Hackers removed a Flock camera from a roadway, made a near-complete copy of its internal storage, and shared the files with journalists from WIRED and 404 Media. The joint investigation reveals in new detail how Flock Safety's automatic license plate readers operate.
The animated GIF illustrates the physical extraction process described in the article, where researchers removed a Flock camera from a roadway, copied its internal storage, and analyzed the software that detects people, license plates, and bicycles, as well as the extensive image collection stored on the device.
The camera's software explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles — a fact typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, the software records where they appear in the image and the confidence of the detection. WIRED extracted the models from the camera's files and ran them against 27,321 short video clips recovered from the device; the models detected people in 11 of the clips, all of them riding motorcycles. The small number is likely due to the camera's overhead position, pointed down at passing traffic where pedestrians were unlikely to appear.
The recovered data also shows how broadly the camera's license plate detector could interpret what it saw: in some cases it mistook bumper stickers, dealership frames, and other graphics for license plates and cropped them out as if they were plates. In one video of a passing motorcycle, the detector cropped an American flag patch on the rider's saddlebag as if it were a plate.
Flock's system sends camera data to its servers, where it becomes part of a national searchable network. According to the joint analysis, in Alpharetta, Georgia, records from the city's Flock cameras were accessible to more than 2,000 agencies, including police departments, colleges, airports, and the Office of Inspector General for the federal General Services Administration. This national network has been a selling point for Flock but also a deep source of controversy. 404 Media revealed that local cops were performing lookups in the national network on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including in areas that banned working with immigration authorities or transferring license plate data out of state. 404 Media also revealed that a cop in Texas searched Flock cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion.
In early 2025, security researcher Jon "GainSec" Gaines reverse engineered a Flock license-plate reader and documented flaws that could be used to gain root-level access. After Gaines disclosed his findings, the company acknowledged the findings but downplayed their severity, writing that the flaws required physical access to the device and that even someone who gained access to a camera "would still not be able to gain access to footage," because images remained on the device only briefly after being transmitted to the cloud.
The hackers said they were able to access the Android system on the camera and found two partitions — one called "vendor" and another called "media." The "media" partition contained an encryption key that unlocked another part, which held much of the media — the videos and stills the camera took. 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.
Flock insists its cameras do not perform face recognition. WIRED and 404 Media found no evidence of any face-recognition capabilities beyond ones included by default in the Android operating system, and those capabilities did not appear to be enabled or in active use.
One of the hackers, from a collective calling itself stegan0gram, said: "Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?" The hackers said they were able to access the Android system on the camera and found two partitions — sections of its hard drive, essentially. A few of these were unencrypted, including one called "vendor" and another called "media." The latter contained an encryption key that unlocked another part, which contained much of the media — the videos and stills the camera took.
The camera's logs also show the camera struggling with storage: more than 27,000 "no space left on device" errors while trying to save full-resolution images, along with tens of thousands of related errors, crashes, and reboots. At the same time, about every two minutes, code checked that the camera was still running and logged the message, "Who's a good boy?!"; more than 12,000 of those messages appear in the recovered logs. When the camera did restart, another service left a final message: "A reboot was requested! ¡Adiós, Amigos!"
A Flock spokesperson said: "The unauthorized removal and tampering of a Flock camera is illegal." When asked specifically about the encryption key stored on the camera, the company added: "Flock takes security seriously and maintains a public Vulnerability Disclosure Policy for security researchers to report potential vulnerabilities directly to us. We received no report through that process, and based on the limited information provided, we do not have enough detail to assess the claims being made. If the individuals identified legitimate vulnerabilities, we encourage them to submit their technical findings through our vulnerability reporting process so our security team can review them and take any appropriate action." One of the hackers said: "Being investigated is a legit concern and something we are trying to avoid. I'm sure our actions have attracted some attention as it is, but we are careful and try to keep a low profile." Noel Pichardo, a former Pawtucket, Rhode Island, police officer who became an outspoken critic of Flock after challenging his department's use of the cameras, says he understands the activists' frustration but worries that sabotaging devices could ultimately strengthen the case for them: "I think that type of vigilantism will only crystallize the police and the state at large in their belief that this tool is necessary."