The Flock Camera Watching Your Car Is an Old Android Phone

Our Take

Credit to HoldsUp for doing what Flock Safety won't: popping the hood. If their findings hold up — Android 8.1 from 2017, last patched who knows when — that's not just an embarrassing hardware choice, it's a security liability bolted to a pole and pointed at your license plate. Every unpatched vulnerability in that stack is a potential entry point for anyone who wants to tamper with the device, inject data, or worse, access whatever it's already collected on you.

This matters because Flock has sold cities and police departments on the idea that this network of cameras is a sophisticated, locked-down surveillance tool. Departments pay subscription fees, sign data-sharing agreements, and tell residents to trust the system. But trust requires competence, and running years-old, end-of-life Android on networked hardware that logs your movements is not competence — it's a liability dressed up as public safety infrastructure.

We don't need to take HoldsUp's word for it or Flock's marketing — we need transparency and accountability on hardware that's quietly multiplying in neighborhoods across the country. Check our camera map to see what's already watching near you, and if you want to push back on your local deployment, our take-action page has the tools to start.