YouTuber Turns Flock Safety Conference Into a Public Surveillance Demo

Benn Jordan, known for his YouTube science channel, investigated Flock Safety's police convention after finding the event app leaked the entire attendee roster. When Flock barred his entry and arranged for his hotel reservation to be cancelled, Jordan positioned a van equipped with Wi-Fi adapters, a parabolic dish and a dipole array in a public parking space, allowing him to pick up the convention hall's wireless microphone transmissions.

He then deployed a drone to capture images of exiting guests and applied facial-recognition tools to reveal their identities. Jordan emphasizes that his goal was to demonstrate that officials cannot rely on private venues for privacy, especially when public-frequency regulations made the mic signals accessible. The episode highlights ongoing concerns about Flock's license-plate-reading technology, which stores data in a centralized database without warrant requirements and has been linked to wrongful arrests. In response, Flock CEO Garrett Langley claimed the company had not been hacked and blamed activist groups for attacks on the firm.