| ▲ | bko 5 hours ago |
| I recently listened to the Flock CEO on All In podcast, and he mentioned an ironic thing about Flock and it's audit trail is that it serves as a honeypot to root out bad police. Flock basically knows what a malicious request looks like. The simple example he gives is someone pinging the same license plate every day without putting it on a watchlist, because the officer doesn't want others to know. They started rolling out auto-detection of bad-faith queries and flagging those to supervisors. If you figure that some percentage of cops are dirty, a simple easily detectable honeypot is extremely effective in identifying them and firing them. I guess the hard part here is actually holding the cops that abuse the system accountable but that's also likely solvable. It's a huge liability for the police force. Usually the ones that are protecting dirty cops are the police unions, but that's a whole different conversation It's also important to note that Flock is just a license plate reader. It doesn't record video or do any facial recognition. And storage typically gets deleted between 1 and 7 days and is up to the precent to set. https://singjupost.com/transcript-all-in-interview-with-floc... |
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| ▲ | chaps 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Flock is not just a license plate reader. They have many products. Here's an article today that includes a decent deep dive into the code of one of its new projects that's... definitely more than just license plate reading. https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-os-investigate/ |
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| ▲ | bko 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | From the article: > The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates. Sounds like they're shipping an AI that can use external datasources like an MCP. By this regard, Claude does exactly the same thing. Give it access to a database with social security numbers and it'll query them for you. The rest of the things described in the article is all a byproduct of having a database (typically kept around for 1-7 days) of cars, their license plates, locations and some physical description of the car. For instance: > vehicles that left one city for another and returned within a week, made repeat roundtrips over 14 days, or passed through three areas in sequence. If you have still photos of every car passing on particular street corners, this is just a query. They're just taking photos and reading license plates. And they started getting some description of the car, like unusual things. The CEO talks about that as well. From the interview: > A car drives by, we take a still image of the vehicle, we read the license plate, and the system’s gotten more sophisticated with time. We can detect things like a roof rack or a bumper sticker or dent or damage, but that’s at its core what the technology does... > So it’s pretty cool technology, and pretty effective, because if you think about what happens on a 911 call, most people don’t instinctively look at the license plate and remember it. They see the thing that was unique about the car — oh, it had damage on the right side. I would definitely recommend the interview if you want to learn more. | | |
| ▲ | chaps 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Friend, even after listening to that interview you still insisted on saying that flock ONLY does ALPR and only now that you've been given an example of where you were wrong, you suggest that I listen to the thing that clearly didn't inform you enough? Your goalposts are quite mobile. | | |
| ▲ | bko 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I said it doesn't do facial recognition or video. Sure there's an image so it's reasonable to catalog color and stuff, but that's relatively new. It's not a big gotcha that you think it is It's entirely reasonable imo since you have no expectation of privacy on the road. I can take pictures of cars that drive by my house. I don't even know what were arguing about here. | | |
| ▲ | chaps 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You literally said, "It's also important to note that Flock is just a license plate reader." You're spreading misinformation about what these things are and aren't. It's fucked up. But I'm hopeful that you can do better. Also, please, for your sake -- submit a FOIA request for footage taken from a public camera. It'll get denied because public records laws consider this sorta information private. Your oversimplification is intellectually silly. | | |
| ▲ | bko 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | My brother in Christ, I am wealthy enough to live in a rich neighborhood w cameras. Others are lucky enough to live in gated communities. We have cameras for the wealthy and elite, I'm trying to expand who we care for in society. Of course we shouldn't let some random person foia these records. These are for police matters only. What are you even arguing for? | | |
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| ▲ | mysterydip 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | m3047 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 1) Flock is a company. 2) One of their products is a license plate scanner / reader. 3) This scanner / reader consumes camera output which includes license plates. 3) One of their products is a tracker / alerter / searcher. 4) The searcher / tracker isn't limited to license plates, it can correlate on other aspects in the photo. These other aspects concern the vehicle, the vehicle occupants, objects and individuals elsewhere in the photo. |
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| ▲ | bko 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The searcher / tracker is limited to license plates or descriptions of the car, not occupants. This is backed up by their statements. If you have an alt source supporting your statement please provide | | |
| ▲ | m3047 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | https://www.gadgetreview.com/flock-safety-says-its-cameras-d... Flock Safety’s FreeForm tool logged 6,736 people-description searches in 2025 while the company insisted its cameras target only vehicles https://www.investigatetv.com/2026/06/15/flock-says-its-came... Company’s newest devices use AI to follow pedestrians, while protesters are mapping nearly 90,000 surveillance cameras nationwide. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/flock-cameras-are-... camera provider has rapidly expanded its products, functionalities, and customer base, creating a vast network of video cameras, audio detection devices, drones, and mobile security trailers. This expanded offering is powered by AI algorithms that process far more than drivers' license plates, recording vehicle profiles, pedestrians https://www.rsn.org/001/how-cops-use-flock-to-track-people-n... Cops have used Flock's FreeForm search feature to look for people with tattoos and wearing specific sport shirts, and searches sometimes include the target's race, according to data reviewed by 404 Media. [yeah, 404 Media, you might start there] https://wlos.com/news/local/asheville-flock-cameras-paintbal... officers identified the juvenile suspects through an investigation and the use of Flock cameras... [wait, there's more, keep reading, KEEEEP REEEDING] Officials who support the use of Flock cameras have argued that the cameras help solve crimes and find missing or endangered people. Here's how we say "hello" in Swedish Meatball: "Uff Da!" Bumper stickers available. | |
| ▲ | m3047 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | dudu24 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm sure once Flock notifies departments of these bad apples, they will take swift inaction. |
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| ▲ | bko 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I agree, police unions are mostly to blame, but unfortunately a downside of collective action. How we allow public sector unions at all is baffling to me. | | |
| ▲ | mrguyorama 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah yes, the problem is that the workers have too much power! Not that, you know, there is clear evidence that police departments just don't put any effort into fixing problems. Ask any former cop. Unions aren't magic. In any other industry, they don't let you commit crimes and avoid punishment. You will find that plenty of unions don't have such absurd power, because there is pushback from the companies that work with them. Last I checked, it wasn't the SAG that allowed pedophiles free reign in the entertainment industry, but rather the fact that the industry had so many pedophiles that they could protect and aid each other. Did police unions force police departments to have such limited training? To have such hostile and fake training? Did the police union make the cop brag to his buddies about what he did? When's the last time the pilot's union tried to defend a pilot who showed up to work drunk as being above reproach? How come rail unions weren't able to prevent measures that punish engineers who are distracted with their phone when they should be working? How come other public sector unions, like teachers and nurses, don't seem to have this problem? |
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| ▲ | tomkarho 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > an ironic thing about Flock and it's audit trail is that it serves as a honeypot to root out bad police. That's like saying the SS served as a honeypot for genocidal maniacs. |
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| ▲ | FireBeyond 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Flock is putting huge PR spin on this. They will not disable features that are illegal for your agency to use in your state. They will give you training on it. And they identify lots more than just license plates. What license plates were visible inside the YMCA children's gym? Or at public pools on the pooldeck? Garrett has also said that he sees false positives as a better outcome than false negatives, because the latter doesn't advance Flock's mission towards "a world with no crime, thanks to Flock" (with unironic apologies to Minority Report). |
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| ▲ | bko 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Private corporations shouldn't set or interpret the law. They can sell technology but that's up to the jurisdiction to set policies. What a dystopian vision you have where corporate ceos start telling police what's legal and illegal | | |
| ▲ | lovich 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | If there is precedent set saying selling $ITEM is illegal in a given jurisdiction , should a company be selling it? Is it dystopian if a company doesn’t sell fentanyl to a police precinct because it’s up to the police to decide and the company should just give them whatever they ask for? edit: lol at your response that’s flagged before I could reply. No consistency in morals, just sweeping for destruction of the rule of law. In a paraphrase of your own words, it’s just some criticism bro. | | |
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| ▲ | pstuart 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| This assumes that the chain of management within the police believes in accountability, which bring to mind a famous quote about assumptions. |
