Police Drones Left Wide Open — For Months

For six months, anyone on the internet could quietly watch San Francisco police drones follow people through their city in real time.

Story Snapshot

Five live San Francisco police drone feeds were left open online for about six months with no password.
The exposed streams showed arrests, searches of homes and homeless camps, and faces of bystanders plus officer names and emails.
Police say only two researchers accessed the feeds and that they fixed the problem once told, but have not shared proof.
The incident shows how fast aerial policing is growing — and how slowly privacy and security rules are keeping up.

How San Francisco’s Drone Feeds Ended Up on the Open Web

Security researchers Sam Curry and Maik Robert found a public web address in June that showed live video from five San Francisco Police Department drones. The link was created using Skydio’s “ReadyLinks” sharing feature but was set up without any password or code and was configured to stay active for a year. Anyone who had the address could see live color video, thermal imaging, location data, and even the pilots’ names and email addresses in real time.

The researchers say they did not hack anything or break through any lock. They simply clicked an open link that had been indexed in a common public database used by security researchers, which means others could have found it too. After Curry and Robert reported the problem to Skydio, the company shut the link down and said police departments, not the company itself, control how secure these shared streams are. That places responsibility for the misconfiguration squarely on the San Francisco Police Department.

What the Drones Were Watching — And Who Got Caught on Camera

The leaked feeds did not just show empty streets or training flights. The researchers watched what appeared to be multiple arrests, visits to apartments, searches of homeless encampments, and tracking of cars and people across the city. Faces of dozens of people were clearly visible, including individuals who were never linked to any crime, raising serious questions about how much everyday life is being recorded from above without people knowing.

Footage also captured calls about “suspicious persons” that led to no findings, including people who were simply heading to play basketball. That clashes with the department’s claim that drones are only authorized for active criminal investigations, vehicle pursuits, and training. The researchers were able to archive more than three hours of video covering about forty‑four miles of drone flight before the feed went offline. This small sample hints at how much more was likely recorded during the full six‑month window.

Police Response, Crime-Fighting Claims, and Missing Answers

In statements to local media, the San Francisco Police Department called the exposed address an “internal restricted link” that was “improperly obtained and accessed by individuals without authorization.” The department says it disabled the link as soon as it learned of the issue and has since put stricter sharing rules in place. It also claims there is no information showing anyone other than the two researchers viewed the feeds and says the matter is still under investigation.

So far, however, the department has not released access logs, internet protocol addresses, or other technical records that could prove its claim that no one else watched the streams. At the same time, police and the drone maker Skydio point to strong crime‑fighting results from the drone program, including a reported fifty‑six percent drop in auto thefts and over 1,000 arrests aided by drones since 2024. That success story is used to defend the program, but it can also distract from the serious privacy and security failure that occurred.

A Growing Drone Program with Thin Oversight

San Francisco voters approved expanded police drone use in 2024’s Proposition E, giving political cover to rapid growth of aerial surveillance. Since then, monthly drone flights have jumped from dozens to over six hundred, but critics say privacy and security protections have not kept pace with this surge in activity. The state requires some public oversight, yet this incident shows how a simple misconfigured link can quietly expose sensitive operations to the entire world.

A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance | Andy Greenberg & Dhruv Mehrotra, WIRED

Just after noon on a Saturday last month, a Skydio X10 quadcopter hovered about 200 feet over a San Francisco apartment complex, watching police… pic.twitter.com/KxIZ3yKjmi

— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) July 14, 2026

San Francisco Police Department has a record of heavy live surveillance, including nearly two hundred hours of live camera monitoring over just three months in 2023. Privacy advocates warn that drone-as-first-responder programs, now spreading across the country, are being rolled out faster than rules to control where drones can fly, what they can record, and how long that data is kept. For Americans who already feel watched and ignored by powerful institutions, an unlocked police drone feed on the open internet looks less like a glitch and more like proof that basic safeguards are an afterthought.