The new problem with flock cameras

Our Take

WSBT 22 is covering ground that Wired and 404 Media broke open: someone physically removed a Flock Safety camera, dug into its internals, and found the system doesn't just snap one plate photo and move on. It's generating dozens of images from a single vehicle pass. That's a meaningful detail, because Flock has long sold this technology to city councils as a narrow, targeted tool — a plate reader, nothing more. If one camera is quietly producing a stack of images per car, that undercuts the "minimal footprint" pitch and raises real questions about what else is being captured, stored, and potentially exposed.

This is also a security story, not just a privacy one. A piece of hardware mounted on a pole in a public right-of-way was vulnerable enough that outside researchers could pull it, get into its data, and hand findings to journalists. Flock's whole business model rests on local governments trusting that this gear is locked down and that the data pipeline is tightly controlled. When hackers can do what police departments apparently can't — meaningfully audit the device — that trust looks thin.

We'd also note the irony: the people doing accountability work here were private researchers, not the vendor or the municipalities that approved these contracts. That's exactly the gap DeFlock exists to fill. If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your own streets, check the map, and if your city hasn't had a real public debate about this hardware, our take-action page has a starting point.