These horrific things are multiplying exponentially in my (rural GA) environs. There are a dozen of them along every conceivable cycling route I could take, and far more if I drive somewhere. If you think this is a city thing meant to deter urban crime, the explosive proliferation of Flock cameras in quite rural and suburban areas may shock you. I find them in the darndest of places, near but not on county lines, adjacent to minor bridges, etc. And next time I go through there, there are more. They seem to be procreating.

As others have pointed out, they're not just ALPRs or traffic cameras, and their use-cases, official and unofficial, are extremely dynamic and expanding fast. They are not the only thing of their kind, but they justly earned the lightning rod status for their conspicuous cooperation with the administration's immigration thuggery and the douchy--but highly consequential--pronouncements of their CEO. Moreover, there's a ticker tape of daily news about police misuse of Flock's database, mainly for stalking exes and things like that.

This _is_ a stop on the way to a Chinese-style surveillance state, and there's nothing inevitable about it. But it will happen if we allow it to happen.

Ben Johnson's video on the security vulnerabilities, linked in the article, always deserves an explicit shout-out. It's likely to intrigue the tinkerers here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY

Benn Jordan, you mean. Good video.

These things proliferate where people trust the government or see the government as a means to the end of getting one over on whoever is bad for them.

So the Nth generation group of townies that run any given rural shithole will happily slap them up, the government represents them as far as they're concerned.

And meanwhile in some snooty inner ring Chicago suburb that fancies themselves "progressive" (but in what direction?) they slap up the same damn cameras because they see it as a means to make more efficient the enforcement of the myriad of rules on which their enclave depends and they are wealthy and well represented so they have no fear of it being used against them.

Rural Georgia probably has a little of column A, little of column B going on.