A researcher mapped 300,000 Flock devices; the company wants it taken down

A map published on 23 September by cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael shows the surveillance network of Flock Safety is far larger than the company has admitted. The Intercept reported that the map is built on coordinates from Flock's own database and shows about 300,000 devices across the United States.

More devices than the company admits

Flock told the press this summer it runs more than 120,000 cameras nationwide. Michael's Flock Surveillance Map shows more than 170,000 cameras and more than 130,000 additional gadgets, including roughly 27,000 acoustic detection devices. The findings were cited at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Flock.

Unlike crowd-sourced projects such as DeFlock, the map is based on a snapshot of Flock's own records that Michael archived in December 2025.

How the data became public

In November 2025 Michael found that Flock's servers were leaking an access token obtainable without logging in. Using it, he queried ArcGIS, a mapping platform the company uses, and retrieved device locations. He reported the flaw to Flock on 13 November, saying his testing was non-intrusive, and published a technical post in January after it was fixed.

That same month Flock said on its own blog that it had never been hacked and that its cloud platform had never suffered a data breach. Michael told The Intercept the claim does not match reality: "Either they knew and chose not to disclose it, or they didn't know I exfiltrated the data at all."

Where the cameras stand

The map colour-codes devices by model, separating Flock's Falcon cameras from Picard processing units, while a searchable table lists each device's name from the company's database: a camera called "FBI Pilot Camera" appears at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI's headquarters in Washington. About 860 devices cluster near Chicago O'Hare airport, and a camera labelled "C-F-23 FOXTROT MALE HOLDING 2/SHOWERS" sits inside the Silverdale Detention Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The Intercept checked six random locations in Arizona and found a Flock camera at each. "These cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives," Michael said.

Legal pressure on the map

On Thursday Michael was told that Doppel, which describes itself as an AI-native social engineering defence platform, filed a trademark complaint against his site on Flock's behalf and asked for it to be taken down. The Intercept also cites an ACLU report describing "a pattern of Flock regularly misleading or even lying about its business practices and privacy record".