Detecting Surveillance with ESP32 #shorts

Our Take

We'll be upfront: a 60-second short doesn't give us much to chew on, but the concept behind STS Technologies LLC's FlockYou device is worth watching. Using cheap, hobbyist-friendly hardware like the ESP32 to sniff out surveillance infrastructure is exactly the kind of grassroots countermeasure that keeps the power balance from tipping entirely toward whoever owns the camera network.

Flock Safety and its ALPR peers have spent years normalizing a surveillance grid most drivers never consented to and can't see. Tools that let regular people detect when they're being scanned — even imperfectly — are a step toward transparency that Flock itself has no incentive to provide. We'd love to see independent testing on how reliably this kind of DIY detector actually performs before anyone treats it as a privacy shield rather than a privacy nightlight.

Until detection hardware matures, the best defense is still knowing what's already watching you. Check our camera map to see documented ALPR locations near you, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back on surveillance creeping into your own neighborhood.