Episode 62: Flock Cameras Are Tracking Your Car Right Now

Bricks & Minifigs. Reckless Ben. And 130,000 license plate cameras that don't need a warrant to find out where you've been. This week we go down a rabbit hole that starts with a viral Lego lawsuit and ends with Flock Safety — the AI-powered license plate camera network now watching roads in nearly every state. We cover how the cameras actually work, the documented abuse cases (including a Mauldin, SC officer fired for running 166 unauthorized searches on an ex's vehicle), the security researcher who hacked one in under 30 seconds, and what Flock just changed about their data retention policy after the backlash. Also: a Unifi container migration that took down an entire Proxmox server, a home lab AI fishing app that met its match at a river with zero signal, and a decade-old Sonic Drive-In robbery story that turns out to be the perfect real-world case study for "would a camera have actually proven anything?" 0:00:00 – Cold open / why Bo doesn't have headphones 0:09:15 – Unifi's new podman container crashes an entire Proxmox host 0:16:30 – K3s, Rancher, and the trout-fishing app that needed cell service it didn't have 0:20:00 – The AI-generated support ticket that gave it away 0:21:00 – The Reckless Ben / Bricks & Minifigs Lego saga, explained 0:37:00 – How that story sets up the real topic: Flock Safety cameras 0:40:00 – How ALPR cameras actually work (it's not facial recognition) 0:44:30 – Documented abuse cases: officers tracking exes with zero oversight 0:47:56 – Benn Jordan's camera hack: Android, root access, and a USB port 0:53:32 – DeFlock.me and the 130,000-camera map 0:56:49 – Pushback, regulation, and "who watches the watchers" 1:01:37 – Flock's retention policy change: 30 days to 7 1:12:24 – The counter-proposal: put cameras on the cops too 1:14:04 – Bonus story: the Sonic robbery and why cameras wouldn't have helped 1:24:29 – Next week: expensive hard drives, and the next Home Lab episode 🔗 Sources & Further Reading DeFlock — crowdsourced ALPR camera map: https://deflock.org/ Benn Jordan, "We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY Flock Safety's official response to the retention policy change: https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-guardrails-address-lpr-privacy-concerns-and-police-transparency AP News coverage of the retention policy change: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/aug/13/amid-public-backlash-surveillance-tech-company-flock-announces/ (AP wire story) Mauldin, SC officer terminated for 166 unauthorized FLOCK searches on an ex's vehicle: https://www.foxcarolina.com/2026/08/14/mauldin-officer-accused-using-flock-cameras-over-160-times-track-ex/ Bricks & Minifigs–Reckless Ben controversy overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricks_%26_Minifigs%E2%80%93Reckless_Ben_controversy Reckless Ben's channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RecklessBen 💬 Got a comment we should read on air? Drop it below — we read every one. 📧 [email protected]