# Douglas County's Flock camera compromised as company leaves it exposed, livestreaming on internet
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You have heard us talk a lot about Flock here on 9 News.
They're known for their cameras used by
law enforcement to track drivers and locations,
but the company also makes a line of cameras for the private sector,
watching places and the people inside them.
This week,
links to streams of those cameras were plastered on the Internet for anyone to see.
Our Spencer Swiutcher
found that includes some right here in Colorado.
Like I,
I just couldn't believe what I was seeing.
If
there was a camera pointed at your children on the playground,
live streaming it on the internet with the capability
to rewind and look at what it captured,
would you be
happy?
When I found that
playground camera,
it's like my stomach sank.
That playground is in California,
and the video was obtained and published by YouTuber and researcher Ben Jordan.
He just partnered with a reporter at 404 Media.
To break a story.
Links to streams of 67 flock cameras nationwide,
5 labeled as in Colorado,
and their last month's worth of footage
posted on a website on the internet.
That requires no login,
and these aren't just license plate reading cameras.
They're
condor cams,
that they're kind of the newer cameras that Flock is making.
Part of their design is to track people,
to zoom in on them and,
um,
follow them.
One other camera on that list
appears to be this one at a trailhead here in Douglas County,
the Sandstone Ranch.
Get that camera off of me.
Here's video from this camera accessible on the internet without a login
just this past week.
Sandstone Ranch Open Space is managed by Douglas County,
who has a contract with Flock.
Every city and law enforcement agency
needs to independently assess the security
and the efficacy versus risk
of these devices,
Flock says it has since cut off the access to the stream links posted online
and in a tweet about it this morning wrote that quote,
Transparency and trust matter.
They then went on to say it was a limited configuration issue affecting
a small number of devices and that the company told affected customers.
If you're
depending on a for-profit tech startup
to do that for you,
they're just going to tell you what you want to hear.
That's common sense.
They're,
they're not going to
tell you about all of the risks and,
and,
and problems.
So a key question here,
what did Douglas County know and when Fox says that they alerted people
about this that were affected by it.
I reached out,
Jenny to
Douglas County earlier this afternoon,
just heard back a couple of seconds ago.
They confirmed,
yes,
we were affected by
this stream being posted on this page,
and they're still working to figure out when
and how it was accessed.
I,
there are cameras everywhere on all things.
When I think of Flock for like license plate readers,
those are very different than say my ring camera on a house.
Where does this,
this,
this private sector part of Flock play in the middle of those two things?
So they play in a couple different couple different fields.
They've got HOAs that they work with.
They've got businesses.
Lowe's and Home Depot have a lot of them.
And then they have obviously the law enforcement aspect of this as well,
working to see a little bit more of
where these exact cameras,
why would,
why would a trailhead have this,
you know,
I think that's an interesting part to this.
Why does Douglas County
have a camera that's not just monitoring license plates like we all
thought.
Interesting.
Continued flock coverage.
Spencer Switzer,
thank you.