Hackers Rip Down Flock Camera and Steal Its Data
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What happened
Elm Grove, a village of about 6,500 in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, installed six Flock automated license plate reader cameras on its main streets. Flock Group, Inc. has sold more than 120,000 cameras to governments, schools, hospitals, shopping malls, and neighborhood associations; the devices capture plates as well as images of vehicles, pedestrians, and surroundings, and Flock’s AI tools create a “vehicle fingerprint” stored in a nationwide location-history database. Audit logs obtained through public records requests by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty show Elm Grove’s cameras are searched more than a million times most months, while village officers search them only a few dozen times a month; under Flock’s reciprocal-access system, the California Highway Patrol runs about 50,000 nationwide searches a month and the FBI about 20,000, with other agencies also querying frequently. A group called stegan0gram removed a Flock camera and took its data, sharing findings with Wired and 404 Media that the cameras’ software can generate dozens of images from a single passing vehicle to develop its signature. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sued a dozen Waukesha County agencies over warrantless Flock-database searches, and the Institute for Justice is litigating Flock-related cases in Norfolk, Virginia, and San Jose, California.
Sourcing check · Mostly on the record · 2 articles
1 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report. Most articles credit Wired and 404 Media rather than reporting it themselves.
What these terms mean and how they're counted
- On the record · names a source 1 of 2
- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty
- Primary evidence · cites a document or data 1 of 2
- Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: network audit logs
- Credits another outlet 1 of 2
- The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Wired and 404 Media
- Unnamed sources 0 of 2
- The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
- How it developed
- When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Sep 15, 11:42 UTC by The Federalist, naming its source. First document in the first report, from The Federalist (network audit logs).
- Not counted 0
- Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Right-leaning coverage is simply more complete on this story. Left-leaning coverage never reports that California police search a Wisconsin village's Flock cameras. The Federalist instead documents that Elm Grove's network is searched more than a million times most months, mostly by outside agencies. It identifies California Highway Patrol as the heaviest nationwide searcher of those feeds. A reader of The Hill would learn only that hackers stole data from a camera.
Right-leaning coverage leads with California cops using the cameras to "spy on" a quiet village. Left-leaning coverage leads with hackers who ripped down a camera, stole its data, and shared findings with other outlets.
Neither side says what legal authority California Highway Patrol claims for querying Wisconsin cameras over crimes on the Pacific Coast Highway, or whether any of those queries returned an image from Elm Grove.
Bottom line
The Hill never mentions California police searching Wisconsin Flock cameras, a practice The Federalist ties to about 50,000 CHP nationwide queries a month.
The receipts — 5 facts one side's coverage lacks
- California Highway Patrol runs about 50,000 nationwide Flock searches a month, the most of any agency
- In June 2026 the Supreme Court held that police access to Google's Location History is a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant
- The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty sued a dozen Waukesha County agencies for searching the Flock database without a warrant
- A group called stegan0gram ripped down a Flock camera and stole its data
- Flock camera software can generate dozens of images from a single passing vehicle to develop its signature
The Left View
The Hill, drawing on a joint Wired and 404 Media investigation, framed Flock around the stegan0gram camera theft and what the stolen data showed about the product’s capabilities, highlighting that the software can generate dozens of images from one passing vehicle to develop a signature. Coverage treated that technical finding, and the outlets’ review of a 21-day stretch of camera data, as the core story about how much visual information the network collects.
The Right View
The Federalist framed the Elm Grove cameras as California and other distant agencies using Flock to “spy on” a small Wisconsin village, calling “Gavin Newsom’s California Highway Patrol” “by far the most frequent nationwide searcher” and arguing that reciprocal access, not local crime-fighting, drives the search volume. It said there is “little or no oversight,” pointing to nationwide queries labeled “other,” “investigation,” or “not applicable,” and to searches it called “downright bizarre,” such as Indianapolis Police running 70 nationwide searches to monitor who attended rapper “Lil E.”’s funeral, Lexington, Ohio, Police running 225 to catch someone “attempting to sell homemade fireworks,” and Harrison County, Texas, running 28 to find a stolen lawn mower. Quoting Flock CEO Garrett Langley that the word he hears most from police is “addicted,” it called Flock a “precise nationwide surveillance tool” and “virtual panopticon,” and argued that a June 2026 Supreme Court holding—that police access to Google’s Location History is a Fourth Amendment “search” requiring a warrant—should apply because Americans have “a reasonable expectation of privacy in their physical movements,” and Flock is “more powerful, precise, and thorough” than cell-site, app-location, or GPS tracking.
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument, based on the stolen-camera data shared with Wired and 404 Media, is that Flock is not a simple plate reader: its software can generate dozens of images from a single vehicle to build a signature, so the network stores rich identifying imagery. The right’s strongest argument, based on Elm Grove’s audit logs, is that a small local camera set is overwhelmingly searched by out-of-state agencies—CHP foremost—often for vague or unrelated reasons, producing national movement tracking without local control or a warrant. The central unresolved tension is whether Flock’s AI-fingerprinted, multi-jurisdiction location history is ordinary shared policing of public streets, or the kind of comprehensive record of physical movements that the Fourth Amendment treats as a search.
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