Flock camera misused by four officers

Our Take

Credit to WLOS News 13 for surfacing this one, because it's a two-for-one indictment of Flock Safety's whole pitch. First you've got four officers reportedly misusing access to a camera network that's supposed to be reserved for narrow, specific investigations. Then, separately, hackers managed to pull a camera and breach data, handing their findings straight to reporters. That's not a hypothetical "what if someone misuses this" scenario civil liberties groups keep warning about — that's the thing actually happening, twice, in the same story.

Flock and local police departments love to say the audit logs and access controls keep this system accountable. But audit logs only matter if someone's actually reviewing them, and they do nothing to stop a camera from being physically pulled and its data exposed by outsiders. When insiders misuse the system and outsiders can breach it, the question isn't whether Flock's network is secure — it's why we've let a patchwork of local police contracts build a de facto national license plate tracking grid with so little independent oversight in the first place.

Every one of these stories is a reminder that this infrastructure exists in your town too, often without much public debate. Check our camera map to see what's nearby, and if you think your community deserves a say before more of these go up, our take-action page has concrete next steps.