404 Media’s latest podcast episode says police are using Flock to search for people, not only cars, including queries described as looking for a “male with tattoos.” That is the lead segment in the July 22, 2026 episode of The 404 Media Podcast, hosted on Megaphone and also posted to YouTube.
Joseph Cox, who authored the episode page and is listed by 404 Media as an investigative journalist, frames the Flock segment around his reporting on how cops use the system. The public description does not spell out the underlying records or agencies involved, so the confirmed claim here is narrower: 404 Media says its reporting found police using Flock for searches aimed at identifying specific people.
That distinction matters because Flock is being discussed here as more than a vehicle-tracking tool. A search such as “male with tattoos,” as described by 404 Media, is a person descriptor. The mechanism described in the episode summary is search by characteristics rather than search by a known car alone. The episode points listeners to a related 404 Media story titled “How Cops Use Flock to Track People, Not Cars.”
Books for AI companies
The episode’s second public segment features Emanuel, identified in the show description by first name, discussing a company that 404 Media says is selling large quantities of books to AI companies. The show description says the company is “explicitly” marketing those sales and promising to keep them secret.
404 Media also links to a related story with the title “AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They’re Free of AI Slop.” The podcast summary does not name the bookseller or the AI companies. It does, however, make 404 Media’s reported angle clear: older books are being treated as desirable training material because they predate the flood of AI-generated text now contaminating parts of the web.
Suno hack segment is for subscribers
The subscriber-only portion of the episode features Jason, according to 404 Media, explaining how he learned about a Suno hack and what it revealed. 404 Media links that discussion to a related story titled “Hack Reveals Suno AI Music Generator Scraped YouTube, Deezer, and Genius.”
The podcast page says paid subscribers get access to bonus content, including the extended subscriber version through a feed delivered by podcast host Transistor and an unlisted YouTube link. The public episode is available through Megaphone, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RSS, and YouTube.
404 Media also uses the episode page to promote its third anniversary live podcast and party, as well as paid subscriptions. The publication describes itself as an independent site owned and reported by human journalists.
This story draws on original reporting from 404 Media.
