Comments for Flock cameras, big brother is watching | Eastern NC Now

Big corporations, Befuddled???? Protecting a big corporation was what Darrin Armstrong's entire campaign was about. A big out-of-state corporation that makes Round Up. He wanted to protect them from "we the people" who were injured by that big corporation's product. Armstrong and his allies put out postcard after postcard accusing Kidwell of being a "sell out" for supporting the rights of "we the people" to compensation for injuries from that big corporation's product.

And it gets worse. Darrin Armstrong's agriculture business has major contracts with the very same out of state big corporation that makes Round Up. Can you spell C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T O-F I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T?

You also need to look at where the big money from the big corporations was in that race. They put hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising to buy the seat for Armstrong. Look at Kidwell's contributor list. There is not big corporation money there, only money from "we the people." And unlike Armstrong, Kidwell did not have a big outside campaign backing him. His only outside spending came from the gun rights organization Grassroots North Carolina, and that was only one mailing.

We are struck with our "one trick pony" and Big Ag puppet, the Round-Up RINO for two years. But we have to do better next time. We need to find a conservative to run. It probably won't be Kidwell, but we really do need to find a solid REAL conservative to run for our seat. The Round-Up RINO got an "F" from the NRA so we need to send him packing as qucikly as possible.

Are you for gun control, Befuddled?

Commented: Friday, July 24th, 2026 @ 9:18 am By: Rino Hunter

I did not think you could name a SINGLE issue, Befuddled, and I was right.

Conservatives need to prepare to find a conservative candidate to primary a RINO warmed over Marc Basnight Democrat who is nothing but a one trick pony for Big Ag. It is not too early to start working on that. We do not need a legislator who gets an "F" from the NRA like Armstrong did.

Supporting "we the people"???? Lets look at Armstrong's big issue that he spent most of his campaign on. That was the dispute between a major out of state chemical company that makes Round Up and the North Carolina citizens ("we the people") injured by Round Up. On that issue, Kidwell sided with "we the people" and their right to receive compensation for their injuries from Round Up. Armstrong sided with the out of state chemical company AGAINST the people, and called Kidwell a "sellout" for siding with the people. Unfortunately, Kidwell's consultant did a very poor job in explaining that issue to the voters. Kidwell himself handled it very well in the debate and demolished Armstrong, but few voters saw that debate compared to all those who got the flood of distorted postcards from the special interest PAC pushing Armstrong.

Commented: Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 @ 1:07 pm By: Rino Hunter

Befuddled, can you name even one issue where Kidwell was on the liberal side and Armstrong on the conservative side? I expect your silence to be deafening. Armstrong's website was devoid of issues, and he never talked about them in campaign events. He was a ONE TRICK PONY on the Big Ag agenda.

I will give you a glaring example of the difference on issues. Keith Kidwell got an A+ rating from the NRA on gun rights issues, their highest, while Armstrong got an F, their lowest rating. The NRA endorsed Kidwell, who has a long record of advancing gun rights issues in the Gerneal Assembly. It was the same with the leading state gun rights group, Grassroots North Carolian, which gave Kidwell their highest rating, and their endorsement and Armstrong their lowest rating. Armstrong featured anti-gun liberal Steve Troxler on many of his postcards and on his website as an endorser of Armstrong.

I could go an with lots of similar issues, Befuddled, but can you name even ONE that goes the other way, Befuddled? No, I did not think so.

Commented: Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 @ 7:41 am By: Rino Hunter

It sure sounds like you had some personal beef with Kidwell, befuddled, or maybe you are just a liberal. You probably are not one of those anti-gun RINOs from Raleigh like that worthless liberal Troxler who recruited Armstrong, but I guess you could be one of those local tax-and-spend RINOs who were so active in his campaign like Frankie Waters or Randy Walker or one of their allies.

Kidwell ranked as the most conservative member of the legislature on all of the legislative scorecards of conservative organizations. He was endorsed by the NRA, Grassroots North Carolina, and the Conservative Coalition of North Carolina.

Armstrong is a one trick money whose campaign showed he cared about nothing but Big Ag issues. He received an "F" rating from the NRA on gun rights issues. He is a warmed over Marc Basnight Democrat now masqeerading as a "Republican".

That was a very clear cut race between a staunch conservative and an establishment hack and the hack narrowly won due to hundreds of thousands of dollars of special interest money. Many of us really do not like having our incoming legislator bought and paid for by the special interests, but that ias what we are stuck with for two years.

In voting we need to look at candidate records on issues, not personal chips on ones shoulder. Take this very issue. Kidwell was rock solid on it and he stood up for us. It does not have any connection to Big Ag, so it is unlikely that Armstrong would give it any attention at all. The one trick pony does not care.

Commented: Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026 @ 2:38 pm By: Rino Hunter

The issue here is expectation of privacy. Case law, and where it bears on the subject statutory law has always presumed that people have no expectation of privacy when they are out in public. That may have made sense in the time before the era of widespread cameras, but what really calls for a rethink is the recent wave of data collection and retention for long periods rom these cameras. I don't think citizens have any reasonable expectation of that.

Rather than waiting for the courts, what needs to happen is passage of data privacy laws either by states or by the federal government. Those have already been adopted in some other countries. Those laws should govern both how retention of this data is allowed or disallowed and access to the data by third parties, which should probably be limited in most cases to law enforcement AFTER they get a warrant.

If a business or homeowner wants to monitor their surroundings and who comes and goes, that should certainly be allowed both to put up cameras and to retain the images for a reasonable period. It is the transmission to and long time retention in a data base by thrid parties that screams for reform. Also, Kidwell was right that our government should not be doing this on a daily basis.

There are also national security considerations. What happens if China, for example, buys Flock, or even hacks Flock's database?

The surveillance state is inconsistent with democracy and human freedom.

Commented: Wednesday, July 22nd, 2026 @ 12:48 pm By: Steven P. Rader

The Flock surveillance state is a "public-private partnership" and a threat to our privacy and liberty. They need to be crushed. Otherwise we will become Red China.
www.thegatewaypundit.com

Commented: Tuesday, July 21st, 2026 @ 7:45 am By: John Steed

That government can access this Flock public surveillance empire is what is frightening. I looked at the deFlock site in a link in a previous post, and it is almost certain there are two of these cameras at the Washington Lowes according to their location map. Should we be surveilled every time we shop there? Many of these surveillance devices can pick up cell phone information and send it to a central database. This makes my desire to shop at Lowes quite negative if I can get what I need somewhere else.

Commented: Monday, July 20th, 2026 @ 1:08 pm By: piratefan

Cameras spying on people everywhere is like something out of a dystopian novel like "1984" or "Brave New World". They are un-American in the extreme. This "Flock" company are Stalinist goons and should be run out of business.

One simply cannot trust these cameras. There was an incident in Germany where a man got a ticket in the mail from a speed camera that said he was doing over 400 MPH on a highway. He wrote back and said that was impossible since he drove an old Toyota, not a jumbo jet. The bureaucrats wrote back and said if the camera said that, then he had to pay the ticket.

Then there was the case of a woman from western NC who got a red light camera ticket in the mail that said she ran in red light in a town in the southeastern part of the state that she had never heard of or been to. She provided documentation that on the day of the alleged ticket, she was in intensive care in a hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada and her car that the ticket was issued for was in the parking garage at that hospital. The town still wanted her to pay the ticket.

I can fully understand why the UK has had a rash of outraged citizens physically destroying these spy cameras. That seems to be starting to happen with these Flock spy cameras, too, and it is well justified as a blow for liberty to disable these spying intrusions.

Commented: Monday, July 20th, 2026 @ 8:34 am By: Conservative Voter