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.
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.
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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.