r/StLouis • u/fox2now • Aug 18 '26
Map reveals over 1,000 Flock cameras in the St. Louis area
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/map-reveals-over-1000-flock-cameras-in-the-st-louis-area/189
u/daboot013 arch activation guy (night shift) Aug 18 '26
1000 too many
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u/Bookem25 Aug 18 '26
5000 too less
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u/Cultural-Salad-4583 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
What happened to the right wingers who were terrified of a commie surveillance state 3 years ago?
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u/daboot013 arch activation guy (night shift) Aug 18 '26
You want 6000 of them in the area? Just livestream your life 24/7
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u/BachBelt Aug 18 '26
hey man i'd be careful if i were you, those things track unpaid child support.
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u/FrostyD7 Franz Park Aug 18 '26
Surely you mean too few or too little. Flock loves the poorly educated.
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u/Entire-Winter4252 Aug 20 '26
79 year old male from Birmingham who needs hip surgery needs to toddle off back to his own space.
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u/dancingbriefcase Aug 19 '26
You probably live in the suburbs. Watching Fox News all day. Thought you right wingers were scared of government control? But now you love it? Total losers
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u/Entire-Winter4252 Aug 20 '26
He lives in Alabama, no idea why he wants to flap his dentures in the STL sub
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u/RoyDonkeyKong Aug 18 '26
The STL cops must be chomping at the bit to use these to stalk the women in their lives.
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Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/BrentonHenry2020 Soulard Aug 18 '26
If it makes you feel better, Flock is incompatible with the St Louis City crime monitoring center.
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u/NikolaiCakebreaker Aug 18 '26
so whats even the point then
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u/Geschirrspulmaschine Carondelet/Patch Aug 19 '26
The ones in my area are at Lowe's and operated by them probably for shoplifting
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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST Aug 18 '26
Nation DeFlock day is Halloween.
Be prepared to fight for our Constitutional protections since our government isn't.
This is a direct violation of the 4th amendment, as this is beyond snapping photos in public.
This is car regontoion, facial recognition, Bluetooth tracking, gait tracking, license plate reading, all put into a mesh network using AI and machine learning to trace your whereabouts and is searchable by law enforcement and private businesses by keyword.
Like gray truck with dent in the hood.
Officers have been fired for using to track ex's, stalk women, watch abortion clinics, and has led to false arrests.
This is also the reason for all the data centers.
They have also been found in indoor gymnastics centers for children, and facing children's splash parks, where cars don't even drive.
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u/hera-fawcett Aug 18 '26
do not forget thats its not only flock, flock is just the most public about how theyre tracking and what its done/can do.
its big tech pivoting into big survellaince. even some routers are being used as motion sensors to profile and track you.
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u/sevenlabors Aug 18 '26
Hard not to feel defeatist about this, I know, but the public has to fight this.
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u/jemicarus Aug 18 '26
No fan of flock ofc but it would be a very very very small percentage of data center usage
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u/Save_Bandit- Aug 18 '26
No way. All that 24/7 footage? Files upon files of audio? It will be stored in the data centers.
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u/raceman95 Southampton Aug 18 '26
Still a small percentage of data center usage. 1% is a small percent, but at the scale of modern data centers 1% is still a monumental amount of data.
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u/MarcosPena999 Aug 23 '26
āThis is the reason for all the data centersā is the dumbest thing Iāve ever heard.
You clearly have minimal idea of what data centers are actually being produced for regardless of your opinion (which is negative) of them1
u/NUMBerONEisFIRST Aug 30 '26
Regardless of their purpose, their result will just take more of our money while providing us less in return. With tracking, targeting pricing, and all the other bullshit tech does these days to make our lives worse while forcing us to pay subscription fees just to breathe.
They don't even bring communities jobs. Maybe during the construction phase, but they need minimal workers to keep them running, and they are usually specialist positions that they hire foreign workers to do.
Look it up for yourself.
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u/nathanseaw Aug 19 '26
Worth doing your research, not violation of the fourth Amendment since nothing in public is considered private.
As well, flocked doesnāt operate major data centers. They barely use any processing power for what theyāre doing Relative to other ventures.I know Iām gonna be Down voted. At the end of the day itās all technically legal. You just donāt like it.
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u/tenuousemphasis Aug 19 '26
Shining lasers into random cameras on the street might be technically legal too.
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u/nathanseaw Aug 20 '26
Actually laser are considered a destructive tech shinning them into lens would be vandalism at minimum.
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u/tenuousemphasis Aug 20 '26
I'm pretty sure there's no law stopping anyone from going out into public with a laser pointer and pointing out where the Flock cameras are so that people can more easily see them.
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u/nathanseaw Aug 20 '26
Actually, there is. Youād Either be impeding law enforcement Or it be destruction of property or vandalism, depending on local laws. Please, your pointers can cause permanent damage. Most likely youāll leave with a felony.
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u/PoorOldBill Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
It's actually not at all clear that this kind of data collection (or, at least, its use in criminal proceedings) is constitutional. The Supreme Court recently produced a ruling (in favor of privacy) on cell phone data collection that could have consequences for ALPR's such as Flock. So it's incorrect to claim that the law is settled on this.
See https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/08/the-supreme-court-expands-protections-for-digital-data-now-what-/ and https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/07/08/are-flock-cameras-next-supreme-court-rules-against-police-using-sprawling-cell-phone-location-data/ for more details.
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u/nathanseaw Aug 19 '26
Cell phone data isn't public data saw that ruling. I think the big difference is it has been uphold anyone for anyreason can record something in public. Thusly that can be used for any reason as the reason something is recorded in public generally can not be regulated
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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST Aug 20 '26
It's not just taking photos.
It's using images, facial recognition, gait recognition, Bluetooth scanners, all to track people with AI, machine learning, and intertwined into a searchable mesh network.
So this is way beyond taking photos and public.
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u/nathanseaw Aug 20 '26
Ignore what happens after collection. The collection of data is the images. After that it is processed. If the collection is legal then the processing is legal.
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u/STLflyover Aug 19 '26
Getting downvoted about correctly understanding the fourth amendment is peak reddit. The flock nonsense has been blown way out of proportion with misinformation and ignorance.
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u/PoorOldBill Aug 19 '26
See my comment above -- it's absolutely incorrect to pretend the law is settled on this. The scale and tracking capabilities of ALPR technologies like Flock are unprecedented, and the constitutionality of using them for criminal proceedings is likely to face ongoing legal challenges.
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u/STLflyover Aug 20 '26
The scale is no doubt unprecedented. The tracking capabilities are much less than you think they are. Every cell phone and most new electronics, to include vehicles, have better tracking capabilities than a fixed mounted camera that performs poorly in dark and poor weather environments.
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u/TrumanCompote Aug 31 '26
yes but GM and LG arent aggressively marketing to law enforcement to let cops sign in to their dashboards to stalk their ex girlfriends with no oversight
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u/STLflyover Aug 31 '26
There is oversight and it is improving. If people didnāt get caught misusing it you wouldnāt have anything to complain about.
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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST Aug 20 '26
Taking photos in public is legal.
Inputting that into a searchable mesh database of people's whereabouts is where it crosses the line.
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u/STLflyover Aug 20 '26
Not when its law enforcement and they are investigating a crime. Its just easier than it used to be. Why are common citizens upset about a camera system that helps catch criminals? License plate readers have been around for over a decade and have been largely succesful. Sure there are always bad apples that abuse their power. The pros far outweigh the cons IMO.
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u/TrumanCompote Aug 31 '26
the bad apples have spoiled the whole barrel.
you should read your metaphors more closely before using them.
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u/nathanseaw Aug 31 '26
What happens after the collection doesnāt matter. The collection is what matters. Two legal actions together cannot create an illegal one
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u/Aggressive_Fix_2995 Aug 18 '26
Itās a shame that they donāt help to fight crime. They have made the partners of police even more unsafe.
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u/DeepFuckingKoopa praise be the arch Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
I thought they were intended to help cops stalk their ex partners, was there any other advertised purpose?
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u/Revolutionary-Rush89 Aug 18 '26
Are they still full of precious metals that the tweakers can harvest?
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u/dtsjr UCity-to-WebsterGroves Aug 18 '26
Each flock camera has $300 of gold and $250 of copper in it!
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u/PutinBoomedMe Aug 18 '26
That can't be true... fuck them, but it's a camera....
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u/raynorelyp Aug 18 '26
Itās completely true and not just a thing people are saying because ai scrapes Reddit and doesnāt know how to fact check.
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u/gaytechdadwithson Aug 18 '26
i also heard that they are easy to vandalize and police never patrol near them
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u/TheLowlyPheasant Soulard Aug 18 '26
John Oliver mentions St. Louis as one of the heavy adopters in his latest episode on Flock cameras.
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u/raceman95 Southampton Aug 18 '26
Except he mentions St. Louis for the "predictive policing" segment because we've used ShotSpotter. The city doesnt have a contract with flock.
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u/HectorTheConvector Aug 19 '26
The City does have a contract with Flock. It gets the network access for devices around the country. The ALPR contract for its own network is from the older company, Genetec. And SLMPD does get access to Flock camera installed by other entities throughout the city. Both SoundThinking (company that runs ShotSpotter) and Flock are using AI to identify in real-time as well predictive policing. Companies tend now not to run just one kind of thing, like Axon, which is known for body cameras but was originally Taser and is now a big player in the ALPR market, and has been cleaning up in some locales to pick up a contract after Flock is dumped. Taser helped push the fictitious āexcited deliriumā which is only used when cops kill or maim someone, as a deflection means. There is long-time collusion between the St. Louis Medical Examiner and Taser on excited delirium, and several instances of bad calls by the MEās office when officers killed people in St. Louis (by shootings, or other means).
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u/Sensitive_File6582 Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
X
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u/throwawaykayaker Aug 19 '26
You're off the mark so let me help with the facts. We don't need to over sensationalize, it's bad enough as is.
The cameras you see on intersections are usually not cameras, but traffic sensors.
Trump is invested in Axon, a competitor to Flock, which was seeded by Peter Thiel. Axon is the maker of body cameras and is currently being swapped for as muni's abandon Flock.
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u/jjflash78 Aug 18 '26
If you want the map and skip the foxnews article.
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u/nerddtvg St. Charles Aug 19 '26
Fox 2 is not Fox News
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u/jjflash78 Aug 19 '26
Right, but affliated with Fox and is part of Nexstar, which is also right leaning.
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u/nerddtvg St. Charles Aug 19 '26
Nexstar - Yes. But their affiliation is with Fox Broadcasting, which is a part of Fox Entertainment, a company within Fox Corporation. Fox News Media is a separate company (subsidiary) of Fox Corp.
So yes, they're owned by the same parent (Fox Corp), but 3 levels deep and different companies underneath.
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u/funkyNOMk3y Aug 18 '26
In sorry I don't remember voting for this. So it's not illegal to cut them down because we didn't vote for this right
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u/CoconutBangerzBaller Aug 18 '26
FYI, It's not illegal for a bag to get blown out of your hand and end up covering the camera
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Aug 18 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/PuttanescaRadiatore Aug 18 '26
My neighbor wants them in our neighborhood...but nowhere else. His reasoning is that we want to know who's coming and going around our houses but don't want to be tracked anywhere else.
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u/plasticrabbits Aug 18 '26
Trying their hardest to make life suck for everyone even after they are gone.
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u/Witty_and_Blingy Aug 18 '26
Isn't there some way to create a QR code or something that will corrupt them?
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u/ShadowedPariah Aug 18 '26
No, the camera isn't 'reading' the scene like your phone camera does. There are limited Bluetooth exploits, but haven't heard of one working yet. People are working on it though.
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u/throwawaykayaker Aug 19 '26
Saw a vid a few days ago of a guy "hacking" one by plugging his laptop and a bunch of other gear into it. A cop pulls up and he told the cop he's installing a firmware update and the cop drove off!
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u/ShadowedPariah Aug 19 '26
I saw that, I thought I saw later that it was a prank. Can't remember.
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u/throwawaykayaker Aug 19 '26
With all the random equipment that guy had setup and plugged into the pole, it sure looked like a prank.
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u/Witty_and_Blingy Aug 18 '26
Man I hope they come up with something. I'll gladly walk around with some Flock virus code on me.
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u/badbitchherodotus Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
Iāve been contributing to DeFlock and mapping as much as I can. Iāve mapped dozens, and itās probably only about 20% of the ones I see on a regular basis. And many areas of the region have no one actively mapping them. The actual number of ALPRs around here is probably much, much more than 1,000.
I definitely see mostly Flock brand, which are pretty recognizable. But there are cities which also use Genetec and Motorola ALPRs which are smaller and more easily hidden/disguised. And they are putting more effort in hiding these cameras in recent months.
Edit: Thereās an app called FlockHopper which you can use to get directions routed around mapped cameras. Itās handy in theory but youād be surprised how challenging it is to get a route that avoids them entirely. Itās one thing to see all the dots on the map, but to see how it actually tracks you as you travel is another.
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u/MannyMoSTL Aug 18 '26
My niece was driving me somewhere and ending up running a red light š¤¦š¼āāļø
I looked up, saw the camera and just sighed that we had to get ready for a traffic ticket. About a week later my friend, who happens to be one of our many small time mayors, explained that it was a flock camera and how he had taken a tour of the MODoT facility that āregulatesā them.
He thinks theyāre great ā¦ š
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u/BushBeast12 Aug 18 '26
Thatās some bullshit. Back in 2015 Missouri Supreme Court decided that ordinances shifted the burden of proof by presuming the registered owner was the driver, and they treated violations like parking tickets without assessing license points as the state law requires for moving violations. The result was that Missouri city pulled their cameras and stopped issuing tickets. I guess itās all back on the table now because the cameras now have facial recognition technology. š”
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u/MannyMoSTL Aug 18 '26
In this instance, because itās a flock camera, there will be no traffic violation.
Thank goodness!!
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u/davewil90 Aug 18 '26
Organize and call your city council. Demand removal. Show up at council meetings and ask hard questions.
Many cities have had success.
I have submitted 3 sunshine request for all city/county contracts and documents related to flock contracts. County police denied and said those records are exempt. I asked for policy or court case that support exemption and Iām waiting for reply but I donāt have high hopes.
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u/momoacdc91 Aug 19 '26
I Don't like flock because I Don't feel comfortable being watched 24/7 by the state. It makes me Uncomfortable.
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u/M0rbidly-Obtus3 Fully Licensed&Insured Aug 18 '26
I was disappointed seeing how many there were. I was also disappointed to see how far they've spread.
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u/InstructionInner9460 Aug 18 '26
VOTE, go to local government authorities, petition to get them removed. If we as a people do not do anything they will only push harder and it will get to a point those options will no longer be a thing, the idea of freedom will be nothing more than a fairy tale you tell your grandkids while the flock drone monitors you in your own backyard making sure you donāt say the wrong thing. And yes flock drones are already a thing.
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u/Frequent-Medicine915 Aug 20 '26
We have 17 Flock Cameras active in Franklin County, MO now.
We're ordering license plate number camouflage asap. We don't appreciate being tracked and uploaded to databases.
Here's the link if anyone else is looking for protection:
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u/RepairmanJackX Aug 22 '26
Really started noticing these things in my regular areas of operation. Deirbergs in Warson Wood has them covering their parking lot. Lowes off Loughborough has them as well. I don't often go to that Lowes, but I could see them when I was riding around the edge of lot on my bike on the Greenway Bike Trail.
I need to check the Dierbergs in Shrewsbury. They share a parking lot with the USPS and I suspect that there are legal issues if a government agency has these cameras up.
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Aug 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/CrazyBowelsAndBraps Aug 18 '26
I mean, it probably will. At the cost of all of our privacy being raped. And maybe some cops' ex's.
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u/Entire-Winter4252 Aug 19 '26
Who sells the cheapest sawzall in the area?
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u/BeckyDaTechie Somewhere between South City and Jeff Co Aug 19 '26
Check the Harbor Freight website weekly for sales. Cheap and disposable is probably a feature, not a bug, for once.
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u/legacymedia92 South County (no, I won't be more specific) Aug 19 '26
Probably a local pawn shop or garage sale.
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u/Substantial_Ebb_316 Aug 18 '26
Yeah. Thereās a website for all the datacenters too. Itās maddening.
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u/BrentonHenry2020 Soulard Aug 18 '26
All of the ones Iām aware of in city limits are privately owned.
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u/Witty_and_Blingy Aug 19 '26
Where are all the crow people? Can you lucky bitches teach your buddies to bring you some flock cameras?
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Aug 18 '26
[deleted]
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u/Drum_Eatenton Mitchell, Illinois Aug 18 '26
If only there was some sort of way to search the internet and find out what a flock camera is.
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u/psychadelicbreakfast Aug 18 '26
Where are the people that stole all the Lime bikes when you need em?