As Flock Cameras Surge, Bipartisan Anger Rises

“ATLANTA -- The fight against Flock Safety is getting louder and more sophisticated, even as the company's AI-enabled cameras continue to spread across the U.S.

 

Last week, here in Atlanta, the license-plate reader company barred the media from its annual conference with law-enforcement agencies. But that didn't deter Benn Jordan, a cybersecurity researcher who has racked up millions of views on YouTube criticizing the company. He parked a gray van loaded with electronics nearby, pointed an antenna at the hotel and listened in.

 

"I'm gonna do whatever I can, whatever the law allows me to do, to gather as much information as possible," he said. "I do want to hear what they're saying to the police."

 

Flock has 120,000 cameras in 49 states that capture 20 billion license plates a month -- along with dents, bumper stickers and other identifying features. The company has said it is giving police a powerful tool to catch criminals. But the same bipartisan public anger that has risen up from towns and cities to stall data centers is now aimed at its spreading camera network.

 

Republican members of Congress have introduced bills to restrict the technology. Jordan appeared on Tucker Carlson's podcast last month where the host compared Flock to the ever-present surveillance of George Orwell's dystopian novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four." President Trump has weighed in too, saying last week that Flock's cameras were "under review." Flock opponents held rallies in 44 states, while a number of towns -- including two in Massachusetts in the past few days alone -- said they would stop using the cameras.

 

As with data centers, the debate over Flock has spilled into this year's elections.

 

A crowd gathered outside Flock's conference, in the shadow of Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium, carrying signs and chanting "Block Flock!" and "Stop spying on us!"

 

Speakers cited a flurry of alleged abuses: Officers who used the cameras to stalk partners and were arrested or fired for it, and cameras that wrongly flagged people who were then detained. Citizens have attacked cameras with shotguns, spray paint and saws.

 

Despite the pushback, Chief Executive Garrett Langley said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that momentum is still with the company. Its conference drew record attendance, and it is signing contracts with police, retailers and other businesses at a rapid clip. Flock's audit tools are helping uncover misuse, he said.

 

Flock announced new safeguards earlier this month to prevent misuse and cut how long data is retained, and Langley apologized for abuses by law enforcement. "Am I on the defensive?" he said. "I'm on the offensive because I need to make sure that everyone has a conversation about how we build this combined world of safety and privacy."

 

Flock's hometown of Atlanta has more surveillance cameras per resident than any other city in the U.S., according to several studies. The metro area is also home to some of the company's most dedicated and tech-savvy critics, including Jordan.

 

Outside the hotel hosting Flock's conference, a scene out of a spy thriller unfolded. Sitting in his van, Jordan watched a wireless broadcast signal scroll down his laptop. It was an undecipherable crackle, and he suspected Flock had hung vinyl sheets on windows to defeat eavesdropping. A friend in the back of the van gathered hundreds of publicly available Wi-Fi IP addresses from the hotel.

 

Local chapters of DeFlock, an opposition group that tracks the precise locations of cameras, also held a forum in nearby Marietta. More than 100 people traveled from as far away as Chicago and about 1,000 watched online.

 

At the meeting, Jordan recounted experiments with Flock cameras he purchased legally. In one, he took control of a camera by repeatedly pressing a button. He also found a way to access a Flock security camera via the internet -- and he broadcast its feed.

 

His ultimate concern, apart from privacy issues, is that vulnerabilities in systems like Flock's will someday "lead to the greatest infrastructure attack we've ever seen," he said in an interview.

 

Atlanta-area resident Jason Hunyar, who works in logistics, said he became alarmed about Flock after seeing Jordan's video exposing the live feed. Hunyar instantly recognized the suburban park where he and his wife walked when she was pregnant and realized his son was in Flock's database before he was even born.

 

Hunyar has obtained Flock audit logs through more than 200 public-records requests. He found Flock employees viewed cameras in the suburb of Dunwoody more than 1,000 times, including at a park.

 

Langley, Flock's CEO, is an electrical engineer who co-founded the company in 2017 after a series of break-ins in his Atlanta neighborhood. But the backlash has grown more visible over the past year, coinciding with public concerns about the rapid spread of AI.

 

Langley addressed the allegations in the Journal interview.

 

Flock has since patched the security vulnerabilities Jordan found in new cameras, he said. He attributed Jordan's ability to view Flock cameras over the internet to faulty SIM cards from a supplier that affected .05% of the company's cameras.

 

Langley said Dunwoody's police department is one of the most successful in the U.S., and that it gave Flock permission to use its cameras for sales demonstrations.

 

"That audit log that we were talking about earlier is why Jason's aware of that," Langley said. Flock has since stopped using Dunwoody's cameras for demos. Langley said Flock improves security constantly.

 

His critics, including an army of people who drive around looking for Flock cameras, also don't plan to stop.

 

Driving through Dunwoody with a Journal reporter, Len Phillips, an IT professional who formed DeFlock's Atlanta chapter in December, stopped on a residential street to verify a location.

 

The black camera on a pole was easy to spot. "When a car comes by, it's gonna trigger about six photographs."

 

But what worries him most, he said, are Flock's fleet of drones, which the company is rolling out to police and fire departments. They can travel 60 miles an hour 400 feet off the ground to enable quicker response times, Flock says.

 

But Phillips sees another eye in the sky. "Drones are always up in the air," he said. "They could be anywhere." [1]

 

1. As Flock Cameras Surge, Bipartisan Anger Rises. Maher, Kris.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 Aug 2026: A1.