As dozens of cities end contracts for its controversial license plate readers, Flock is rolling out a voluntary severance program, WIRED has learned. Flock Safety announced a voluntary employee separation program on Friday, offering a "generous" severance package to those who want to leave amid growing backlash against the surveillance technology company, according to an internal email shared with WIRED. Applications for Flock's voluntary severance program opened Friday, and employees have until October 2 to decide whether to leave the company. Flock expects to grant buyouts to the majority of workers who apply, according to the email. People familiar with the program but not authorized to discuss it publicly say they believe that a significant number of the startup's roughly 1,500 employees may try to depart.

Flock Once Touted Its Cameras as'Made in the USA.' Now It's Not So Clear Flock reveals little about where its license plate readers are assembled, but the answer could have geopolitical and cybersecurity implications. Flock CEO Garrett Langley has said the company made its first license plate cameras in his Atlanta home, permanently scratching his dining table with drill marks. A decade later, where the company assembles its signature--and fiercely debated --product has become more of a mystery. For years, Flock touted publicly that its devices were produced in the United States. But more recent marketing materials from the company reviewed by WIRED no longer specify where its cameras come from. One US manufacturer that previously identified Flock as a customer quietly removed a mention of the company from its website earlier this year as public backlash against the company's surveillance technology grew.

A hacker collective pulled down a Flock camera and dumped its data. The files included thousands of videos and logs showing that the device captured 1.6 million images of 50,000 vehicles in 21 days. Hackers ripped down a Flock camera above a roadway, made a near-complete copy of the data stored inside it, and shared the files with 404 Media and WIRED, revealing in new detail how exactly Flock Safety's cameras track the movements of both vehicles and people . The hackers say they are also publishing details on how they managed to obtain the software, in the hopes that other people may copy them. The breach provides an unprecedented look inside a system that Flock has described as protected by on-device encryption .

AI'Actor' Tilly Norwood Told Me That'All Lives Matter' The virtual character, which is promoting its upcoming movie, tries to evade politics by repetitively commenting on the clothes you're wearing. A generated image of AI actress, Tilly Norwood. For Hollywood stars, press junkets are an opportunity to promote new work while connecting with fans. They tell funny or embarrassing stories about one another, give us a glimpse into the film production process, and reveal mannerisms that make them more relatable. So why would anyone want to talk to Tilly Norwood, an interactive, British-accented digital character and "actor" developed with generative artificial intelligence by Xicoia, an AI division of a studio called Particle 6 Group?

Plus: Tens of millions of US and Canadian driver's licenses go up for sale on the dark web, the US military finally tries to tackle the risk online ad data poses to troops, and more. After reporting last week that the surveillance company Flock Safety is building an AI search tool for law enforcement, WIRED reconstructed Flock's latest search tool from code that the company sends to a police officer's browser and uncovered key details about how the tool works. OpenAI said this week that its Astra model, which will have a private release soon, is its first model with cybersecurity-related capabilities that the company defines as posing a "critical" risk in public release. Meanwhile, the AI chatbot platforms Claude, ChatGPT, and Grok all suffered outages on Thursday at nearly the exact same time. But while xAI said the Grok outage resulted from issues at a Memphis data center, the causes of OpenAI's and Anthropic's outages are unclear.

WIRED rebuilt Flock’s latest search tool from code the company sends to a police officer’s browser. Its AI can keep watch across multiple cameras for anyone fitting a written description.

Christopher was sick of being ghosted by AI recruiters. So he unleashed ChatGPT on his robot interviewer. Christopher has become accustomed to jumping through the endless hoops of the modern job hunt. Like many government contractors, his work has dried up in the DOGE era . Over the past six months, he has applied to roughly 700 jobs; in the vast majority of cases, he's heard nothing back.

Trending Now Say More Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series Florida's order comes amid a remarkable wave of Flock cancellations, suspensions, and proposed bans across the country. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.

Security News This Week: The Cybersecurity Apocalypse Is Coming in'Months,' AI Giants Warn Plus: Hackers target over 100 US water systems, ICE puts in an order for robot dogs, and you'll never guess what "MrChildPorn" was arrested for. You may have noticed that Flock Safety's automatic license plate reader cameras--and the cops who misuse them--are getting a lot of coverage lately. This week, WIRED found a particularly wild case: A cop in Alpharetta, Georgia, was accused of searching for the license plate of a coworker dozens of times after an affair between the two ended, according to internal documents obtained by WIRED. The same police department where the former lovers worked also shared the data captured from its Flock cameras with more than 2,000 police departments, colleges, and other organizations across the United States, and accessed data from more than 1,300 entities in exchange. Also at the intersection of love and surveillance, background-check company PeopleFinder is making use of its extensive dossiers on people to start a new dating site called Stud or Dud.

Mice, a Caved-In Ceiling, and Cloudy Water: The GSA's New Office Is Falling Apart "Do we need to look at the ceiling before going to the bathroom? Can we actually trust the water is safe to drink?" asks one GSA worker. About 1,600 federal employees who work at the General Services Administration have been forced to relocate from their current office on F Street in Washington DC to the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building, roughly two blocks away. Workers say the new building, which also houses staff from the Office of Personnel Management has mice, a caved-in bathroom ceiling, and drinking water that needs to be run for 5-10 seconds before it is clear. The federal workforce has been rocked by changes made by Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) since January 2025.