Flock Cameras Caught Spying on Faces #shorts

Our Take

Advanced Network Professionals says they went digging into Flock Safety's firmware itself rather than taking the company's marketing claims at face value — and found code suggesting the cameras may be doing more than reading plates. Flock has long marketed these systems as "vehicle fingerprinting" tools, not facial recognition. If a technical breakdown shows functionality that connects faces to vehicles or identities, that's a meaningful gap between what's sold to city councils and what the hardware is actually capable of.

This matters because almost every Flock deployment in the country was approved by local officials who were told, explicitly, that these are license-plate cameras — not people-tracking systems. Decompiled firmware claims deserve scrutiny and independent verification, but the mere possibility that these networks could tie faces to travel patterns should worry anyone who thought they were just getting read-and-alert plate cameras on their street corner.

Credit to Advanced Network Professionals for doing the technical legwork that most of us can't. Whatever the final verdict on capability, it's another reminder that these black-box systems are installed first and explained later. Check our map to see what's already watching your neighborhood, and hit take action if you want to push your local government for real answers.