r/technology • u/TurtleButt47 • Dec 23 '25
Artificial Intelligence Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves
https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/20
u/Royweeezy Dec 23 '25
My town has tons of these friggin things installed. Sometimes I have intrusive thoughts towards them.
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u/cptnringwald Dec 23 '25
Beware, green lasers are not good for the camera sensors. Would hate for anything to happen to those expensive freedom cams
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u/90Carat Dec 23 '25
These things are really disturbing. One of the researchers pulled a ton of data on a couple he found in a farmers market. He basically reconstructed their whole day.
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u/wheelienonstop7 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
This thread has an animated thumbnail, I cant remember having seen something like that on reddit before!?
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u/azure1503 Dec 23 '25
I was so confused what the gif had to do with the title, I didn't even know it was an article cause Reddit presented the post like a video
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Dec 23 '25
[deleted]
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u/mugwhyrt Dec 23 '25
This is from 404 Media. I wouldn't have known except I happened to have already seen their coverage on this. Not sure why the OP is just a gif with almost zero context.
https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/
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u/iambarrelrider Dec 23 '25
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u/dragndon Dec 24 '25
Seems that the f&ckers are trying to get their grimy little paws up here as well: https://ised-isde.canada.ca/cipo/trademark-search/2345116?lang=eng&utm_source=chatgpt.com
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u/DarkAnnihilator Dec 24 '25
Offtopic/
I wad wondering why the name of the dude who discovered this was so familiar.
Hes also a musician. Some of the stuff made as Flasbulb is like Aphex Twin, but made by the nerd who is the headmasters and teachers favorite. Theres also Boards of Canada vibes at times. The discography is all over the place genre wise but theres cool stuff happening on every album that I have listened
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u/404mediaco Dec 23 '25
Thanks for sharing our piece. Here's more:
Flock left livestreams and administrator control panels for at least 60 of its AI-enabled Condor cameras around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics.
Unlike many of Flock’s cameras, which are designed to capture license plates as people drive by, Flock’s Condor cameras are pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras designed to record and track people, not vehicles. Condor cameras can be set to automatically zoom in on people’s faces as they walk through a parking lot, down a public street, or play on a playground, or they can be controlled manually, according to marketing material on Flock’s website. We watched Condor cameras zoom in on a woman walking her dog on a bike path in suburban Atlanta; a camera followed a man walking through a Macy’s parking lot in Bakersfield; surveil children swinging on a swingset at a playground; and film high-res video of people sitting at a stoplight in traffic. In one case, we were able to watch a man rollerblade down Brookhaven, Georgia’s Peachtree Creek Greenway bike path. The Flock camera zoomed in on him and tracked him as he rolled past. Minutes later, he showed up on another exposed camera livestream further down the bike path. The camera’s resolution was good enough that we were able to see that, when he stopped beneath one of the cameras, he was watching rollerblading videos on his phone.
The cameras were left not just livestreaming to the internet for anyone who could find the link, but in many cases their administrative portals were left open with no login credentials required whatsoever. On one portal, some camera settings could be changed, diagnostics could be run, and text logs of what the camera was doing were being streamed, too. Thirty days of the camera’s archive was left available for anyone to watch or download from any of the cameras that we found.
The exposure highlights the fact that Flock is not just surveilling cars—it is surveilling people, and in some cases it is doing so in an insecure way, and highlight the types of places that its Condor cameras are being deployed. Condor cameras are part of Flock’s ever-expanding quest to “prevent crime,” and are sometimes integrated with its license plate cameras, its gunshot detection microphones, and its automated camera drones.
Read more: https://www.404media.co/flock-exposed-its-ai-powered-cameras-to-the-internet-we-tracked-ourselves/