I Think We Can Still Detect Flock Cameras #flock #wifi #surveillance #esp32

Our Take

Credit to YouTuber deamonmist for digging into something most of us wish Flock Safety would just tell us outright: how to spot these cameras before you drive past one. Using an ESP32 microcontroller to sniff out wireless signals associated with Flock hardware is the kind of scrappy, open-source thinking that the surveillance-industrial complex doesn't want ordinary people doing. It's a reminder that detection and transparency shouldn't require a $10 chip and a YouTube tutorial — but here we are.

We'd caution viewers not to treat any single DIY method as bulletproof. Wireless fingerprinting is finicky, firmware changes, and companies like Flock aren't static targets — they adapt. But the value here isn't a finished product, it's the signal that regular people are building their own tools to answer a question Flock and local police departments routinely dodge: where exactly are these cameras, and who authorized them? That question matters because ALPR networks aren't just watching cars, they're building searchable timelines of everyone's movement, often with zero public oversight.

If you want a more immediate way to know what's watching you, skip the soldering iron for now and check our camera map, which tracks confirmed Flock installations crowdsourced from the community. And if you're ready to push back on these systems at the local level, our take-action page has concrete steps for making noise at city council meetings, where these contracts are actually decided.