Mountain View recently turned off their Flock installs after they discovered Flock had enabled data sharing without notice and other agencies were searching through MV data.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came...
> A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-...
> The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
The liberty at stake here is freedom of movement without a permanent, searchable record. There's a meaningful difference between "a person can see you in public" and "a corporation logs your plate, location, and timestamp thousands of times a month and makes it queryable." The Supreme Court moved in this direction in Carpenter v. United States, when it ruled that accessing historical location records constitutes a search even when the individual data points were shared with a third party, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Some real-world examples of "the whole being greater than the sum of its parts":
- If your plate and another person's plate consistently show up at the same locations at the same times, that's evidence of a relationship. Now multiply that across everyone. You can map social networks, figure out who's meeting with who, identify affair partners, figure out who attends the same AA meeting every Tuesday.
- Regular trips to a mosque, a church, a union hall, a gun range, a protest staging area, a political campaign office. No single trip is meaningful, but the pattern over months tells you someone's affiliations and beliefs.
- Repeated visits to an oncology clinic, a methadone clinic, a fertility specialist, a psychiatrist's office. That's health information that would normally be protected under HIPAA if obtained through medical channels.
- When you leave for work, when you come home, what routes you take, when your house is empty. This is exactly the kind of information a stalker would want, and it's sitting in a database that (depending on the jurisdiction) may have minimal access controls.
The key point is that none of these individual observations are particularly sensitive. It's the longitudinal aggregation that transforms mundane location data into an intimate portrait of someone's life. And importantly, that portrait exists for essentially every driver, not just people under investigation.
You could argue that the 4th Amendment constrains state action, not corporate behavior. But it's not like Flock is collecting this data for some independent commercial purpose and the government occasionally subpoenas it. The product is government surveillance, just privatized. Outsourcing surveillance to a private contractor to avoid 4th Amendment scrutiny is arguably worse than the government doing it directly, because it bypasses the oversight mechanisms that keep the government in check (or at least, are supposed to do so).
This is an excellent video documenting some Flock camera vulnerabilities by Benn Jordan, a security hobbyist/researcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY. It's a bit long, but worth it.
It's amazing at how terrorism has been re-defined. When I was a kid you had to blow up skyscrapers or planes (or both at the same time), set off bombs in a crowded area, or a specifically targeted mass shooter to be labelled a terrorist.
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
I wonder how he would feel about a competitor putting a flock-like camera outside his house so that anyone who wants to can learn whenever any car, perhaps his car, enters or leaves his home driveway.
Would he be happy with this, or would he become a "terrorist" by objecting?
I'm a deflock user - I'm a libertarian. These cameras are a huge privacy violation, its amazing how fast Flock has grown ubiquitous. There is a strong Fourth Amendment argument against Flock, they have a generous interpretation of the constitution that your car has no rights and neither does your license plate therefore you have no privacy while on the road.
I've also been on the receiving end of secret Federal subpoenas for private user information at a YC backed startup. They include gag orders and management does not question the orders - they simply comply. It happens more often than you think.
However you feel about the current administration, imagine this power in the hands of the other.
Flock isn't American in any sense of the word. We should work in our communities, through legal, procedural, and civil means to eliminate these terrible, terrible cameras. The cost is much worse than the benefits on offer.
It's interesting to read how flock is positioning themselves as all pro-law-and-order. In countries where I hang out in, Flock would be pretty much illegal.
Their are documented cases of Flock cameras that can see into private residences. What if one of those cameras recorded an underage person? Would Flock be responsible for collecting and distributing CSAM?
This statement essentially boils down to "The only right way to fight me is in an environment where I expect to win"
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game.
The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information.
This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
I “like” how Overton window (??? I hope I use it right) shifted dramatically in USA.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
I'm honestly tired of all these knuckleheads. They've got a few bucks in their bank accounts and pretend that makes them smarter than everyone else. They're just gaming the system, nothing more, and they have every incentive to keep it alive.
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
The fee for the first time you get caught without a plate on your registered vehicle is $10 (2nd is $20).
Trailer hitch balls do not "count" when considering whether a vehicle's plate is obstructed — I literally have one hung across my Camry, not technically obstructing the plate (but you can't see shit).
YMMV. Lasers might be a good offensive, but defense is more important.
They are building a surveillance state, LOL. The AI, Datacenters, the flock cameras, slow social media ban, the private police, etc. West, especially USA is slowly getting the taste of their own medicine.
"Thankfully, we live in a beautifully democratic and capitalistic society where we can fight in court."
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
Does anyone have a template for a network audit that one could request of a local police department that would disclose access logs for Flock Safety data?
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
The TV series Person of Interest [1] becomes more on point as years go by, even though by now it has been 15 years since its S1. One of the scenes [2] from that series where "terrorist" are shown as being in control over ghoulish CEOs like the one from this posted video.
These clean-shaven wide-eyed SV types give me the uncanny valley heebie-jeebies. Everything, from their tone of voice, to their appearance, to (most importantly) the way they phrase things... there's an almost AI-generated quality.
Anyone aware of people doing something like over here in Europe? And how legal/illegal it might be? I'm talking about putting government-operated security cameras on a map, for the general public to be aware of their locations.
These wretched wastes of skin that contribute to the surveillance system need to have the full brunt of that same surveillance apparatus turned toward them full time, published for all to see. This should include elected officials that voted for and paid for these systems as well. You don't want a system that allows more anonymous movement? You want that data collected and stored and collated and analyzed without end? Ok, pull down your pants and have yourselves offered up as the first and most prominent ones to be tracked and then see if you change your tune.
Seems like “terrorists” = citizens standing up for their rights. We aren’t past the point of no return but we are rapidly approaching it. What will it be Americans? Liberty or death?
I swear, every fascist has the same playbook. They use the same phrases, same accusations, same lies, sometimes even same wordings. It is like they have a single hive mind - for which everyone else is the enemy and is subject to destruction or enslaving.
I didn't even know about flock, and I still don't quite understand what it is, other than that they seem to want everyone being spied upon every second of their lives they're outside the hose, or something. For our protection / against crime / terrorism / pedophiles / communists / zombies or whatever. Usually it's governments and their law enforcement arms that push for that, but in the US private enterprise is king so I guess in this domain as well?
Anyway, assuming I've gotten the gist of it - I support De-flocking and de-surveillance'ing and will be happily to carry the label of an antifa terrorist all day long :-)
What's Flock? What's Deflock? Why should I care? There's absolutely no context but just another smug American with that same accent as all the other smug American dickhead CEOs speaking in that exact American CEO way they all do (is there like a school or something they all go to?).
Genuinely hilarious that this is banned off the front page. A YC alum is calling people who publish data terrorists and the fascism apologist bros are like "this site isn't for politics"
If i were the kind of person to say "i told you so" (and i am), i would point out that people have been screaming since like 1994 that the term "terrorist" is a tool of the state to punish anyone they find inconvenient.
Unfortunately for me i was born in 1991 and so i wasn't actually screaming in 1994 or 1998 or 2001 or 2003 but god damnit EVERYONE just decided "ah, typical left wing cranks" and said fuck it, let's let the president do whatever he wants, it's fine?
Obama executed a US citizen without trial on allegations of terrorism. I was absolutely screaming then.
has anything ever good come out of silicon valley or the wall street? one greedy capitalist after another and you wonder why the world has turn to a shithole! the inequality between the rich and the poor is reaching the level of ambani vs. mumbai slums.
Flock CEO calls Deflock a “terrorist organization” (2025) [video]
(youtube.com)660 points by cdrnsf 5 February 2026 | 507 comments
Comments
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/privacy/2026/02/flock-came... > A separate “statewide lookup” feature had also been active on 29 of the city’s 30 cameras since the initial installation, running for 17 straight months until Mountain View found and disabled it on January 5. Through that tool, more than 250 agencies that had never signed any data agreement with Mountain View ran an estimated 600,000 searches over a single year, according to local paper the Mountain View Voice, which first uncovered the issue after filing a public records request.
A different town (Staunton, VA) also turned of their Flock installs after their CEO sent out an email claming:
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-... > The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding, from the same activist groups who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness. Now, they're producing YouTube videos with misleading headlines.
INTERVIEWER: Surveillance is becoming more prevalent everywhere. There's an organization called Deflock that's become fairly well-known in activist circles. They take an aggressive approach—counting cameras and maintaining a Discord channel where they discuss potential activities to move against surveillance expansion and stop organizations like Flock. What's your perspective on this organization and their methods?
FLOCK CEO: I see two distinct groups of activists here. There are organizations like the ACLU and the EFF that take an above-board approach to fighting for their viewpoint. We're fortunate to live in a democratic, capitalistic country where we can fight through the courts. I have a lot of respect for those groups because they engage in reasonable debate while following the law.
FLOCK CEO: Unfortunately, there are also what I'd call terroristic organizations like Deflock, whose primary motivation appears to be chaos. They're closer to Antifa than anything else. That's disappointing because I don't want chaos - I value law and order and a society built on safety.
FLOCK CEO: For those groups, I think it's regrettable they haven't chosen a more constructive approach to achieve their goals. They do have the right to their views, but that's why we have a democratically elected process. We're not forcing Flock on anyone. Elected officials understand that communities and families want safety, and Flock is the best way to create safe communities.
INTERVIEWER: Deflock probably wouldn't agree with the "terroristic" label you've applied to them, but...
----
Yeah. "They have a right to their views" buuut also, they are terrorists, and implicitly therefore deserve to have their freedom taken away because of said views. So giving the public a map of flock cameras and organizing to advocate against these being used in our communities is terroristic, I suppose. There's one party here that should be in jail here. Seems like that ought to be the creeps that are filming everyone against their consent, but I guess that makes me a terrorist...
Some real-world examples of "the whole being greater than the sum of its parts":
- If your plate and another person's plate consistently show up at the same locations at the same times, that's evidence of a relationship. Now multiply that across everyone. You can map social networks, figure out who's meeting with who, identify affair partners, figure out who attends the same AA meeting every Tuesday.
- Regular trips to a mosque, a church, a union hall, a gun range, a protest staging area, a political campaign office. No single trip is meaningful, but the pattern over months tells you someone's affiliations and beliefs.
- Repeated visits to an oncology clinic, a methadone clinic, a fertility specialist, a psychiatrist's office. That's health information that would normally be protected under HIPAA if obtained through medical channels.
- When you leave for work, when you come home, what routes you take, when your house is empty. This is exactly the kind of information a stalker would want, and it's sitting in a database that (depending on the jurisdiction) may have minimal access controls.
The key point is that none of these individual observations are particularly sensitive. It's the longitudinal aggregation that transforms mundane location data into an intimate portrait of someone's life. And importantly, that portrait exists for essentially every driver, not just people under investigation.
You could argue that the 4th Amendment constrains state action, not corporate behavior. But it's not like Flock is collecting this data for some independent commercial purpose and the government occasionally subpoenas it. The product is government surveillance, just privatized. Outsourcing surveillance to a private contractor to avoid 4th Amendment scrutiny is arguably worse than the government doing it directly, because it bypasses the oversight mechanisms that keep the government in check (or at least, are supposed to do so).
"...and then unfortunately there is terroristic organizations like DeFlock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else."
"We're not forcing Flock on anyone..."
It is a short 1:32 video, I encourage people to watch it for themselves.
I thought DeFlock was just publishing locations of cameras and lawfully convincing local governments to not use Flock, primarily through FOIA requests.
And that they're sharing their data with other non-local agencies (eg. ICE as it stands) without a warrant? That's outrageous, IMHO.
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/
This Project includes work to fight technologies such as Flock's in the courts:
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/licen...
I've always felt good contributing to IJ and the topic and takes in the posted video are precisely why I do so.
Definition of terrorism is:
the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
couldn't be further apart from that.
Would he be happy with this, or would he become a "terrorist" by objecting?
I've also been on the receiving end of secret Federal subpoenas for private user information at a YC backed startup. They include gag orders and management does not question the orders - they simply comply. It happens more often than you think.
However you feel about the current administration, imagine this power in the hands of the other.
Flock isn't American in any sense of the word. We should work in our communities, through legal, procedural, and civil means to eliminate these terrible, terrible cameras. The cost is much worse than the benefits on offer.
That's how you know the DeFlock strategy is effective. They aren't playing the game that the CEO wants to play, they are playing the actual game. The actual game is minimizing the impact of cameras that are now everywhere.
Some individuals may take it upon themselves to vandalize the cameras, which can't be planned via conspiracy (that would be illegal), but those radical individuals can be "set up for success" through information. This strategy of creating an environment where effective vandalism is easy, is also part of the actual game.
- “law and order” is “good”, when _de facto_ most of constitution is not being applied for a year and laws or court orders are applied selectively. Not to say that “law and order” is vastly different depending on the size of your bank account;
- “terrorist” now is anything you don’t like, especially if it’s anti establishment. True freedom of speech is now apparently “violence” (and of course this dictatorial (adjacent) government would think that, as it’s biggest danger);
- “antifa” is apparently now a boogeyman, though I’d say he used it correctly as he is (apparently) fascist;
Also it is forced against people, how population can choose otherwise?
He can shove his cameras deep in his ** as far as I'm concerned.
Most trailers do not require license plates.
The fee for the first time you get caught without a plate on your registered vehicle is $10 (2nd is $20).
Trailer hitch balls do not "count" when considering whether a vehicle's plate is obstructed — I literally have one hung across my Camry, not technically obstructing the plate (but you can't see shit).
YMMV. Lasers might be a good offensive, but defense is more important.
Of course he's "thankful" for that, since in our "beautifully democratic and capitalistic" society, Flock can use their $658 million of VC funding [1] to wage lawfare against the have-nots with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers. [2]
1. https://websets.exa.ai/websets/directory/flock-safety-fundin...
2. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyis...
no: terror is strictly about civilians.
When it benefits me.
This guy gives all villain vibes you see in futuristic movies, funny how he resembles a young version of “Fletcher” in minority report movie, a movie about mass surveillance to provide a “safer community” to all.
Flock btw isn’t just an ALPR, it is a car finger printing technology, I have seen some videos of police IDing cars with no plates and they knew the owner by using flock cams.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igKb2DhP7Ao
I've never heard about Deflock, but your tantrum motivated me to know it. And I like it!
But the best part are the implications: it is ok for Flock to spy people, it isn't ok for people to spy Flock.
Pointing cameras at cameras? Terrorist organization
From what I can tell no one from YC has issued a statement about Flock since the public realized how terrible they are.
"I put cameras in your neighbourhood to track every aspect of your public life" == Apple pie and sunshine
"You get together with your neighbours and make a map of their locations" == terrorist
Flock is Fa---
Telling illiberal authoritarians to go fuck themselves is reasonable. But power is still more important than insults.
It makes me wonder what his values are.
Source article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2025/09/03/ai-st...
Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45119847
and at the same time:
Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45128605
Anyway, assuming I've gotten the gist of it - I support De-flocking and de-surveillance'ing and will be happily to carry the label of an antifa terrorist all day long :-)
We must, as a society, reject the full capability of technology to observe the public.
Unfortunately for me i was born in 1991 and so i wasn't actually screaming in 1994 or 1998 or 2001 or 2003 but god damnit EVERYONE just decided "ah, typical left wing cranks" and said fuck it, let's let the president do whatever he wants, it's fine?
Obama executed a US citizen without trial on allegations of terrorism. I was absolutely screaming then.