These 2 Industries Just Got Caught Using the Same Trick #consumerrights #privacy

Our Take

Mading Thok's video connects two stories that look unrelated on the surface — surge-pricing grocery shelves and GM selling your driving habits to insurers — but the throughline is exactly what we track every day at DeFlock. Companies and agencies alike have figured out that quietly collecting data about ordinary people's movements, purchases, and routines is wildly profitable, and they'll keep doing it until a regulator, lawsuit, or public backlash makes them stop. GM didn't ask permission before selling trip data to LexisNexis and Verisk; it took a $12.75M fine and an FTC order to even slow it down. That's the same asymmetry we see with Flock Safety: cities quietly sign contracts, cameras go up on street corners, and the first most residents hear about it is when a neighbor points out the mysterious black box on a pole.

The pattern matters because once this kind of infrastructure exists, the use case always creeps. Shelf prices that update in seconds can just as easily target you based on what the store knows about your spending habits. Driving data sold for 'better services' turns into a premium hike you never agreed to. License plate reader networks sold to police as a tool for stolen cars quietly become a nationwide location-tracking system queried for immigration enforcement, abortion investigations, or just idle curiosity. Nobody votes for that expansion — it just happens, one API integration at a time, because the data was already being collected.

Credit to Mading Thok for tying consumer pricing tricks and data-broker insurance scams together in one clear narrative — it's the kind of pattern-matching we need more of. If you want to see where this same logic has already put cameras on your own streets, check our map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has concrete steps for your city council meeting.