Just in case your car will decide to have a pool day...
The short version: Cybernews highlights Benn Jordan's find of a Flock camera aimed at an empty HOA pool, raising real questions about mission creep beyond 'vehicle tracking.'
Our Take
Credit to Cybernews and technologist Benn Jordan for catching this one: a Flock Safety camera, sold and marketed strictly as a license-plate-reading tool for roads and parking lots, found pointed squarely at a community pool. Empty pool, 105-degree day, camera still rolling. Whether it's sloppy installation by an HOA vendor or just where the pole happened to land, the optics are bad because the whole business model depends on trust that these systems only watch cars and plates, not people lounging poolside.
This is exactly the kind of creep we've warned about. Flock's pitch to HOAs and police departments is narrow and reassuring: vehicle tracking only, no faces, no bodies. But once a camera is bolted up, the HOA board rarely audits the field of view, and nobody's checking whether the lens drifted from 'street' to 'backyard.' Multiply this by the thousands of Flock units going up in neighborhoods with zero public hearings, and you get a patchwork of cameras whose actual surveillance footprint nobody outside the installer really knows.
If you live near a Flock camera, check what it's actually capturing — not just what the brochure says it's for. Look up nearby devices on our camera map, and if something looks off to you the way this pool shot did to Benn Jordan, use our take-action resources to push your HOA or city council for answers.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Cybernews, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.