A met a guy once whom drives a PU truck, he lowers the tailgate and places an oversized piece of plywood in the bed as an excuse, he also places an opaque plastic cover over his front lic plate, which has been raised to a $300 fine in Texas, if caught. He now intends to place a series of bright strobe lights around his front plate to "bleach out" the sensors of these spy cameras.
Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
141–150 of 251 posts
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
All this is assuming one travels exclusively by car. Bikes, public transport, or walking are not as easy to track using this system. Then again, these modes of transport are less popular in the US; I guess such a surveillance system is extra effective in the US because of that.
Not yet. Facical recognition in 2025 is where LPR was in 2010.
As the cost of compute and wireless communications continues to drop, facial recognition will be prolific. There are more limitations with cameras, but AI will make it easy to backtrack movement to a place where they get a clean shot that can identify you.
As an example, the transit authority in NYC Metro was able to plug existing security feeds from trains into Amazon Rekognition to count heads, which feeds their ticketing app — you can see which carriages are full. As time goes on, they’ll become able to track the breadcrumbs individuals from seat to platform. (If not already)
Detectives do this manually today. I was on a jury where the purse snatcher was followed by various cameras until he got on a bus. They pulled the bus passes and tracked his pass back to his girlfriend.
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#143Since 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…
Americans (the general public) are a lot more weary of government surveillance than other developed nations. Its one thing that you can get a lot of liberals and conservative to agree on.
Unlike ring cameras which people voluntarily install and the government needs a warrant to access, flock cameras are pretty much exclusively for the government to actively monitor citizens without any court oversight.
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Flock Safety" is a company that makes "ALPR" cameras (automated license plate recognition, in reality they go far beyond just reading license plates), they've been getting a lot of attention recently because people are worried about privacy and abuse. There's a bunch of articles about them here: https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/
I would also recommend Benn Jordan's YT channel, he has a couple of videos covering flock cameras. His latest one is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY edit: grammar
Unrelated but he's been getting threats of violence. I'm not sure whats going on with that.
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#145Besides the obvious privacy concern: at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful for public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily incomplete. But, give it a year or two, and you can replace this whole website with a black background and 72 point white bold text "YES".
Rule 1. Do not comply in advance. Do not accept it as inevitable. Do not give away your power without friction.
tptacek writes on here sometimes about their activity in local politics. This perspective (from my reading) is that it has a lot of strong support that is difficult to oppose, not that we should give up. Read "give it a year or two" as "give it a year or two of things going as they are".
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#146A met a guy once whom drives a PU truck, he lowers the tailgate and places an oversized piece of plywood in the bed as an excuse, he also places an opaque plastic cover over his front lic plate, which has been raised to a $300 fine in Texas, if caught. He now intends to place a series of bright strobe lights around his front plate to "bleach out" the sensors of these spy cameras.
Is his name Rusty Shackelford by any chance?
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#147Now imagine every other aspect of modern life is enshittified similarly to some extent and all being dialed up. Nothing is sacred, and talk to the contrary is laughable. Government is a scummy grift, every big (money) cause is full of unaudited scammers. I hope you are never passionate about a pet government policy!
You can buy local or do it yourself, but all of those are squeezed at the margins by enshittified inputs.
Before even seeking to fix the problem, I try to work on me.
First, I try (difficult) to not be sucked into useless wallowing, which keeps me exactly where the enemy wants me to be. I tend to skim 'news' headlines now, if that.
Second, in my career I strive to produce uncommon quality so as to not add to the problem.
I love to stand out and feel proud of my work. It makes me sad when coworkers are concerned/confused when I put in extra effort. I know where they're coming from. No one notices nor cares at $megacorp, and my work is internal and humble.
I do it for self-improvement and to make the time I spend working for them worthwhile to me.
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think it's mostly just a privacy issue. The idea that your every movement is being recorded by the government is Orwellian, especially when they try to hide its existence, lie about its capabilities, and you have no say in the matter (referencing NSA metadata monitoring). The average person thinks their ring camera is like their coffee maker, an individual piece of technology they own and control. If it were releas…
But these cameras have been around for 30+ years, including in the US. Why is it suddenly in the news.
The cameras don't track me either. They track a car. They have no idea who is driving the car.
> If it were released that everyone's ring cameras were being fed into some NSA program running facial recognition to track citizens movement I'm sure they would be upset about that too
That's the interesting bit, how did ANPR get into the US public consciousness now, rather than over a decade ago when it started to be used on toll roads
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#149Now imagine every other aspect of modern life is enshittified similarly to some extent and all being dialed up. Nothing is sacred, and talk to the contrary is laughable. Government is a scummy grift, every big (money) cause is full of unaudited scammers. I hope you are never passionate about a pet government policy! You can buy local or do it yourself, but all of those are squeezed at the margins by enshittified inpu…
You forgot to mention personal integrity and setting a good example to others.
Re: Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
All this is assuming one travels exclusively by car. Bikes, public transport, or walking are not as easy to track using this system. Then again, these modes of transport are less popular in the US; I guess such a surveillance system is extra effective in the US because of that.
Less popular because it’s not feasible for many. I live in MN. Biking 20mi to work when it’s -10F and in 6” of fresh snow on top of the 12” received so far this season just isn’t something that’s safe to do. Please don’t make it seem like it’s a “popularity” thing; it’s a necessity thing.
Hardly anyone lives in MN - half the poulation of New York City alone.
The vast majority of Americans live in cities. Half live in just 8 metro-areas, just as the vast majority of Europeans live in cities. Europe is far more dispersed though.