How Benn Jordan Discovered Flock's Cameras Were Left Streaming to the Internet

[music] Hello and welcome to the 404 media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist owned company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. Subscribers get bonus episodes and early access to our interview series which you're listening to right now. This week, I'm talking to YouTuber Ben Jordan, who has done some of my favorite reporting on Flock, the automated license plate reader surveillance company. A couple months ago, he found vulnerabilities in some of Flock's license plate reader cameras. I've been following Ben's work for a while, and soon after that video came out, he reached out to me to tell me that he had learned that some of Flock's Condor cameras were left live streaming to the open internet. If you don't know, Flock Condor cameras are video cameras that are pan, tilt, zoom cameras, so they can like go back and forth, zoom in. They're not for license plates. They're actually for tracking people. So, we learned that some of those exposed cameras were located in Bakersfield, California, which is about a 2-hour drive from my house. So, I went up there to film myself on them. And before we get to my interview with Ben, here's some footage I took in Bakersfield that demonstrates the problem we're about to talk about. If you're listening on audio only, I think this will still make sense, but you can see the video on our YouTube. Okay, so I've driven up to Bakersfield, California from Los Angeles uh to check out this Flock camera that Ben Jordan uh Gain and myself found streaming directly to the internet. Uh, it is a Flock Condor camera, which is a newer type of Flock camera that is designed to track people as they walk by. This is an addition to its automated license plate reader systems. And so, this one is stationed at Hughes Lane and Ming Avenue in Bakersfield outside of a Big O Tires, a Carl's Jr. Well, here's the Big O tires. Uh, a Carl's Jr. and a Macy's. We have a Macy's mall. And I don't know for sure, but I think that the camera is probably owned by the mall because the mall has automated license plate readers at every entrance. And this is stationed at a traffic light. Um hopefully you can see it up there uh on top of this traffic light. We'll zoom in. And basically what we've found is that this is streaming unencrypted, totally insecure, no password required directly to the internet. Uh there's actually a panel that you can go on there and you can see not just the footage, which I believe saves about 18 minutes at a time, but you can sometimes see logs, you can sometimes see the type of camera that it is. And we found between 40 and 60 of these live streaming throughout the United States. We don't know if that's the total number of them, but so far we've seen them stationed at playgrounds. We've seen them stationed at malls. We've seen them stationed on bike paths. Um I saw one like outside of a skate park, a soccer field. And so I'm going to go out there and walk my dog who's here with me and I'm going to record this camera recording me and then I'm going to watch myself on the internet because this is streaming directly to the internet insecure. Uh we can see people walking by. Uh some of these cameras are so up close that we're able to see people's faces. You can see what they're doing. I saw people walking their dogs. I saw people rollerblading. Uh there was one that was like at a Christmas fair. So yeah, we're going to go check it out. So after doing that, I published an article called Flock exposed its AI powered cameras to the internet. We tracked ourselves. And Ben Jordan published a YouTube video called this Flock camera leak is like Netflix for stalkers. In a blog post after our reporting, Flock said, quote, "The issue involved a troubleshooting only debug interface that was temporarily accessible on the internet and quote, the only content visible was live or recorded video comparable to what can be observed from a public roadway." It added that quote, "No sensitive or confidential information was accessed or accessible." While recent thirdparty coverage characterized the issue as more extensive, this was an isolated configuration issue and not indicative of a broader or ongoing concern, we'll let you make your own decision about whether this data is sensitive based on our reporting and what you're about to hear. So, here's my interview with Ben about how he found this, how he thinks about Flock, and what comes next. For people who don't know you, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Like how you got into this? You know, you have a big platform on YouTube, but what do you what do you usually do? Because you're not usually looking into vlog cameras. Uh yeah. So I mean I my YouTube channel started out with like kind of deep audio synthesis stuff and then it kind of went into general science and techy stuff oftentimes related to acoustics or things like that. Um and I live near Atlanta and we have the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in America and many if not most of them are flat cameras. Like I literally can't go to a grocery store without passing a flock camera and being tracked by it. And it just it it's kind of the story you hear about from anybody who's been proactive or uh I guess active with the the surveillance scene. It's like they they were asking what are these black cameras? Like what what are they doing? and then they find out and then they find out more and you just end up down the rabbit hole and you kind of can't believe that this is something that actually exists and you can't believe how how much of a Fourth Amendment violation it is. And so I guess mine was was the same story except that I have the I have a lab here and the capability to actually test something. So I started testing breaking the AI models that are in pretty much every single license plate reader. And then yeah, and then the security vulnerability stuff. I started learning about that when I was making the first video and it just [laughter] kind of brought me down. And I'm probably a little bit more attracted to this type of thing or or maybe a little bit more concerned about it because I I would categorize myself as like a left libertarian. Like I I truly do believe that privacy is a human right and I think that it is there at the very fiber of our ability to live out our own destiny. Like I think it's very important to have privacy when you need it. and this is the opposite of that. So, it's it so maybe that's what gives me more energy, you know, or makes me more more likely to keep diving into the same thing. And that's I guess that's how I got here. Did you have the same experience that Joseph and I have had where you do a big story about Flock or learn something about how these cameras work and and what they're doing and you publish it and then like 500 other leads pop out. Yeah. Uh yeah, [laughter] because that's that's what's happened to us and you know it's a very important story and an important company and you know it's been a very like important part of our reporting but also it's like it feels like it's almost never ending because we've done a couple stories and then it you know we'll hear from an activist in Washington, we'll hear from an activist in Texas like that there so many people are are sort of pushing back against this on a city level. Um, but they're also like creating so much data with their audit logs and all of that sort of thing and people are pulling it and they're finding like really up things in it and and so it's like, oh, you should look into this, you should look into that. And it's like we are, but also there's not enough hours in the day to do it because there's so much going on with this company. It's so expansive at this point. Yeah. Um, I mean employees, flock employees have reached out to me even like I a lot of people have reached out to me. Um, and people have reached out to me about like similar things too I think after making these videos some which you know I'll probably tell you about like they're actually notable stories that are that are kind of crazy. Yeah, it not only do I have leads, [clears throat] I think another weird side effect of making the content is it gets repurposed onto Tik Tok and Instagram where basically you just sort of have it's like somebody watched my video and then they they put their face on it instead and they give a two-minute version of the video, which I'm totally okay with. Like I think any sort of advocacy for this is great. Use my content. I don't care. However, they're getting details a little bit wrong just because they're a little bit lazier about it. like and uh that that's I I could I I have a bone to pick with that of course, but the bigger concern is that this company's extremely ligious and um kind of malicious in my opinion. They're not messing around. And and I think like in the next content I make about this, I I'm definitely going to mention that in hopes that some of these people watch it and maybe pay a little bit more attention because if you say the wrong thing, they're going to take advantage of that and and send you a cease and desist or something much worse. Yeah, we we've noticed the same where um you know very happy that uh people are sort of spreading our reporting on Instagram, on YouTube, on Tik Tok and a lot of people are doing their own reporting but there's also a lot of people who are not uh which is fine because they're talking about it and they're raising awareness about it but but then they are getting some of the details wrong and that feels bad because some of those have gone like far more viral than our uh work on it and then it's like okay it's not it's not the worst that that people are learning about this, but they they are learning sort of like a distorted version of it sometimes and and that that worries me a little bit. Yeah. And it's frustrating when you're sort of asked to respond to someone else's [laughter] someone else's reframing of your content, which is, you know, that's another thing where you're just kind of like, well, hold on. I never said that. They said that. But yeah, I mean, I just hope people are more careful. And I mean a lot of people have been kind of in flax crosshairs, myself included. Um it's it's been a very stressful year and you you would think that the company would just like you know hire a robust security team and fix this stuff rather than just you know attacking every single person who points out the problem. But here we are. Yeah. you know, you found at least 40 uh of these flock condor cameras that are streaming unencrypted to the internet were streaming for at least days, maybe weeks. Can you take me through a little bit how you discovered this? Yeah, I like I kept telling myself like, "All right, I'm done with Flock. I have so many other things to be doing. I I genuinely have Flock fatigue from the previous round of security vulnerabilities and then the previous round of like the video. I've already made two videos and I never make more than one video on on a topic. So yeah, it randomly middle of the night I'm searching on showdown which is kind of a internet of things search engine and I had known about the ports that some of the cameras were using and they were initially being used by the Falcon cameras if if I if I remember correctly and some of them were in saved searches and I don't even remember the methodology. I think I was just kind of punching in numbers, procrastinating going to sleep, and then I saw some some come up and they they kind of matched [snorts] it. The interesting thing is I had definitely seen these models in the past, but you see so many things when when when you search stuff on Showdown that a lot of times you don't really want to click everything and then also you're kind of worried. You don't want to click something and then somebody have your IP address, you have to start your VPN, you know. So, a lot of times you kind of get lazy and this time I didn't. And so I I found some and then I realized that just by searching flock admin I could find even more and um and different different set setups that were in these cameras. And so uh I I think I found probably 40 maybe around I didn't really do a count um and at least 10 were active. Um I kind of stopped counting at 10. I shared some of the information with John um John Gaines Gaines and uh he found even more. He he updated the searches that for you know a little bit smarter way to search cuz he's more of an expert at this than I am. Yeah. And and I mean immediately we were just without any username, without any password, we were just seeing everything from playgrounds to parking lots with people Christmas shopping and unloading their stuff into cars. I mean, it was it honestly we probably saw more stuff that didn't have cars in it than stuff that did. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing that really stood out to me is that um you know, a lot of our reporting, almost all of it has focused on Flock's ALPR cameras. I know that's what your videos have focused on so far. But this company is building a huge surveillance apparatus that is not just ALPRs. you know, they have a drone program and now they have these Condor cameras which are specifically focused on tracking people more or less. Um, you know, I watched the webinar [clears throat] where they uh showed this to cops and and you know, they do talk about tracking cars as well, um, to go along with their LPRs, but you know, I I was able to see uh these cameras tracking people walking down a bike path, you know, walking down the corner in front of a mall in Bakersfield. And I I don't know, I just I was so struck by how high- res it was and how it was clearly tracking people. And then also the kind of benality of the places that they were stationed like you know a bike path, random parking lot, a playground. I I'm curious sort of like what you thought when you saw this stuff because I I know you were pretty affected by it. Yeah. I I think it was like the first time that I actually got like immediately scared, you know, like like like you see the next step right in front of you, you know, like I all this time I've been saying, you know, this is a slippery slope. This might happen, you know, and that was the first time I was like, "Oh, it's it's it's here. This is it. This is this is like the stuff that I've been a conspiracy theorist about for the last couple years, and now we get to view it in real time." So that bike path that you mentioned, I went there um and I read Flock's statement under a Flock camera with access to it in real time. And but going down that bike path is one of the most uncomfortable dystopian things I've ever experienced. It's these cameras, they move around and make noise that you could see them moving around and following you. And it so it created this this sort of rift with me where where it's like okay so I'm I'm really angry that this is here. I kind of hate the city or you know for allowing it to happen but like why is anybody dealing with this like like if I live nearby I wouldn't go on the bike path period. Like I'd just be like this is creepy. I don't want to be here. I again I don't care who's watching me. It's just very strange for these you know things to be following you around while you're like walking around. Um, yeah. I I think the one that affected me the most was it was a playground whi which is powerful. Like, you know, seeing unattended kids being watched from public view is like, you know, I feel like that's one of the most powerful things. And obviously that was like something that I wanted to show other people publicly so they could understand how dangerous this is. And there was one that just going through this footage like collecting some of it for reporting. Um, I just saw a guy sort of walk out, um, old, you know, a guy who's looked like he's about 30 years old, walked out and just went on a swing set and like looked around and then just had a blast on it for 15 minutes and then, you know, went back to work and left the playground and and that one weirdly felt I think that one affected me the most because that it it showed what a person does when they have an expectation of privacy and like that person had he known that anybody was actively watching him. It It's doubt it's doubtful that he would have enjoyed himself in that moment. Like it was like this moment of innocence and privacy that I had access to that I didn't think I should have access to. Mhm. [snorts] Yeah. I mean, for me, the the most affecting things I mean, I thought the playground was very harrowing. Honestly, I I felt happy that there were not that many people who went to that playground. Like, you know, when I was looking at it, there were just not there wasn't that much going on there. But for me it was the fact that it was uh you know these are PTZ cameras or pan pan tilt zoom cameras and they were following people who were walking around like people walking their dogs a person rollerblading and the fact that it is tracking you as though you may be a criminal at some point was very just very wild to me because I have seen how Flock talks about this to cops um and what they tell them is that We our AI automatically tracks people so that you can use this for evidence if you need it at some point. And yeah, it's just like Okay, but you're tracking literally every single person who walks by these things, right? Yeah. I mean, I suppose that's the big difference is having everybody's activity in a giant, you know, data set or uh in a [clears throat] giant in, you know, a giant data storage thing that's being organized by AI versus having the police have a suspect and getting a warrant and then following them, which requires man-hour. And and if somebody is suspected of something frivolous that's not worth those man-hour, then they don't investigate them. in that way and they don't track them. So, it it's easy to see how quickly this gets out of control. A couple years ago, I went to uh University of Chicago to interview some data scientists. Um it was their sociology department and to interview data scientists and the professor of sociology there who had made this AI crime prediction system that had a 90% accuracy rate. And oddly enough, the neighborhood that this AI model was initially trained on happened to be the neighborhood that I grew up in, which is West Anglewood in Chicago, which is uh Anglewood's one of the most violent neighborhoods in America right now. And so it was really interesting to find out that they had never actually visited the neighborhood that was only 15 minutes away, yet we're spending years studying all all the the data from it. But more so, and more to my point is you very quickly realize that if you have um you know, [clears throat] if you have police uh constantly monitoring one area, you'll find crime there because crime happens everywhere. And that doesn't necessarily make anybody safer. It just means that more crime is being detected where more police are. So that was kind of the that was kind of the vibe of it is you were able to to find all this crime, but in the neighborhood next to it or maybe even a neighborhood that that didn't have as many socioeconomic issues, you you know, you weren't finding crime that maybe you should have found. And and I I see this in the exact same flavor as that where it's like you could put these cameras up and yes, you're going to find more crime and then you're going to have more people uh you know being affected by by you know maybe policies that weren't being enforced by actual police officers. I've been thinking a lot about my goals for 2026. I want to eat a little healthier, work out more, be a little bit more social. And the funny thing about goals is you usually need the right people around you to make them happen. A dietician, a trainer, maybe even a therapist. It's hard to find people who are so good at what they do. 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Initial plan term only after 50 gigabytes may slow down when the network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. cment.com. Let's talk about the security aspect of this just because um I don't know. It's like you walk around, you drive around, you see CCTV cameras, you see cameras out there and so we are being recorded all the time. I don't like it. Um, but I I also don't generally think like this is being live streamed somewhere. And if it is being live streamed somewhere like in a law enforcement context, I imagine that it's going to the police and to no one else. But what was happening here is that literally anyone on the internet could go and not only look at this stuff, but also, you know, see the settings, see some of the logs, change some of the logs if you wanted to, which we did not do. Um, you know, what what does this say about Flux Security? I mean, so before I even had access to look at a stream, um, I had access to the administration page of the actual camera itself and 31 days of data of every single person who had walked in front of that camera. I had the ability to delete that stuff. I had access to the logs. Um, even more problematic, you can't really prove it, but I was finding when I went up on the logs, I was finding like parser errors in that player from 45 minutes before I looked at it. And this is before I shared it with John or anything, meaning that someone had watched it and had an issue playing the video because like it wouldn't just play a video on its own. Um, now it doesn't seem to me like Flock would sit around and watch their cameras all day or something, especially, you know, at a playground or something like that, but it did make me wonder like, okay, who else? Because these were visible on on Showdown. So, like it is it's not that far of a stretch to think that there are a lot of people who have already found this and just didn't report it or you know maybe uh or were scared to report it or possibly using it for some sort of nefarious use. Um yeah, I mean the security with Flock I I don't know how it could really be any worse to be honest. Like I can't imagine it being worse. It was already bad enough being able to poke the camera a few times and connect to it as [laughter] an access point and then route it and you know it be being able to control outside of the operating system which is Android by the way. I mean so it's like it I I honestly can't think of any way where it could be worse. Like [clears throat] at this point, if I if I were, you know, working for the company in security or something, I mean, we're at the point where like most cameras, in my opinion, need to be replaced. They need to be replaced with something that's not running Android. they need to be replaced with a proprietary operating system or something that's more low-level because there's no need to load all of the libraries and things in the Android OS just for something that that rereams and catalogs um footage from a security camera. And this is a $7 billion company. Like there's no there's no excuse why they they couldn't develop something like this. That's a start. But right now it's the it really feels to me I would never say this in one of my videos cuz this is very opinionated. But it really feels to me like they are aware that this is a huge mess and they're just pushing on until they can have an IPO and then they'll deal with it once the stock market is invested in it and we'll have to you know pay the damages. Yeah. I mean it struck me that uh you know you and John Gaines um found all of these CVEes like you know made a video got quite a lot of attention on it um because the things that you found were frankly insane and then here it's just a few weeks later and this is like an entirely different class of vulnerability and exposure on totally different cameras and and it it feels to me like like it's new and interesting ways of of being uh insecure. Yeah. Long before this when I was making the the security the flock security video. Um it was almost like a catchphrase where I'd say like I don't see how it could get any worse and and then something would happen where you'd be like, "Wow, they they pulled it off. They made it worse." And you know, that happened like three or four times. Um and then this was like the ultimate one because again, yeah, like you said, this is completely unrelated. Um, and it's it's exactly what has been promised would never. I mean, there are so many quotes. I mean, right off the bat, the company says that it doesn't collect data of people that that it only collects license plates. Like, that's right on their fact. It says that all data is encrypted. You can see now that that is a flatout lie. Like that is that like, you know, that's not even a misunderstanding of what's happening. They're just lying at this point. Well, I mean, if it's encrypted, but you give people the endpoint, it's functionally not encrypted. Who cares? Like, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. And so, it's it's just mindboggling at this point. But, um Yeah. No, I I honestly felt a little I felt a little bit bad. I I hadn't hit up John about anything flock related for a few weeks because two days after the video came out, he lost his job. Um, and and it wasn't it didn't make any sense to me, you know, it wasn't like he hadn't been showing up to work or it's not like, you know, a company that was downsizing. Like he he was a val he seemed like a valued high up member of a security team that just randomly got got canned 2 days after the video came out. And he probably won't speak speak about this just for, you know, his own, but you know, I could have my own opinions, but I think it's pretty easy for the average person to figure out, yeah, these two things are probably connected. So, I I actually didn't reach out to him about anything flock related. Just kind of kept things friendly because I felt bad. I felt terrible. Like I was like, "Wow, if I didn't release this video, he'd still have a job." And but when I found this, I was just like, "Okay, you got to see this." And he he immediately, you know, fell down the rabbit hole, too, as did you. And, you know, it it is one of the most astonishing security vulnerabilities. Yeah. I mean, it was um the the cameras that you went and saw are were closer up. Like the ones that I I saw were pretty far back. Uh you know, like very very wide shots. But there was something pretty like I'm I had to drive two hours to go see these cameras. And I was surprised by how much it affected me even though I knew exactly like what I was doing. But I was like, "Oh, I took my dog. I was walking my dog." Uh, and I'm like I'm watching I'm recording myself being recorded and I'm watching myself back in real time as I'm doing this like on the open internet. Yeah. In a way that it shouldn't be. And I was kind of surprised by how much it affected me. You knew what you were getting into, but was it weird uh seeing yourself on these cameras like that you had been watching on the internet uh you know days before? Yeah. Uh I've always sort of called that closing the loop. It's like when you when you you know you know something exists. You you your your logic lets you know that you know you have an instinct that something exists. You you logically believe it exists but then you see it and and when you see it you it's like then you actually you feel the full weight of the whole thing. It was kind of funny because I was recording a you know I was reading flocks statements contradicting exactly what you would be seeing with your own eyes watching me read it and uh random people on the trail were just kind of like hey uh what's going on cuz you know then I realized how crazy I was talking into a security camera into a microphone that had a little recorder on it. Yeah. And I and I just told them I'm like, "Oh, no. I have access to this." And I just showed them my phone and they were like, "Oh my god, what?" Yeah. And I mean, they were they were blown away by it. So, I guess more to your point, it's one of those things where it's like I always tell people things like this. I always tell people like, "Yeah, this is this is a really bad security vulnerability, but that closes the loop." And once, you know, once they saw their image on the phone in real time, uh, that I think, you know, probably not likely that they're going to be going on that trail again. Yeah. For me, it just it really shows kind of the like holistic nature of the surveillance. It it like adds a lot to sort of what I thought of Flock as a company. Not not not giving them too much power here, but like I had largely thought of them as an ALPR company. Uh yeah. And sort of seeing like the the cameras that I saw, there was a bunch of Falcon cameras right near it. the ALPR cameras near it and and it just I was like, "No, this is like a holistic like surveillance state situation and and just also seeing that the exposures were not just in California, like we saw some in New York, we saw some in Louisiana, you know, various in Georgia, you know, it really is. It's like it's all over the place. And you could click one link and be in, you know, Bakersfield, you click another link and be in suburban Atlanta, like They're all over the place. Yeah. I guess like seeing the scope of it, I I guess I just keep asking myself or I I mean I I want to ask my my the people who watch my platform as well like what's it going to take? Like what is it going to take? So now that we could see children unattended on at playgrounds and we could see women jogging alone on a forest trail and we could see people uh buying, you know, a bunch of expensive Christmas gifts and loading it into their van in a in a the shopping a retailer's parking lot. Uh what's it going to take for somebody to stand up to this? Well, like what's it going to take for Lowe's to say, "Yeah, you got to get these out of the parking lot. This is this is endangering our customers and making us liable." Like, the answer I don't want to hear is it's going to take a child getting abducted or a woman being assaulted. Like, I don't want to hear that because I don't think that that's necessary at all. I think we could see the risk right here of uh like if I'm finding this stuff. I guess an interesting thing to say here is that if if you see a security vulnerability on my video or if you hear about it generally in the press, anything like that, chances are that things are a lot worse because I can only tell you that about things that I can legally access. But if I didn't intend on telling you that, then I would try to obiscate my research so I didn't get caught and I would be using more backdoor things. So basically, I am limited by the law to only use the search engine and click on things, you know, and then find them and then show them to you. But if I actually go into that log and take that hash information or um you know do an audit of of the system that's running the software on there like you could do all those things and you can find a whole lot more but I just can't report on it and most people can't due to the crazy computer crime laws that we have in this country. Yeah. I mean also you know you do really great work but um it's like showdown isn't magic. It's like people know about Showdan. Uh, you know, hackers know about it. Bad actors know about it. A lot of security researchers obviously obviously know about it. It's like if you were able to find this, like who knows how many people were able to find it. Yeah. And if it's on Showdown, that doesn't mean it's only on Showdown, you know? Like somebody could pro could have used Duck. Go and possibly found the exact same thing. Like it just depends if the web crawler had reached it or not. Showdan mostly just prioritizes things. Like it just filters out other stuff. But with enough dorking, I mean, yeah, we we found all that uh in the last video I did, we found Joshua Michael, he found a bunch of uh GPS location data of police cars and things like that um just off Google just from doing Google Dorking. So yeah, I mean it's it's it would be unlikely for me to think that nobody else had found this. Um in fact, you know what? I did get an email from somebody who after I had already told the group about this, I got an email from somebody notifying me that they had found a similar camera on a from a web search engine. I mean, we're we're in a world right now where we're like banning Tik Tok and DJI because we're concerned about national security and surveillance of Americans, yet this is allowed, which you know that I feel like somebody needs to pay attention to that. Thanks so much for listening. You can watch Ben's videos on YouTube at Benjordan. Ben is [music] with two N's. And you can find more of our reporting about Flock at 404media.co. [music] As a reminder, 404 Media is a journalist owned company and needs your support. You can subscribe to us at 404media.co. This episode was created in partnership with Kaleidoscope and was produced and edited by Alyssa Midaf. We'll be back with a new episode soon.