Flock Safety cameras capture more than license plates, hack reveals

A physical investigation of a Flock Safety surveillance camera by the hacking collective ‘stegan0gram’ has revealed that the devices capture significantly more data than their intended purpose of Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) suggests.

Research conducted by Wired and 404 Media indicates that the cameras do not only record vehicle license plates but also capture images of people, bicycles, motorcycles, and even specific details like stickers on vehicles or patches on clothing. In one instance, hackers who physically removed and analyzed a camera found approximately 21 days of recordings containing 1.6 million images, data on roughly 50,200 vehicles, and 27,000 short video clips.

While the hackers successfully extracted an encryption key from the physical device to decrypt stored data, cybersecurity experts, including former Secret Service specialist Jason Brown, suggest that the central Flock Safety cloud infrastructure does not appear to be compromised. The incident has reignited debates regarding privacy, potential misuse of surveillance technology for tracking individuals, and the security of networked public monitoring systems.