Banish Big Brother

Jake Green of Peaceful Sea Productions joins Zach and Elizabeth for a wide-ranging tour through the surveillance state's latest toys.

They start with a throwback: the 2013-era panic over Bitcoin's energy use, and why nobody in the media seems bothered that AI data centers now consume vastly more power with a fraction of the outrage.

From there it's nuclear reactors coming back online (including one NASA wants on the moon by 2030), satellites beaming solar power down to Earth, and Lockheed Martin's vague teases about "magical" classified tech.

Then things get personal: new state laws protecting your brain data, headbands that read your sleep patterns, a Chinese elementary school that monitored kids' attention spans, and the incoming mandate for driver-monitoring cameras in every new car.

They close it out with FIFA's turning every World Cup player into a digital twin, and what that means for VAR, trust in your own eyes, and the future of "watching" sports at all.

Jake also talks about his other projects, including his true crime podcast The Cascade Effect and his weekly roundtable Liberty Libations, plus his work with the Ludlow Institute alongside Naomi Brockwell.

Guest: Jake Green, Peaceful Sea Productions

A Texas town council member throws a public tantrum after his city votes to cancel its Flock contract, and the resulting "Bandera Declaration of Digital Independence" is as unhinged as it sounds. Zach and Elizabeth break down the logical fallacies packed into one man's attempt to equate mass license plate surveillance with your personal Ring doorbell.

Then, the UK's proposed social media ban for under-16s sounds like it's about protecting kids, and that's exactly the point. Underneath the "think of the children" framing is a system that will require age verification, facial recognition, and government ID uploads for any adult who wants to open a new social media account. Australia already tried it. It's not working. But that's never stopped anyone before.

Then, a listener tip leads Zach and Elizabeth to Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where local officials voted to move discussions about an ALPR contract with the New Jersey State Police into executive session, away from any public scrutiny or participation.

Finally, Flock cameras are going undercover. Literally. Yellow plastic barrels along Arizona highways and fake utility boxes on poles, all designed to blend in and escape the growing public awareness that has started canceling Flock contracts across the country. Elizabeth makes the case for why fighting Flock isn't enough. You need broad privacy legislation, not just company-specific bans.

The surveillance state isn't coming. It's already here, it's expanding fast, and apparently if you have a problem with that, China put you up to it.

In this episode, Zach and Elizabeth dig into the sudden explosion of data centers across the country, why governments at every level are pushing them through over loud constituent objections, and what all that infrastructure is actually being built for. Spoiler: it's probably not so you can make better ChatGPT images.

They also get into Flock Safety's quietly expanding capabilities, a recall effort brewing in Michigan over a vote that happened before the public was allowed to speak, and a story that perfectly captures how communities are being steamrolled by interests that have very little to do with them.

Plus: where all of this is heading, why Elizabeth is feeling genuinely hopeful for the first time since starting this work five years ago, and how you can support the cause even if you never knock on a single city council door.

The pitch for Flock is always the same: “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide.” Then a court says the footage is public record, and suddenly cities start unplugging the cameras.

In this episode, Zach Varnell and Elizabeth Melton walk through the public records rulings that are forcing Flock programs into crisis mode, the predictable scramble to replace Flock with “Flock, but spelled differently,” and the deeper problem no vendor can fix: mass tracking doesn’t become acceptable just because it’s “secured.”

They also unpack major security research and reporting showing just how exposed this surveillance infrastructure can be, and why the Institute for Justice lawsuit may be the best shot at hitting the root issue: does the government have the right to build a searchable map of everyone’s movements?