into anything that pops up because you trust that and think that it's okay. It used to be they had a little key up there that was like, this is encrypted. But you don't know, you never know where your stuff is going. And so I guess the thing is, is if you don't want this stuff to happen, then you have to give up all these things that everyone is using, right? Like, okay, well, now we're not gonna use an iPhone, now we're gonna use a flip phone, now we're not gonna do, we're not gonna get it on the computer, we're gonna look through the yellow pages. Wait, there's no more yellow pages. So what can you do, right? Like, how are you gonna find the things that you need to find without doing the things that you need to do? So have they created this need for um for you know like social media and and technology?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Well, I mean, it's always boiled down to um who's supervising what's going on, who is creating that kind of oversight. And so, for example, in the intelligence community, obviously you guys can't know what we're doing, it's highly classified. Well, they created what's called the gang of eight in Congress, which is which is the people that basically can have the most highly classified oversight of what the intelligence community is doing so that they're not running wild. And so this is really back down to how much do you trust those who are given stewardship over information? Like the NSA has had you know tremendous access to us for years and years and years. Have they misused it on occasion? Sure, no question. And and here's always the problem with this stuff, and just straight up you only hear about the negatives. In other words, when the NSA abuses the system, that's what you hear about. But because it's highly classified, you're never gonna hear about the thousand times it was used for good. What you're gonna hear about is the one time it was used for bad. The reality is that I don't know the answer to the question. And unless I worked for them and I had specific, you know, uh if I was read in on certain projects, then I could comment. But the reality is we just have to have a certain degree of trust with those we empower to do this, because the reality is we're never really gonna know, and you're really never gonna know their reach. Like we learned that the NSA was collecting metadata on everybody, not just on targeted criminals. And then when we said, Oh crap, that's bad, they can use it for malintent. Yes, of course they can. The question is, is it is it overall, is it good, is it bad? These are the struggles we have to. This is why in a democracy we have a certain amount of oversight, certain amount of pushback, and a certain amount of word that you don't have in autocratic nations like China and Russia. Accountability. Okay? The reality is, is as much as we may dislike the media, these media people do present some form of accountability. Now, they need to stop being so damn partisan so that we can actually see accountability on both sides and we don't feel as though that there's a team that's working for the left and a team that's working for the right. Journalism should be working for everybody. It should be basically when it finds a good story or there's a whistleblower, we should be in the position where we push back against abuse. But other than that, we are stuck in our society with trusting those we empower.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah, and it's interesting because this is coming on the foot of a couple things that happened last week that I just was I thought was really interesting with the media, where is the media responsible to make sure that everything that is supposed to be televised is televised? Because we had this whole same situation with uh the president addressing the nation in two of the networks, two of the major networks, and I don't know how many they consider there are now, but it used to be like there was four of them, and you watch one or you watch the other, and they have the the liberal media and then they have the conservative media, supposedly, like this is what it is, and half of the media decided that they're not going to show the president addressing the nation. So they conveniently put what they want and then they don't. What are your thoughts on that scenario where they can go into this database and get whatever they want, but they're not actually, they're only jumping on some of it, not all of it?

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Well, the really cool part is we have what's called very fragmented media because we have two nothings, two nobodies who know nothing who get a microphone and can talk about whatever the heck they want to. So we have social media, we have all the different venues and abilities for people to be citizen journalists. So, yeah, do I think the media is doing the best kind of job they can at this point holding power accountable? No, I don't. But that's okay. It goes in cycles. And it sometimes they're doing an excellent job, sometimes they're doing a poor job, but it goes in cycles, and it's not like they don't try. But fragmented media has put us in a position where citizens can actually hold someone accountable. Think about all the controversies that were created over somebody with a cell phone in their hand. Not that the ABC or NBC or CBS News was there, that a citizen with a cell phone was there, and that that is what's creating this kind of pushback against power. I think most of the ICE controversies were not created because newscasters were there. They were there because people were sitting there with a camera. So we have lots and lots of eyes on us now.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

And hopefully the the combined resources of what we call legacy or old media and this new fragmented media, hopefully the two of them get us hold power accountable. Hopefully.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah, and it's crazy. The thing that the thing that drives me, you know, the most crazy about the whole thing is that they don't really have to do any research if they don't want to either, right? So, you know, there's a couple times like you were talking about with the ice agent where the bystanders camera film comes out first, right? Like so the person who's filming it on their camera posts it to social media as fast as they possibly can, but they're only posting what they see in the moment. They're not posting what the other person sees or what's going on with, like, say the ice agent. Like, how has this happened? What has this person done? And we've had two scenarios where that person was doing something that wasn't captured, and then we have to wait weeks before it came out. Now you have the whole country making a decision based off of what this one person saw without the whole story, and then it becomes, well, I'm not gonna, you know, like it's hard. Once that thing is, it's like in a court, right? When when they bring up something and they say something that is untrue, but the person has a reaction to it without the real evidence being presented first. Now all of a sudden it's in the mind of that jury that they had already they're already guilty because they only saw the one thing that made them guilty. They didn't see the whole story or the things going through, and then it gets, you know, objection, you know, abstained, you know, whatever. It's like we've already they've already got this little seed planted in their mind that this was a bad thing, and then the good thing out doesn't really, you know, help them.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Well, and and the sad part is we've actually studied that aspect, and so it's called kind of correcting truth. And so the reality is is that the issue becomes once whatever's put out there is first put out there, people are somewhat resistant to they present a resistance to the truth coming out, right? Or let's not call it truth, more facts.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Okay. And so then they thought it was A, there's more facts that come out that point to C, but the point is they're not going to move off of A. That's what they originally saw, that's what's originally where we actually see that problem exists in media, the fact that even when it's corrected, in other words, somebody comes out and says something that's rather flagrant, and it's corrected the next day on the record. In other words, the broadcaster stops and says, Hey, yesterday when I said X, we've looked at it again. It's really Y. It doesn't matter because that first impacts the one that people stick with. You know, that's a challenge we have. I mean, there's there's several challenges in media we have. Again, you've pointed out a great one.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just I think it's insane because I feel like once that's planted, you have to, how do you unplant it? You know, like and I see, like in media right now, the biggest thing that I see is that everyone looks at that first initial one, so let's get that out, and then they're not willing to they either they've moved on or they're not going to look at what actually came out. And when you have an intelligent conversation with someone and you're like, hey, did you see this? Well, yeah, but he did this first. It's okay. It's like Joel says, it's never shown what made the issue escalate. They don't show that this guy was kicking out tail lights, this guy was, you know, punching people as they're walking by. They just show the person who got injured in the aftermath of what had happened with the officer instead of what had happened, what the person did to get what the officer was initially, or not initially, but had to do at the end of the day, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Well, we we see this in sports all the time, right? It's not the person that initiates it, right? Like in football or basketball, it's not the person that initiated the foul. It was the person that retaliated.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

They got caught and got flagged. And of course, when they go back and look at the film, they go, Oh, well, okay. I understand why they were mad, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

And the point we were taught was, well, we were taught, don't retaliate.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Because we were we were taught because we knew that if we retaliated, if they didn't catch, if the refs didn't catch the initial infraction, they were going to catch the retaliation.

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Yeah. And that's the uh it's funny because this is the thing. Like you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't. You know, we're we're I feel like we've jumped all over the place, but we're still in the same place, right? At the end of the day, even if it's in sports, even if it's in driving your car, even if it's at some, you know, police officer altercation who you've got pulled over or whatever, they're now going back to review the film, right? So this new thing with baseball is that you get thrown a ball, you don't think it's a strike, you get two chances to tap your head. If you get it, and they can they can check the call of the umpire. And if it was a strike, then you get to keep your two chances. If it wasn't, you get to lose one. Well, MBAs, the WNBA is a big controversy right now, too, right? Like Caitlin Clark, who is gonna be, I feel like it's it in 20 years, we're gonna look at Caitlin Clark as what happened here? What what did she do? Because everyone dislikes her, but all these fouls that are happening against her, the refs either are not seeing them or not doing anything about them because they're busy watching the rest of the game. And now they're going back post-game and giving out fouls. Like, I mean, at what point do we just have the camera be the referee, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Come on. And and here's the thing, I think, because we you know, we saw the first advent of cameras in serious sports. We saw it in football.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

And it was basically for what? It was for whether it was a touchdown or not.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

That was the real issue. And then then it became was it was it a catch? Okay. And you could, you know, I gotta tell you that when you look at a game and you look at the speed at which the game is going, and you look at the refs, getting the call right, what, nine times out of ten at game speed, right? You go back and you do see some reverse, but overall, you you know, I'm amazed at how good the calls are, right? Yeah, I'm amazed. They're really, really good. And so consequently, when you get that kind of reversal, I'm like, okay, whatever. Because these guys have really got this down to a fine science. So I mean, I really get it, but as far as an uh an ump is concerned in baseball, oh no, come on. We've known for years, decades, that an ump has a strike zone, right? And when you get up There, we know what he's calling, right? It's a question of where he's positioned behind the catcher, right? How he feels that day, right? He's calling them low, he's calling him high, he's got a small strike zone, a large strike zone. And what do you do? You just adjust.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah, and I think that it's funny. Sorry, I'm writing down some stuff here, but I think that it's funny because if what you said, okay, so there's nothing to me, there's like nothing wrong, and this is just my hot take on it, right? Like there's nothing wrong with at the end of the day, we go in there and there's, you know, Angel Hernandez was this umpire, you know, that he's since retired, I believe, but he was like, everyone hated him. He was terrible. He couldn't get the strike zone right, he had all these missed calls, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And this is what these guys do at the end of the day. They'll go in there and they'll say, This is gonna make the umpires better, right? In my mind, if you have the camera and you're and you're checking the strike zone, they're gonna go back and they're gonna go, all right, the probability that this guy is going to get this wrong is you know 0.003%. He's the best option for this game. But and then if not, like if it's like 50% of the time he's wrong, then they know, see ya. You know, it's kind of a way to have your checks and balances with these umpires, with these referees, with all that stuff. And the funny thing, like, if you look at a major league baseball game and as a high school baseball coach in a small league, I couldn't tell you how many times we have one umpire, and that one umpire is behind the plate. And so if you have one umpire behind the plate, is he gonna be able to make the good calls at first, second, third that are happening as fair or not? Because he's concentrating on the whole field. So, but when you have two, now they can confer with each other and talk to each other, and then like you look at MLB, they got one on every base, right? So they got one behind behind own plate, they got one at first, one at second, one at third, and that's their job. So it kind of just depends on what's actually there.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Yeah, and and I think we've reached the point where we can say, I like the idea of using the technology to grade the graders more than I like it changing the game. Right. So I I so coaches always said the same thing to us because we would have a call at the end of a game and it would shift the game. And the coach always said the same thing. Take the game out of the ref or the umps' hands. Yeah, in other words, if you do your job, hey, if the score is 45 to 7, do you give a crap what the referee says? No, if you have a very, very ultra close game and it's life, can you lose them? Yeah, unfortunately, that's that's the way it goes. And we've all seen it. I remember one that I always laugh my butt off at. We were in the finals, and uh so it's a basketball game, and so ref calls a foul, right? He can't figure out exactly who he who did it. So you see him reaching like this for I need to pick out a person to give this foul to. And I'm looking at and he taps me, and I'm like, dude, I wasn't even there. Well, it happened to be my fourth foul, which puts me one away from being out of the game. So now my game has to change because of that call. And it's okay because I looked at it like this, it's the way it goes. Yeah, unfortunately, we had about five minutes left in the game. Three minutes later, I got a legit foul and I was gone.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

And did it make a difference in the game? Yeah, we lost the game.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, and that's changed the course of the game.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Change the course, and that's what I said. We all know that happens, and we all accept that. Yeah, you know, it was Tom Tom Brady's biggest burn in his life, and he'll mention it over and over and over again, is a guy catching a football with his helmet. Yeah, right? He he loses a perfect season. That's not it's not a bad call, it was the right call. Right strange, odd, but he realizes the difference between immortality with having a perfect season, and not was a guy catching a ball with his helmet. Yeah, but he but he's like this things happen. That's the way it goes. Yeah, unfortunately, refs can sometimes weird plays can set it up, wind, rain, it's it's the point of sports.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

The point we didn't want that to do was we didn't want that to bleed over into our lives and have these flock cameras or things like that. We're really pushing back because we're like, really? Is everything I'm gonna do beyond camera? And the answer is, yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, at some point it is gonna be, you know, you're gonna be, I don't know, that's where technology is going, right? These people want to wear around their meta glasses and they don't understand that there's a possibility that someone could be looking through their eyes of what they're doing every single time. So it's like if you don't want to use technology, then don't use it. However, it's it's coming for you, and it's gonna be one of those things that you're gonna have to get used to. And you can't have, there's so much to separate from everything that you can't have it both ways. You got to decide, do I want the convenience of this or do I want to? And you know, at the end of the day, I look at it as if you don't want to be tracked and you don't want to know what's going on, then just be a good person. It's not that hard. Do the things that you're supposed to do, and they're not gonna come after you. But it if if you're suspected of doing something and you have nothing to hide, then what are you worried about?

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Right. And there's the the last example, which is kind of off the cuff a little bit, but a lot of female uh movie stars had long distance relationships and they would take a sexy pick and send it to their significant other or their husband or whatever, and they would eventually somebody would break their iCloud account and would float the pictures. And I always say the same thing. I appreciate the fact of long-distance relationship, I appreciate the fact that's your husband and you're sharing something, but please, really, folks, do you not think that someone can break into your account? So whatever you take a picture of, realize it might come out.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

You think about it, like at the end of the day, back when it was take a picture with a family a camera that actually had film in it, you had to take it somewhere to get it developed, unless you're a developer. What do you expect? You think those people aren't gonna see that? I mean, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

And again, I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't have their privacy and stuff. I'm just saying, really? Yeah, how does that not how do you think that is not gonna get out? Especially when you're the target of a bunch of malicious people. Come on. That's that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yep, you gotta trust yourself. Well, Robert, what do you got going on this week? Thanks for hanging out with us, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

I'm writing at the Global Strategy Institute.substack.com, and this week I'm writing about uh the freedom of navigation, something that the United States has protected for everyone since 1945.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

And I've got uh Shaping Success Treasure Valley episode out right now with Hayden Levin. We got Will Hayden Levitt, commercial airline pilot at 22 years old. We got Will Anderson coming out Friday, and I'm gonna look forward to getting more of those out. Check Jay Finning and myself out at OneDrink Wednesday, every Wednesday, 7 o'clock Pacific Standard Time. Please make sure that you follow that page on Instagram. We need to get it 2,000 so we can go live again. And until next time, this is To Nobodies Who Know Nothing.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Have a great week, everyone.