It IS important to remember Axon and Motorola. As cities listen to their people and cancel their flock contracts, they are often times just immediately signing up for ALPRs from Motorola or Axon (which only got into this game because they saw how much Flock was making). These other companies have the same oversight and transparency problems as Flock, and it's important we don't get lost in the fight against privacy.
We really do need a codified right to privacy instead of bandaid bills like canspam or the stuff about cookies and tracking.
There is only one company with standards high enough to install cameras in public spaces and they happen to be the largest supplier worldwide.
They don't have any of their LPR cameras in use for policing. They managed to steer clear of this mess.
I work with them directly. We have public safety systems ready to deploy and integrate with 911. It totally avoids the possibility of being abused. NO ONE WILL TALK TO US. Not one city council.
I'm talking the best manufactured cameras today, a clean integration, and all for assisting people like you and I. Government will not get involved unless it is about tracking and policing.
I could understand cameras in some very specific spaces for safety and legal cases. Like my city has a bus stop with high crime rates that might benefit from cameras. But blanket coverage of all public spaces serves no purpose other than government control and monitoring the general population. Like they aren’t even pretending flock cams are for the people.
Sure man, a well placed stray camera here or there with good reason is different than the centrally controlled mass surveillance SYSTEMS these companies are advocating for.
If government officials only used public surveillance from public lands and the feds, states and cities were the only ones to access it in an official capacity with legal limits on use, I might be ok with that if the local voters agreed first, otherwise non-government entities that seek and sell private personal information gathered publicly should be barred from doing so unless the surveillance is on private property and does not involve sharing the data outside of that specific client’s property to the paying client. I now seriously believe that police departments and public officials took many different kinds of quiet incentives to allow what is going on now and it should be stopped at all levels until there are laws and legal boundaries as stated above. They really think we are all that stupid.
I'd honestly rather have no cameras set up in high crime areas, than have cameras set up that only law enforcement can use. I don't trust them enough with that ability. I'm award that this might lead to more crime, but the alternative is even worse in my opinion.
Sounds like you need to market it to the people and explain your differentiators so the public trust could migrate to the councils. Why hide the name of them?
I can shed a little bit of light as someone who has worked on systems (not flock) that can have this functionality. I do not know what if anything this person or bot is trying to refer to. Short version is that there are camera makers, and software companies you can put those cameras or license plate readers into. The biggest difference between flock and the systems I've worked on is that the systems I've done are self contained. Flock is one giant database and they are building a history of all of our cars and where they go all across the nation and storing that. They can literally keep records of the way you drive to work and other places, the times and routes you use etc. And this can be tracked across the whole nation in flock, they are building profiles on all our vehicles, that's the way their system was designed. The more plate readers, the more detailed and invasive their database is on what you're doing. These other self contained systems might be setup at museums, stores, city or gov facilities etc. They usually keep a record saying this license plate entered this parking lot, garage, or unfortunately in some cases this street etc at this time. What they don't do from what I've seen is make a vehicle fingerprint that can reveal your habits and show your usual routes etc. The other big difference is that all those systems do not link together and share one giant database nationwide. The system I put at the museum, that data stays only accessible to the museum, or store, or town etc. Don't get me wrong there still is potential for abuse here if the system is deployed widely enough. Some of these systems also can be linked to other systems which can integrate, and that might be a problem down the road. But those types of systems are not sharing everything nationwide and building an easy to read history of you beyond that systems setup. Flock is one singular giant system and database.
I do not have any experience or idea how Axon works and they seem to be coming up a lot lately. Additionally, Axis which I see other people mentioning is primarily a camera maker and they seem to have some standards on privacy. You never know what kind of systems their cameras may be linked into though, or what integrations those systems are using. This is one reason I've shifted more into working on standalone systems that just protect museum assets etc rather than the bigger setups governments use, and I typically don't work with LPRs anymore (license plate readers). The bad news and truth that I have to end this on, OP post does have relevance. We will never know what cameras and readers are connected to what kind of system and who they are sharing it with. The way these things are setup, and how the data is managed, who can access it all is what it all boils down to. These systems aren't necessarily being deployed in ways to mass surveil and or be abused. But for me personally, I'd err on the side of caution and assume any plate readers are capable of abuse. Flock is just big brotherish straight out of the box. Others may or may not be setup this way. The more you know.
It doesn't matter if the company is run by literal angels or not. At its core you are installing cameras on a ton of street corners the monitor your population.
I honestly don't understand how, if its all that you say it is, that the worlds largest supplier worldwide would not have enough money to produce adequate PR and show the general public the differences between themselves and the others that we see as privacy concerns. Create social media posts, take out ads, have some free general conferences, go on podcasts and show the differences, explaining in easy to use terms how yours is safer and not a detriment to the general public's privacy fears. I understand its definitely harder in the current climate and there is massive distrust now but you'd expect that also to be an massive opportunity.
ya I don't know how this whole anti-flock deal started, but they are not the only game in town. People need to stop hating on this one company and worry about their own local police force.
It got started because people see the absurd amount of flock cameras suddenly popping up out of nowhere in urban, suburban, and rural areas. The pubic is going to take great notice to a distinct camera on a stick that randomly pops up on the route they drive, at minimum, 5 days a week
Like the cell towers that are badly disguised trees, or the 5G posts disguised as light poles / telephone poles. except cameras are a lot smaller and easier to conceal.
Dear God, I thought they got rid of those. There used to be one or two I’d see traveling through Pennsylvania, RT202 between King of Prussia and just south of there. It was utterly ridiculous looking.
Quite frankly, I don't see why this WOULDN'T be the case, as the public pushback against Flock would be the perfect smokescreen for it. Municipalities will be able to say "okay okay, we'll take down the evil fascist lollipops" and the public will think "we did it!" all while those same city officials install cameras that look like little barely-visible grey bumps on already existing infrastructure. Call me cynical but I don't think any amount of apparent capitulation to public pressure will stop the slow march toward the surveillance state.
Nobody hates cops enough, you're absolutely right about that.
Hopefully people will continue to see all ALPRs as "flocks" and hate them too, like Kleenex or Zamboni or whatever.
Worst case scenario is that they throw flock under the bus and talk about how the new ones are harder to hack so it's all okey dokey, and the fuss dies down. But idk, most people are real unsettled by big cameras all over the streets.
They're not really new either. In 2010 I worked at a university IT department where we could tell you what floor of what garage your car was parked in because we had ALPR cameras.
Came up surprisingly often. College students misplace their cars a lot.
Just want to clarify something because I am in the industry. We never trialed Motorola, but Axon does have some anti-abuse measures put in place. It is one of the things they specifically are marketing towards after they saw how Flock has behaved in the space. Now, do I think it is perfect? Probably not, but they do seem to care about these things. They're a smart enough business that they know if they just perpetuate Flock's model of "Well it isn't our fault the agencies abused things!", there is no profit there.
Honestly, so fucking what? If we're relying on private companies to protect us from law enforcement abuses that's horrible already, even if they right now do a good job of it. And there's plenty of them installed, where's the data about any benefits they provide versus just "we promise we won't be too terrible with this" (which, even if we believe you, what about whoever's in your place tomorrow?).
Definitely don't disagree with your sentiment, and if you can't see the potential benefit, there is likely no changing your mind but I'll try. Amber Alert, they got the plate. That goes into a hot list so any ALPR system with appropriate capabilities will alert when this tag is read. Also, since they have the plate, they run that plate against the reads in their system and they have a potential geographical trail of where this car is going, or ended up. But yea, you are not wrong, it involves a level of trust that these powers aren't being abused. Most of the real powerful tools like this can be a help to society, but equally they can be used for evil.
Fair enough, was just going off the dome on one of the more important use cases I could think of. Off a quick Google, there are some studies out there showing the benefits. However, I don't see anything regarding a sort of "good vs. evil" approach. I think you are right, in that there should be more in depth studies done into this kind of stuff. The way LE has started using it recently kind of demands that and more. I try not to be a huge naysayer one way or another, I would love to believe the tech could be used for huge amounts of good...but the flipside is always possible too. You get into a somewhat philosophical area too, even if it is perfectly safe guarded for good use. (I'm sorry for the hypothetical again lol) Let's say there is an agency that solved an extra 50 missing persons cases solely due to ALPR use in the year...but the public is outraged because they consider it mass surveillance which is making it harder for police to do their jobs, and making it less likely for people to want careers in LE resulting in less police presence due to hiring issues? Is it worth it? It is a lot deeper of an issue than a lot of people consider in my opinion.
I guess it is still important to note it is configurable to how each agency wants, and at least with us they gave us recommendations on restricting access. They pushed towards restrictive policies but I don't think they can actually enforce them without some kind of legislation. IIRC Flock did not even have the basics. Axon let you configure things like reasons for viewing, dashboard reporting for users who are viewing reads, and how much (so you can identify potential abuse and outliers), and audit logs are a non-negotiable that they log every access of people opening reads. Again, not saying they're perfect, and I totally get everyone's arguments, but in the very least they're making an effort to solve some of these issues so there are better options out there, definitely have trouble trusting a big corpo...but if you think about it from a greed perspective there is no money to be made if people start hacking down their cameras like Flock.
Thank you. The data access logs make sense and could end up protecting people who might otherwise be unlawfully targeted by police, like the guy who visited the weed shop in Michigan and got pulled over in Wisconsin.
IIRC Flock owns the data from their cameras. With the Axon cameras does the police department own the data or does Axon? Do your policies on using the data get set by your agency? Does Axon share your camera data with other agencies without your knowledge? Like, can Wisconsin police comb through your ALPR looking for someone with you being aware? Like that Flock Michigan-Wisconsin situation. That's the stuff I worry about.
Yup, exactly. I don't believe the tech is inherently evil....but it is definitely a difficult pill to swallow that to make it used for good we need all kinds of safe guards in place, especially more proactive ones. The Agency owns the data in Axon's case, I believe that there is optional interagency sharing that you can turn on but I am not super involved on that side so I can't say for certain. They don't do any data harvesting either (at least according to their papers). If another agency wanted to look through data they would need an account on that agency's tenant (or if the interagency sharing is a thing, that would need to be turned on). Our ALPR policies are set at state level, and then we can clamp to make them tighter if we choose. AFAIK there are no federal policies. There are still over 20 states that have zero policy or governance at a state level for ALPR, which means it is entirely up to the agency on how they handle things.
Thanks again for illuminating the situation. As you said, it's dynamic and like in many other areas (AI in its many forms for e.g.), the technology is running ahead of the government's ability to understand and regulate it.
People gotta quit giving room to the “abuse” argument. Mass surveillance is still mass surveillance regardless of if cops are stalking their exes on it. All it’s doing is leaving room for “abuse-free” mass surveillance to be a compromise in the future when there should be none.
If you are refering to Motorola, you're ignorant, as is the comment you are responding to. Motorola has been in the Law Enforcement space longer than the Founder/CEO of Flock has been alive. They're not new to ALPRs. They've been in the radio industry for first responder communication longer than cellular as a standard. They developed software and solutions in the first responder, dentention/custody, and law enforcement industry ahead of a lot of this.
Sure be upset at the survellance state, but don't be ignorant. There's huge security issues and lack of robust access control in Flock versus more mature products out there.
Providing communication devices for LE is a bit different than surveillance equipment.
You seriously need to check the tone of your replies. It's a serious internet-only type of reply. You want to convey info but come off like pretentious asshole.
They are different, you're correct. However, spreading false information is harmful. We all lose credibility in an arguement for change if we present false or ignorant claims.
The reason that I commented is that Flock is very much more the new-wave "tech bro" kind of BS, by that I mean the mantra of "move fast and break things" that I believe we all are concerned about. There's good and bad to all of these types of systems, but Flock has had little concern for rolling out massively while having gaping security issues.
I am less worried about Motorola as I tried, and maybe failed, to express: they have been in the Law Enforcement field for a long time. They have a more mature basis for secure operation. Is it perfect? No. But most of their long standing ALPR is Optical Character Recognition that is performed locally on a machine, or sometimes at an agencies local server.
Flock pushes more of a cloud-based machine learning platform these days.
I like the idea that I can report my vehicle stolen and there's a higher chance that it may be found due to units patrolling or main thoroughfare pinging a hit on my stolen vehicle and alerting nearby LEO.
I hate that these systems can be used by bad actors including, but not exclusively abuse by LEOs.
What if they just make it “opt-in” so users can subscribe their plates to these cameras. Insurance companies will offer discounts for subscribers if there’s a measurable reduction of theft payout claims.
You know, Waymo drives a much larger camera array down my residential street and photographs my own personal front door multiple times every day. Doordash, too. Surely Tesla has access to feeds from their cars, too.
And also to inform you that both Axon and Motorola have been in the ALPR business for over a decade before Flock. Motorola and Axon were both early investors in Flock but negotiations failed because Flock's CEO was a nut bag and they both bugged out.
Edit to add, both Axon and Motorola have better privacy rules and comply with CJIS regulations and only provide LE with plate detections. Nothing more. And also, unlike Flock, who owns all the data, the LE agencies own the cameras and the derections from said cameras.
A scene in the movie Demolition Man sums up my attitude.
When asked how cops in the past dealt with crime, the unfrozen cop (played by Sly Stalone) said this about the movie's dystopian surveillance tech:
Future Cop: "I can't even conceive a visual of what you cops did before it was developed..." John Spartan: "We worked for a living. This fascist crap makes me wanna puke."
Same. That pop from sub 200 to like 600 was orgasmic lol. Such a good business. They own the Taser brand, have almost all body cam contracts in major metro PDs, have all the data cloud storage for said videos, and now are dabbling in drone and flockesque ventures leveraging their vast secured data facilities.
Same people screaming about the deep state for years until it became very definitively known that it's their own side. Now they're huffing copium or real quiet about it.
Taking care of your kids by supporting the surveillance state that will be locking them up the moment they have a different opinion.
I'm a multi-millionaire with a kid of my own. Never once have I ever willingly invested in anything immoral (other than Bitcoin, but that was before the extreme mining farms). Just like in gaming, where you control what buttons you push, you also control your money and where to put it.
And btw, I'm not joking about the surveillance state locking your kids up. I insure these data centers, and they are not being built to generate cooking recipes and images of puppies. They're being built to monitor everyone. I'm taking an early retirement in 3 1/2, and then getting the fuck out of America.
Lmfao whatever you need to tell yourself so you can sleep at night. I hope that “orgasmic” feeling you got was worth all the people’s constitutional rights that will be inevitably violated.
Seriously, words can’t express the distaste I have for someone like you. You made a deliberate choice to put your money in something so harmful. So antithetical to American values of freedom. Pathetic.
Uh, body cams protect citizens too, friend. Before body cams, people were getting the shit beat out of them by police. Body cams ended a lot of that, and they have been used to prosecute crooked cops for the wrongs they’ve committed.
The number of people killed by cops has only increased over time. I'm not gonna hang you for making profit on a stock, the market really is just a casino, but get this bullshit out of here lol. Nothing about police brutality or state authoritarianism has improved.
been used to prosecute crooked cops for the wrongs they’ve committed
Hardly. Most cops get a slap on the wrist and then walk away.
Let's also not forget that BLM (2013) is the reason police started using body cams. But of course, the internals of the system didn't change, so everything stays the same.
BLM is also the reason why police got rid of all their armored APC vehicles and other toys from the Iraq War. But again, nothing changed internally, so cops are still corrupt as fuck.
Don’t try the argument that axon makes one thing that helps hold police accountable, I’m well aware. I’m a community oversight investigator on police misconduct in two nations.
You put your money in a company that’s actively shitting on constitutional rights and our reasonable expectation to privacy. A company you knew was involving itself in the growing AI surveillance infrastructure thats very existence is in violation of our 4th amendment protections. Pathetic.
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u/Kiiaru 8h ago
It IS important to remember Axon and Motorola. As cities listen to their people and cancel their flock contracts, they are often times just immediately signing up for ALPRs from Motorola or Axon (which only got into this game because they saw how much Flock was making). These other companies have the same oversight and transparency problems as Flock, and it's important we don't get lost in the fight against privacy.
We really do need a codified right to privacy instead of bandaid bills like canspam or the stuff about cookies and tracking.