This is pure laziness aka “reduced time to market” on the part of Flock.
It takes time and effort to think through proper secure boot architecture and to implement key management in a way that doesn’t kill developer productivity.
Their product managers, though, should have realized that setting these up in unsecured public spaces means that their threat model really does include local physical access to everything.
Using off the shelf hardware and software stacks all but guarantees attackers have tools at their fingertips to exploit said physical access.
Given all the recent exploits hitting the kernel, there’s a good chance that there exists an exploitable over-the-air vulnerability present in their WiFi/bluetooth stack, too.
The flip side of this laziness is that now, when my elected representatives tell me "these are just license-plate readers that don't record video", I have evidence to show them that's false.
If Flock had done a more competent job of securing their system, it would be harder to demonstrate this in a compelling way. To a technically-inclined person, it's obvious from the get-go that somewhere in Flock's pipeline, video is being recorded and archived, and is therefore vulnerable to misuse. But the more they're allowed to keep the implementation proprietary, the easier this is to sweep under the rug.
They can be recalled and/or replaced, as many have who voted for data centers.
They fought against datacenters. Now they are running for local offices - <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/datacenters-local-elections" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/datacenters-... - September 15th, 2026
Exactly. It helps they also control who can even run for office in any meaningful way. Nobody fights the left harder than Democrats. Good luck finding a representative that is against data centers, flock, Israel, congressional stock bans and pausing and regulating AI, views overwhelming popular with the majority of the actual American public.
You are misunderstanding basic political terminology then, if you think it's somehow odd that leftists are against Democrats. Democrats and Republicans are both capitalists and liberal in the classical sense, both of which leftists oppose.
Funny. In my experience, nobody fights the “leftists” harder than the Democrats. I think the Republicans fight the Democrats harder than anyone else, and aside from the “leftists”, no political group seems to really fight the Republicans.
>Good luck finding a representative that is against data centers, flock, Israel, congressional stock bans and pausing and regulating AI, views overwhelming popular with the majority of the actual American public.
That is rapidly becoming Democratic party orthodoxy. At the very least there are a sizable number of Democrats who fit that.
killbot5000 · · focus · HN ↗
It takes time and effort to think through proper secure boot architecture and to implement key management in a way that doesn’t kill developer productivity.
Their product managers, though, should have realized that setting these up in unsecured public spaces means that their threat model really does include local physical access to everything.
Using off the shelf hardware and software stacks all but guarantees attackers have tools at their fingertips to exploit said physical access.
Given all the recent exploits hitting the kernel, there’s a good chance that there exists an exploitable over-the-air vulnerability present in their WiFi/bluetooth stack, too.
teraflop · · focus · HN ↗
If Flock had done a more competent job of securing their system, it would be harder to demonstrate this in a compelling way. To a technically-inclined person, it's obvious from the get-go that somewhere in Flock's pipeline, video is being recorded and archived, and is therefore vulnerable to misuse. But the more they're allowed to keep the implementation proprietary, the easier this is to sweep under the rug.
QuiEgo · · focus · HN ↗
toomuchtodo · · focus · HN ↗
They fought against datacenters. Now they are running for local offices - <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/datacenters-local-elections" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/datacenters-... - September 15th, 2026
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375000">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375000 (citations)
astura · · focus · HN ↗
wand3r · · focus · HN ↗
wredcoll · · focus · HN ↗
Refreeze5224 · · focus · HN ↗
dtmooreiv · · focus · HN ↗
shigawire · · focus · HN ↗
That is rapidly becoming Democratic party orthodoxy. At the very least there are a sizable number of Democrats who fit that.