How Flock Cameras Track Your Phone: Privacy Warning
The short version: Hard Lens Media's Kit Daniel warns that Flock's camera network may be expanding beyond plates to track phones and devices, raising fresh mass-surveillance alarms.
Our Take
Credit to Kit Daniel and Hard Lens Media for keeping a camera on Flock Safety's ever-widening net. The core worry here isn't new, but it's worth repeating until it sinks in: a system sold as a tool to catch stolen cars has quietly become a platform for tracking vehicles, patterns of life, and — if this video's thesis holds — potentially the devices in your pocket. Once a company builds a nationwide capture-and-store pipeline, the temptation to bolt on more sensors and more data streams is basically baked into the business model.
We can't verify every technical claim in the video, and we won't pretend otherwise — but the broader pattern is well documented. Flock's pitch to police departments keeps expanding past 'find the getaway car' into vehicle fingerprinting, cross-jurisdiction data sharing, and now, apparently, interest in device-level signals. Each new capability shrinks the gap between 'public safety tool' and 'general-purpose tracking network,' and that gap is the only thing standing between you and a permanent record of everywhere you drive, park, and maybe now, where your phone pings.
None of this works without cameras nobody notices. Check our map to see what's already watching your block, and if you want to push back locally, our take-action page has the steps for making noise at your next city council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Hard Lens Media, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.