Flock Safety, known for its fixed pole-mounted license plate readers, developed a plan to collect vehicle data from dashcams inside Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers’ cars — effectively turning hundreds of thousands of privately owned vehicles into a roving surveillance network, according to a sales presentation obtained by 404 Media.
The document, prepared last August for the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, was uncovered through a public records request filed by a Dunwoody, Georgia, resident. It describes a proposed partnership with dashcam maker Nexar covering 350,000 devices. Flock’s existing cameras scan the license plate, color, make, and model of every passing vehicle; the Nexar deal would have extended that capability to moving cars.
Flock told 404 Media the partnership was never finalized. Uber, Lyft, and Nexar did not respond to requests for comment. The presentation contains no indication that drivers would have been informed their cameras were feeding data into Flock’s network.
The disclosure raises questions about the potential scale of passive vehicle surveillance through commercial fleets. Because the plan relied on dashcams already installed in rideshare and delivery vehicles, data collection could have occurred across wide geographic areas without any fixed infrastructure.
The Nexar connection adds a further wrinkle: the dashcam company was itself breached in September, when a hacker extracted terabytes of customer video that included footage captured around Department of Defense sites.
The story emerged during Black Hat and DEF CON week in Las Vegas, where security researchers and government officials gathered to present findings on privacy, surveillance, and cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The Flock sales presentation was not presented at the conference but surfaced through the parallel public records process.
Source: WIRED