Hackers Exposed Flock Surveillance Data After Ripping Camera From Pole

Our Take

If this reporting from Mirror7 News holds up, it's a gut-punch to Flock Safety's pitch that these cameras are a secure, professionally managed piece of public safety infrastructure. A camera bolted to a pole in a residential neighborhood or highway shoulder is, at the end of the day, a physical object that anyone with a wrench and a grudge can remove. Once it's off the pole, whatever data, credentials, or network access lives inside it becomes fair game — and that's a problem Flock and the police departments who lease these systems have been slow to acknowledge.

This isn't just a story about one bad camera. It's a preview of what happens when a surveillance network built on thousands of unattended, internet-connected devices scales faster than its security does. Every ALPR pole is a potential point of failure, and 'someone yanked it off and found data inside' is exactly the kind of incident that should make city councils ask harder questions before renewing their Flock contracts — not just about crime stats, but about who's actually protecting the data being hoovered up on every driver who passes by.

Credit to Mirror7 News for putting a spotlight on this. If you want to see how many of these cameras are watching your own commute, check our camera map, and if you think your town shouldn't be leasing surveillance gear with these kinds of vulnerabilities, our take-action page has next steps.