The cameras in this video are not managed by law enforcement. They’re not installed on the Flock cloud and there’s zero evidence the cloud has been hacked.
As explained in the video, there’s no technical difference between these videos and a video feed some random person could set up with a stolen iPhone.
There are somewhat rogue or incompetent people who get their hands on Flock cameras, don’t follow the security protocols, and don’t use the Flock cloud.
They get hacked. Because they’re idiots.
Notice this video didn’t bother to mention contacting law enforcement agencies that had been hacked. Why? Because no law enforcement agencies have been hacked.
This video is conflating hardware abuse (very easy to do) with system abuse (very hard to do), a pretty rookie mistake suggesting that this YouTuber is more interested in monetizing people’s paranoia than the truth.
No personal attacks - We use respectful language here. It’s a necessary framework for tackling controversial topics, and an awesome tactic against anyone trying to paint us as “haters."
We literally have had homeless encampments directly outside Defremery Pool for several years. Do we know if any of these people are on a list for abusing children or others? No, we don't. Your pearl clutching is so misguided.
35 officers on patrol each shift on a good day. Without Flock enabled LPR or real time community camera footage sharing, they're missing hits and wasting time physically collecting footage.
Council introduced a LOT of amendments (no interstate transfers, two key sharing auth, external audit, penalties on Flock to deter unauthorized transfer) to address privacy concerns.
What do anti-Flock people propose we do about public safety?
Public Safety has been an issues since adam and eve. I don't know why all of a sudden its a moral imperative to remove any sort of privacy to ones life. Oh the wifi route is set up to scan your house you dont want to be safe?
In you own home if you are doing anything digital its catogized and recorded. This expands to in front of your house as well as you and your neighbors ring cameras get that. Phones are bascially spying devices. Im pretty sure they do not sell non-smart tvs. Those also record you.
We have all the tech right now and the police still wont do shit if you are burglarized.
I think the reality is that most people see no negative consequences in their life from any of the creepy online tracking stuff and thus don't give a shit. If anything, people get annoyed by all the GDPR banners. Nobody cares if their data is sold and used for targeting some ads.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that most people are apathetic.
Oakland actually just installed 18 automated speed cameras so officers don't have to waste time on that. Do we like those cameras?
What's your evidence that speeding enforcement is a major drain on OPD resources?
OPD does not pull people over for excessive speeding. This reply sounds like you don’t live in Oakland. On many of occasions have I and my family witness drivers in Oakland typically with paper tags or no license plates running red lights at excessive speeds that are way over 10mph or driving on the shoulder at excessive speeds to overtake other drivers who are following the law and driving within the acceptable speed limit ranges. So stop all this online CAP about OPD actually doing their job. Only parking enforcement employees seem to work occasionally to issue tickets to folks not following the law and having cars parked in streets for more than 72 hours.
They are built with old hardware and are operating on an obsolete OS. They wont be patched. As you said they have a profit motive. Patching doesnt equal profit. They will sell Oakland new cameras, with built in obsolescence to keep the grift going.
Patching and releasing new firmware images is a net drain on revenue. Unless something really, truly terrible happens it's unlikely at best. For example, there are huge botnets out there comprised of jacked consumer IoT devices, and the manufacturers straight up said "We're not going to fix it."
I don't remember if OTA (Over the Air) firmware updating is enabled in those units or not. From what I've heard it seems unlikely.
You people are not serious, and should not be considered in serious discussions. All your bleating about safety. And then when real safety concerns are brought up, this is all you've got?
But there's always money to be made being creepy and surveillance happy, which is why they do it. And very rich people think it'll save their butts, so they're on board with it (looking at you, Chris...)
How often did that happen before the Flock cameras were installed, though? What do the stats look like?
The nice thing about surveillance services is that the marketing writes itself; mention things that we've been conditioned to be afraid of since we were little (kidnappings and murderes), play them up a little, and then say you have "a deterrent solution." In the industry it's called "elephants in trees repellent," back home it's called "a self-licking ice cream cone."
This Oakland Sub doesn’t care about Privacy, they value “safety” over freedom. I tried warning others about Flock during the council vote, and was harassed and called a “criminal” 🤷♂️
No this sub is more authentic than the other Oakland sub.. you can’t sugar coat shit on this and you can speak the truth about Oakland and won’t get banned
Centuries ago when vaccines were first introduced, there was similar opposition from fearful people who could not see the immense societal benefit that the technology would accrue one day. Waymo was almost killed by similarly naive opposition. While Flock cameras are already positive ROI, they are far from perfect today but they will one day be part of a revolutionary defensive policing system that will make long term criminals extinct. Our job is to do whatever it takes to get Flock cameras to the point where everyone can see the benefit in their lives.
Personally I am fine with our current human-centered policing but people like you always claim it’s racist. I think a widespread colorblind defensive surveillance system that can lock onto a criminal until they are immobilized by a police officer or drone is a reasonable alternative that you can’t claim is racist.
The problem is that regardless of any potential good it might be able to do, surveillance is inevitably abused by criminals and by govt and corporations. No data is truly secure. The TBs of data amassed are all linked, so it’s not just a view of the path—it’s who everyone is and everything else about their lives including medical history, disability status, financial history, travel…
Flock has a track record of being used to catch criminals. It has not been abused by criminals because the criminals who have been tracked do not generally have the technical sophistication to erase their data to prevent their inevitable capture by police.
We're not talking about "potential good." We are talking about actual and realized good. You may want to take justice away from the victims of serial killers and thugs, but I want to expand justice to 100% of crime victims by using this technology as part of a comprehensive system to end the profession of crime.
You’re proving to everyone that when one can’t credibly refute someone’s ideas, they attempt to attack the person. When you go low, we go high.
Your attempted attacks don’t change our history of progressive societal improvement. From the Model T to vaccines to Waymo and now to Flock, our brighter future won’t wait for you to join us.
Criticize opinions and policies, not the human beings behind them. This applies to both fellow Reddit users AND public figures (no matter how frustrated you might feel).
If you have a point to make, you should be able to make it without resulting to personal insults. Keep your cool.
I’m strongly in favor of capturing criminals using race neutral defensive tools such as Flock and drones armed with immobilizing devices such as nets.
Similar to how Alexa is always passively listening in order to respond to our commands, I’m strongly in favor of 24/7 surveillance technology that is inactive until we call upon it to track a criminal through our streets tirelessly until they are immobilized to face justice.
Rather than downvoting because you disagree with me, you may consider engaging in good faith like I am trying to do.
If you focused on reading my comment in good faith rather than instinctively downvoting it. Since I answered your question, I will not engage with you further until you commit to good faith discourse, which includes not immediately downvoting my comments before you read them.
All these people worried about privacy think they are more important than they really are. if you want privacy, don’t go outside, don’t use electronics, why are you even on reddit? - you signed away your privacy already
These cameras are running an outdated version of Android that hasn't recieved security updates since 2021 because it's o obsolete and no longer supported.
They are easily hacked, but more to the point they can be accessed without hacking if they arent secured. Which is the point of the new video. You, or ICE, can use a search engine like Shodan to find cameras that aren't protected.
I support law enforcement, and I believe officers should have the tools they need to fight crime, especially when departments are understaffed. But, I don’t have a good feeling about Flock. At first, I did support it, but after watching those videos, my opinion changed. I honestly think it could end up causing more harm than good. Criminals are getting smarter and more calculated every day, so it’s not surprising to think that these systems could be hacked or misused. If that happens, the same technology meant to protect people could be used to stalk or prey on them instead. Not supporting Flock does not mean being anti police. It just means being cautious. I feel like the Oakland PD should have invested in alternatives instead, like expanding the use of drones, rather than relying so heavily on camera systems like this.
Easily penetrated cameras + affordable genAI = we haven’t seen the level of creativity that criminals will unleash to plant seeds of reasonable doubt in any case. If they even get caught.
In part, it's because they're not techies. The Oakland government is staffed by people whose skillset is running the Oakland government. The company assured them they were secure, so they took them at their word. It's not like they have the inclination (or probably the funds) to bring in a third party to do any kind of security analysis and testing. In part, Flock's products are kind of crap, their engineers aren't very good, and when word got around that Flock was being deployed out here the hacker community started cackling madly, because Flock doesn't really have a good reputation among the clueful. Between SHODAN safaris and copies of Flock firmware images floating around online, it was only a matter of time before journalists caught wind of it.
The cameras in this video are not managed by law enforcement. They’re not installed on the Flock cloud and there’s zero evidence the cloud has been hacked.
As explained in the video, there’s no technical difference between these videos and a video feed some random person could set up with a stolen iPhone.
There are somewhat rogue or incompetent people who get their hands on Flock cameras, don’t follow the security protocols, and don’t use the Flock cloud.
They get hacked. Because they’re idiots.
Notice this video didn’t bother to mention contacting law enforcement agencies that had been hacked. Why? Because no law enforcement agencies have been hacked.
This video is conflating hardware abuse (very easy to do) with system abuse (very hard to do), a pretty rookie mistake suggesting that this YouTuber is more interested in monetizing people’s paranoia than the truth.
It's just fear mongering by people with an agenda
Yes - the agenda of… not wanting to live in a surveillance state
How dare they!
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No personal attacks - We use respectful language here. It’s a necessary framework for tackling controversial topics, and an awesome tactic against anyone trying to paint us as “haters."
What "agenda" is that? He basically doxed anyone on camera with relative ease.
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People can see your kids at the park with their eyes too.
Yes if they are present. But this can be a stalker anywhere in the world. Maybe you just dont care about privacy or people tracking you.
People have cameras pointed away from their homes and I bet most are poorly secured. Do you find those tolerable?
We literally have had homeless encampments directly outside Defremery Pool for several years. Do we know if any of these people are on a list for abusing children or others? No, we don't. Your pearl clutching is so misguided.
35 officers on patrol each shift on a good day. Without Flock enabled LPR or real time community camera footage sharing, they're missing hits and wasting time physically collecting footage.
Council introduced a LOT of amendments (no interstate transfers, two key sharing auth, external audit, penalties on Flock to deter unauthorized transfer) to address privacy concerns.
What do anti-Flock people propose we do about public safety?
Public Safety has been an issues since adam and eve. I don't know why all of a sudden its a moral imperative to remove any sort of privacy to ones life. Oh the wifi route is set up to scan your house you dont want to be safe?
In you own home if you are doing anything digital its catogized and recorded. This expands to in front of your house as well as you and your neighbors ring cameras get that. Phones are bascially spying devices. Im pretty sure they do not sell non-smart tvs. Those also record you.
We have all the tech right now and the police still wont do shit if you are burglarized.
I think the reality is that most people see no negative consequences in their life from any of the creepy online tracking stuff and thus don't give a shit. If anything, people get annoyed by all the GDPR banners. Nobody cares if their data is sold and used for targeting some ads.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that most people are apathetic.
Totally, but the idea that more surveillance is going to get more bad guys is just false as hell at this point.
Spend less time in patrol cars pulling people over for going 10 over the speed limit in predatory areas
Oakland actually just installed 18 automated speed cameras so officers don't have to waste time on that. Do we like those cameras? What's your evidence that speeding enforcement is a major drain on OPD resources?
It’s a revenue source, which is why it’s done - the speed cameras do free up resources tho
OPD does not pull people over for excessive speeding. This reply sounds like you don’t live in Oakland. On many of occasions have I and my family witness drivers in Oakland typically with paper tags or no license plates running red lights at excessive speeds that are way over 10mph or driving on the shoulder at excessive speeds to overtake other drivers who are following the law and driving within the acceptable speed limit ranges. So stop all this online CAP about OPD actually doing their job. Only parking enforcement employees seem to work occasionally to issue tickets to folks not following the law and having cars parked in streets for more than 72 hours.
Seems like a nothing burger? And seems like it could be patched somewhat easily?
Sometimes things need to be tested in real environments to find weaknesses, which can then be addressed.
Watch the video. It was looking at Flock cameras installed in public in real life in multiple locations.
Automatically zooming in on faces and could even see what was on one person’s phone screen.
Very different from being seen by other humans when out in public.
If this company is this bad at security, this late in the game, there's no chance they patch this, they do not care
And even if they do, you better bet ice or some extremely crooked cops are going to abuse the fuuuuuck outta this
Pretty hyperbolic statement that isn’t likely to hold true, IMO.
There is a great likelihood that vulnerabilities will be patched, and they do care because they have a profit motive.
They are built with old hardware and are operating on an obsolete OS. They wont be patched. As you said they have a profit motive. Patching doesnt equal profit. They will sell Oakland new cameras, with built in obsolescence to keep the grift going.
Patching and releasing new firmware images is a net drain on revenue. Unless something really, truly terrible happens it's unlikely at best. For example, there are huge botnets out there comprised of jacked consumer IoT devices, and the manufacturers straight up said "We're not going to fix it."
I don't remember if OTA (Over the Air) firmware updating is enabled in those units or not. From what I've heard it seems unlikely.
Maybe. Maybe not. IoT security is a contradiction in terms at the best of times, and Flock's firmware is not the greatest.
You people are not serious, and should not be considered in serious discussions. All your bleating about safety. And then when real safety concerns are brought up, this is all you've got?
This isn’t hacked, this is a complete and total disregard for privacy by both the municipalities and the company.
This shit doesn’t belong in Oakland or any other city
Please show up to the next council meeting. Us anti-Flock people are outnumbered at these meetings.
You're right - it doesn't.
But there's always money to be made being creepy and surveillance happy, which is why they do it. And very rich people think it'll save their butts, so they're on board with it (looking at you, Chris...)
Berkeley PD has used cameras for over a year. San Pablo Park has several of them. Probably even more hackable than Flocks but no kidnappings etc.
How often did that happen before the Flock cameras were installed, though? What do the stats look like?
The nice thing about surveillance services is that the marketing writes itself; mention things that we've been conditioned to be afraid of since we were little (kidnappings and murderes), play them up a little, and then say you have "a deterrent solution." In the industry it's called "elephants in trees repellent," back home it's called "a self-licking ice cream cone."
Can’t say you weren’t warned.
This Oakland Sub doesn’t care about Privacy, they value “safety” over freedom. I tried warning others about Flock during the council vote, and was harassed and called a “criminal” 🤷♂️
I know. They just downvote and insult anything they don’t like here.
No this sub is more authentic than the other Oakland sub.. you can’t sugar coat shit on this and you can speak the truth about Oakland and won’t get banned
Whatever you say. 🤷♂️
You can’t sugar coat Flock is a mistake for Oakland, but yeah…more “authentic”
Shhhh…its more “authentic” here!
There is no upside except paranoia
No one saw this coming /s
Centuries ago when vaccines were first introduced, there was similar opposition from fearful people who could not see the immense societal benefit that the technology would accrue one day. Waymo was almost killed by similarly naive opposition. While Flock cameras are already positive ROI, they are far from perfect today but they will one day be part of a revolutionary defensive policing system that will make long term criminals extinct. Our job is to do whatever it takes to get Flock cameras to the point where everyone can see the benefit in their lives.
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Personally I am fine with our current human-centered policing but people like you always claim it’s racist. I think a widespread colorblind defensive surveillance system that can lock onto a criminal until they are immobilized by a police officer or drone is a reasonable alternative that you can’t claim is racist.
Holy minority report
The problem is that regardless of any potential good it might be able to do, surveillance is inevitably abused by criminals and by govt and corporations. No data is truly secure. The TBs of data amassed are all linked, so it’s not just a view of the path—it’s who everyone is and everything else about their lives including medical history, disability status, financial history, travel…
Flock has a track record of being used to catch criminals. It has not been abused by criminals because the criminals who have been tracked do not generally have the technical sophistication to erase their data to prevent their inevitable capture by police.
We're not talking about "potential good." We are talking about actual and realized good. You may want to take justice away from the victims of serial killers and thugs, but I want to expand justice to 100% of crime victims by using this technology as part of a comprehensive system to end the profession of crime.
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You’re proving to everyone that when one can’t credibly refute someone’s ideas, they attempt to attack the person. When you go low, we go high.
Your attempted attacks don’t change our history of progressive societal improvement. From the Model T to vaccines to Waymo and now to Flock, our brighter future won’t wait for you to join us.
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Criticize opinions and policies, not the human beings behind them. This applies to both fellow Reddit users AND public figures (no matter how frustrated you might feel).
If you have a point to make, you should be able to make it without resulting to personal insults. Keep your cool.
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Are you for or against capturing criminals using race neutral defensive tools?
Against.
Are you for or against 24/7 surveillance of Oakland citizens by the state OR private companies?
I’m strongly in favor of capturing criminals using race neutral defensive tools such as Flock and drones armed with immobilizing devices such as nets.
Similar to how Alexa is always passively listening in order to respond to our commands, I’m strongly in favor of 24/7 surveillance technology that is inactive until we call upon it to track a criminal through our streets tirelessly until they are immobilized to face justice.
Rather than downvoting because you disagree with me, you may consider engaging in good faith like I am trying to do.
Hold on, I answered your question, answer mine.
Are you ok with 24/7 surveillance by private companies and the city of everyone in Oakland?
Until you answer yes or no I won’t engage with you
If you focused on reading my comment in good faith rather than instinctively downvoting it. Since I answered your question, I will not engage with you further until you commit to good faith discourse, which includes not immediately downvoting my comments before you read them.
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Thanks for sharing. Lots of folks commenting not from oakland. That is very interesting.
If they can significantly reduce crime, I'm all for it. That's the bottomline. I don't want to worry about getting robbed in broad daylight.
There’s some quote out there about liberty and safety and such. You should look it up, bootlicker
Learn to read. I said "IF" it can significantly reduce crime. I didn't say it would.
And yet what I said still applies to you.
Ok.
All these people worried about privacy think they are more important than they really are. if you want privacy, don’t go outside, don’t use electronics, why are you even on reddit? - you signed away your privacy already
That video is part of a series. Here is a summery of the prior video: https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2025/11/17/ben-jordan-exposes-severe-security-vulnerabilities-in-flock-surveillance-cameras/
These cameras are running an outdated version of Android that hasn't recieved security updates since 2021 because it's o obsolete and no longer supported.
They are easily hacked, but more to the point they can be accessed without hacking if they arent secured. Which is the point of the new video. You, or ICE, can use a search engine like Shodan to find cameras that aren't protected.
Lmao the astro turfing from Flock bots says everything
Hi it’s me definitely not a flock employee:
I like safety. Please scan my thoughts every 5 minutes to ensure I won’t commit a crime!
Its crazy! The bots to this subreddit on this topic is unreal!
I support law enforcement, and I believe officers should have the tools they need to fight crime, especially when departments are understaffed. But, I don’t have a good feeling about Flock. At first, I did support it, but after watching those videos, my opinion changed. I honestly think it could end up causing more harm than good. Criminals are getting smarter and more calculated every day, so it’s not surprising to think that these systems could be hacked or misused. If that happens, the same technology meant to protect people could be used to stalk or prey on them instead. Not supporting Flock does not mean being anti police. It just means being cautious. I feel like the Oakland PD should have invested in alternatives instead, like expanding the use of drones, rather than relying so heavily on camera systems like this.
Easily penetrated cameras + affordable genAI = we haven’t seen the level of creativity that criminals will unleash to plant seeds of reasonable doubt in any case. If they even get caught.
There’s these thing called lasers - when you shine it at cmos sensors inside the cameras, it overwhelms them
In part, it's because they're not techies. The Oakland government is staffed by people whose skillset is running the Oakland government. The company assured them they were secure, so they took them at their word. It's not like they have the inclination (or probably the funds) to bring in a third party to do any kind of security analysis and testing. In part, Flock's products are kind of crap, their engineers aren't very good, and when word got around that Flock was being deployed out here the hacker community started cackling madly, because Flock doesn't really have a good reputation among the clueful. Between SHODAN safaris and copies of Flock firmware images floating around online, it was only a matter of time before journalists caught wind of it.
Which, apropos of the situation: https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/
That's not flock. Flock is a series of photos of intersections. It's not live streaming video.