Flock Safety’s Billion-Dollar Surveillance Machine Caught Sharing Your Data With The Feds
July 20, 2026
The Orange traffic barrel on the side of Arizona State Route 60 looked like any other piece of construction equipment. It had the same yellow-and-white striping, the same tapered shape.
It also had a camera lens carved into both sides, a solar panel, and a cellular transmitter feeding data to a private company’s servers.
License plate readers disguised as traffic barrels. Orange traffic cones with cameras inside. Speed trap signs with AI-powered sensors. This is how Flock Safety operates — a $7.5 billion surveillance company that has deployed more than 100,000 cameras across the United States, more than any law enforcement agency has ever controlled.
The company says it solves crimes. The court filings say it does something else.
1.6 Million Illegal Searches in 7 Months
On February 26, 2026, the Oakland law firm Gibbs Mura filed a class action lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against Flock Safety. The complaint, co-filed with Milberg PLLC, alleges that Flock violated California’s ALPR Privacy Act by sharing license plate data with federal agencies on a massive scale.
The numbers are specific. Between mid-2024 and early 2025, out-of-state and federal agencies queried San Francisco’s Flock database more than 1.6 million times in seven months, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs are seeking $2,500 per violation under California Civil Code Section 1798.90.55. At 1.6 million violations, the exposure runs into the billions.
The list of agencies that accessed the data reads like a federal law enforcement directory: FBI, ICE, CBP, ATF, DEA, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, VA Police at the Loma Linda Medical Center. San Jose PD audit logs showed search reasons listed as simply “CBP” and “ICE” — no case number, no warrant, no explanation.
“The audit noted that in May of 2025, the US Department of Veterans Affairs Police Department at Loma Linda Medical Center, a federal law enforcement agency, conducted two nationwide queries that included OPD in its search,” the city of Oxnard stated in a February 27, 2026 news release.
California’s sanctuary laws (SB 54) explicitly prohibit sharing data for immigration enforcement. The lawsuit describes the arrangement as a “side door” that let federal immigration enforcement access data collected from California drivers without their knowledge or consent.
The “Vendor-Based Issue” Nobody Can Explain
Oxnard police set their Flock cameras to “California only” access. They thought the data would stay local.
They were wrong.
A routine audit revealed that a “vendor-based issue” had silently re-enabled the nationwide query feature, according to the city’s official statement. Federal agencies could search Oxnard’s data without the department’s knowledge.
“Proper guardrails must not only be in place, but they must work reliably,” Oxnard Police Chief Jason Benites said in the release.
The city suspended its entire Flock program.
Ventura County found the same problem. The Sheriff’s Office audit showed 364,000 unauthorized accesses between February and March 2025. The National Lookup feature had been disabled in June 2023 to comply with California law. Somehow, it reactivated itself. “No one from our agency activated the national lookup feature,” the Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
Flock offered three possible explanations: an employee from the sheriff’s office, a Flock employee, or an automatic system bug. The company said “technical logging limitations” prevented them from determining which one it was.
They do not know how the data left. They cannot prove it will not happen again. They kept no records that would let anyone figure it out.
67 Cameras Open to the Internet, No Password Required
In December 2025, a security researcher in Georgia noticed something unusual about Flock’s Condor cameras. He could watch their live feeds from his living room. No login. No password. Just an IP address and a web browser.
Benn Jordan and Jon “GainSec” Gaines identified 67 Flock Condor cameras streaming live, unencrypted video to the open internet. The feeds came from cameras mounted on traffic signals and utility poles. They captured footage of playgrounds, parking lots, shoppers on public streets, and people leaving their homes.
404 Media confirmed the findings independently. A reporter drove to a California traffic signal, opened his phone, and watched himself on camera in real time.
The vulnerability went beyond live feeds. Anyone with the IP address could download a full month of archived footage. They could also change device settings.
Senator Ron Wyden called for an FTC investigation. In a letter, he described a surveillance company leaving 67 cameras accessible to “anyone with an internet connection.”
Flock blamed Verizon. The company said Verizon sent the wrong SIM cards with public IP addresses on 60 to 70 devices. The explanation did not address the underlying issue. No authentication was required because none was configured. The cameras were open by default.
Two months later, Gibbs Mura filed the class action lawsuit in San Francisco.
The timing is worth examining. A $7.5 billion surveillance company leaving 67 cameras streaming live, unencrypted video to the open internet weeks before a lawsuit alleges systematic data sharing. The question is whether this was incompetence or design. Gross negligence at that scale is hard to distinguish from intentional access. Either way, the convenient answer for Flock and its federal partners is that it was all a mistake.
Sixty-seven cameras were streaming live footage to anyone who looked. For the people captured in those feeds, the distinction between negligence and design changes nothing.
Mountain View: 600,000 Prying Eyes
The same pattern played out in Mountain View, California, home of Google’s headquarters.
An ACLU-supported investigation found that a statewide lookup setting had been active on 29 of the city’s 30 Flock cameras since installation. The police department did not know.
Over 12 months ending December 2025, more than 250 agencies that had never signed a data-sharing agreement with Mountain View conducted approximately 600,000 unauthorized searches of the city’s plate data. A separate national lookup setting on one camera had also been toggled on without the city’s knowledge.
Among the agencies found accessing the data: the ATF, the U.S. Air Force, and the GSA Inspector General.
The city council voted unanimously to terminate the contract.
DHS Pays for the Cameras
Flock’s expansion is not driven by local demand alone. The federal government is helping pay for it.
In Green River, Wyoming, the city council considered accepting a $111,956 grant from the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security in July 2026. The grant consists of federal funds from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Its stated purpose: enhancing “the ability of governments and nonprofits to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks.”
Green River has a population of about 12,000. Mayor Pete Rust told Cowboy State Daily he does not know of any terrorism concerns in the town.
Police Chief Shawn Sturlaugson acknowledged the friction. “I heard complaints Tuesday morning that we’ll use this as some type of proactive, crime-stopping tool,” he said. He insisted the cameras were “strictly to identify vehicles or people that are already of some concern.”
Former state lawmaker Marshall Burt was blunt about it. “It’s some bullshit,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
“The problem with putting in guardrails like everybody talks about is, nothing ever becomes permanent,” Burt said. “The next City Council or whoever decides can change policy.”
The DHS grant pipeline for surveillance cameras is not unique to Green River. Federal money flows to small towns for “terrorism prevention” equipment. The towns get cameras. The federal government gets access to the data. The architecture of Flock’s network ensures the data flows freely across jurisdictional lines.
53 Cities Cancel — But the Cameras Stay
The backlash has been significant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) documented at least 53 cities across 20 states that have terminated or rejected Flock contracts, according to the TechTimes. Communities from Austin to Evanston to Eugene have walked away.
In Dayton, Ohio, city workers spent weeks pulling black garbage bags over 72 surveillance cameras bolted to utility poles across town. They wanted to stop the cameras from collecting data. They could not immediately exit their own contract.
Dayton’s audit revealed that data from its cameras had been searched more than 7,100 times for immigration enforcement purposes — searches explicitly prohibited under the city’s own policy.
Evanston, Illinois terminated its contract in August 2025 and ordered Flock to remove the cameras. The city later discovered that only some cameras had been taken down. Flock had reinstalled others without permission. Evanston sent a cease-and-desist. The cameras were not fully removed until early 2026.
San Francisco’s police chief disclosed at a June 2026 police commission meeting that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center had queried the city’s Flock network on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies — 299 improper inquiries over approximately one year.
The CHP had already warned Flock. In November 2025, California Highway Patrol Commissioner Sean Duryee sent a letter to CEO Garrett Langley reaffirming that sharing data with the federal government or entities outside California was contractually prohibited. Flock responded that it was “aligned with CHP’s commitment to responsible, privacy-first public safety technology.”
Months later, the audits showed the exact sharing the CHP had warned against.
We Don’t Track People (Our Training Videos Say Different)
Flock’s public position is clear. “We don’t track people,” Josh Thomas, the company’s chief communications officer, has said repeatedly.
Flock’s own training videos contradict this.
“The example of tracking that vehicle from location to location to location,” a Flock webinar instructor says in company material obtained by Atlanta News First.
“And you’re able to track your suspect’s movements,” another webinar shows.
One training video features a police officer describing how Flock cameras were used to follow a suspect across state lines. “And we were able to track him all the way over to another state, in Kentucky,” the officer says.
The contradiction extends to hardware. Flock’s Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom devices that use artificial intelligence to detect and follow human movement. When Atlanta News First reporter Brendan Keefe walked in front of a Condor camera on a public trail, the camera followed his movements in real time, panning and tilting to keep him in frame.
Thomas told Keefe the camera does not track people. It uses “object detection.”
A Flock training webinar describes the feature differently: “To alert you when it sees human movement. And it will actually acquire and track that person as they walk, or people.”
The Defense Contractor Connection
Flock Safety is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the Silicon Valley venture capital firm. a16z’s American Dynamism fund invests in companies that serve what the firm calls the “national interest” — defense contractors like Anduril, drone manufacturers, and surveillance firms like Flock.
In June 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth appointed Marc Andreessen to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, placing the venture capitalist on an advisory panel that counsels the Pentagon’s top civilian leadership on force structure, modernization, and national security strategy.
Flock recently acquired a drone company. Its new platform, Flock Nova, is described as unifying “LPR, video, RMS and more in one platform.” Internal company meetings revealed that some of the data accessible through Nova came from a hacked parking meter app, according to 404 Media.
The company has also partnered with Leonardo, the defense contractor, to deploy SignalTrace technology. SignalTrace captures Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and RFID signals emitted from every vehicle that passes a Flock camera. Your phone, your smartwatch, your earbuds, your car’s tire pressure sensor — they all broadcast unique, fixed identifiers. SignalTrace combines these signals with your license plate to create a permanent digital fingerprint.
Seventy out of 100 cars might have an iPhone. Only one has an iPhone, a Bose headset, a Garmin watch, an Audi radio, and plate ABC1234. That cluster is you. It follows you even if you swap the plate.
Your car’s tire pressure sensor broadcasts a fixed, unencrypted ID constantly. There is no fix available on any car made today.
The Air Force Engineer Who Fought Back
Early last week, a U.S. Air Force engineer appeared in a Virginia courtroom charged with cutting down multiple Flock Safety cameras across town.
Jeffrey Sovern, 41, faces 13 counts of destruction of property, six counts of petit larceny, and six counts of possession of burglary tools.
He has not hidden his reasons. In a GoFundMe campaign for legal expenses, Sovern wrote: “My name is Jeff and I appreciate my privacy. I appreciate everyone’s right to privacy, enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”
He set an initial goal of $8,500. The campaign has raised more than $15,000 from over 400 contributors.
Sovern joined a growing list of people taking direct action. Vandals have used spray paint, garbage bags, and chainsaws to disable or destroy Flock cameras across the country. Sovern’s case has drawn particular attention because of his position — an Air Force engineer who understands surveillance technology choosing to act on that understanding.
He has become an unlikely folk hero. In an update after his preliminary hearing, he wrote: “We have seen a huge uptick in awareness of the system and this case.”
He urged supporters to “reach out to the local governments and demand that these systems are taken down.”
The AI Camera That Put the Wrong Man in Jail
Flock markets its system as a truth machine. It captures evidence, nothing more. The case of Hugo Parra suggests otherwise.
Parra spent nearly a month in a San Diego jail cell through Thanksgiving 2025, charged with an armed carjacking that happened five miles from where he actually was. A Flock automated license plate reader had pointed police toward his friend’s red Alfa Romeo.
The timeline should have ended the case immediately. The Flock photo that allegedly placed Parra at the scene was taken 23 seconds after officers tried to stop the fleeing suspect five miles away. No car covers five miles of city streets in 23 seconds.
“This Flock hit was obviously the wrong car, as it could not have been in both places simultaneously,” said attorney Alex Coolman, who represents Parra.
Police arrested Parra anyway. An officer described one suspect as wearing a white hoodie; the carjacking victim described a gray one. A search of the car turned up no weapons, though the crime involved a man brandishing a handgun. The route Parra and Beltran had taken passed several other Flock cameras that would have confirmed where they came from.
None of it mattered. The Flock hit overrode every human signal — the timing impossibility, the missing weapon, the wrong-colored hoodie, the three men telling officers they came from downtown.
“Mass surveillance without any sense of skepticism, or common sense, is a recipe for disaster,” Coolman said.
Parra and Beltran filed tort claims seeking $1.5 million each. The city denied the claims. A lawsuit for civil rights violations is expected.
When Police Use Flock to Target Journalists
In Lenexa, Kansas, a man named Canyen Ashworth published an op-ed critical of local ICE operations. The same day the piece ran, Lenexa police began investigating him.
The investigation was not based on any evidence of a crime. The police tied Ashworth to an unidentified person who had posted four posters around town showing a picture of an ICE agent with the words “remember when we killed fascists.” The posters had been removed. The police alleged a “damaging glue” violation.
Lenexa police used Flock’s automated license plate readers to track Ashworth’s movements around town. Several weeks after his op-ed, the police chief emailed patrol officers with a “be on the lookout” alert for Ashworth.
The chief declared the alert “MYOC” — “make your own case.” As the deputy police chief explained, this meant “there is no arrest warrant for him so look for any reason to stop him.”
The ACLU obtained the internal emails through Kansas public radio station KCUR.
The case is a concrete example of what civil liberties groups have warned about for years. Mass surveillance systems sold as crime-fighting tools inevitably become tools for targeting disfavored speech.
This is the pattern. Law enforcement access to the complete movement history of every vehicle in a city means anyone the police decide to target can be tracked, followed, and pressured — with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause.
What You Can Do About It
The surveillance is not passive. It is designed to capture everything.
But there are countermeasures.
The Scarecrow is an open-source project that generates optimized grayscale frame patterns for license plates. The patterns are designed to suppress ALPR camera detection while remaining readable to the human eye. The project is available on GitHub. It degrades the system’s ability to automatically read your plate. No frame defeats every camera. (https://github.com/Meltedd/scarecrow)
One man living in a big city uses the Scarecrow frame on his vehicle. He passes six Flock cameras on his daily commute. He has not received a single automated alert or citation linked to the frame.
DeFlock (deflock.org) is an app that maps Flock camera locations nationwide. Created by Will Freeman in Boulder, Colorado, the app shows where cameras are positioned and which direction they face. It can also plot routes that avoid cameras entirely. The number of cameras mapped has reached nearly 90,000.
The app exists because no government agency is doing this oversight.
SignalTrace countermeasures are harder. Your car’s tire pressure sensor broadcasts a fixed, unencrypted ID constantly. Disabling Bluetooth on your phone does almost nothing. The sensors passively capture signals your devices emit whether you want them to or not. The only reliable method is putting your devices in a Faraday bag before entering a vehicle.
Legislative action is the only permanent fix. The Institute for Justice offers draft legislation that would cement Fourth Amendment constraints into laws specifically governing ALPR systems. The California ALPR Privacy Act (SB 34) was supposed to do this. Flock’s architecture bypassed it anyway.
The Architecture Is the Problem
Flock has crossed 100,000 cameras. The network grows regardless of local pushback because DHS grant money ensures expansion continues. The company’s $7.5 billion valuation depends on it.
The EFF, ACLU, and investigative journalists have documented the patterns. Officers have been arrested for using Flock cameras to stalk former partners. Texas deputies used Flock to track a woman who had a self-managed abortion. Police in 80 jurisdictions used racial slurs and anti-Romani stereotypes in their Flock searches. Illinois data was shared with CBP through a “pilot program” the company said its own leadership was unaware of.
The pattern is not a bug. The network architecture is designed to make data sharing easy. That is the product. The convenience of sharing is what justifies the valuation.
The lawsuit is moving through California courts. The 53 canceled contracts are a warning. The Air Force engineer’s GoFundMe is now fully funded.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley calls the system a “digital eyewitness.” The audit logs call it something else.
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*Source documents for this article are drawn from the Gibbs Mura v. Flock Safety class action complaint (San Francisco Superior Court, Feb 2026), Oxnard Police Department official news release (Feb 27, 2026), Ventura County Sheriff’s Office audit findings, Mountain View city council records, Dayton Police Department internal audit, Atlanta News First InvestigateTV investigation (June 2026), ACLU reporting on Lenexa, Kansas, EFF investigations (2025), TechTimes reporting, stateofsurveillance.org analysis, 404 Media reporting on the Flock Condor vulnerability (Dec 2025), Senator Ron Wyden’s letter to the FTC (Dec 2025), and author archives.*
The post Flock Safety’s Billion-Dollar Surveillance Machine Caught Sharing Your Data With The Feds appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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The Everyday Life of Ukrainian “Democracy”
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