- Coincidentally, a nearby county has just announced that they have begun installing new Flock cameras [0].
Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts."
The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero.
EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials.
[0] https://www.ketk.com/news/crime-public-safety/new-traffic-ca...
[1] https://www.beltontexas.gov/news_detail_T11_R1277.php
by snailmailman
6 subcomments
- This is a quite scary map. They are all over my local area. It may technically be possible to route a drive around them, but if you take the most convenient path between any two points at least one camera will spot you. I'd have to leave my neighborhood through back roads and enter local shopping areas through sidestreets.
This data shouldn't even be collected in the first place, let alone consolidated into a national network that any police officer can decide to spy on me through.
by nocoolnametom
2 subcomments
- One way to possibly get the cameras taken down: insist on requesting the data as it's public data and should be publicly accessible.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/wa-cit...
- Remember, according to Flock's CEO, Deflock is a terrorist organization.
by pietervdvn
1 subcomments
- If you spot missing camera's - Flock or not - you can add them to OSM easily with https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance
by fc417fc802
0 subcomment
- I'm glad the data is being catalogued and made available like this but the interactive map doesn't work for me at all. Seems to be missing clickable zoom controls and gestures on my trackpad only seem to be able to get it to zoom out, not in (I think maybe it's becoming entirely unresponsive when it first registers the zoom in event and dropping the rest of it). Did anyone actually bother to test this on a low end device?
More generally, if you're a webdev with a high end workstation it's really important to occasionally spin up a single core VM with less than 4 GB RAM, open a youtube video, and then check how well your page works in a second simultaneously visible window.
- It's clearly true there have been abuses as a result of this technology. And its also clearly true criminals have been caught as a result of the cams, that otherwise would not have been.
If you believe the costs of the the abuses, and potential abuses, exceed the benefit, then at least be honest about the trade-off, because there are real benefits.
Personally, I believe the costs, on net, are worth the benefits. And in so far as the costs can be further reduced, without loosing most benefits, then great. This is not right or wrong. It's just a question of values, and how you weight the costs vs benefits.
Don't down-vote this all at once.
by willis936
1 subcomments
- Woof. There is one that I basically must drive by everyday close to where I live. How can I figure out who is responsible for its installation so I can let them know how I feel (and will vote) about it?
by david_shaw
0 subcomment
- It would be an interesting and potentially useful project to combine these camera locations with Maps routing -- similar to "avoid toll roads," we could "avoid surveillance cameras."
- I'm gonna get downvoted for this.
But I'd like cameras in my neighborhood.
- I added one a few months ago and went to go check it, and there are 2 others almost right on top of it pointing in different directions, I guess that can't be prevented? I'm fairly certain they didn't add two more ALPRs that close to each other.
- Nice. The bike trail to my office and a few grocery stores doesn't have any of these.
by unclad5968
0 subcomment
- Weird. The city I live in has cameras, but only a few at random intersections. Most of the cameras are on a university campus, home depot, Lowes, and target. Are these normal places to put flock cameras for other cities?
- Just anecdotally looking around my city, it's noticeable that the camera's locations have a much stronger correlation with areas of high wealth rather than high crime.
- The only flock cameras indicated in my town are the canonical Home Depot arrangement. I'm pretty sure it's part of their standard operating procedures at this point. The effect these have had on the in store experience (at my location) is the primary thing that has me interested in limited deployments. Shopping at HD prior to the ALPRs was a horrible time. I think they finally caught the guy who was stealing the little screws out of the irrigation vacuum breakers. You can actually get a complete, unopened factory product most of the time now.
- Interesting ... the police in this case are claiming to be the owners of the camera.
https://oaklandcounty115.com/2026/03/03/clarkston-man-accuse...
- A potentially nice addition to this map would be your closest hardware, paint, craft store, or other spray paint dealership.
- So, our city clearly has other cameras but they are from a different vendor (and don't show up on the map). I wonder how good/bad the other players in the industry are. Flock gets the press, is that just letting someone worse quietly fill in the gaps?
by waterproof
0 subcomment
- Reminder that at least in Washington state, all images from Flock cameras are public data and thus subject to public records requests.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...
by drunken_thor
2 subcomments
- Haha Sudbury and Napanee are the only places in Canada to have them. They are tiny cities where nothing happens. Bored police officers imagining situations where they are needed.
- In my area I'm seeing a few random ones on roadways, but mostly clusters of them in the parking lots of Home Depots, Lowes, and Wal-Marts.
by nickstinemates
0 subcomment
- None in my area. Time to disperse. Get out of major cities like the pandemic promised. Fill in this great country we live in. Proliferate the governments surveillance for them.
by craftkiller
0 subcomment
- Huh, none on the upper west side in NYC. Interesting.
- Why dont they put up a couple drones up high in the sky
by the_real_cher
0 subcomment
- You can bet money theyre selling this data to private companies like repo men.
- Great site.
Caveat: it does not seem to update camera statuses after initial reporting. I see several cameras that were removed long ago, or have been repositioned, but their old statuses remain.
- Jeez there’s a few all around my uni and surrounding areas, did not know about that at all.
- I wonder how long until the site gets taken down. You know ... to protect the children.
- So silly question. Flock is making money off of my Name, Image, and Likeness can I request compensation for that?
by buellerbueller
0 subcomment
- All this does is incentivize crime doers to steal someone else's license plate first.
by renewiltord
0 subcomment
- This is pretty cool. I think I'd want a few more on my block. Can an individual request and fund one?
- Flock AI cameras run off small solar panels. Having run my own computer systems off small solar panels I know that even a minor shadow or a bit of bird poop on the panel can decrease the output enough the computer eventually cannot run and shuts down. I bet Flock cameras have the same response to a bit of bird poop like substance or shadow.
by tmshapland
1 subcomments
- How do we make this site mainstream? The public would really start to push back if they could so viscerally experience that they are being surveilled multiple times per day.
by bigwheels
2 subcomments
- When your car gets stolen, suddenly nobody can access the data.
Are there any coordinated efforts for widespread scrubbing or removal of these parasitic devices?
- [flagged]
- [flagged]
- love this , give me more cameras please , fuck those criminals.
by baggy_trough
0 subcomment
- This is great, we can see where more cameras need to be added around the neighborhood!
by whimsicalism
1 subcomments
- Much prefer camera driven enforcement to cop-on-beat driven enforcement.
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