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

a month ago by fubarx to c/privacy

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.
blueworld 43 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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artyom 10 points a month ago

The liars are lying again? I'm shocked!

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Steve 4 points a month ago

Stop playing with the electrical outlets and you'll stop being shocked!

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silentjohn 11 points a month ago

"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."

100% lying: https://www.404media.co/...

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f3nyx 11 points a month ago

LAPD suspending their contract gives me hope that this movement is strong enough.

Protesting, showing up to city council, and generally making officials' lives uncomfortable is the bare minimum, because it works.

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NateNate60 10 points a month ago

There's nothing inherently wrong with the concept of ANPRs (automatic number plate recognition) as these are called in the rest of the world. It's more of an issue that there is a complete lack of laws surrounding how that data is to be used, and especially when it's controlled by a private company. If there were strict laws limiting the situations where ANPRs could be used, such as requiring a warrant to begin searching for plate numbers and automatically discarding data from non-matching plates, I doubt people would complain as much about these.

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artyom 12 points a month ago

There absolutely is a lot inherently wrong with them. There's no method that is useful and isn't also a means of mass surveillance.

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ef9357 9 points a month ago

I don’t care if the technology is simple and I don’t care if it only records license plates, it is inherently wrong.

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melsaskca 6 points a month ago

If it's a tech product, they're lying about it's use. Everything is a façade on top of a darker and more sinister reason. Go Luddites!

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Marshezezz 3 points a month ago
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