How Cops Are Using Flock Safety’s ALPR Network To Surveil Protesters And Activists
#alpr
Who wants to see the start of the Fuck Flock 9000? #flock #flocksafety #flockcameras #alpr
A remarkable outcome for a large group of local Colorado activists last night. In Longmont, a Denver suburb northeast of Boulder, more than 50 people testified last night to city council (and more than 90 people came to the council meeting) about their pending renewal of a contract with Flock, the ALPR company that has been under fire for its surveillance capitalism. DeFlock Longmont, the group that organized the public comment scrum, won a victory when city council voted not to renew the contract at the end of the hours-long meeting.
Public comment was at times serious and other times silly, but unanimous in opposition to the city renewing their contract. Public safety officials, including the chief of Longmont Police, testified after the public comment period that the Flock cameras had been instrumental in stopping a number of dangerous incidents and arresting people who committed violent crimes.
I hope you're following this, @404mediaco because we are not going to stop with just this one city.
Read the story here:
https://yellowscene.com/2025/12/10/longmont-residents-win-fight-against-ai-surveillance/
edit: added BRL story:
Watch the video:
Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA
#HackerNews #Automated #License #Plate #Readers #ALPR #USA #Privacy #Tech #Innovation
I published a new post to my blog about #flock
“The UK’s advanced Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system, now capturing around 90 million reads each day across more than 18,000 cameras, is being critically undermined by weak regulation of number plate production, supply and a lack of enforcement.“
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/widespread-number-plate-illegality/
At the city council meeting for #Longmont, Colorado, more than 90 people have come to do public comment in opposition to the city renewing its contract with #Flock, the #ALPR company whose products have been under fire as a result of the abuse of the company's products by ICE, CBP, and other federal law enforcement agencies. It is a massive turnout for any city council meeting. The meeting is being livestreamed on the Longmont youtube live stream. This is going to be a very passionate public comment period at this meeting.
"Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company.
The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people reviewing the footage may be based. Flock has become a pervasive technology in the US, with its cameras present in thousands of communities that cops use every day to investigate things like carjackings. Local police have also performed numerous lookups for ICE in the system.
Companies that use AI or machine learning regularly turn to overseas workers to train their algorithms, often because the labor is cheaper than hiring domestically. But the nature of Flock’s business—creating a surveillance system that constantly monitors US residents’ movements—means that footage might be more sensitive than other AI training jobs."
https://www.wired.com/story/flock-uses-overseas-gig-workers-to-build-its-surveillance-ai/
#USA #Flock #Surveillance #AI #PoliceState #Upwork #ML #ice #ALPR
Painting your car number plate with a special glaze can trick police cameras.
According to a trial in Birmingham, UK, thousands of drivers have these "ghost plates".
@PrivacyDigest
I appreciate efforts like this. But the privacy skeptic in me suspects it's a data harvesting scam.
Is there a link to download the data for offline analysis?
(Yes, I read the FAQ. No, I don't take the answers at face value.)
Have I been Flocked ?
Enter a license plate to see if it's one of the 2,207,426 plates seen in the 27,177,268 #Flock searches we know about.
#privacy #security #alpr #flocksafety
How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists
Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety's servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock's national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity
#FlockSafety #ALPR #police #surveillance #privacy #protests #technology #tech
Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
https://haveibeenflocked.com/
#ycombinator #flock_safety #ALPR #license_plate_reader #privacy #police #surveillance #license_plate_search
Have I Been Flocked? – Check If Your License Plate Is Being Watched
https://haveibeenflocked.com/
#ycombinator #flock_safety #ALPR #license_plate_reader #privacy #police #surveillance #license_plate_search
Eugene Police Department in Oregon finally agreed to cancel their Flock contract. I am sure they will try to sneak in some other freedom eroding technology, but for now, getting rid of Flock is a huge win for not just Eugene, but Oregon as a whole. #fuckflock
#privacy #massSurveilance #alpr #fuckice #bigbrother #eugeneoregon #oregon #flock
Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with ‘suspicious’ travel patterns
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.
drivers find themselves pulled over then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.
How to Identify Automated License Plate Readers at the U.S.-Mexico Border
Last month, the Associated Press published an in-depth investigation into how agencies have deployed these systems and exploited this data to target drivers. But what do these cameras look like? Here's a guide to identifying #ALPR systems when you're driving the open road along the #border.
#mexico #privacy #security #cbp #surveillance
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-identify-automated-license-plate-readers-us-mexico-border
Pump the Brakes: Regulating License Plate Readers -- a webinar from ACLU of Washington next Wednesday (December 10), 5:30-6:30 pm Pacific Standard time (UTC -8)
"In this webinar, we'll discuss how ALPRs work, why the lack of regulation threatens our civil rights and enables federal overreach, and how you can take action to fight back.
https://www.aclu-wa.org/event/pump-the-brakes-regulating-license-plate-readers/
Here's the report from the University of Washington Center for Human Rights:
Leaving the Door Wide Open: Flock Surveillance Systems Expose Washington Data to Immigration Enforcement
https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-the-door-wide-open/
Washington lawmakers want to regulate license plate readers
"Washington’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is leading the charge to regulate the license plate readers here. The issue has taken on new urgency during the Trump administration’s campaign for mass deportations, said Tee Sannon, the organization’s technology policy program director.
A report last month out of the University of Washington found several local police departments authorized U.S. Border Patrol to use their license plate reader databases. And in other cases, Border Patrol had backdoor access without express permission. In some instances, police conducted searches on behalf of the federal agency."
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