{"id":5448,"date":"2026-09-25T05:04:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T05:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=5448"},"modified":"2026-09-25T05:04:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T05:04:35","slug":"flock-wants-the-most-detailed-map-of-its-cameras-taken-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=5448","title":{"rendered":"Flock Wants the Most Detailed Map of Its Cameras Taken Down"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Amid mounting concerns<\/span> about its sprawling surveillance camera network, Flock Security told the press this summer that it operates more than 120,000<\/a> cameras nationwide.<\/p>\n

But a new map published Wednesday by a cybersecurity researcher reveals Flock\u2019s nationwide reach is even bigger. Based on location coordinates from Flock\u2019s own database, the map shows more than 170,000 cameras, plus more than 130,000 accompanying gadgets that play a part in the company\u2019s expansive American surveillance network.<\/p>\n

Joshua Michael\u2019s Flock Surveillance Map<\/a> highlights the locations of what he says are 300,000 Flock surveillance devices spread across the country. His findings \u2014 which were cited in Wednesday\u2019s Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing<\/a> on Flock \u2014 differ from existing maps of Flock\u2019s automated license plate readers in scope and methodology.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

Unlike crowd-sourced projects such as DeFlock<\/a>, 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\u2019s own records. In addition to cameras, it maps supplemental devices \u2014 including 27,000 acoustic detection devices, as well as networking equipment that integrates third-party cameras \u2014 to illustrate the scale of Flock\u2019s surveillance web.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives,\u201d Michael told The Intercept, \u201cso foreign nations don\u2019t need to send spies to harm our country. They can simply watch where our soldiers, federal agents, and politicians go.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Intercept visited six random Arizona locations on Michael\u2019s map; each location had a Flock camera present at the indicated coordinates.<\/p>\n

The Flock Surveillance Map also color-codes each Flock device according to its model \u2014 showing, for instance, whether the device is a Flock camera, known as a Falcon, or an accompanying processing unit known as a Picard. (Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

The accompanying searchable dataset table<\/a> also lists each camera\u2019s individual name, as outlined in Flock\u2019s database, which typically includes a street address and sometimes other identifying characteristics. A camera with the name \u201cFBI Pilot Camera,\u201d for example, is shown to be located at the J. Edgar Hoover Building \u2014 the FBI headquarters in Washington.<\/p>\n

The map illustrates Flock\u2019s national spread, but also its clustering in certain areas. For example, 860 Flock devices appear to be concentrated just outside Chicago O\u2019Hare International Airport, at the Rosemont Public Safety Department, which provides police, fire, and emergency medical services in the Chicago suburb.<\/p>\n

Numerous Flock cameras appear to be installed inside detention centers. A camera titled \u201cC-F-23 FOXTROT MALE HOLDING 2\/SHOWERS\u201d appears at the coordinates of the Silverdale Detention Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.<\/p>\n

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In November 2025,<\/span> Michael discovered a novel way to identify the location of Flock\u2019s devices. Trawling the company\u2019s website, he realized that Flock\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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: \u201call 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.\u201d Michael said he didn\u2019t receive a reply, so he followed up with Flock the next day, and a third time several days later.<\/p>\n

After his third attempt to inform Flock of the discovered vulnerability, Michael received a reply from a Flock that said, \u201cThank you for the findings. We are internally triaging them and will reach back out with next steps soon.\u201d <\/p>\n

Michael said he never heard back about it from Flock.<\/p>\n

In December 2025, Michael downloaded the Flock device location data, and in January wrote an in-depth technical blog post<\/a> about what he had found. After Michael\u2019s post, it appears that Flock fixed the vulnerability.<\/p>\n

Despite being alerted of Michael\u2019s findings in November 2025, Flock published its own blog post<\/a> the following January saying it hadn\u2019t had any data breaches. \u201cFlock has never been hacked, and there has not been a leak of Flock information,\u201d the company claimed. \u201cFlock Safety\u2019s cloud platform has never experienced a data breach.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Atlanta-based startup has faced mounting criticism for its practices and lack of transparency in recent months. An American Civil Liberties Union report<\/a> found \u201ca pattern of Flock regularly misleading or even lying about its business practices, safety record, commitment to privacy, and efforts to protect vulnerable populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael told The Intercept that Flock\u2019s recent claims about its data security record don\u2019t reflect reality. Flock has publicly claimed multiple times that the company has never experienced a data breach, \u201cand this was after I pulled their database of devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat leaves two possibilities,\u201d he said. \u201cEither they knew and chose not to disclose it for fear of bad press, or they didn\u2019t know I exfiltrated the data at all. The first is a transparency failure. The second is a detection failure with national security implications.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Michael was notified that Doppel, which describes itself as an \u201cAI-native social engineering defense platfom,\u201d filed a trademark infringement complaint regarding his site, claiming to be working on Flock\u2019s behalf. Doppel says that the site is using the trademark \u201cFLOCK SAFETY\u201d without authorization, which \u201cmay cause customer confusion \/ harm.\u201d Doppel requested the site be taken down.<\/p>\n

When he posted the Flock Surveillance Map, Michael included a pop-up disclaimer saying that the site is \u201cnot affiliated with or endorsed by Flock.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid mounting concerns about its sprawling surveillance camera network, Flock Security told the press this summer that it operates more than 120,000 cameras nationwide. But a new map published Wednesday by a cybersecurity researcher reveals Flock\u2019s nationwide reach is even bigger. Based on location coordinates from Flock\u2019s own database, the map shows more than 170,000 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-usa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}