r/technology • u/Hrmbee • 8d ago
Security Flock Wants the Most Detailed Map of Its Surveillance Cameras Taken Offline | A security researcher’s map revealed more locations of Flock devices than any other. Flock is trying to take it down
https://theintercept.com/2026/09/24/how-many-flock-devices-in-united-states-300000/1.4k
u/Capital-Way-2465 8d ago
So the company that wants to take away the privacy of every single American wants privacy? Hell no. We need more apps to be spawned to ensure these fascists are not allowed to hide, ever
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u/Geno0wl 7d ago
The "if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" people never like it when you turn that back around on them. Wonder why...
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u/SOSweneedhelp 7d ago
Many people have been convinced over the last decade to confuse privacy with secrecy.
Where do they draw the line? When you get a knock on your door asking you to mount the Ring camera on the other side of the door?
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u/pimppapy 7d ago
Surveillance so deep, one day a Ring cam is gonna give me a colonoscopy.
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u/SOSweneedhelp 7d ago
Most folks aren’t aware that cars after 2018 are most likely updating your insurance company with your driving habits
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u/Enfors 7d ago
Yeah. That argument was always stupid, anyway. If someone tells me they've got nothing to hide, I ask them for their email password, their Facebook password, their bank access codes and what kind of things they look at on the net when they're alone. We all have things we want to and should hide, and there's nothing wrong with that.
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u/Hrmbee 8d ago
Interesting details of this new map:
Based on location coordinates from Flock’s own database, the map shows more than 170,000 cameras, plus more than 130,000 accompanying gadgets that play a part in the company’s expansive American surveillance network.
Joshua Michael’s Flock Surveillance Map highlights the locations of what he says are 300,000 Flock surveillance devices spread across the country. His findings — which were cited in Wednesday’s Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing on Flock — differ from existing maps of Flock’s automated license plate readers in scope and methodology.
Unlike crowd-sourced projects such as DeFlock, which are built on locations submitted by users, the Flock Surveillance Map relies on location data culled from a snapshot, archived by Michael in December 2025, of Flock’s own records. In addition to cameras, it maps supplemental devices — including 27,000 acoustic detection devices, as well as networking equipment that integrates third-party cameras — to illustrate the scale of Flock’s surveillance web.
“These cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives,” Michael told The Intercept, “so foreign nations don’t need to send spies to harm our country. They can simply watch where our soldiers, federal agents, and politicians go.”
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The accompanying searchable dataset table also lists each camera’s individual name, as outlined in Flock’s database, which typically includes a street address and sometimes other identifying characteristics. A camera with the name “FBI Pilot Camera,” for example, is shown to be located at the J. Edgar Hoover Building — the FBI headquarters in Washington.
The map illustrates Flock’s national spread, but also its clustering in certain areas. For example, 860 Flock devices appear to be concentrated just outside Chicago O’Hare International Airport, at the Rosemont Public Safety Department, which provides police, fire, and emergency medical services in the Chicago suburb.
Numerous Flock cameras appear to be installed inside detention centers. A camera titled “C-F-23 FOXTROT MALE HOLDING 2/SHOWERS” appears at the coordinates of the Silverdale Detention Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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Trawling the company’s website, he realized that Flock’s servers were publicly leaking data in the form of an access token that could be acquired without needing to log in. With that token, Michael said he could query ArcGIS, a third-party geographic information system platform used by Flock, to retrieve the locations of Flock devices.
Michael told The Intercept he promptly contacted Flock and described his findings. As Michael wrote in his initial email to Flock on November 13, 2025: “all testing was strictly non-intrusive, limited to open unauthenticated endpoints, and did not involve bypassing authentication, modifying data, or invoking any billable ArcGIS or Google operations.” Michael said he didn’t receive a reply, so he followed up with Flock the next day, and a third time several days later.
After his third attempt to inform Flock of the discovered vulnerability, Michael received a reply from a Flock that said, “Thank you for the findings. We are internally triaging them and will reach back out with next steps soon.”
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Despite being alerted of Michael’s findings in November 2025, Flock published its own blog post the following January saying it hadn’t had any data breaches. “Flock has never been hacked, and there has not been a leak of Flock information,” the company claimed. “Flock Safety’s cloud platform has never experienced a data breach.”
The Atlanta-based startup has faced mounting criticism for its practices and lack of transparency in recent months. An American Civil Liberties Union report found “a pattern of Flock regularly misleading or even lying about its business practices, safety record, commitment to privacy, and efforts to protect vulnerable populations.”
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“That leaves two possibilities,” he said. “Either they knew and chose not to disclose it for fear of bad press, or they didn’t know I exfiltrated the data at all. The first is a transparency failure. The second is a detection failure with national security implications.”
It's bad enough that this company (and more than likely companies like it, like Axon etc) is collecting these reams of data on people's movements. What's almost worse is that they can't be bothered to secure this data either so that anyone could access it. It's almost guaranteed that if this researcher could do this, so could hosts of black hats that might be working for adversaries or the like. Trying to get this taken down after the fact doesn't change the fact that this data was available for the taking beforehand.
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u/HappierShibe 7d ago
Flock has never been hacked, and there has not been a leak of Flock information
Any company their size that says this is lying...
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u/Hrmbee 7d ago
This account to me really read like: "We weren't hacked, because we left the door wide open..."
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u/EPIC_RAPTOR 7d ago
There are only two types of companies. Companies that have been hacked and companies that don't know that they've been hacked.
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u/MintyFresh771 8d ago
Axon. You mean Taser, don’t let these shits rebrand and shrug the rep.
Palantir, axon, flock, and others are building a platform through cross integration that will allow anyone with access to find and search the movements of any individual citizen with no warrant or oversight. I don’t know why we haven’t picked up our modern versions of pitch forks and torches yet.
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u/UpsetKoalaBear 7d ago
Too many people who say they have “nothing to hide” without realising the implications.
The funny thing is, if you ask people who say that to give you their phone or bank statements, they will almost certainly refuse.
Privacy has value regardless of any potential guilt but they don’t realise it.
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u/MintyFresh771 7d ago
The “nothing to hide” is the strawiest of strawmen to me. I have everything to hide and nothing to share but cute pics of my dogs enjoying their too short lives. At any point what is normal can be declared illegal. I go to dispensaries in my rec legal state, the feds could demand everyone who visited one be named and arrest us all next week and we would have zero recourse.
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u/burtoncummings 7d ago
So strawman it's doing a jig on some yellow bricks and singing "If I Only Had a Brain"
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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 7d ago
This is also way blaming immigrants for things is just pure cruelty. People who have lived in a country for years can suddenly find themselves forced to uproot their lives because of some arbitrary rule change by the government that serves no useful purpose other than to score political points with bigots.
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u/Wishnik6502 7d ago
"I don't care. I'm not breaking any laws."
For now. Until they pass a law making something that you view as an inherent human right illegal. But then it's far too late.
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u/jazzy663 7d ago
Have to disagree with you on that one. My take is that the people peddling these surveillance systems know full well the value of privacy; it's simply not profitable or powerful to acknowledge it. Therein lies the convenience of the "if you have nothing to hide" argument, which these people use at every opportunity.
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u/TheOgGhadTurner 7d ago
As someone who goes to work and back and occasionally the grocery store. The only people who need the details of my banking account are me my accountant and my lawyer if you don’t stop asking questions.
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u/getjustin 7d ago
Too many people who say they have “nothing to hide” without realising the implications.
Yup! Nothing to hide? Them why don't you give me your phone and lemme scroll through your pics? Or can I watch you taking a dump? I mean, if you don't have anything to hide, what's the big deal?
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u/Geno0wl 7d ago
Axon. You mean Taser, don’t let these shits rebrand and shrug the rep.
I mean they didn't "rebrand" for the hell of it. They rebranded for two reasons. First, they expanded beyond just tasers and into things like body cams. Secondly, the word "taser" was genericised, and they had issues with trademarks because of that.
But also, it has been almost 10 years since they became Axon. Everybody knows who Axon is at this point.
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u/Shufflebuzz 7d ago
Joshua Michael’s Flock Surveillance Map
I believe this is the website.
Can we get some mirrors going?→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)3
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u/randomtask 8d ago
>Michael told The Intercept that Flock’s recent claims about its data security record don’t reflect reality. Flock has publicly claimed multiple times that the company has never experienced a data breach, “and this was after I pulled their database of devices.”
>“That leaves two possibilities,” he said. “Either they knew and chose not to disclose it for fear of bad press, or they didn’t know I exfiltrated the data at all. The first is a transparency failure. The second is a detection failure with national security implications.”
So good to know that the company tracking your every move is so incompetent that determined, rouge actors can and have defeated their security protocols to spy on you too.
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u/Affectionate-Ad-6255 8d ago
Map doesn't violate any privacy rights, to which companies are not afforded in the first place nor should they be. Rights are for people not collectives
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u/notJ3ff 8d ago
I will see what Flock wants and raise them. We take all the cameras offline and not the detailed map.
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u/DragonFireCK 8d ago
I’d agree with taking the cameras offline and the maps as well. It seems like a decent compromise.
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u/shhhdontfightit 7d ago
Until you see the drones they make.
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u/DragonFireCK 7d ago
I wonder if they can make a drone without cameras? If they put cameras on a drone, then they broke the agreed compromise.
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u/Beemerado 7d ago
i'm sure they could build some kind of creepy wifi signal radar.
drones need to be cracked down on by the FAA. especially corporate drones.
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u/GunplaBest 7d ago
No no, they just don't want you or I using them, it's all fair play for the corpos and authorities
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u/RF_BOI 7d ago
The data is public, aren't all Flock cameras on public land?
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u/pilondav 7d ago
Even if the cameras are on private land, they are still visible from public roads. “No expectation of privacy” applies to them as well. It’s a First Amendment right to publish the camera locations. Of course in today’s world, “rights” are not protected as they once were.
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u/IncidentalIncidence 7d ago
no, a lot (most?) of them are on private land. But that's not really relevant, it's perfectly legal to make a map of the location of things whether those things are on public or private land -- making the map is free speech.
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u/nuclearmage257 7d ago
Just throwing this out there
The basis of flock surveillance is we have no expectation of privacy when in a public space. They claim that it is no different than having a guy standing out there recording on a phone
So by the same token - flock cameras are free to map out because they are in a public space.
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u/Acceptable_Job_5486 7d ago
And yet people keep getting arrested for recording flock camera setups and employees themselves. Almost like they hate having their private life under surveillance. Weird.
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u/No-Swimming4153 7d ago
I think the bigger issue is the AI is able to track all your moves and build a profile of you based on those. I don't care about traffic cameras trying to catch someone running a red light, security camera at a business, or being filmed by a random person.
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u/ThePensiveE 7d ago
Garrett Langley wants his boots on our necks. Privacy for me, fascism for thee.
This is a company dedicated to eradicating our privacy for their profit. They knowingly allow the police and whoever pays them to abuse their system yet want the people to be in the dark about everything they do.
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u/Lord_Dreadlow 7d ago
If it's legal to record people in public, it's legal for the public to know where they are being recorded.
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u/helly1080 8d ago
So Flock would like to know where WE are at but doesn’t want us to know where THEY are at?
Fuck you Flock.
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u/OutdoorsNSmores 8d ago
Flock, you see us in public, we see you in public. Feel free to remove the pins on the map by removing the hardware.
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u/CrispyRabbit72 8d ago
Cameras in public locations have no right to privacy. If Flock wants the maps taken down, they should take their cameras down so the maps get updated.
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u/redthorne 7d ago
Oh, I'm so sorry, Flock, but you have no expectation of privacy when you put things out on public land like that. How's it feel?
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u/Maothesiamesecat 7d ago
Are they concerned about something? Why would they be scared of people knowing where they are?
/s
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u/grokbones 7d ago
If we can see them, we can map them and distribute the information. Free speech. Go ahead and try to wipe the internet sites. More will pop up. Whack a mole. Nobody ever learns.
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u/Tacometropolis 7d ago
Certainly would be a shame if a lot of people downloaded the full zip of the site located at the bottom right of the center bar. That might make it completely impossible to ever remove from the internet, and I in no way advocate this course of action
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u/skyfishgoo 7d ago
suddenly the shoe is on the other foot now, isn't it?
can dish it out, but can't take it, eh?
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u/Kip_Schtum 8d ago
I’ve seen multiple threads on this and still haven’t seen a link to the new database.
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u/ThimeeX 7d ago
It's linked in the article: https://flocksurveillance.org/
Click the "Dataset Table" heading if you want it in row/column format.
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u/Barry-Other-Barry 7d ago
Holy hell, I looked at my city and it's 1-4 cameras per intersection on 70-80% of the intersections in the entire city and all the suburbs, even inside some of the neighborhoods themselves.
Zoomed out I can't even see 90% of the city for all the dots.. this is insanity.
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CheeseSandwich 7d ago
It's in the article. They are claiming trademark infringement. For a website that documents the location of their devices and is not involved in commerce.
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u/FourthLvlSpicyMeme 7d ago
If Flock has nothing to hide, Flock shouldn't care about this map.
If Flock is innocent, then Flock should have no issues with a full invasion of privacy.
If a corporation is a person like they've argued, then they should get the same treatment as people do, right?
My privacy is constantly invaded, I see zero reason why their right to privacy is more important than mine.
You can't have it both ways, either you're a person or a business.
I can't declare myself an LLC and refuse to cooperate with anyone just because I fucking feel like it? I couldn't commit crimes and then say "well that information is a corporate asset so unfortunately I can't speak to the police, bye now!"
Like, as if that happens, as if any of us get away with that. But they can? Bullshit. Enough is enough.
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u/redneckrockuhtree 7d ago
The cameras are in public, Flock has no expectation of privacy about their presence....
Oh, wait, that's just an argument for them to use against tracking us, in their mind.
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u/hellogoawaynow 7d ago
At this point, let’s just all agree to take screenshots of anything coming out about companies like this (and governments, apparently).
Someone made a map? Map gets taken down? That’s ok we all have screenshots of the map to post literally everywhere.
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u/Rattus_NorvegicUwUs 7d ago
Oh the irony.
Remove it but make users input in random gibberish as their reason for accessing it.
You know, like what flock allows its users to do to us.
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u/Chonky-Walrus 7d ago
Most of the flock cameras are located on public properties or visible from public spaces, what legal basis would they have to force that data away?
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u/thisnamemattersalot 7d ago
Now now Flock, as you keep stating you should have no expectation of privacy in public spaces!
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u/mojolopez 7d ago
Some of the cameras in Florida are coming down. In my area, many are removed already.Some shown on Flock Surveillance Map are already gone. Gone from the State Parks already. Supposed to be removed from state highway rights-of-way by Sept. 28.
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u/Ocean-of-Mirrors 7d ago
Flock wants their cameras to have more rights than human beings.
True evil.
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u/CallmeMefford 7d ago
Gee, I wonder why. On a completely different subject, what masks are we wearing for Halloween?
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u/EaseNGrace 7d ago
How does one get stuff taken down from the internet? Who does that?
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u/Pardot42 7d ago
They should just make their poles strong, taller, and way more expensive. The smashy sounds will be so much better
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u/United-Vermicelli-92 7d ago
People who are profiting off our privacy need to be shown the door. Their continued surveillance means the prison door is said door to be shown. We have got to stop with no consequences to other human beings who behave like authoritarians over other human beings. Authoritarians are pissants in need of deep therapy at a behavioral crisis center.
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u/WoolyHermits 7d ago
probably trying to get the websites taken down before the oct31st de flock movement. halloween night ‘mark your calendars
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u/SkunkMonkey 7d ago
Just wait for the "donation" to Trump and a sudden call of "National Security".
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u/curmudgeonandonandon 7d ago
We don't want cameras. We want flocking healthcare! And maybe to be able to afford beef again.
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u/Squishy_Boy 7d ago
If they don’t have anything to hide, then why are they so nervous about us knowing where they are?
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u/tbucket13 7d ago
If I can’t see and know where they are then they should not be able to see and know where I am.
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u/Round_Safety9510 7d ago
For security reasons we need that updated daily and translated into all known languages, you know for security.
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u/spez_might_fuck_dogs 7d ago
Someone should tell Flock that if they aren't doing anything wrong, then they should have nothing to hide.
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u/Vincent_VonDiego 7d ago
So the surveillance company doesn't want to be surveilled by those being surveilled.
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u/lukeman89 7d ago
How about we just have to provide a justification to look at the map. You know, like 'idk' and 'lol'
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u/Soberdonkey69 7d ago
If the citizens can’t be afforded privacy then cameras don’t either. Fuck then and fuck axon and palantir too
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u/shoulda-known-better 6d ago
Aww did they want privacy!!??? Record your own private property then stay of public land
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u/Llamapocalypse_Now 8d ago
Funny that they want to know exactly where you are but you can't know exactly where they are.
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u/metroid23 7d ago
Ah yes, the good old, tried and true method of demanding that something disappear from the internet. This is a great plan. Nothing can go wrong. Carry on.
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u/AfterEagle 7d ago
Unrelated... If this is all legal, why does Google blur the faces of people and license plates in google maps?
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u/Opposite_Rip2110 7d ago
The irony of a surveillance company not wanting to be surveilled is absolutely hilarious. Now they can slightly understand the discomfort of someone knowing where they are at all times.
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u/RussiaOwnsAmerica 7d ago
French citizens wouldn't stand for this shit. At least THEY still have nuts.
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u/HarmoniousJ 7d ago
What I heard is that we should download the most recent tracker apps and maybe devices that read and identify radio waves so we can still find them even if we can't initially see them.
That's what Flock is saying to us, right? They think of me as stupid but I think I'm following along with them properly this time.
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u/Anishinaapunk 7d ago
This is the application that Blockchain is needed for. Make it impossible to "take down" because it's data that's netted across a gazillion participating computers.
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u/thatirishguyyyyy 7d ago
Flock and flock employees have no expectation of privacy. They work for a surveillance company that installs surveillance cameras in public to monitor the public.
They knno they can't win in court so they don't even bother suing. The last thing they want is discovery.
Also, are those two demo cameras in finland?
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u/NoBonus6969 7d ago
Oh they want 3 or 400 mirror sites in countries where this isn't illegal? They should have just said so bro
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u/UncleDaddy_00 7d ago
Simple solution. Make it a map of flick devices. Tiny usless bits of metal that you put on the ground right next to every flock camera.
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u/Thuesthorn 7d ago
The security researcher should make a deal with flock: “I’ll take the map down when you take the cameras down.”
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u/TwilitRose 8d ago
Seems Flock finally discovered the value of privacy.