Police officer tracked ex-girlfriend with Flock cameras, sentenced to jail

Our Take

Credit to WLUK-TV FOX 11 for sticking with this case through sentencing. Cristian Morales didn't hack anything — he just logged into a tool his department already trusted him with and used it to hunt down a woman he was abusing. That's the whole threat model critics have been warning about since Flock cameras started going up in every town square: the system doesn't need to be breached to be weaponized. It just needs one person with a badge and a grudge.

Flock and police departments love to point to 'audit logs' as the safeguard, as if the mere existence of a record after the fact undoes the harm of being tracked in real time by someone who wants to hurt you. The victim in this case had to stand in court and describe living in fear while a cop with system access knew where she was. That's not abstract. That's what unaccountable access to a nationwide plate-reading network looks like when it goes wrong, and it goes wrong more than departments want to admit.

This is exactly why we built our map — so people can see how many of these cameras are watching their own streets, not just read about misuse after someone's been sentenced. If you want to push back on this kind of surveillance infrastructure in your own community, start with our take-action guide.