Put up billboards around metros with a license plate reader that queries this database with each passing car and announce "White Tesla Model Y XYZ-1234 You've been focked for: Inv" What a sick society we live in.
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Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
91–100 of 251 posts
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#92Since the page is currently down and I have no idea what flocked means in the context of license plates, can I assume this is US specific?
ANPR cameras which the rest of the world (and apparently America) have had for decades have recently become big news in America, I believe because they're now being used for immigration purposes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
I'm not sure why these are so bad but generally everyone loves things like Ring cameras which do the same thing but with people rather than vehicles. I suspect there's something in the American Psyche and how they treat cars, and the inherent trust of the billionaires and distrust of "The Feds"
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#93Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because the records created on behalf of the government are held by a private enterprise doesn't mean they aren't government records.
Yes but: Privatization is an effective way to negate the public's right know. eg Some companies have claimed trade secret protections to prevent public access. Infamously, election administration vendors like Diebold. I imagine anyone trying to investigate govt activities conducted by Palantir (for example) will run into similar stonewalling. Even getting the fulltext of contracts can be challenging.
Not automatically. There's aleeady case law(0x1) that ruled that images captured by Flock ALPR cameras are public records, even though the data are stored by Flock (a private vendor), not directly by the city.
The court rejected the notion that “because the data sits on a private server, it’s not a public record.” Instead, it said that since the surveillance is paid for by the public (taxpayers) and used by a public agency, the data must comply with the state’s public-records law.
This shows that — in at least one jurisdiction — using a private company to run ALPRs doesn’t shield the data from public-records requests.
(0x1) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#95I wonder if I got a license plate holder that said 'I do not consent to selling my position information' if I could sue them.
You have no right to privacy in public, at least in the US.
That is oft-repeated, but case law is starting to show it's not strictly true:
See Mosaic + Carpenter case which say “Yes, each scan is public; yes, aggregation is different. "
Carpenter shows the Court recognizes that aggregated location data can be constitutionally significant.
Individual observability vs. systemic observation: A passerby can note a single plate at a single place/time. But a system of ALPRs, distributed spatially and continuous in time, indexed and retained, can map a person’s entire movements, associations, repeated visits, and behavioral patterns. That’s exactly the “mosaic” insight: the whole reveals things the pieces don’t. (Maynard / Jones reasoning).
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is genius if you work in B2C and want to prevent your website from going viral.
Does Cloudflare let you set hard limits when you are on a paid plan? Or they just do it for the free tier?
No, the paid plan scales to infinity (without having to beg for limit increases like on some other clouds). But ther paid plan has a $5/month base fee, so it's tempting to stay in the free plan if you don't expect to go viral
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just work backwards. Here's what I would do working off just a single license plate number w OSINT. I would pivot immediately into license plate databases that have been breached. For example, ParkMobile got popped in 2021 and the db has 20.9M license plates in it. prob have low success rate and iirc its pretty US centric. It has their full name, address, phone, email, all kinda data. If you had paid fancy tools,…
Sure, and so what? You can look up people on Accurint without license plates. Depending on what kind of account you have, you can just search by a zip code, or a state with no further identifiers. What would be the point of running a website collecting the license plate numbers of random visitors?
You need to think more evil!
Lets brainstorm!
Theres a parking lot... what are the 10 wealthiest car owners...and the 10 frailest oldest people... or maybe the 20 women aged 19-25 blond under 150 pounds... and when do they get off work tired, drive home each day? What's the most isolated gas station,convenience store they stop at? Ones where few other cars pass by? Who's homes don't show a 2nd car in driveway? Owned by 6'5" 200 pound man? Who frequently visits a karate studio?
Or: im a car salesman, in comes a customer, whining abt lowering the price bc Theyre broke... lemme just look up where they eat supper every night! How much time they spend at airports! What school they drop off their kids! Who comes to their house? Nannies? Oh look drug dealers, i can threaten them with blackmail!
Sound ridiculous? All the data brings it into focus. A local detective told me theyre focusing on robberies of $ethnicity restaurants bc that group stockpiles cash in their homes...
And this is all assuming good info, but when u get creative:
..what if we look for mistakes... hey that annoying $religious neighbor pissed me off with his loud music. His kids car shows up as visiting thr wrong side of town..probably a wrong digit but lets report him anyway!!!
Or: Hey lets scan all the wifi dbs for ssids that seem like defaults, then offer them csam-insurance: you pay me $1000 cash rn and ill insure i dont browse csam from your network! And my alpr data says when youre home and your iot devs tell me when you go to sleep so we'll slip it in at before-bed-wank-time!
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#98Since the page is currently down and I have no idea what flocked means in the context of license plates, can I assume this is US specific?
ANPR cameras which the rest of the world (and apparently America) have had for decades have recently become big news in America, I believe because they're now being used for immigration purposes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni... I'm not sure why these are so bad but generally everyone loves things like Ring cameras which do the same thing but with people rather than vehicles. I suspect…
It’s trivial for law enforcement to track your movement with ALPR cameras. Information feeds into a single database, paid for by law enforcement agencies, and they just connect the dots.
Ring camera footage requires law enforcement to get a warrant or for individuals to give consent to supply the footage.
Now tell me which system makes it easier for a cop to stalk their ex.
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#99Since the page is currently down and I have no idea what flocked means in the context of license plates, can I assume this is US specific?
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Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#100I love these kinds of sites, since they're indistinguishable from honeypots. Sure, have my license plate and the information that I'm worried about being watched.
With no other identifying info, though, what can they do with a license plate number in isolation?
In many states, car registration data is public information. If you have a license plate number, you can easily look up who the car is registered to, where they live, etc. License plate numbers are PII.