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A hacker collective that goes by the name stegan0gram did what most people only talk about: they took a Flock Safety license plate camera off its pole, carried it home, and opened it up. What was inside says more about America’s largest camera surveillance network than any press release ever has.
Two unencrypted partitions. The encryption key sitting right there on the device. And once 404 Media and WIRED analyzed what the key unlocked: roughly 1.6 million images covering 50,200 vehicles in just 21 days — an average of about 28 photos per car.
But the data wasn’t only cars. The camera’s software also flags PEOPLE, with confidence scores — a capability Flock has never advertised, and one the company did not address in its statement after the data went public.
It gets more absurd from there. The EFF’s audit of Flock’s national search logs found officers typing “LMAO,” “IDK,” and “ASDFG” into the reason-for-search box — 19,000 cameras across 1,558 cities, and the audit trail reads like a middle school keyboard. One Lake County, Indiana deputy ran a camera network search with “LMAO” as the stated reason.
The network’s reach is the real story: more than 2,000 outside agencies can query a single city’s cameras, which is how an officer in one state can search plates captured in another. That reach is why more than 50 cities pulled Flock cameras in 2026, why Los Angeles suspended its entire 138-camera rollout, and why senators from both parties — Wyden, Sanders, Massie — are demanding answers.
And the irony beat writes itself: in Oviedo, Florida, Evan Meyer faced three felonies for smashing what turned out to be a 3D-printed decoy camera. Meanwhile, the hackers who took a real one — and exposed a national surveillance apparatus in the process — face no announced charges at all.
This is part of our continuing Flock coverage. On the Treasure Coast of Florida alone, three officers in three weeks have been caught misusing plate-reader searches: Fort Pierce officer Josepher Crutchfield ran his ex-girlfriend’s plate 382 times, Vero Beach officer Hatfield ran a plate tied to his own name 107 times with “TEST” as the reason, and Indian River County Sgt. John Finnegan searched the same two plates 574 times with reasons like “SUS” and “DAYTIME SEARCH FOR BEST RESULT.”
Every agency involved acted only after reporters started asking questions. The cameras watch 24/7. The oversight, as always, watches on business days only.
Sources:
- 404 Media: Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People
- WIRED: Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera
- EFF audit via 404 Media: Cops Search Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO’ and ‘ASDFG’
- TCPalm: Treasure Coast Flock search investigations (Crutchfield, Hatfield, Finnegan)
Editorial art: 404 Media (SPUMONI Cooperative), WIRED (Jobanny Cabrera). Camera hardware photos: Wikimedia Commons CC, TCPalm, KODIS.
#OhDangReally #Flock #Surveillance #Privacy #ALPR
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