Amid the national debate on Flock Safety cameras and their role in the surveillance state problem, some have taken to using radical methods to oppose law enforcement’s use of these tools.
A report from Wired and 404Media revealed that hackers tore down a Flock camera and accessed the data it held, giving people more insight into how this technology works and the information they can collect.
Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED, revealing in new detail how exactly Flock Safety’s cameras track the movements of both vehicles and people. The hackers say they are also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software, in the hopes that other people may copy them.
The breach provides an unprecedented look inside a system that Flock has described as protected by on-device encryption. The hackers were able to copy the camera’s storage and recover an encryption key stored on the device, which unlocked videos of thousands of vehicle detections. The hackers shared the material with 404 Media and the transparency nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets, which shared the data with WIRED. 404 Media and WIRED then analyzed those files as part of a joint investigation.
While much of the automatic license plate reader’s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s saddlebag.
One of the hackers told the news outlets, “Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?”
The cameras pick up various data points on the vehicles they monitor, including color, make, and model. The company makes these records available to law enforcement agencies using the technology.
The report details how they work:
According to the code, when something moves into view, the camera takes a rapid series of photos. A typical passing vehicle generated about 28 images, though some produced more than 100. The camera uses different exposures to capture both the license plate and the wider scene, then scans the images, selects and crops useful frames, and sends them with other data to Flock over the cellular network. The camera itself does not appear to read the plate or identify the vehicle’s make, model, and color. That appears to happen on Flock’s servers.
According to our analysis, the camera’s logs recorded about 21 days of activity across several periods. During those windows, the device photographed roughly 50,200 vehicles and generated about 1.6 million images. On a typical day, it logged around 3,300 vehicles, with a high of 4,454. Those figures would vary considerably depending on where a camera is installed and how much traffic passes in front of it. The camera was almost certainly operating outside those periods, but older logs had been overwritten or were no longer recoverable from the device.
The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection.
Flock camera cut down in Fort Worth Texas, American flag planted pic.twitter.com/VTUim7SrOm
— Dallas Texas TV (@DallasTexasTV) August 27, 2026
People across the country have been cutting down, spray-painting, and prying the license plate readers from poles this year amid a widespread backlash against mass surveillance at the local and state level.
From The Guardian:
The Minneapolis camera destroyer is not alone. As anger grows towards law enforcement contracts with Flock, vigilantes across the country are taking matters into their own hands by smashing, obstructing or taking down these cameras. Many are leaning into their creative side: “paint bombing” the devices, planting American flags at the scene after damaging them, 3D printing objects to help obstruct the camera’s view and leaving colorful messages like “hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling f***s”. Some influencers are even creating fake cease-and-desist letters from Flock, capitalizing on the company’s negative public perception.
The Guardian has identified at least 33 instances of people damaging, vandalizing and destroying Flock cameras, across 23 states, that appear to have the explicit message of protesting surveillance.
Several cities have canceled their contracts with Flock Safety in response to the uproar. Other indicate they are considering abandoning the technology. However, some cities are defending the cameras, saying they are a critical law enforcement tool.
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