u/Ellogar

Stegan0gram pulled a Flock Safety ALPR off a roadway, copied its Android storage, and gave the files to 404 Media and WIRED. Their September 16, 2026 analysis found an encryption key in an unencrypted “media” partition plus logs of about 50,200 vehicles and 1.6 million images in 21 days. The software also scored people and bicycles. Flock called the removal illegal and said its most sensitive storage stayed locked.

SparrowMap has volunteers point spare phones and webcams at public streets. Detection stays on the device. Government plates and photos become a public record; civilian plates are destroyed in the pixels before anything is sent. The curb is the contact point. An unmarked unit can be logged from a window; a private car is supposed to vanish. The same physical access that opened the Flock box can open a volunteer node, and the map itself is public.

Reason obtained a Massachusetts fusion-center product later sent through a Wisconsin center. It names SparrowMap, quotes calls to map government and ICE vehicles, and treats anti-ALPR software builders as a potential operational threat. The bulletin also says the Commonwealth Fusion Center had no indication of a planned crime. The trajectory is reciprocal mapping: police buy Flock, volunteers invert it, and fusion centers file the inversion.

Public roads now carry both stacks, and no single federal statute cleanly covers Flock’s person-scoring models or a civilian government-plate log. Read the WIRED and 404 Media teardown and SparrowMap’s two-tier rules. City contracts and a window-cam on/off switch remain the controls that still exist.

Sources

Hackers Got Inside a Flock Camera. Its Data Shows How the System Really Works

https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-flock-camera-data-shows-how-system-works/

WIRED half of the Sept. 16, 2026 joint investigation of the stegan0gram Flock teardown, image counts, people-detection models, and on-device key.

Hackers Stole Flock’s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks Cars and People

https://www.404media.co/hackers-stole-flocks-camera-software-revealing-how-the-company-tracks-cars-and-people-2/

404 Media companion piece documenting the physical removal, file handoff to journalists, and software that scores people as well as plates.

Homeland Security Is Monitoring Activists Building Anti-Flock Tech

https://reason.com/2026/09/23/homeland-security-is-monitoring-activists-building-anti-flock-tech/

Sept. 23, 2026 Reason report on the Massachusetts fusion-center product circulated in Wisconsin that names SparrowMap and online ALPR critics.

SparrowMap

https://sparrowmap.com/

Project site describing volunteer phone/webcam nodes, on-device detection, and the two-tier rule that keeps government plates and destroys civilian ones.

GitHub - SparrowMap/sparrowmap

https://github.com/SparrowMap/sparrowmap

Source repository stating private plates are never written to disk, government plates are a public record, and civilian data is deleted after 14 days.

The Government is Monitoring Anti-Flock TikTok and Instagram Accounts

https://www.404media.co/the-government-is-monitoring-anti-flock-tiktok-and-instagram-accounts/

Aug. 12, 2026 404 Media report on fusion-center bulletins tracking anti-Flock social posts and DeFlock activity.

We're building a community around the opposition to these 4th amendment violations. Together we can rid CT of this plague on our communities! Come learn what has worked in other communities.

These aren’t all the types of ALPR‘s. But people keep asking “is this a flock“. So here’s a simple nonconclusive guide.

"Some of the cameras which were no longer showing connection – because we took them down – have been serviced and replaced," Grass Valley Police Department (GVPD) said. "We've learned and dealt with at least two."

It's not like Flock needs any more bad publicity, but it's probably tempting fate with the attitude of, "hey, you shouldn't have removed our privacy-invading, heavily abused camera system so quickly after canceling the contract."

The backlash has become so intense that police have asked rival Axon to redesign its cameras so people stop mistaking them for Flock's. That followed four former Savannah police employees being arrested over alleged misuse of the system, while Florida police used a fake camera to catch a vandal and charged him with three felonies for destroying it. With cities dropping Flock at a record pace, the company might want to make sure its systems can tell the difference between a broken camera and an unwanted one.

https://www.techspot.com/news/113769-california-city-canceled-flock-removed-cameras-found-company.html