The debate over Flock cameras in Knoxville, Tennessee, had reached a fever pitch this July when a stay-at-home mom received a text message from a nonprofit group she had never heard of.
The group, Neighbors for Strong Communities, asked Ashley Smith to speak out in support of Flock’s controversial license-plate readers. The nonprofit even offered to use artificial intelligence to help her draft an email to public officials.
There was only one catch: Smith, a mother of four, said she noticed that she would only be supplied with text if she indicated she supported the Flock cameras.
Instead of offering support, Smith dashed off her own email — an outraged missive to her elected officials and a local blog outlining what she saw as an insidious PR campaign.
“If the interests beyond this surveillance technology will work this hard to deceive you to win a vote, what will they do with the database of our every movement?” she said. “A company that manipulates and manufactures fake neighbors is not a company that will honor our data policies, audit logs, or the privacy of the people of Knox County.”
The text message to Smith revealed little about the Flock campaign’s origins.
As it turns out, the campaign was the product of a “partnership” between Flock and a newly created nonprofit that has used similar tactics in support of the controversial proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Opponents of the merger derided the nonprofit’s work there as corporate “astroturf” — the practice of drumming up fake grassroots support.
The combination of texts and AI-generated messages fell short of swaying public officials in Knoxville. Last month, the county commission became the latest municipal body to vote to cancel the Flock contract.
In both the Paramount and Flock cases, however, Neighbors for Strong Communities’s work has raised questions about what counts as truly grassroots organizing.
“One of the concerns of the people with the Flock cameras is: Can we trust you?” Smith told The Intercept. “And this sort of manipulation of people’s desires already shows that they are secretive, and they are not willing to share the honest information.”
Flock and Neighbors for Strong Communities did not respond to requests for comment. On its website, the nonprofit said it had a lead role in the pro-Flock campaign. “Flock Safety brought experience with public safety technology. Neighbors independently designed and managed the resident-engagement campaign, helping Knox County residents share their experiences directly with local decision-makers,” the organization said.
There are, however, no signs of a genuine upswell in grassroots support for Flock, said Craig Aaron, the co-CEO of Free Press, a nonprofit advocacy organization that is critical of both the Paramount merger and Flock.
“This is very much an astroturf project. I mean, there are no neighbors and there are no communities,” he said. “What makes it astroturf is the fake grassroots nature of it.”
“You’re talking about literally one of the most unpopular technologies,” Aaron added, “that has people taking chainsaws to light poles because they don’t like being spied on.”
“This Is So Shady”
Neighbors for Strong Communities’s text messages can look like they come from nearby.
The text Smith received about Flock cameras came from a Knoxville area code. In California, residents received text messages about the Paramount merger from a Los Angeles area code.
In both cases, residents were presented with a series of questions whose answers would, in at least some cases, be used by Neighbors for Strong Communities to draft AI-generated emails to public officials.
Despite the area codes it sent texts from, Neighbors for Strong Communities was incorporated in Washington, D.C., in June.
Although the group does not list a board or staff members on its website’s “About” page, its incorporation papers show that its directors include several political consultants, including at least one former registered lobbyist.
At least two directors at Neighbors for Strong Communities also helped found Influent, a company that uses AI to generate letters to elected officials. Text messages to Knoxville residents linked to a URL with the word “influent” in the address. Whether Influent has a business relationship with Flock is unknown. (Influent did not respond to a request for comment.)
The page on Neighbors for Strong Communities’s website dedicated to Knox County features an image of a man with six fingers — a rare condition that is also a hallmark of AI-generated imagery. The page says Flock’s supporters are “real people.”
Smith said she was confused to receive the text message from Neighbors for Strong Communities, which she had never heard of despite her long involvement in local politics. In its message to her, the group seemed to play up a local connection.
“Knox County Neighbors for Strong Communities is asking local residents to speak up in support of responsible license plate readers with strong privacy protections before the vote on Monday,” the text message said. “Answer 2 quick questions and we’ll help you generate a personalized message urging local leaders to support this practical public safety tool.”
She filled out the form from Neighbors for Strong Communities twice, at first indicating her opposition to license-plate reader cameras, she said. Only on the second attempt, when she pretended that she supported the cameras, was she given the draft of an email to her county commissioners. The draft did not indicate the use of AI or its connection to the nonprofit group.
The experience disturbed Smith, who felt certain that she would have heard of a grassroots group in Knoxville given her years of organizing in local conservative politics.
“This is so shady,” Smith remembered telling herself. “If you’re in opposition, they don’t let you send that to your commissioners. But if you’re in support, they’re sending that to all of the commissioners.”
Smith started digging — and she used artificial intelligence to help. Her searches turned up Neighbors for Strong Communities’s incorporation paperwork in Washington, D.C.
Knox shared her findings with her county commissioner Andy Fox and a popular Facebook page for local politics. She noted that the address the nonprofit provided was shared with an Italian restaurant in D.C. (The group has since updated its address, which it shares with a UPS store in Santa Monica, California.) When the Facebook page shared her findings, at least nine residents posted comments saying they had received text messages, too.
“Clearly a PR Campaign”
Neighbors for Strong Communities’s intervention came at a perilous moment for Flock.
The company had already reaped more than $2 million from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office, but county commissioners said they had never been asked to approve a contract.
Residents on the right and left were raising concerns about privacy protections and the camera network’s history of being used by rogue law enforcement officers to stalk former romantic partners.
The nonprofit’s outreach effort appears to have generated a flurry of emails to commissioners arguing that the cameras were needed to prevent crime. Former at-large Commissioner Larsen Jay shared eight emails that he received from constituents supporting the use of license-plate readers.
None of those emails were identical, but their language was similar enough to raise red flags for Jay, whose service on the commission wrapped up at the end of August.
The emails Jay shared with The Intercept appear to come from genuine residents of the Knoxville area. Two residents confirmed to The Intercept that they had sent emails in support of Flock, although one said she had since switched her position.
While several emails contained personalized details, Jay said he considered the pro-Flock emails to be “form letters” nonetheless. In face-to-face conversations, Jay said, opposition to Flock ran 99-to-1.
“It’s just clearly a PR campaign,” Jay said. “Don’t use my people. That’s how it felt when I started to realize what it was.”
“These Are Real People”
At some point after the pro-Flock campaign came to an end, Neighbors for Strong Communities posted a defense of its tactics on its website.
The group acknowledged that it used “technology” to help residents craft missives to county officials. It said, however, that all of those residents were asked to sign off on the AI-generated drafts.
“Technology played a role in this campaign, but it was never the point,” the group said on its website. “These are real people with real experiences. Whether someone ultimately agrees with every policy position or not, their voices deserve a place in the decisions shaping their community.”
It remains unclear how the group handled responses from residents who oppose the use of Flock’s cameras. The group said on its website that it “listened” to those responses but did not comment further when asked.
Flock’s partnership with Neighbors for Strong Communities largely flew under the radar until weeks later, when the nonprofit partnered with Paramount Skydance on its proposed merger. Critics of the merger noticed the group’s earlier work in Knoxville and began asking questions about why a nonprofit would work on such disparate campaigns.
Merger critics said the nonprofit’s work in California had all the hallmarks of a phony “astroturf” campaign, which is designed to generate the appearance of grassroots support.
The group drew more negative attention recently, when a merger critic discovered that its AI text generator flipped her criticism of the deal into support. The nonprofit’s spokesperson blamed “a recent system upgrade.”
In Knoxville, Neighbors for Strong Communities appears to have disclosed — at least after the fact — that it “partnered” with Flock on the pro-camera campaign. Still, the group has not disclosed the sources of its funding.
Thomas Lyon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business who has studied corporate public relations, said that a campaign can still be classified as “astroturf” even if it generates letters or emails from ordinary citizens. In the pre-AI era, Lyon said, public relations firms running “astroturf” campaigns for corporations would sometimes call people and offer to draft them letters to public officials over the phone.
The company associated with two of Neighbors for Strong Communities’ directors, Influent, promises on its website that it has a different approach from other corporate influence campaigns.
“Generic astroturf form letters are destined for the trash bin,” the company says in promotion materials. “Every Influent letter, Tweet, phone call, and message is tailored to the individual — each one unique, reflecting the authentic voice of its sender.”
Neighbors for Strong Communities’s own website features similar language stressing the authenticity of supporters’ messages to public officials.
By that measure, at least, the nonprofit missed the mark, according to another county commissioner. Andy Fox — Ashley Smith’s representative on the commission — told The Intercept that he received dozens of “template” emails in support of Flock.
He said, “It doesn’t feel right to me.”
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