EFF: Cops Searched 19,000 Flock Cameras for 'LMAO'

Our Take

Credit to GenZ Tech for putting numbers on something we've been saying for a while: the "audit logs" that Flock Safety and its police customers point to as proof of accountability are a joke. When officers can type "LMAO" or mash their keyboard as a justification for pulling location data on someone's car across 19,000 cameras, the entire oversight system is theater. There's no meaningful review happening if garbage input gets accepted without question.

This matters because the pitch for ALPR networks has always hinged on the promise of guardrails — searches are supposedly logged, reasons are supposedly required, and abuse is supposedly caught after the fact. EFF's reporting shows that promise is hollow in practice. If the reason field is optional in spirit even when it's mandatory on paper, then every driver swept into these databases is trusting a system with no real brakes on who gets looked up, why, or how often.

Nonsense log entries aren't just embarrassing, they're a symptom of networks that have scaled faster than any department's ability or willingness to police itself. Check our camera map to see how many of these systems are already running near you, and head to take-action if you want to push your local officials for real audits instead of rubber-stamped ones.