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Should We Beware of Other License Plate Surveillance Companies Besides Flock? (npr.org) 69

Posted by EditorDavid from the Flock-my-life dept.
NPR reports: Police officers in cities across the U.S. are quick to extol the virtues of real-time crime centers as a game changer that helps them find missing children, monitor large events from the skies and scope out dangerous scenes before putting an officer in harm's way. Hundreds of police departments have one of these central hubs, which have existed for years. But many are now being powered with AI software, such as Fusus, from the public-safety technology giant Axon... synthesizing the data it pulls in and allowing police command centers to watch an entire city from one place.

Flock cameras, the automated license plate readers (ALPRs), have faced intense backlash in recent months amid stories of abuse. Yet privacy experts say they're just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to police surveillance. "I have been watching the debate about Flock with a little bit of puzzlement," says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University. "Because real-time crime centers have not just ALPR cameras and sensors, but video analytics and drones and essentially a way to create a visual single-pane-of-glass vision of what's going on in a city, with time machine capabilities where you can go back and investigate crime." Tools like Axon Fusus, which is a leader in this type of software, also pull in footage and data from police body cameras, law enforcement dashcams, 911 dispatch, gunshot detectors and surveillance cameras, including sometimes those of private businesses that opt in. Its use is growing fast. In 2024, the technology news site 404 Media reported that just over 100 law enforcement agencies had deployed Fusus, which was then its own company and was acquired by Axon that year. The number of law enforcement agencies using the tool has more than doubled since then, according to Axon.
Even the American Civil Liberties Union warned concerned citizens in August that "Flock is far from the only vendor," adding that "it's important to realize that its competitors aren't so great either, and that simply replacing Flock surveillance with another company's surveillance won't necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems posed by this mass surveillance technology." Communities can't simply assume that their residents will be better off from a privacy and civil liberties perspective by dropping Flock and replacing it with another ALPR provider, as some customers have done. They should ask hard questions about whether they really want to create that kind of a system, and if they do, ensure it doesn't function as a mass surveillance system...

One of Flock's most significant competitors is Motorola. This company, which has been expanding its police technology offerings through an aggressive acquisition strategy in recent years, offers a nationwide law enforcement data sharing system similar to Flock's called the National Vehicle Location Service, operated by Motorola unit Vigilant Solutions. In addition to collecting data from law enforcement clients' cameras, it also runs a large separate commercial ALPR unit that makes deals for tow trucks and other fleet vehicles to carry cameras and collect data for Motorola as they drive around, amassing billions of plate reads (a claimed 500 million monthly, subject to no apparent data retention policy). Known as the Digital Recognition Network, that unit sells its data for commercial purposes but also makes it available to its law enforcement customers for an extra charge. Motorola tells agencies they can have "access to billions of detections beyond your own."
Abandoning Flock for another system doesn't protect privacy, their article argues. "If a jurisdiction decides to allow license scanners to be installed, how that system operates is more important than which vendor provides it..." They recommend strong restrictions like data retention limits — and imposing them by law rather than in the language of contracts with vendors (which could always be renegotiated).
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Should We Beware of Other License Plate Surveillance Companies Besides Flock? More

Should We Beware of Other License Plate Surveillance Companies Besides Flock?

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  • Yes and no (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GeekWithAKnife ( 2717871 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @07:58AM (#66372038)
    What we need are open standards, transparency, governance and correct enforcement of the law regarding privacy.

    Even with the best of intentions technological solutions can produce errors...and many times the intentions are far and away from "best."

    So this tech will stay and improve and perhaps be more beneficial than terrible...so trust that it will be one day but verify it is doing what it should today.

    • Re:Yes and no (Score:4, Insightful)

      by doc1623 ( 7109263 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @09:19AM (#66372152)
      I love your first sentence, but it's more than just errors; it's a violation of privacy and basic human rights. Especially, as the police are just badly designed. There needs to be external oversight to police. "protect and serve" shouldn't be just a re-branding after a the police go off the rails, it should be the ideal they strive for. Unfortunately, police abuse the law and citizens daily all over the country. They work for the major who serves the biggest campaign donors. So, the last thing they do (generally) is work for most of us. Of course, we all know self-auditing never works as well as it should.

    • We don't need open standards. We need a ban on ALL ALPR and face recognition technology.

      If the cops can afford to buy it they're obviously overfunded. Cut their money.

      • Well... since the Forth Amendment no longer exists we might as well get rid of the others.

        I bet a lot of *citizens* would be happy to eliminate the Second Amendment as currently interpreted. And that is going to be a lot easier when everyone is SURVEILLED everywhere with LPRs and (so the hoodie and mask won't help) gait analysis with bulge detection.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          FORTH-79 or FORTH-83?

      • Shall we also outlaw fingerprint recognition and DNA testing? No. We should regulate them and guard against abuses, but simply using a technology isn't automatically abuse.

        Many serious crimes have been solved, and criminals apprehended, because of ALPR technology.
        https://www.krqe.com/news/albu... [krqe.com]
        https://www.police1.com/police... [police1.com]
        https://www.sighthound.com/blo... [sighthound.com]

        We should place guardrails around police use of technology, not forbid it altogether. Technology is too valuable to set aside as a crime-fighting too

        • This one is automatically abuse.

          There are NO valid use cases for ALPR. It needs to be banned.

          Posting copaganda is NOT helping anybody.

          • So that's your opinion, and you're entitled to it. But you provided zero supporting rationale for your opinion. WHY is ALPR always abuse?

            I disagree, I don't think it is automatically abuse. So we've each stated our opinions. Is yours better than mine? Why would you say so?

            I think police forces should be able to leverage tools like this, to hold back crime.

            • The only way to have police forces hold back crime is to dismantle police forces.

              They are the criminals now. Over a thousand people killed by police every year in the US. More theft by police than burglars every year. They're a huge burden on society, they are the enemy.

              And ALPR isn't a tool, it's an automated invasion of privacy.

              • That is a very radical view that is not shared by people who have successfully made their towns and neighborhoods safe places to live. My neighborhood, for example, is extremely safe. With 2,500 homes in a suburb of 250,000, burglaries occur less than once per year. The worst problems are occasional vandalism or teenage mischief. The police are welcome here. They do a good job of keeping us safge.

                Show me a neighborhood where police forces are absent, and I'll show you a neighborhood where crime is high and

      • We need open standards to enable competition in tech, and most everywhere else. Personally, I wasn't referring to just ALPR. Companies/Industries have locked down standards to prevent competition/compatibility. The standards that used to be better for all of us have been taken over by industries. I haven't researched web standards, but why we can't right click anymore on many/most websites. The websites seem to have more control of our computers/browsers than they used to (it seems to me). Open standards ar

  • Yes because despite what cowards think (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @08:32AM (#66372084)
    1984 wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual.

    We should also be keeping an eye out for them adding, or separately mounting, corollary surveillance items.

    We already see Flock, and I'll guarantee other vendors are looking to add it as well, SIGINT to the cameras. That means even if they can't see your plate, or even your car very well because you rented a trailer, they can track you by WiFi/Bluetooth to a few feet.

    We should also be keeping an eye out for them to roll out facial recognition integration. They have it all set to go, and may even have live near you. Axon has it. ACTi sells long range zoom cameras with it. There are even vendors that add it to Flock as a software layer..

    There are a few thing we should do:
    1) Make it a state felony worth a 5-10 years in prison for law enforcement to abuse the cameras. No warrant? Congrats snowflake you just caught a MINIMUM 5 year sentence in prison with no early release option. When they whine about the penalty, remind them that they say you need hefty punishments to deter crime. When they inevitably whine about the warrant remind them they say "this isn't mass surveillance" and "this isn't real-time surveillance" so waiting a few minutes on the phone to personally affirm to the judge under penalty of perjury isn't a big deal. You're only looking backward in time.
    2) Put vendors on the hook for not following data retention / sharing limitation standards. That latest update flipped a switch that changed a customer's share settings? Congratulations snowflake, you just caught a fine worth 10 times the original contract, per day.
    3) Make it illegal to repackage and sell ANY data from the cameras, or other sensors, to anyone. I mean, seriously folks, how long do you think it will take for the companies to start selling? That is, if they aren't already under the table.

    Police and many politicians will whine. You can be dang sure the companies will screech loud to the Calvinball Court. I don't care. Not only is this stuff reek of fascism it's a national security nightmare.

    • As a footnote, I'd add my surprise if people weren't already war-driving protests and getting a log of everyone present. At least to the extent they have a log of your phone's ID, which you can bet your ass they can tie to your ID if you've ever handed out your phone number or purchased anything or logged into anything with your phone. Leave it on airplane mode or put it in a faraday bag.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by xpyr ( 743763 )

      1984 wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual. We should also be keeping an eye out for them adding, or separately mounting, corollary surveillance items. We already see Flock, and I'll guarantee other vendors are looking to add it as well, SIGINT to the cameras. That means even if they can't see your plate, or even your car very well because you rented a trailer, they can track you by WiFi/Bluetooth to a few feet. We should also be keeping an eye out for them to roll out facial recognition integration. They have it all set to go, and may even have live near you. Axon has it. ACTi sells long range zoom cameras with it. There are even vendors that add it to Flock as a software layer.. There are a few thing we should do: 1) Make it a state felony worth a 5-10 years in prison for law enforcement to abuse the cameras. No warrant? Congrats snowflake you just caught a MINIMUM 5 year sentence in prison with no early release option. When they whine about the penalty, remind them that they say you need hefty punishments to deter crime. When they inevitably whine about the warrant remind them they say "this isn't mass surveillance" and "this isn't real-time surveillance" so waiting a few minutes on the phone to personally affirm to the judge under penalty of perjury isn't a big deal. You're only looking backward in time. 2) Put vendors on the hook for not following data retention / sharing limitation standards. That latest update flipped a switch that changed a customer's share settings? Congratulations snowflake, you just caught a fine worth 10 times the original contract, per day. 3) Make it illegal to repackage and sell ANY data from the cameras, or other sensors, to anyone. I mean, seriously folks, how long do you think it will take for the companies to start selling? That is, if they aren't already under the table. Police and many politicians will whine. You can be dang sure the companies will screech loud to the Calvinball Court. I don't care. Not only is this stuff reek of fascism it's a national security nightmare.

      According to this: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

      Flock already does sell that footage to ICE.

  • The problem isnt the ALPRs its the plates (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @08:39AM (#66372094) Journal

    The obsession many have developed with Flock and it is exactly than an obsession, because literally all thinking people do about it have little or nothing to do with Flock itself is really counter productive.

    There are real privacy questions here. Should police have access to ALPR aggregators and as a subscription service really isn't one of them.

    The technology to recognize a plate is getting better and better pretty soon there will be zero need for a purpose built camera, computer vision will identify a vehicle plate from a photo taken at any angle at any level of clarity a human could and then some. There are plenty of nice images complete with exif tags for date time precise location all over social media to scrape, there plenty of things like RING cameras, and even if its not Amazon specifically other companies will share their data, that do residential and commercial surveillance. It will not be long before gait + face + other recognition technologies are sufficient to relatively positively track individuals and vehicles, coupled with AI to correlate these uniqued tracks with a few really positive identifications say from ALPR, and anyone with enough cash is going to be able to construct a very detailed picture of everywhere a person or vehicle has been.

    Policing and potential abuse is just one angle, and it isn't the angle I'd even worry about for every case of abuse there are at least some kidnapped children returned home, some property recovered, some criminals off the street, and remember those people arrested rightly or wrongly still get a trial - well unless they act like anti-society loonatices and try to combat law enforcement...they yes they might get shot.

    Personally I think we should care about privacy. Police abuse though quite honestly seems like less of an issue for most people, I'd be more worried if my HR department suddenly got to start evaluating if I went the bars or the horse track to often for their taste. Maybe your homeowners company raises your rates because they see how frequently you visit the DIY warehouse store?

    There really are only three (3) real solutions here and two (2) sorta practicle ones.
    1) Eliminate all requirements to display unique identifiers in public. IE No more license plate numbers, just a state registration tag except on public vehicles (IE police, fire, medical, municipal). Non-government employers should be strictly prohibited from requiring employees ware any identification that shows and employee number or name when they are not on the employees own premises. You could still say you must where have on your "I am Steve's HVAC employee badge" when you visit a client, it just can't say you are "Jim Smith, #192".

    2) Restrict photography, that captures individuals or vehicles on public property - ie streets. Carve outs would need to exist for places identified as parks etc where people would simply have the expectation of being photographed at least incidentally to others taking their family vacation photos etc. Yes this will change the media landscape we are used to in a huge way. We will have to go back to accepting witness description of evens in our daily news feeds.

    3) Try to legally control the aggregation and sale of individualized marketing data. This is the one I actually don't think is reasonably. I think you have to tackle the production of the data on the supply side because it only becomes marketing data when it is used for marketing, before that it is someones security footage, university research projection, or news gathering operation. Trying to imagine and describe what is legally permissible to do with collected images from any number of sources after the fact with lots of actors motivated to try and get around it, is probably hopeless. The law just isn't that plastic.

  • "Your view is unreasonable because..." (Score:3)

    by BitterEpic ( 10503015 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @08:44AM (#66372104) Homepage

    adding that "it's important to realize that its competitors aren't so great either, and that simply replacing Flock surveillance with another company's surveillance won't necessarily solve any of the privacy and other civil liberties problems posed by this mass surveillance technology.

    The argument of this looks like the kind of propaganda used to put peasants in their place. We do not need to accept accept being filmed everywhere. Saying that other vendors will just come in is a defeatist's argument to stop effort before it even starts.

    This strongly reminds me of the arguments against bringing manufacturing back to the US. "Even if you bring it back [blah]!" Not everything is easy. Not everyone might like the tradeoffs. Sometimes it is important to also fix the auxiliary issues if the core is important enough.

  • Beware! And I MEAN IT! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eric Freyhart ( 752088 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @08:49AM (#66372108) Journal
    I worked for "one" of these companies. You have no idea (and it is designed that way) how many of these systems exist or where they are located. Flock cameras are made to be easily seen. Others are designed to be hidden from public view. And they can track you 24/7 using a form of AI that can put the data points together to form a complete picture of your daily routine. They know where you work, what you purchase, where you get your meds, where you go to the doctor, what you're going to the doctor for, and if you are unlucky and doing something you shouldn't (like a side girl), you are screwed already.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      You have no idea (and it is designed that way) how many of these systems exist or where they are located. Flock cameras are made to be easily seen. Others are designed to be hidden from public view.

      They've been around for decades. The land borders have ALPRs that read the license plate for everyone entering the US. They're also used on toll roads - the ALPR is on the gantry you pass that reads your transponder. If you don't have a transponder it snaps a photo so they can bill you.

      If you ever parked your car

  • When cellphone companies sold location data to 3rd party data brokers, there government bought it and people didn't get it their pitchforks then (I have no idea why). Which is better data because it shows exactly where you have been.

  • Our local county just announced they are doing away with stickers for registration. They're touting the cost savings of not printing, mailing, etc. They're also touting that they no longer need to deal with stolen tags (well stickers anyway... a plate can still be stolen). But this is only possible due to the fact that they have hundreds of plate readers throughout the county and they've spent millions to add LPRs to every county and city police vehicle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Then I'll just ride an e-bike. No plates or registration, can outmaneuver anything the cops choose to pursue me with.

      Only downside to this idea: I have to be no more than twelve years old to engage in such activities on the public roads.

  • Abos-fucking-lutely!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @09:26AM (#66372162)

    All of them, all of them, take us down the same road to the same destination.

    Flock caught everyone's attention because they used prominent and easily recognizable devices popping up everywhere. Then we realized their shitty behavior and the shitty behavior of authorities that Flock facilitated. At our expense, I might add. So Flock is getting all of the attention, right now.

    But, Axon, Motorola, et al are all pushing the same products and services. Their equipment blends into our daily lives a bit more so they are less noticed. But they are all striving to dominate the market that Flock is spotlighting and they are all a massive threat. They'll soon be connecting into DOT cameras on highways and every traffic light. Assuming that they haven't already.

    All of these vendors and their products or services are a massive threat. All. Of. Them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • I think of license plate readers like I think of all the new "features" from Apple or Google. The idea behind an LPR is they're only catching criminals, solving crimes, or giving you a fix-it ticket for your expired registration. The idea is "if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear". Apple (and others) do similar... they add all these features for location tracking, family sharing, etc. But they only work if you're on the up and up. Imaging the guy that's cheating on his wife. If he has

  • When we complain about Flock we are really complaining about all of the surveillance business, not just Flock.

    It's like saying I ran out of Kleenex instead of tissues. Kleenex has come to mean any tissue product designed for the nose and it is easier to say kleenex rather tissue for the nose.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      You might, but Joe Public isn't. People are cutting Flock cameras down, they are not ripping RING doorbells of houses for the most part. Now I'll grant you the person taking a sawzall to their local Flock camera isn't maybe the sharpest knife in the drawer, however...

      The people showing up at your county supervisors meeting are not demanding the county cancel their contract with Motorola or issue a statement saying they won't deploy Motorola ALPR. They are there given their rant about Flock; the sheriff's

      • You gave a true but irrelevant answer.

        When someone says they are not making contracts with Flock that is ALWAYS bullshit. It is an executive telling you what they did yesterday, not what they are doing tomorrow. You are looking at the middlemen who always lie, not the top dog.

        Getting them to say things is worthless, not matter what they say.

        The top dog are judges and legislatures that interpret makes laws not local councils talking about their current contracts.

        When they speak, they talk about what is lega

  • As soon as the data is there, it will be abused. The only reliable way to prevent that abuse is to not collect the data in the first place.

    See also the reasoning behind the respective parts of the GDPR.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I guess that's the end of Washington States toll lane and bridge program then.

  • "Police officers in cities across the U.S. are quick to extol the virtues of [strike]real-time crime centers[/strike] [insert] panopticons[insert] as a game changer that helps them find missing children, monitor large events from the skies and scope out dangerous scenes before putting an officer in harm's way."

    There, fixed that for you.

  • We should instead be on the lookout for Politicians disguising themselves as Representatives.

    In fact, Politician should be the new four-letter word in politics. Because NOT acting like the Representative namesake you should carry is in fact THE delineator voters should be using to dismantle shit like Flock and every other fucking thing like it.

    Citizens should elect future American leaders on one singular primary standard FIRST: Believe and lead however you want. You will NOT violate The US Constitution o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Citizens should elect future American leaders on one singular primary standard FIRST: Believe and lead however you want.

      No. I don't want a leader. Just pick up the garbage, clean the streets and keep the trains on time. I can figure out my own priorities, thanks.

  • But in reality, as long as I'm carrying a phone, I'm being tracked already.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I don't carry my phone when engaging in illicit activites. I leave it at home so as to create reasonable doubt.

      Unfortunately, I can't leave my face at home (try as I might).

      • I don't carry my phone when engaging in illicit activites. I leave it at home so as to create reasonable doubt.

        Good start. You can also leave it at home when running errands, going for a walk, pretty much anything in fact. This way you don't get a reverse correlation e.g "PPH has left their phone at home, therefore they are doing something illicit." It's also just plain liberating.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          Hmm. I think you'd want to perpetuate the idea that you always carry it with you. If you leave it behind sometimes and that can be shown, it makes for an unreliable indicator. And the idea is that I didn't leave it at home but that I'm with it (at home).

  • We already lost. We lost when half the country lost their minds over around 34 trans girls who might potentially play in sports. If a moral panic that's stupid can work I don't know what the fuck you do.

    I remember watching the trans panic develop. Forget for a moment your opinion on the subject and just focus on the raw political mechanics of it. Start to think like a political strategist who is trying to achieve a goal instead of a person.

    At first the main push against trans girls, and it was alway

  • DoJ (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    ... has a pretty good camera system installed in a few select places. I've seen the video products of the system in my neighborhood. I can only guess at where the cameras are, but it appears as though they are in a few street lights. This may be why we can't upgrade to the newer LED lights in a few block area. Only the old sodium vapor bulb types have enough room in their housing for all the gear.

    I could be mistaken and the cameras are in the crows sitting on the lights. Because, as we all know, birds are

  • ...but is it possible other large cat predators could be bad news? Is it possible cougars and leopards and tigers don't have our best interest at heart, either???

  • First Flock, then us (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Monday October 12, 2026 @11:20AM (#66372350) Homepage Journal

    Of course people should beware. Anyone who has a problem with Flock is surely aware that they are only a fraction of "the problem," though among the more visible.

    I'm concerned that some Flock haters might take us down a slippery slope to where you can't have a camera in your house if it looks out onto the street, or that you shouldn't be allowed to record cops, or that I shouldn't be allowed to have a camera attachment on my Manhattan apartment balcony telescope that I normally just use to furiously goon to the good people of NYC who don't close their curtains. (Oops, forget that third example.)

    I can't say I'm a fan of Flock but if their rights are infringed in a way that might possibly expand to everyone else, then they will need to be defended.

    That said, I have a modest proposal for the law-enforcement-related problems of surveillance vendors. Require non-warrant sharing with LE to be unreliable. For every geo search, remove a random half of the applicable results and replace them with deliberate, randomized false positives, so that LE will know the data shouldn't be taken too seriously on its own. If cops act without confirmation while KNOWING it's _at least_ 50% likely to be wrong, that'll help with the civil suits for false arrests.

  • It's the behavior, not who's perpetrating it
  • I am sure I am wrong. But the grammar doesn't look right in that title.

  • As others have mentioned, this AI tech and approach is competitive and it's not going away. The intelligence and law enforcement demand is there. I wouldn't be surprised if Flock's CEO moves to create a new company, there's a ton of $ involved.

    I do think this entire AI 'bubble" may deflate a bit at some point. Right now, our limits are algorithmic and energetic. The landscape is changing so quickly, way faster than the "tech boom" of the 90s. I imagine it's all going to look very different even in a ye

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