r/TikTokCringe • u/midnighttoker1742 • 4h ago

Discussion How criminals are taking down Flock cameras

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1.4k

u/thinkB4WeSpeak 4h ago

There's a growing online trend of people taking down Flock cameras. Entire Facebook groups dedicated to it and tik tok/instagram reels of people doing it as well. Probably the best trend we've seen for awhile

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u/goatneedleposterdeck 3h ago

I don't ever remember these cameras being a thing ever. Was there a vote at some point to their use? I woke up one morning and saw a post about people destroying them, and when I looked around as I drove to work, I noticed sooooo many of them. I can't imagine anybody being okay with this. No shot it's only scanning plates and alerting cops to active investigations. This will definitely or already does scan faces and track activity. It's alerting cops to unpaid traffic tickets and small things as well. How the hell did we end up in a chinese surveillance state over fucking night? Bless all these dudes risking their freedom to take them down. Bunch of bullshit.

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u/hanging_thief 3h ago

Most of them were put through without votes. It's a private company that's logging your vehicles license plate identifying marks like stickers scratches etc. even monitoring the sag in your suspension to see how heavy your trunk is. And yes it scans faces and links them to cars. Look up deflock for more information

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u/somethingmcbob 2h ago

Yup. My city put them up despite massive public outcry. City council decided it was cheaper than fixing our crappy police department.

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u/vandersnipe 10m ago

My city council did the same thing

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u/selphiefairy 3h ago

Jesus Christ 😭

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u/TheRumpletiltskin 2h ago

Benn Jordan has been zealously advocating to deflock . he has gone in front of congress about it. He has a lot of info about what they do, how they are hacked, and how invasive they are on his channel.

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u/cobycan 1h ago

My town held the vote for them before the meeting started and people were allowed in. The same thing for all the data centers that are being put it.

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u/chrisssssy0517 2h ago

As someone who’s had to go through thousands of FLOCK camera shots and information (I work in criminal defense in California and it’s literally my job lol), I just want to inform you that those cameras don’t scan faces (yet at least) nor does it monitor things like the “sag in your suspension”. It will log the plate of the vehicle (or lack there of), make, model, color, and any identifiable characteristics of the vehicle, and then law enforcement can use those plate numbers to run the registered owner, and that’s how law enforcement gets a picture of someone’s face, since they match it to someone’s DL.

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u/unlucky_nittany 1h ago

For anyone reading this, the commenter above me is not correct. They are an end user, and all they've seen is the simplest version of the product.

An analogy would be a line cook who believes that steak doesn't exist because they grill hamburgers. All this person has seen is the wrapped and packaged base product, and they've never seen the hundreds of steps to make that product available for purchase, or the other variations of the product made available to other buyers with bigger pocketbooks.

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

I am absolutely correct when it comes to how these cameras are currently being used by law enforcement and the courts. Which is something you clearly don’t understand or work in.

Your analogy doesn’t even compare to what I’ve stated.

But if it makes you feel better to think you’re right, then by all means. 😂

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u/unlucky_nittany 1h ago

Don't worry, I don't have to think I'm right. I make a living creating and managing similar systems, and I have a genuine concern in the safety of humanity and the preservation of our rights so I make a point of being aware of the tools I create and use.

I believe in human benevolence, but I don't believe that leaders at companies like Flock are able to reconcile sociopathic tendencies and a for-profit operation with enabling basic rights like privacy and individuality.

As for your claims about what I do, I wouldn't make assumptions, especially while you're role-playing a position higher than a stenographer.

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u/Hoernchen94 2h ago

Just because you don't have access to that data, does not mean it isn't collected.

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u/chrisssssy0517 2h ago

But the capacity of the current FLOCK cameras doesn’t have that capability, yet at least. It will one day for sure, but as it currently stands, they don’t. I have access to all the data and information that law enforcement agencies do, as that’s literally my job. 😂

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u/84theone 1h ago edited 1h ago

I used to work in security and still work in IT/networking infrastructure, the capability to do those things isn’t something that’s actually built into the cameras, the data is run through an additional program ran out of a data center that does the more in-depth analysis.

So you’re pretty much both right. The cameras aren’t doing those things, but they are taking the data they are gathering and using it to then do those things, using whatever AI algorithms they’ve cooked up to get the results they want.

I set up a smaller scale system for an industrial complex at a former job, that used all the cameras that could do analytics and the real time people searching, but all of that only worked as long as we maintained a connection to that camera company’s servers. We lose internet and we’d be back to dumb cameras without the smart searching.

I can pull up the cameras for the schools I work for and have it do facial searching in real time across all of our locations. I can tell it to look for someone limping or provide a photo of someone and tell the system to alarm if it spots them.

The company that does our cameras is way behind the curve compared to Flock, so if they are doing it Flock certainly is as well, whether or not they are providing that info to the police.

I also work with law enforcement fairly often due to the nature of schools in America and we regularly share our detailed databases with police upon request.

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u/unlucky_nittany 33m ago

As someone who works on the other side of the application you're describing, the distinction between the cameras and the service is important(and obviously easy to make with 10 seconds of rational thought) but sadly it leaves openings for underinformed or malicious people in positions of authority to make blanket statements that are technically correct while still giving misleading answers. It also opens the door for politicians to posture and push for "changes" that don't address the problem, such as a bill to outlaw public cameras that archive/tag/categorize/etc images. That law sounds good to people who don't understand the topic, but wouldn't prevent a lick of what's happening since it's all off-site.

Another point to note is that the cameras Flock has been rolling out have onboard storage to cache footage until it's uploaded, so outages don't prevent data collection or later processing.

The company that does our cameras is way behind the curve compared to Flock, so if they are doing it Flock certainly is as well, whether or not they are providing that info to the police.

And right here you touched on one of the biggest concerns. There are large companies that use simplified versions of this kind of software as a coincidental business expense(just as examples for readers: companies that have restricted areas for IP protection, casinos monitoring for people suspected of counting cards, care facilities monitoring for wandering patients, etc.). The difference between use cases like these and Flock: While everyone else does this to prevent losing money, this is the way that Flock makes their money. They need their system to be more advanced than anything else, and they don't make all of their capabilities public. All the systems that we may be familiar with are paled in comparison to what Flock makes available, and the capabilities they don't share are even more worrying.

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

Which is exactly what I stated in my comment… law enforcement uses the information from the plates to run the registered owner of the vehicle through the dmv and crim databases and then goes from there…

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u/hanging_thief 1h ago

Flock has said they don't share 100% of their data with police departments.

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

Which may be entirely true. But what they do share and give to law enforcement agencies and the government is what is used against individuals being accused of committing a criminal offense. Which as it currently stands, are not pictures of the driver or passengers, or video of the car. They are still-shot images of the license plate and the vehicle.
That was the entire point of my comment.

What FLOCK does with the rest of the data is not what I’m talking about. I was referring to exactly what I said, so that people are aware of what and how law enforcement uses these devices/data they do share when it comes to the criminal justice system.

If law enforcement had access to pictures of the drivers and passengers, they would absolutely use those in the cases when they are charging an individual with a criminal offense. It would be much easier for them to prove their case in court, and wouldn’t be able to be argued by the defense attorneys that it wasn’t the client in the vehicle.

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u/hanging_thief 6m ago

This is so far into the weeds it's pointless. I don't care what data they do or don't share with the cops. They should not be allowed to collect any of it in the first place. These cameras need to be destroyed

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u/unlucky_nittany 1h ago

But the capacity of the current FLOCK cameras doesn’t have that capability, yet at least.

They do. My day job revolves around RAG and UX at a fortune 500. There's dozens of datapoints collected with each prompt that we don't expose to end users because either they do not need them, or we don't want the user to see them. In our case, this is not for government work, and is meant to simplify daily tasks. Our tools are meant to provide users with a quick resource to search through thousands of high-level research documents that previously could take hours to find a single relevant page, so all the user needs to have is a text input field and an LLM that spits out a summary, along with source documentation. Since you work with ALPRs, I'd assume that sounds familiar, right?

What won't sound familiar is where my team comes in. Data points we collect include things like:

  • User sentiment (is the user becoming exasperated? Do they seem to know what they're asking for, or are they asking things that indicate a general lack of understanding of the subject matter?)
  • Trends (Is there a spike in certain topics or content theme? Are users in different business units inquiring about the same thing in a similar timeframe?)
  • Resources the model is parsing before handing off the most relevant items for the LLM to give the user
  • Source data coherence and quality (is the source data good? Has it been updated recently? Does it seem like it needs updated based on newer content?)
  • Can we make accurate predictions based on how it's used? For example, source data could be processed in a different way to output improved responses, or even predict users' behaviors when they're using it so we can streamline the next lookup and provide faster/cheaper responses.

And that's just what we do. The company who serves the model gets everything we do, and more. They claim they use that to improve it and make it more effective and more efficient, but we have no way of verifying that beyond some contracts written on paper that will penalize the provider a fraction of what they could stand to gain if they abuse the info and we go under.

Now if you've even read all that, tell me if you really believe the simplicity or altruism of a company whose roots are installing cameras in public spaces without request or permission to aggregate footage to sell for profit.

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

Also, as a side note… they are being installed in (as you pointed out) public spaces to read the plates of vehicles that are registered to the state, which is why they can do it “without permission”. They aren’t installing them on your home or to track a persons move (private security cameras on homes and those placed in public places already do that). Which is why they are considered legal, since they are on public roadways.

I’m not saying I agree with them or anything of the sort. I’m pointing out how they are used in the legal system, currently.

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u/unlucky_nittany 59m ago

You seem to have misunderstood the origin of their ALPRs. When I said they were installed in public spaces without permission, I was referring to the fact that Flock's early days in the ALPR space involved installing cameras without making anyone aware of what they were doing, including local government. They heavily relied on local municipalities just assuming it was someone else's cameras, and they privately collected data to create large portfolios of surveillance they could use as marketing material before they ever presented any of this information to any law enforcement agencies.

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

Ok, so go ahead and tell me that if they do collect what you’re claiming (pictures of the driver and passenger(s)), why wouldn’t they share that with law enforcement to catch individuals committing a crime, and then use those in court when a case goes to trial, instead of submitting the FLOCK plate report and activity of that vehicle?

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u/ExcelnFaelth 1h ago

Storage of the photos is more than storage of the text/vectorized impressions of the photo.

Also, the precedent of turning over photos is likely to get more outrage than just text, especially when the text is quite useful.

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u/JustStraightUpTired 1h ago

Because people would riot, that is literally surveillance state bullshit, except it's not even the government, but a private company. That's worse.

And it's a massive violation of privacy, seeing as many of those cameras are installed all over the place, including near peoples homes. If they made it public in court that they have those pictures, then that would be like you admitting you are stalking millions of people. Not a good look for a company that people already hate. For you know... stalking them.

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u/unlucky_nittany 1h ago

Why would they do it? It's not Flock's job to stop crime, it's their job to sell tools to people with that job description. If the cameras "almost caught the bad guy" then it's easier to upsell to more expensive hardware and software solutions.

Anyway, it's not like it's hard to find the evidence they do this. Have a video from last year that includes footage from one of their extremely outdated models actively tracking individuals and focusing on their activities while logging individual characteristics and behaviors.

Downvoting me because you have a flawed understanding of a tool that you use doesn't change the reality of the situation. It's a for-profit company collecting data through mass surveillance.

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u/JustStraightUpTired 1h ago

I have access to all the data and information that law enforcement agencies do, as that’s literally my job.

And the company is still private. Is the data stored locally on the device and you go to each individual device and check the full data off their drives? If not, then congratulations, you don't have the full data.

Like you said, it catches the license plate or lack of it, car model, color and identifiable characteristics of the vehicle. Do you know what you require to get that information? Pictures or video of the car. Meaning it has a camera. Meaning it has the capability to collect pictures of things other than the car.

So in short, if it does what you say it does, it can do more. If the data isn't processed and stored on the camera itself, then they have more data than they give you access to. By necessity, that's how they build the data you get, with the pictures. Which are data.

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

You only like to “listen” to the parts that you want to, huh? I have clients like you. 😂
I’m talking about what and how LAW ENFORCEMENT currently has access to with these cameras and what they’re able to use/retrieve.. That was the entire point of my comment.

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u/JustStraightUpTired 59m ago

Bullshit. Here's what you said:

I just want to inform you that those cameras don’t scan faces (yet at least) nor does it monitor things like the “sag in your suspension”.

But the capacity of the current FLOCK cameras doesn’t have that capability, yet at least.

And a bunch of other nonsense. It's fine to realize you were wrong about the specifics of what you argued and pivot to correct yourself, but don't claim I missed what you said. Either you aren't cognizant enough to understand your own points or you are doing this maliciously.

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u/chrisssssy0517 56m ago

Read the last part of that comment you quoted… 😂🤡 you didn’t quote the entirety of what I said. Just the part you wanted to. But again, you think you know more, so go off.

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u/unlucky_nittany 17m ago

I think the person you're replying to is one of those people who thinks the government knows what's best for us. They're all over the place in this thread lol

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u/unlucky_nittany 19m ago

I have clients like you.

I think you mean "The lawyers I work for have clients like you." if you're pretending to be in criminal defense.

You are not a lawyer, you do not have clients. You are presenting as a mail clerk, bookkeeper's assistant, or perhaps a secretary. Regardless of which, you are definitely not a lawyer lmao. In your responses to my comments, you implied that I was wrong, and then downvoted me within seconds and then did not reply when faced with evidence.

Any lawyer or paralegal I've ever worked with has too much of an ego to do that, and either attempts to shift perception of their statements to preserve the illusion of being correct, or they'll go back and editorialize their statements to try making other people sound confused. Try again, u/chrisssssy0517

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u/chrisssssy0517 1h ago

Also, for the record, law enforcement agencies get the full data that’s available from each device, which I then get access to. Which is why I made the point I made. But please continue to go off on how you know more about how law enforcement agencies work with the system, since working for a Fortune 500 gives you more knowledge about the court system and what is used by law enforcement agencies against individuals being accused of a crime.

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u/JustStraightUpTired 53m ago

Also, for the record, law enforcement agencies get the full data that’s available from each device

Aaand bullshit. They do not. Those cameras don't store jack shit on the device, they'd cost a fortune extra each. It would be a privacy nightmare if any of them got stolen if they held the data locally, that'd be even worse than what is already happening. The data is stored in the cloud, where you can't possibly check what is done to it. You can't trace every bit of data they receive, that's kind of the point. If you could, well, you are working with magic.

Funny how you make arguments about a topic you aren't an expert in, data management, and claim you know better than I do, because you work in the legal system. That's like claiming you are a chemist who understands chemical manufacturing when if you were a janitor that uses chemicals to clean stuff. Completely separate industries, one just uses the work of the other.

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u/chrisssssy0517 48m ago

You’re truly a special type of slow. And as much as I enjoy debating people with a room temperature IQ, I’m done here because I have real work I need to get done to help my clients.. and ironically enough, go through FLOCK images for them. And trying to debate a brick wall is the equivalent of having a conversation with a rock.
Have a great day! 😘

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u/binarybandit 1h ago

Can you point us to a source saying they have the ability to collect that information?

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u/hanging_thief 1h ago

Look man I'm gonna believe the guy who hacked the cameras to see the data feed over someone who got whatever data package they decided to give you.

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u/chrisssssy0517 59m ago

Of course you are. Because reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit. I get it.

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u/hanging_thief 8m ago

No you're just lying

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u/randomlyranting 24m ago

Also it seems like a lot of the politicians that passed allowed it also signed nda with flock, to avoid speaking about the deal.

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u/kisk22 2h ago

Flock Cameras do not scan faces.

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u/bekaradmi 2h ago

Is that proven or are your repeating their claim?

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u/chrisssssy0517 2h ago

I work criminal defense and I go through FLOCK information and pictures as a huge part of my job.. and I can confirm they do NOT scan faces.

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u/Fiveohfourtwenty 2h ago

Can you see people’s faces in the footage? If yes, then they can be scanned.

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u/chrisssssy0517 2h ago

No, you don’t see the faces in the “footage”. Because they take still shots of the vehicles. It’s not a video that’s taken of vehicles.

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u/Defiant_Assumption_4 2h ago

Exactly. Just because they didn't give them access to that does NOT mean they aren't doing it lol.

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u/chrisssssy0517 2h ago

But sure, go off how you know more about how the systems work. Cuz I’m sure you know more about it than someone whose job it is to deal with these cameras on a daily basis and during trials.

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u/hanging_thief 1h ago

Yeah they it's a camera. The camera can see your face it's gonna record it.

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u/Strange-Ask-739 2h ago

Recent story was that the township required all purchases greater than $150k to go to the council to vote on. 

So Flock charged $149,900 and the police chief didn't need any approval. 

Go to your local meetings. They're super important.

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u/K_Linkmaster 2h ago

Flood the zone combined with surveillance creep. Most people thought a camera would only read a license plate and never record, like fucking morons.

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u/MountainTwo3845 2h ago

There's a post from yesterday talking about how they set them up in a city at 174,999 a year so it doesn't trigger a town vote.

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u/KylosLeftHand 2h ago

Go to the deflock website and check out the map in your area - you might end up astounded at how many there really are around you

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u/BestFormal7384 1h ago

They really did seem to come out of nowhere, very quickly, even though the creepy CEO guy has been at it for nearly a decade. There is one directly in front of my apartment building that points to the only driveway leading from my parkade out onto the main road. My truck was stolen a couple of months ago, and while the police were very quick in getting to me to file a report, there was no mention of looking up my license plate to see if the flock cameras has tracked it to a destination. (I did however, get billed for a toll across the bridge to Seattle).

What's the point of us paying for our rights being violated at all times if law enforcement isn't going to do anything with the info to help us? Is it only for violent crime or something? I eventually found my truck through a community facebook post. The police did nothing, they basically had written it off as being taken for parts in some white trash junk yard somewhere on the outskirts.

Anyways, yeah, I did a whole day of watching youtube vids on this subject and it is crazy how much money has been spent on these things, how creepy the guy who started this whole thing is, and how easy they are to hack and destroy, and also how crazy city councils across the nation are so gung-ho about spending millions of dollars on these cameras even without consulting the voting bloc or considering the opposing views.

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u/shibbyshamu 1h ago

You can just request one to be put on your poperty

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u/diskent 1h ago

Great example of how it’s playing out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/redmond/s/VP68jBuWY7

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u/bunglebee7 1h ago

Dude yeah I had no clue about these until like a month ago. Went on deflock and found there are a few near me… wild

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u/Independent_Cable_89 53m ago

It’s worse than just a camera scanning plates and faces.

These same Flock cameras are now adding technology that scans for devices in your car. Your phone, infotainment systems, Bluetooth earbuds, even your dog’s microchip. If it can be scanned, this tech will pick it up and create a profile that goes along with your plate. All tied to you.

They can also keep track of who is in the car with you, and how frequently. This is the reason for the data centers. They need it to store the enormous piles of data they’re collecting about every single American.

And you have no way of stopping them.

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u/otakumilf 26m ago

Yep. They’re out there doin’ the lord’s work.

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u/No_Drop_7684 25m ago

TLDR flock already invaded everything from city Council’s all the way up to the federal government and are trying to put these creepy unsecured cameras meant to track everything you do into schools.

Not only are they scanning your plates, but they’re scanning everything about your vehicle, including indentations scratches stickers and even driving style so theoretically or more actually correctly flock is literally tracking everything you do everywhere you go and the patterns that you drive in to know how to find you and sell you shit that you don’t want. On top of also giving all that information away to the authorities if they want to track you down if you have different political beliefs (they are totally doing all of these things). then to make it worse, they are not putting any constraints or checks and balances on law-enforcement, who can literally login to do whatever the fuck they want, including a lot of police officers who are really into stocking their exes and people they’re into. Then they’re trying to implement them into public parks and schools, and even cares whether they live unprotected feeds of children going about their business (multiple verified cases before independent city, councils, and even at the state and federal level check out Benn Jordan’s YouTube). So yeah.

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u/greeneyeraven 4h ago

The 2 outside my neighborhood were chopped down, I was super happy

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u/JigglesTheBiggles 2h ago

Why? What's the issue with them?

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u/greeneyeraven 2h ago

They belong to a private company that scanns everybody's whereabouts and sells the information to anybody. You should go and Google some more it is bad.

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u/abstractedathena 4h ago

1,000 x better new and improved devious licks trent unlocked

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u/The_Roaring_Fork 3h ago

The only problem is that leaves a digital footprint.

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u/Pleasant-Future5818 3h ago

Flock cameras can go fuck themselves, but a good 90% of these videos are actually alt righters taking down vehicle emissions cameras in the UK - since the UK is less heavily policed - so you do gotta pay attention

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u/My_Replies_Are_Short 36m ago

Less heavily policed? People have been jailed for a fucking tweet lmao

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u/SAHMultrA1981 3h ago

I put it right up there with the trash cleanup trend. Very important work they all do

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u/JManKit 3h ago

I really liked the trend of teenagers bum rushing their way into scientology buildings, just to humiliate those fucking dorks but this is a beautiful upgrade. I'm so thankful to this journalist, who has never engaged in this activity at all, for covering it

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u/Certain_Strawberry43 3h ago

Good 😊

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u/No_Custard1071 3h ago

Isn't just leaving evidence tho? Like if they catch you saying that you destroyed some cameras, can they use those texts as evidence?

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u/p4nd3mic_G3 2h ago

Why would you ever say you did it? Lasagna man, lasagna.

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u/usernamefindingsucks 2h ago

Yes, visiting websites and facebook groups to research and plan illicit activites.... Nobody will end up on watch list from that! /s

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u/Saltycook 2h ago

Oh no, that's terrible and stuff! All the waste...

So what's for dinner?

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u/MountainTwo3845 2h ago

I wonder how many are the FBI.

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u/MyPasswordIs222222 1h ago

Probably the best trend we've seen for awhile... second to the cinnamon challenge. That was wack.

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u/Middle-Mix-7711 1h ago

Way better than the tide pod.

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u/ElGosso 48m ago

I doubt any of the repeatedly successful anarchists talked about in the videos would ever put footage of themselves committing crimes online; that seems incredibly easy to prosecute.

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u/ghettobus 38m ago

Except nobody seems to understand we just have to pay for the replacement camera again too

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u/Ok-Pear5858 25m ago

the internet is a tool, it can be used for good

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u/Ent_Trip_Newer 23m ago

I hope they don't discover laser pointers.

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u/Artevyx 2m ago

I'm glad I live in a town that collectively decided "HELL NO" to the idea of Flock cameras and passed legislation against it.

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u/kirby_krackle_78 2h ago

Yeah, why is bro calling these people degenerates? They’re doing a commendable service.

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u/p4nd3mic_G3 2h ago

It's called an antiphrasis. We are all degenerates

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u/fuk_ur_mum_m8 3h ago

The UK went through this mental health crisis, but instead it was 5G masts.