I’ve heard from people that these are some kind of special cameras, possibly with AI, that can completely scan your phone that is, the files on your phone, your contacts and so on, I don’t know for sure. It’s possible that even if your phone is turned off, it won’t help. It’s scary for me.
Maybe it’s my paranoia, but if I remember correctly, 5 years ago I didn’t even know that it was possible to spy on people via Wi-Fi and thought that AI wouldn’t come soon, but in reality, the reality turned out to be much scarier. Holy crap.
I’ve read a few articles, but they’re aimed at reducing the risk so that people don’t panic, it looks like they’re just trying to give small hints; perhaps you know more?
“Flock” is just the name of the manufacturer. There is nothing special about them.
You need better news sources
They’re not completely wrong. It’s just not Flock.
Police have had Stingrays for well over a decade now, which are basically man-in-the-middle attacks. They mimic a real cell tower, so your phone connects to it like a normal cell tower. Then the police have full access to all transmissions your phone makes to that tower. That doesn’t give them access to things like your contacts that are stored encrypted locally, but it does give them access to your text messages in transit (if not E2EE encrypted), your voice data during transmission (so any phone calls you make they can listen in and record), and any other metadata in transmission.
No, a camera can not access your phone. Ever. At all.
Flock is a camera brand that governments use because they can has several recognition systems (face and lisense plate as examples) so camera operators know that deadlymouse drove their car along main street at 10:33am, parked in parking space 234453 at 10:35AM, and walked into Cashies at 10:36am.
At 11:12am they left Cashies, returned to their car and drove west along 2nd Ave at 11:17am. Now scale that to a neighbourhood, a town, a city. You can see how it gets very distopian very fast.
There have also been cases where police officers are abusing those systems to track people for personal reasons.
People are not happy with that level of intrusion in their lives, especially when the system is used by people with a history of abusing their power and failing to report people abusing it.
Remember that whole media firestorm a few years ago that china had this massive camera network that could track everyones movements in the country. Flock is basically that, they are a private US company that is putting up cameras all over USA territory to “track speeding cars”. That is their excuse, if i remember correctly. In reality these cameras can be used to track a whole bunch of things like your movements, where you live, what you do day to day, who your friends are, etc… Now flock says they strictly control who gets to access their database, but on the flip side there have been numerous reports of police officers tracking ex wives, finding pretty girls to pull over, and more. There are reports of ICE using them, even though legally they definitely do not have access to the service. Plus flock has been extremely aggressive of critics of them, for example a few days ago there was a journalist who started doing some research into flock and 2 days later there was a camera pointing at his front door. They have been non stop threatening the creator of deflock.com that is a website that just tracks placed the flock cameras. And their security is extremely poor, like MULTIPLE potential databreaches in about 2 years and the ceo has pretty much said “ye dont care”, kind of poor. Just imagine some of the massive damage this can cause with something like scams, they now know where you live, know what car you drive, you license plate, etc… its a dream come true for the identity theft people because they can pretty much just ask " i want to be this guy" and then open like 5 credit cards in with your name and address. In short, basically a massive camera spy network over the USA that tracks citizens, bad security and overall just really not something you’d want around
I think you are conflating the Flock cameras with other things the police do.
On a flock camera they can only see what the camera sees.
They also put up wifi sniffers (stingray, imsi catcher) that can capture everything that’s sent and / or received to mobile hotspots. Essentially an endless mitm attack. They can do that with a court order.
They can only enter your phone with a search warrant. Practically this only happens when the police are already suspicious of you. Technically this can happen to anyone and everyone should keep that in mind.
But no, they cannot look into your cellphone from a flock camera. In fact these cameras are probably quite bad for capturing anything else other than number plates.
Flock is a private security company which has been making contracts with city and state governments all over the US to put up their cameras in public spaces. These cameras use AI to monitor the public and report any potential crimes to law enforcement.
Unfortunately, AI is in its infancy and highly fallible. So most of the “crimes” reported are false. Just hallucinations by the AI. However, this doesn’t stop police from responding to every report and treating innocent civilians like criminals before they’ve done a proper human assessment of the situation or any real detective work.
On top of that, police (and government officials) are using these cameras to spy on American citizens and stalk them. Harassment of “suspected criminals” is at an all-time-high thanks to these cameras, and biases (read: racism) are being encouraged. Especially with all the issues with ICE going on right now.
The cameras aren’t even encrypted properly, and some more tech-savvy folks are finding it easy to connect to the Flock camera network and browse cameras themselves without any actual credentials or authorization. You never know who is actually looking at you through these cameras.
The issue with your phone being scanned is a whole different thing unrelated to Flock cameras. Law enforcement can set up fake relay “towers” for cell phones in a mobile van, which your phone will connect to automatically while searching for the nearest strong signal. Then they can track all data that comes and goes from your phone, effectively watching everything you do on your device.
The problem is, they can’t pinpoint specific phones to connect to, so everyone in the area will automatically connect to their relay and they can effectively collect data on dozens of wireless devices all at once. It’s a short-range relay, so it’s not like they’re tracking everyone in the city. But if they’re looking for someone in particular, everyone in the area will have their private data accessed without their knowledge.
Can someone scan your phone and remotely access all of your data? Yes and no. With the right equipment, software, and skill, your phone can be remotely hacked. But no one is just pointing a device at your phone and stealing data that way. Especially not Flock. Their AI is just (falsely) reporting on what their cameras detect. They’re not actively scanning signals in the area and attempting to hack them.
Most hacked devices are either random (hackers scanning networks until they find an unsecure device), targeted attacks by someone with a purpose, or just a regular person accidentally clicking on a bad file or website link that installs a virus on their device that allows hackers to access it.
Hola LittleMouse. In case you like learning via video, I wanted to share a video I made on the topic a month or so ago. It’s about Jeff Sovern, a vigilante who allegedly destroyed 13 Flock cameras in his town, but I also give a background on what Flock is why people hate them too.
Here’s the video: https://youtu.be/Y2A66tDGwFo
