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Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

deflock.me

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Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#41

Post by DaSHacka »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

What we need is a leak of a Flock database. Ideally, due to a security fuck-up by someone other than the jurisdiction that installed them. (Company itself, or another city doing Flock's warrantless search feature.) Having granular location data for an entire town's license plates should still be creepy and damaging enough that it gets these things torn out and replaced with something more thoughtfully designed. (Side…

> What we need is a leak of a Flock database. Ideally, due to a security fuck-up by someone other than the jurisdiction that installed them. (Company itself, or another city doing Flock's warrantless search feature.)

With how poor Flock's own security is, using unauthenticated APIs for the vast majority of their service, and camera access points using hardcoded passwords, anyone who's even half motivated could have already done this.

Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#42

Post by Y_Y »

scottydelta wrote: post #28

> You're thinking Chinese surveillance > US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims — Garry Tan, Sept 03, 2025, YC CEO while defending Flock on X. https://xcancel.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955

don't bite the feed that feeds you

Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#43

Post by Y_Y »

nuthje wrote: post #24
reify wrote: post #20

Here in the UK we also have London's congestion charge. All around the outskirts of London on all the main arterial roads, there are ANPR cameras tracking number plates to fine you, if you have not paid the £15 charge for entering the city. A worrying example of ANPR. I visited my mum one weekend, she lives over 300 miles from where I live on the egde of London. She had a phone call while I was there from the police.…

Or they called your mum because she's your mum and top of the list to call? No creepy additional surveillance required there.

What list?

Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#46

Post by tsbischof »

crimsoneer wrote: post #44

Maybe I'm less sensitive to this coming from the UK, where we're quited to ANPR, but this feels pretty okay to me. When you drive a giant hunk of metal, you accept a higher burden of government surveillance.

Why accept surveillance and tracking without a narrow and well-defined scope? It is one thing to track cars for estimating traffic velocity, it is another entirely to create a national database of all locations any given individual has been seen, with minimal oversight to the purpose for collecting and using that data.

Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#47

Post by einarfd »

beagle3 wrote: post #14
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still looks like there are more data controls in the EU for ANPRs (number plate versus license plate) [1]. (EDIT: Nvm.) [1] https://data.europa.eu/data/datasets/automatic-number-plate-...

This is a list of datasets, not of restrictions, it seems? When they say “ Information captured at the Roadside Automatic Number Plate Recognition system. Only vehicles matching specified criteria (e.g. expired test) are captured.” - meaning, that’s what in the dataset. But they have to read every plate to check its expiration status etc. they just don’t put it in this dataset. But also … how is ANPR in Europe PII? I…

In Norway the plates to owner database is public, and you can either use the free government service or for profit ones. To look them up.

Basically ownership of vehicles is not viewed as private information. So it isn’t covered by privacy legislation. But tracking where the car is, that is covered. That doesn’t stop, speed traps reading car plates, nor parking tracking with cameras. But that info can’t be sold for other purposes.

Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#49

Post by WindyMiller »

tsbischof wrote: post #46
crimsoneer wrote: post #44

Maybe I'm less sensitive to this coming from the UK, where we're quited to ANPR, but this feels pretty okay to me. When you drive a giant hunk of metal, you accept a higher burden of government surveillance.

Why accept surveillance and tracking without a narrow and well-defined scope? It is one thing to track cars for estimating traffic velocity, it is another entirely to create a national database of all locations any given individual has been seen, with minimal oversight to the purpose for collecting and using that data.

> all locations any given individual has been seen

This is perhaps another reason people in the UK might be more chill about ANPR: we're smaller and incrementally less carbrained, so to describe ANPR as tracking "all locations any given individual has been seen" sounds like wild hyperbole.

(Of course all our police forces are frothing at the mouth to roll out facial recognition everywhere they can, so kicking off a bit more about surveillance might not be a bad idea...)

Re: Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)

#50

Post by ck2 »

Unless you don't carry a phone, they know where you are at all times anyway

If not realtime, then historically, without a warrant, for any reason they want

Not saying that's okay but it's what's been happening for decades and well known/documented

They even know every single person who visited Epstein's Island via cellphone tracking

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