Between 2026-09-14 and 2026-09-16, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) revealed that police officers have been conducting thousands of searches through Flock surveillance camera footage with trivial or absurd justifications. Officers logged reasons including "LMAO," "IDK," "Hehe," button mashing, and insults like "idiot" and "WEIRD KID."
No BS check run yet — press ⚖ to extract this story's claims and verify them against independent sources.
The EFF found cops writing “idiot,” “WEIRD KID,” "blah," "leave me alone," and button mashing in Flock's 'reason' box.
this outlet adds: https, archive, 20260914155650, 404media
Cops are searching thousands of Flock cameras for very important law enforcement investigations, with given reasons like "LMAO," "IDK," and "Hehe." https://www. 404media.co/cops-search-thousa nds-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/
Cops Search Flock Cameras for Reasons of 'LMAO,' 'IDK,' and 'Asdfg' L: https://www. 404media.co/cops-search-thousa nds-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/ C: https:// news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4 9699493 posted on 2026.09.14 at 12:23:41 (c=0, p=7)
> Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department used Flock’s surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop’s stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock’s system, was “LMAO.” Other reasons included “LOL,” “Hehe,” “Haha,” “idk,” “blah,” “TBD,” and “robbery I don’t remember the case n
preemptively: yes I fucking know they don't care this is for my autism. this is such a trivial fucking win for flock to integrate with Jira or similar (because why wouldn't cops use jira? they're constantly writing tickets) so that the valid provenance must be present for the footage to be released; that way you can use Jira's stats and other management functions to audit usage. https://www. 404me
“Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff’s Department used Flock’s surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop’s stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock’s system, was ‘LMAO.’” https://www. 404media.co/cops-search-thousa nds-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/
# Cops Search Thousands of # Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO,’ ‘IDK,’ ‘Hehe,’ and ‘asdfg’ EFF found “idiot,” “WEIRD KID,” "blah," "leave me alone," and button mashing in Flock's 'reason' box. “Police are routinely searching the Flock database without providing any legitimate justification, making a mockery of our # civilliberties by logging reasons like ‘LOL,’ ‘LMAO,’ ‘sexy,’ and ‘idk’ to acces
# Police regularly abuse # Flock camera searches. https://www. 404media.co/cops-search-thousa nds-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/
https://www. 404media.co/cops-search-thousa nds-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg