This Massive Police Surveillance Network Is Shockingly Easy to Hack
The short version: A new investigation claims Flock's ALPR network has 50+ security flaws, undercutting its promises of encryption and short data retention.
Our Take
The Atlanta Community Press Collective's breakdown of Benn Jordan's research is exactly the kind of scrutiny this industry has dodged for years. Flock Safety built a nationwide surveillance network on a simple pitch to local governments: trust us, the data is encrypted, retention is short, and only cops can see it. If the vulnerabilities described here hold up — exposed admin backends indexed by search engines, wireless access points that spin up in seconds, data sitting unencrypted while the system runs — that pitch collapses. This isn't a minor bug report. It's a demonstration that a system tracking your car, and apparently more than your car, was never hardened the way a tool with this much reach should be.
What makes this worse is the gap between marketing and reality. Departments sold these cameras as narrow crime-solving tools are now sitting on infrastructure that may leak far more than plate numbers, for far longer than advertised, to anyone who knows where to look. When a private company controls the security posture of a de facto national tracking grid, and independent journalists are the ones finding 50+ holes in it, that's not a partnership between public safety and technology — that's outsourced surveillance with none of the oversight.
Credit to Benn Jordan and the Atlanta Community Press Collective for doing the hands-on work most agencies never bothered to do themselves. If you want to see whether one of these cameras is already watching your street, check our camera map, and if your city hasn't had this conversation yet, our take-action page has what you need to start it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Atlanta Community Press Collective, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.