Flock Safety CEO speaks out after LAPD suspends use of company's surveillance cameras

a month ago by fubarx to c/technology

Flock bills itself as a public safety technology company, using license plate reading cameras to help law enforcement investigate crimes and locate missing people. But critics see something else.
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blueworld 98 points a month ago

He's so full of shit: "The technology is really simple," he told ABC7. "A car drives by, we take a picture. It's a static picture of a car, and then we read the license plate. That's what the technology is -- it's actually not that complicated, it's pretty simple."

When in fact these use AI to build what the company calls a "Vehicle Fingerprint" to identify each car by make, model, color, body type, and distinguishing features like bumper stickers, roof racks, dents, decals, and even objects in truck beds. They can track and identify vehicles even when license plates are missing, obscured, or swapped for an 6-12 frame interaction. Moreover it is a database of metadata allowing them to characterize personality, trends, habits, and patterns across 80,000 cameras in 49 states. That's just the plate readers.

They've grown to include 'first responder' drones, audio sensors, gunshot detection sensors, and full video surveillance in both the public and private sphere.

And worse is it's real-time cross-jurisdictional alerting, which has seen multiple false reports.

So it's damn well not just a static picture of a car, but surveillance capitalism.

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RunningInRVA 24 points a month ago

I'm sure there is bluetooth device scanning occurring as well to identify individuals through their phones.

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CADmonkey 14 points a month ago

There are also scanners that detect the identifiers being broadcast by your TPMS system.

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Jason2357 18 points a month ago

The real danger has always been the database.

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Frenchgeek 4 points a month ago

How many of them are anywhere near his home?

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