Police Searched Thousands of Flock Cameras for “LMAO,” “IDK,” “Hehe,” and “asdfg”
The short version: A Lark Technology investigation found cops typing joke-words like "LMAO" and "asdfg" into Flock's nationwide ALPR search system, exposing how little oversight actually exists.
Our Take
Credit to Lark Technology for digging up what should be a five-alarm story: officers reportedly ran searches through Flock's network using "reason" fields like "LMAO," "IDK," "Hehe," and "asdfg." If that's accurate, it means a system built to justify itself with audit logs and "accountability" language is being fed pure nonsense — and apparently nobody downstream is checking. That's not a rogue-officer problem, that's a design problem.
Flock has always sold this network on the promise that every search is logged, reasoned, and reviewable. But logs only matter if someone actually reads them and pushes back when a cop types a keyboard-smash instead of a case number. When the entire safeguard is "trust the officer to write something real," you don't have oversight, you have theater. Multiply that across the thousands of agencies now plugged into this shared camera network and you get a searchable, cross-jurisdictional map of everyone's movements, guarded by a rubber stamp.
This is exactly why we track where these cameras actually are and who's watching. Check the map to see what's near you, and if your city council hasn't asked hard questions about audit practices yet, use our take-action resources to make them start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Lark technology, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.