Please do not call these devices license plate readers. They are surveillance tools with capabilities that far exceed that of normal license plate reading devices. It’s like calling an RPG a spear.
They are free electronic components and modules that can be used for your own projects.
Just make sure they are completely erased and serial numbers removed before reusing.
Crack it open and take out the GPS and cellular module.
Or relocate the entire unit to somewhere it will actually provide civic good like somewhere prone to Illegal
Garbage dumping or as a trailcam for wildlife.
They tend to have tamper alarms and since the company has a working relationship with the local PD I don’t really want to be playing engineer with a device like that.
This article may be out of date, but it is quite clear that Flock just ordered a bunch of parts off AliBaba, slapped them together in an injection moulded enclosure, added some vibe-coded software and pumped them out after greasing some palms.
Interesting. Do they transmit full video streams or just the aggregated data taken from plates? Doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of processing power in those components.
I think I need to park my car behind one of these with my cell phone/wifi jammers running.
If you’re handy with a soldering iron and know how to read a JTAG port, every chip on the pcb could be lifted and repurposed. Afaik a lot of them use miniature solar panels as power sources, which is absolutely repurposeable if you’re comfortable crimping cables. This piece too far from my area of expertise to do more than just speculate on, but I have to assume they have optical components that could be repurposed by somebody with the right skillset too
I’m curious why the flock cameras are worse than the “traffic observation cameras” that went up on top of every traffic light in like 2007. I was pretty upset about those at the time, but I never found any other push back.
Not many people upset about the cop cars becoming mobile license plate readers either.
Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code
Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates.
VEHICLE SURVEILLANCE GIANT Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.
Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver’s “associates” from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives. It can search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description.
Flock is selling software called freeform which tracks people’s movements. I don’t know if it can be used on their current cameras or if they need upgrades or new cameras.
Also, flock was planning to use stolen information from a hack against a parking lot company until a news story came out about it. Flock got ahold of the hacked data, that included license plates and names on credit cards, and was planning to use it to identify car owners. After news stories released they said they would not use it but it shows that they are a shady company.
It’s just a loss of privacy. Those old cameras captured plates but now there are flock cameras everywhere and the data they capture is searchable nationwide. The data is being used by ICE to find people they want to arrest. There is little oversight of their use. If police want to track your phone they have to get a warrant and show it to your phone carrier. If they want to track your car they just look it up in flock.
A lot of police officers are using flock lookups for their own personal use, like to track people they know.
Flock cameras are worse, at least imo, because it’s “active”. The old cameras clocked your speed, took a picture, got processed and sent a fine. The flock cameras will misread your plate, determine you are a violent out of state felon, follow your movement and dispatch a squad to your location. You can be dragged out of the car at gunpoint before you even know what’s happening.
Theres also the universal database aspect that can expose all the different department’s data to each other, allowing officers to do things like saayy, stalk their ex-wives across state lines.
The history of movement they compile, the analysis tools available, the “proactive policing”, and the creep factor of always being monitored all roll together.
I agree that it not functioning properly is bad, but I don’t think we should frame it like that. These aren’t bad because they make mistakes. Fixing the mistakes doesn’t make them acceptable.
Tracking people’s movements at all times is bad. It removes people’s freedoms, and it can easily be used to quash dissent. Even functioning perfectly, it is far too much freedom lost for a small amount of safety.
my town got them but every thing flagged by the system has to be reviewed by a peace officer who officially gives the ticket and signs off that a violation actually occured.
Guess how that’s going to play out. The machine flags someone for review, the cop hits accept without looking into it, now an innocent is being swatted.
it has played out and that does not seem to be the case. the town itself is good about not trying to make the police a profit center. A cop doing this would likely face discipline or being let go from community feedback.
Are you mentioning this implying that’s sufficient oversight? The alert is minimally providing reasonable suspicion to track and investigate someone. Police don’t need to ticket or bring charges to ruin your day.
If everything “checks out” as a misflag hopefully they cut that person loose quickly, without issue. Unfortunately, there’s too many videos of innocent people being felony stopped, because cops defer to the lead and treat the situation as they’re trained.
Oorr people go running for unrelated reasons except they drew today’s lucky number for a stop, leading to incidents.
these are camera systems so the person is not there ot detain or let loose. Im don’t think you quite get the situation. its the way the town does red light cameras. so the system flags someone runs a red. a peace officer reviews the video of the incident and decides if they get a violation for running a red or if they were in the left and had to wait for traffic or such.
Those ones didn’t track anything. At most they counted the number of cars. They didn’t identify you in any way, nor track you as you moved around. Nor could you search the data, except though manual review.
Please do not call these devices license plate readers. They are surveillance tools with capabilities that far exceed that of normal license plate reading devices. It’s like calling an RPG a spear.
They are free electronic components and modules that can be used for your own projects. Just make sure they are completely erased and serial numbers removed before reusing.
Yeah, take home the solar powered GPS device with a built in cellular connection. See how that goes.
Crack it open and take out the GPS and cellular module.
Or relocate the entire unit to somewhere it will actually provide civic good like somewhere prone to Illegal Garbage dumping or as a trailcam for wildlife.
They tend to have tamper alarms and since the company has a working relationship with the local PD I don’t really want to be playing engineer with a device like that.
Put it in a metal tool box with the lid fully closed and leave it in the woods for a month first.
Can you give examples of what parts can be repurposed? I would have assumed they were mostly proprietary.
https://www.cehrp.org/dissection-of-flock-safety-camera/
This article may be out of date, but it is quite clear that Flock just ordered a bunch of parts off AliBaba, slapped them together in an injection moulded enclosure, added some vibe-coded software and pumped them out after greasing some palms.
Interesting. Do they transmit full video streams or just the aggregated data taken from plates? Doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of processing power in those components.
I think I need to park my car behind one of these with my cell phone/wifi jammers running.
If you’re handy with a soldering iron and know how to read a JTAG port, every chip on the pcb could be lifted and repurposed. Afaik a lot of them use miniature solar panels as power sources, which is absolutely repurposeable if you’re comfortable crimping cables. This piece too far from my area of expertise to do more than just speculate on, but I have to assume they have optical components that could be repurposed by somebody with the right skillset too
Yeah, the solar panels are definitely usable. Probably not a lot of output, but definitely usable.
I’m curious why the flock cameras are worse than the “traffic observation cameras” that went up on top of every traffic light in like 2007. I was pretty upset about those at the time, but I never found any other push back.
Not many people upset about the cop cars becoming mobile license plate readers either.
Here’s a good article this week on just one reason why Flock is terrible:
https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-os-investigate/
Flock is selling software called freeform which tracks people’s movements. I don’t know if it can be used on their current cameras or if they need upgrades or new cameras.
Also, flock was planning to use stolen information from a hack against a parking lot company until a news story came out about it. Flock got ahold of the hacked data, that included license plates and names on credit cards, and was planning to use it to identify car owners. After news stories released they said they would not use it but it shows that they are a shady company.
It’s just a loss of privacy. Those old cameras captured plates but now there are flock cameras everywhere and the data they capture is searchable nationwide. The data is being used by ICE to find people they want to arrest. There is little oversight of their use. If police want to track your phone they have to get a warrant and show it to your phone carrier. If they want to track your car they just look it up in flock. A lot of police officers are using flock lookups for their own personal use, like to track people they know.
Flock cameras are worse, at least imo, because it’s “active”. The old cameras clocked your speed, took a picture, got processed and sent a fine. The flock cameras will misread your plate, determine you are a violent out of state felon, follow your movement and dispatch a squad to your location. You can be dragged out of the car at gunpoint before you even know what’s happening.
Theres also the universal database aspect that can expose all the different department’s data to each other, allowing officers to do things like saayy, stalk their ex-wives across state lines.
The history of movement they compile, the analysis tools available, the “proactive policing”, and the creep factor of always being monitored all roll together.
I agree that it not functioning properly is bad, but I don’t think we should frame it like that. These aren’t bad because they make mistakes. Fixing the mistakes doesn’t make them acceptable.
Tracking people’s movements at all times is bad. It removes people’s freedoms, and it can easily be used to quash dissent. Even functioning perfectly, it is far too much freedom lost for a small amount of safety.
my town got them but every thing flagged by the system has to be reviewed by a peace officer who officially gives the ticket and signs off that a violation actually occured.
Guess how that’s going to play out. The machine flags someone for review, the cop hits accept without looking into it, now an innocent is being swatted.
it has played out and that does not seem to be the case. the town itself is good about not trying to make the police a profit center. A cop doing this would likely face discipline or being let go from community feedback.
Are you mentioning this implying that’s sufficient oversight? The alert is minimally providing reasonable suspicion to track and investigate someone. Police don’t need to ticket or bring charges to ruin your day.
If everything “checks out” as a misflag hopefully they cut that person loose quickly, without issue. Unfortunately, there’s too many videos of innocent people being felony stopped, because cops defer to the lead and treat the situation as they’re trained.
Oorr people go running for unrelated reasons except they drew today’s lucky number for a stop, leading to incidents.
these are camera systems so the person is not there ot detain or let loose. Im don’t think you quite get the situation. its the way the town does red light cameras. so the system flags someone runs a red. a peace officer reviews the video of the incident and decides if they get a violation for running a red or if they were in the left and had to wait for traffic or such.
Those ones didn’t track anything. At most they counted the number of cars. They didn’t identify you in any way, nor track you as you moved around. Nor could you search the data, except though manual review.