Florida county won’t investigate sketchy Flock cameras removed by mystery owners

Florida county claims it lacks resources to find owners of unpermitted Flock cameras.

A Florida county that discovered a clump of mysterious unpermitted Flock cameras during a countywide takedown effort won’t investigate who owned the sketchy cameras, which have since disappeared.

On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that St. Lucie County residents “remain upset,” not knowing who installed the cameras or how they were using the data collected. Hannah Galindo, a 31-year-old resident who petitioned to get Flock cameras removed, told the Post that she was worried “that data could be anywhere.”

Of the 12 cameras found, five were eventually claimed by city law enforcement, the Post reported. Apparently, a police department mistakenly issued guidance claiming that officers could post multiple cameras under one permit, a Flock spokesperson told the Post, even though the county required individual permits. However, neither Flock nor the city police departments in Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce that claimed the sketchy cameras will confirm who gave the guidance.

Over three years, the Port St. Lucie Police Department’s Flock contract ballooned from $22,000 to $470,000 in 2025, the year before the county mandated removals on county roads. However, Erick Gill, a St. Lucie County spokesperson, told the Post that despite ending that nearly half-million-dollar contract, the county lacks resources to investigate who owned the seven other unpermitted cameras found.

“It sounds like when you do something wrong, and you don’t want to get caught, and you kind of just want to sweep it under the rug,” Galindo told the Post.

According to Gill, the county’s goal was to remove the cameras, not to identify owners, which is why the county gave owners 30 days to take the cameras down without facing any questions.

“Our goal was to get the cameras out of the right-of-way within 30 days,” Gill said. “We accomplished that goal.”

Asked for comment, Gill did not address the cameras of unknown origin, only reiterating that the directive was to remove the cameras.

The Post reported that Flock “did not respond to emailed questions about who operated and removed the cameras or the apparent confusion over permitting requirements.” However, a Flock spokesperson told Ars that Flock knows who owned them and simply won’t disclose it to St. Lucie County residents.

“The cameras have been removed and belonged to several different customers,” Flock’s spokesperson said. “Flock does not share specifics regarding individual agency contracts, camera counts, locations, or deployments.”

Flock CEO said protests aren’t “real”

In St. Lucie County, Galindo’s petition makes it clear that some residents were already concerned about the lack of transparency around Flock cameras, and that was before they learned several unpermitted cameras were also collecting their data.

“These high-tech surveillance devices have been installed without clear, publicized consent or adequate discussion with the people they affect—us, the citizens who cherish their privacy and value transparency,” the petition said. Most concerning, the petition emphasized, studies have shown that Flock’s cameras “often lead to invasions of privacy, data misuse, and can even disproportionately affect marginalized communities.”

The fight in St. Lucie County echoes calls to take down Flock cameras across the US. This summer, cities were terminating contracts at a record pace, with Flock haters crossing political divides to unite against the invasive cameras that many cops abuse and misuse.

But Flock has downplayed the mass backlash, as its camera network continues to grow. On Monday, 404 Media shared leaked audio from a private police conference in which Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed nationwide anti-Flock protests like Galindo’s “are not real” and repeated a disproven conspiracy theory that Russian bots supposedly fueled viral anti-Flock social media posts.

“Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it,” Langley reportedly said. “Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight. And so look, I’m the last person, my wife as well, she’s like, ‘This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things.’”

Seemingly hoping to reassure police facing protests in their own communities, Langley insisted that “it’s anonymous bots, and so it is not real. Inorganic activity has led to organic activity, but when I look at protests across the country, it is the same people with the same signs and the same message. That’s not normal. That’s not organic at all.”

Flock’s line to police ignores that the ACLU has created a toolkit to help communities “DeFlock,” citing genuine concerns that “creepy cameras make it possible to track everyone’s movements” without a warrant. On the day 404 Media leaked Langley’s statements, the ACLU updated its resource providing instructions on how to “Get the Flock out,” while warning about lack of oversight for Flock’s huge camera database.

Flock fights to obscure 100,000 cameras

For Flock protesters, cases like the one in Florida are disturbing, since Flock appears to take great pains to obscure who owns cameras where and how large its camera network is. Talking to the Texas Tribune in August, Flock estimated there are about 120,000 cameras used by law enforcement nationwide, but cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael recently discovered that the network is nearly twice as large and has since faced legal threats from Flock for sharing his findings publicly.

In a research paper this September, Michael explained how he found a Flock access token that let him retrieve device locations without logging in. He notified Flock of the vulnerability, but he also created a map tracking all the devices. Analyzing that map, Matt Busel, founder of a software studio called Tensorust, noted that Michael exposed a network of 214,073 devices, not 120,000. Most likely, the nearly 100,000 difference represents Flock’s private camera network, which Busel warned is operated without regulatory oversight.

“It is bigger than anything Flock says out loud,” Busel wrote.

Busel told Ars that “it’s concerning” that St. Lucie County isn’t investigating ownership, since Michael’s map and his analysis show how many holes there are in the public’s understanding of how much their movements are tracked by Flock. The company’s statements do not appear to sympathize with residents who fear their data may have been misused by unknown Flock owners.

“Flock’s lack of transparency is a recurring pattern; they seem to prioritize obscuring the network’s footprint over public accountability,” Busel said. “My analysis suggests this isn’t just about localized camera placement but a broader effort to limit visibility into their total operating capacity.”

Instead of increasing transparency as public criticism swells, Flock has moved to protect private camera owners, including seemingly the ones in St. Lucie County. After Michael published the map, Flock sent a cease-and-desist letter, accusing Michael of violating laws by openly encouraging others to download its confidential data.

“An inadvertently exposed credential is not an invitation to access private systems or data,” Flock said.

Flock has demanded that Michael pull down the map, the data file, and his research paper. They’ve also asked Michael to name anyone who received the data. Otherwise, Flock has threatened to sue for injunctive relief, as well as statutory and punitive damages, since they said Michael knew the data was confidential and proprietary.

Michael has no plans to yank the data. On his site, he posted an update noting that “Flock Safety has responded to my research with a cease-and-desist letter threatening litigation. In an email to its customers, the company branded me a malicious actor, announcing it had notified law enforcement. That same email concedes Flock found no indication of unauthorized access to its data when it closed the issue in December, which is precisely the monitoring failure my research warns about. I’m not backing down.”

Asked for comment, Michael sent a statement to Ars, arguing that his research has national security implications. He confirmed that he is currently self-funding his legal defense and accepting donations from supporters on his website.

“Our nation is not protected by ignorance of a risk,” Michael said, adding:

My research on FlockSurveillance.org documents cybersecurity failures with national-security consequences. There is an extremely deep irony in slandering me as a malicious actor, and confirming my thesis in the same email. My research argued that Flock Safety could not detect exports of their data and that because they hold data on nearly every American and their pattern of life, they are a national security threat to our country and people. Flock Safety has threatened me with litigation, notified law enforcement, and promised to take every measure possible to take my research offline. These actions against my good faith cybersecurity research covering national security should be considered a betrayal to our nation and sovereignty.

“I will not put Flock’s quarterly profits ahead of the security of the United States,” Michael continued. “Today I fund my legal defense myself and I am grateful beyond imagination that Proton is taking a stand to host a mirror of my research map. This is not a problem that will just disappear and the people of our country are rightfully concerned.”

This story was updated on Wednesday to include Michael’s statement.