Hacked Data Shows Just What Flock Cameras Are Really Recording

Flock cameras are recording even more than you think.

A hacker collective known as stegan0gram tore down a Flock camera, scoured its insides, and shared the results with WIRED Wednesday, revealing that the proliferating surveillance devices are capturing and logging far more than license plate numbers.

A joint analysis of the camera’s data indicated that it had captured millions of images over the span of just a few weeks, cataloguing people, bicycles, and even small details such as bumper stickers. In one instance, the Flock camera identified an American flag patch on a motorcyclist’s bag.

Those images are then uploaded to Flock’s servers, where they are sorted, filed, assessed for other identifying details (such as car type and manufacturer), and ultimately sold to police departments across the country—a business model that has catapulted the company to a $8.4 billion valuation.

Even America’s smallest cities are under a close eye. The Flock cameras in Alpharetta, Georgia—which has a population of nearly 67,000 people—are accessible to more than 2,000 agencies, according to another WIRED report. Those entities included police departments, colleges, airports, as well as the federal General Services Administration’s Office of Inspector General.

Some local legislatures have banned sharing the sensitive data with outside agencies, but cops in some of those areas have still performed lookups on behalf of inquiring federal immigration agents, 404 Media reported in May.

Flock Safety has deployed tens of thousands of cameras across the country to record and document the movements of everyday Americans, regardless of whether they’re suspected of a crime. The cameras’ sudden prevalence—and erosion of privacy—has triggered a national backlash. Some people have even taken matters into their own hands, risking the threat of jail to hunt and destroy the surveillance devices.

But choosing to dissect one of the devices that have cumulatively put Americans in a digital panopticon was a no-brainer, according to one stegan0gram member.

“Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?” one of the hackers told WIRED. “We liberated hardware in the field, disarmed them, and proceeded with reverse engineering of the cameras and associated solar equipment.”

A plane split in two, a charred armored vehicle, flattened trailers, and smoke rising from a structure at Camp Buehring, Kuwait: New photos released by CBS News depict dramatic damage to American military infrastructure in the Middle East as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks. The Iranian military, it seems, is alive and well.

These photos, released Tuesday night, follow an account published by the Department of Defense inspector general Monday that reveals far more damage to American military capabilities in the Middle East than had previously been disclosed. Despite the U.S. spending upward of $33.4 billion in the war effort so far, the military has lost dozens of drones, fighter jets, helicopters, and refueling tankers. Hundreds of buildings on U.S. bases in the Middle East, like those depicted in these photographs, have been damaged or destroyed by Iranian missile and drone attacks.

The new photos were reportedly sent to CBS News by active service members who have been on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia and Camp Buehring and Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.

“This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public,” one service member currently deployed overseas told the news outlet. “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.”

Still, according to President Donald Trump, the U.S. already “won” the ongoing war against Iran—a claim he has repeated at least 66 times in the past six months.

If Trump’s definition of “winning” includes the deaths of at least 18 American service members; $184 million in damages to diplomatic facilities in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE; skyrocketing gas prices; damage to the global economy; a critical missile shortage; a U.S. naval base in Bahrain blown to “hell”; and historic unpopularity for his party ahead of a critical midterm election, then sure. Agree to disagree.

“We’re not defending these bases,” the service member added to CBS. “We’re just watching them get destroyed.”

The House is going home again—this time to avoid a vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s impeachment.

House GOP leadership announced Wednesday morning that they will end their current slate of votes early and head home until the midterms, a nearly two-month break.

“Members are further advised that upon completion of today’s legislative business, votes are no longer expected in the House tomorrow, September 17th,” a message from the office of House Majority Whip Tom Emmer read. “The last votes for the week are expected at approximately 4:45 p.m. this afternoon. This is a change from the previously announced schedule.”

The House will now move up votes on cutting Environmental Protection Agency regulations to Wednesday.

The vote the House GOP is most notably avoiding regards outgoing Republican Representative Thomas Massie’s eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth for his handling of the Iran war and other “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Massie’s impeachment articles focused on Hegseth’s “waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat,” and continuing to attack Iran after the War Powers Resolution expired. They also cited Hegseth’s suppression of Democratic Senator Mark Kelly’s right to free speech, initiating an unlawful war in Yemen, and “ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties.” Massie said he hid his privileged resolution, which forces a vote within 48 hours, from House leadership.

This Congress is extremely avoidant and unproductive, as it pulled a similar disappearing act last summer when Massie demanded a vote on the release of the Epstein files. Now it’s going on another paid vacation after essentially doing nothing at work all week.

The federal government paid employees $9.5 billion not to work in 2025 as a result of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The New York Times, citing a new estimate from the Government Accountability Office, reports that DOGE’s deferred resignations program increased paid administrative leave by 435 percent in 2025. That’s an increase of over six times since 2023.

President Trump and Musk’s efforts have shrunk the federal workforce by 12 percent since the inauguration in January last year, but that has not translated into any savings. The Trump administration claims that the government has saved over $200 billion, but that has never been proven, and the federal deficit has only shot up thanks to the Iran war and Republican tax cuts passed last year.

Of the $9.5 billion figure, $6.7 billion was spent on DOGE’s deferred resignation offer, which about 139,963 federal employees took, resulting in several government departments losing their most experienced personnel. Many departments later scrambled to restaff those positions: The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization, found that over 20,000 federal jobs vacated by the resignation program have been backfilled. The federal government has also tried to recruit new employees to fill the void, focusing on early-career workers.

“Trump spent billions to push out experienced and badly needed experts across government—this was the most expensive way imaginable to make government worse,” said Democratic Senator Patty Murray in a statement Tuesday.

DOGE was supposed to reduce the size of the federal government and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, with Musk promising $1 trillion in savings. Instead, the entire program appears to be a massive example of setting taxpayer dollars on fire.

The Trump administration has a lot of things “visitors should know” before entering the National Museum of American History.

According to reporting by The Atlantic, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is mobilizing the National Park Service to display at least a dozen signs around the National Museum of American History warning visitors of “ideologies that distract from a coherent and accurate presentation of America’s story” before they step foot on the premises. The signs are projected to cost at least $84,000.

This is the Trump administration’s latest attack on the Smithsonian, a cultural institution that has stood witness to the American story for 180 years. It comes after the September 8 announcement that Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Smithsonian’s chief official and founder of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, will retire at the end of this year. Bunch has said that the repeated attacks from the Trump administration and pressure to eliminate exhibits representing “improper ideology,” such as anything to do with race, gender, or oppression, did not influence his decision.

In June, Donald Trump signed an executive order giving his administration unprecedented control over the institution, which he claimed “views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society.”

The White House Domestic Policy Council elaborated on Trump’s claims in an Independence Day report on the status of the institution. “The Smithsonian Institution, and the National Museum of American History in particular, under its current leadership and current interpretive ideology, cannot be trusted to tell America’s story honestly and in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic,” the report said.

When he announced the signs to Senators Jeff Merkley and Lisa Murkowski, Burgum said that the “informational signage therefore will provide visitors with important context about the exhibits they are about to encounter and the personal viewpoints that the curators of the exhibits are seeking to advance.”

“We believe the public should enter the museum fully equipped with the information needed to evaluate whether to invest their time in viewing these exhibits and programming,” he wrote in a letter to the senators.

It is not yet clear what exactly the “information needed” will be. The text of the signs or the plans for their physical structure is still undetermined, but Burgam’s letter suggests direct attacks on Smithsonian leaders, including Bunch and museum director Anthea Hartig.

Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian are a textbook example of an administration using its power to manipulate how citizens encounter history and discredit institutions that challenge its preferred narrative—a stepping stone, of course, toward fascism.