Update: Townhall on Flock- Saturday 2/7 from 9-11am at Ridgecrest City Hall. 100 W California Ave.

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The issue:

Cities all across the country are suspending their contracts with Flock after security vulnerabilities findings. The cameras and entire system can be easily hacked in several different ways. The cameras run off of an Android operating system that was discontinued in 2019 and which Google no longer supports. It has over 900 security vulnerabilities. The system itself does not require 2 factor authentication and username and passwords have been found on the dark web.

This should be alarming to everyone, but it poses an even higher problem to our community in Ridgecrest. People who work on base have legitimate physical security concerns with the information possibly being leaked to adversaries.

In Washington state, it has been ruled that since the system is tax payer funded, data collected is considered public records. This gives anyone the ability to stalk someone with the right to request copies from a city at their standard price per page for copies. This will be coming to California as our state has even stricter laws to share what is considered public records.

Additionally the Flock system allows for any police department in the state to search all records gathered without a warrant violating California's constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The entire statewide system is not restricted to the Ridgecrest PD. This could allow for ICE to monitor cameras from anywhere if they gain access with one cooperating PD. Santa Cruz even found that other states have gained access to their system somehow.

Join our petition to show that you're against the Flock system in Ridgecrest so we can prove to City Council that the people feel this isn't a risk worth accepting. We use the number of people who signed the petition as evidence to City Council that they need to put this topic on the agenda at a minimum or possibly host a townhall on the subject.

For updates please visit: deflockridgecrest.org

Sources:

White paper by Jon Gaines and Joseph Cohen on the cameras: https://github.com/GainSec/anti-crime-ecosystem-research/blob/main/whitepaper/GainSec_Whitepaper_AntiCrimeEcosystem.pdf
YouTube video explanation: https://youtu.be/uB0gr7Fh6lY?si=kn_GDNT8nxNNXew
San Jose Flock lawsuit: https://www.eff.org/press/releases/lawsuit-challenges-san-joses-warrantless-alpr-mass-surveillance
Santa Cruz finds out-of-state PDs accessed their system: https://www.ksbw.com/article/santa-cruz-flock-camera-data-sharing-illegal/69490747
Washington State, data is public records: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records

Kyle Blades

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