Flock Safety Camera Network Security

Our Take

Credit to Hill Hammer and the Nasty Boys Dirt Club channel for pointing a camera back at the cameras. Most coverage of Flock Safety focuses on where the devices are and who's paying for them, but this video digs into the technical guts — the network security posture of a system that silently logs millions of plates a day. That's exactly the kind of scrutiny this technology has mostly avoided, because police departments and city councils rarely have the technical staff to ask hard questions before signing a contract.

Flock markets itself as a law enforcement tool, but functionally it's a privately-run surveillance network with access to law enforcement data pipelines, cloud storage, and increasingly, AI-driven analysis. Independent security research — even amateur, DIY-style investigation like this — matters because vendors have every incentive to downplay vulnerabilities and every incentive to keep their architecture opaque. When a breach or misuse happens with a system that tracks where everyone drives, 'we take security seriously' is not an acceptable postmortem.

If this kind of teardown makes you want to know whether these cameras are already watching your street, check our camera map to see what's been documented near you, and visit take action for ways to push back at the local level.