this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. 404 Media Tracked Themselves. (www.404media.co)
submitted 2 days ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
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I am standing on the corner of Harris Road and Young Street outside of the Crossroads Business Park in Bakersfield, California, looking up at a Flock surveillance camera bolted high above a traffic signal. On my phone, I am watching myself in real time as the camera records and livestreams me—without any password or login—to the open internet. I wander into the intersection, stare at the camera and wave. On the livestream, I can see myself clearly. Hundreds of miles away, my colleagues are remotely watching me too through the exposed feed.

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.

Archive: http://archive.today/IWMKe

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[–] vacuumflower 1 points 14 hours ago

It's more of an emotional antipode of how tracking everyone is justified - "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" and all such.

Whether, say, a convicted rapist (I suppose that's dishonest enough) should be tracked or not is a question in the system of values my previous comment represents.

First, whether them being a confirmed (by a proven deed) threat justifies tracking them, second, whether tracking them violates rights of those around them - their coworkers, their family members, their friends, and so on, third, whether it's possible to make tools for tracking them without introducing a technical possibility of tracking random people.

Second and third are not the same, second is about how tracking technically only them exposes those on their social graph, third is about initially illegal, but technically possible use, that would eventually become legal, because of slippery slopes.