Flock cameras revealed footage and phone-screen text
The short version: A cybersecurity witness's hearing testimony about exposed Flock camera interfaces and readable phone-screen footage is exactly the kind of failure we keep warning about.
Our Take
Credit to NewsTwon for getting this testimony on record. When a cybersecurity witness tells a hearing they found exposed camera interfaces — and that archived footage was detailed enough to make out text on someone's phone screen — that's not a hypothetical privacy risk anymore. That's a documented failure in how these systems are secured, sitting in a government hearing transcript.
This is the part of the ALPR conversation that gets buried under sales pitches about "public safety." Flock and similar networks aren't just logging plates — they're capturing high-resolution images of everything that passes a camera, storing it, and in cases like this apparently leaving interfaces reachable by people who were never supposed to have access. Once that data exists and the system around it is porous, it doesn't matter what the original intent was. The exposure is the vulnerability.
If your town has one of these cameras and you don't know who can actually get into the backend, that's worth asking about at the next city council meeting. Check our camera map to see what's near you, and use our take-action page if you want to push for real answers on who's watching the watchers.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NewsTwon, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.