Hacking the Flock | Benn Jordan

THE BIG PICTURE INTERVIEW SERIES

BIG PICTURE sits down with Benn Jordan — a Chicago-based security researcher, hacker, and musician — to expose the rapid, largely unchecked expansion of Flock Safety’s AI-powered license plate reader cameras, now installed at over 80,000 locations across the United States.

Jordan walks through how these systems capture and retain location data on ordinary citizens, details the nearly 80 security vulnerabilities his team uncovered — including hard-coded credentials that could let a hacker track anyone’s daily movements down to their home address — and explains why warrantless police access to this data raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns under the Supreme Court’s Carpenter precedent.

This is a rigorously reported, technically grounded conversation on one of the fastest-growing surveillance networks in America, produced with the same commitment to depth and accuracy that defines our series on the forces shaping the world we live in.

Watch the full interview to understand what’s really being tracked in your city, share it with anyone who cares about privacy and civil liberties across the political spectrum, and consider supporting the continued production of this kind of investigative work.