Unfortunately, this involves a massive degree of trust to believe. And I simply dont believe that there's regulation and enforcement of any of this.

Why would anyone believe that these "forbidden things" are actually prevented? There is no evidence besides occasional anecdotal outings of police doing searches that the only get caught doing after way long after.

So they can use words like "strict" all they want. The system doesnt work that way and neither do the people operating it. Just lipservice.

If privacy is a concern:

1. Every hit is hashed and sent to every camera.

2. Whenever a camera detects a license plate, it hashes the license plate and only reports if the hash matches. Nothing leaves or even stored on the device if the hash does not match.

3. There's no "search for hits", you tell cameras which plates to record and every plate registration is associated with person who registered it and reason.

This assumes flock is just doing ALPR and it’s obvious from police statements and stolen flock camera data dumps they are well beyond that now, onto facial recognition.

The govt has been steadily eroding privacy and our rights (carnivore reading email, bulk collection of phone metadata, all internet traffic with x-keyscore, stingrays, etc etc etc) and using terrorism as the boogeyman when often it’s just wrong think that will put you in the sights. None of this needed warrants, all of it illegal by a plain reading of the 4th amendment. If a constitutional amendment won’t protect you, a state law is basically toilet paper.

That mitigates one specific problem with Flock, and not entirely. Firstly, as long as any jackass can fill out a form and set a "hit," they can still target and stalk people.

And ALPR is only one method that Flock uses. Their pan-tilt-zoom offerings are specifically meant to target pedestrians. They have facial recognition (and I've heard gait as well) and sniff for Bluetooth and other things to try to fingerprint devices.

It needs to be illegal to collect video for later facial recognition analysis as well.

Should be:

* Illegal to collect every plate for later analysis

* Must delete "non hit" plate images within 3 MILLISECONDS

* Strict forbidden to upload "non hit" camera imagery to NON-VOLATILE STORAGE.

* "HIT" LIST MUST BE CRYPTOGRAPHICALLY SIGNED & ENCRYPTED BY WARRANT KEY ONLY JUDGE HAS ACCESS TO.

I don't understand why people are only talking about the ALPR aspect of Flock and similar devices. When the company does it it feels like they're trying to minimize the collection.

I believe I've seen claims the are recording Bluetooth MACs of passing devices, and I've definitely seen that they're also detecting people on the camera feed.

The only way to prevent leaks and abuse is to not collect the data.

Since there can not be any trust in the supply chain and operations, the only way is to ban ALPR outright.

Mr. Cat, You ran a stop sign ten years ago so now you're on our watchlist for suspicious persons.

I'm in the middle, cameras can be useful in a crowded society as we see with body cams on cops. The can show truth really well, helping innocent people also, but there needs to be serious guard rails and criminal ramifications for misuse by users and companies itself so this is treated very seriously.

I am different in that I would be fine with these BUT only if there is super strict guardrails with real consequences for misuse:

- Super strict rules around information storage and access. - Ensuring access can only be for an active investigation where there is direct reason to look for a name, face, number plate etc.

- Ensure there is reasonable crime threshold for use so cops don't have the right to track someone because they jay walked or something frivolous to justify use.

- Add a requirement any person looked up then they must be informed within ~6 months with reasons why (or a judge warranted delay every 6 months).

- Legal use only and the data can never be sold for general commercialisation.

- Require human verification of hit if police are going to take action on data so there is clear ownership of incorrect actions.

- Some level of data deletion, after a year type thing.

With something down that route, and naturally more than my quick comment, I feel it could balance benefit vs cost. Without real guardrails and consequences it's openeing a risky path for totalitarianism misuse.

How does it determine a "hit"? By making a query to a database? Then there is a log of the request anyway. Even if the database is on a local laptop there are application logs.

It's not the imagery that's really important, it's tracking the who+when+where.

Why are they so concerned about an image and not the obtained data in any format like OCR generated text?

Seems to be a huge loop-hole: It doesn't seem to prohibit a private company from operating a ALPR system...?

This is such a classic software developer's fallacy. Law is not code that is executed by society. The program called society is also orders of magnitude more complicated than the most complicated program you've ever worked with.

If you accept the consequences in American politics of the slippery slope, the chilling effect, and inalienable rights, then you cannot condone any limited version of a technology which still serves the same perverse underlying purpose of subjugation and control.

Many laws constricting police activity and related to data collected by police go ignored.

New Hampshire is a staunchly Libertarian state, but man it has some good ideas

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

Isn't Flock's alleged legality predicated on the principle that there is no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in public? I don't see why that would change depending on whether it's "Joe Average" or a police officer at the controls---IIUC I'm allowed to capture images, video, etc. of people in public just as much as cops are.

Agreed that these systems simply need to be banned.

In the US, photographing and recording police are first amendment-protected activities.

Likewise, the fourth amendement doesn't forbid a police officer from recording someone in public, because there's no expectation of privacy when out in public.

The courts have found that legally, one officer recording one person is no different from a large-scale, automated surveillance system recording everyone.

Well, that argument goes both ways. If the scale and automation don't make a difference, they don't make a difference.

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

Oh - this had me in stitches.

Juxtaposing "law enforcement" and "Joe Average" in that way is entertaining for Australians, as "Joe Average" is literally one of the entry requirements for law enforcement.

From https://www.police.nsw.gov.au/recruitment/application_proces... :

"Academic Eligibility Year 12 HSC (minimum ATAR 50 or equivalent)"

"ATAR 50" is Australian for "of your high school cohort, half of them did better than you."

"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson

Filming cops in public is a legitimate activity protected by the Constitution, according to the Supreme Court. Using a nationwide surveillance network to track people not suspected of any crime and without a warrant is not.

If Flock is specifically for law enforcement then it is a cut and dry violation of the 4th amendment. Case closed.

However, they are simply commissioned by law enforcement and law enforcement are just one of any number of customers. There is either an expectation of privacy or there isn't. This case highlights this exactly.

That's trying to unbake the cake. This technology will not go away. The powerful will use it in secret; and sometimes the less powerful too.

I'd rather see surveillance first pointed towards government leaders, and then once the government is highly surveilled, then maybe we can trust the government to surveil everyone else.

I don't know. My idea here isn't very realistic. It's not going to happen (though we should still try), so maybe just outlawing all of it would be more realistic.

It doesn't seem all that different. Cops use these cameras to stalk ex-girlfriends, target political foes, and perv on the public at large. The public watching them hardly seems worse.

I do agree that we just shouldn't have this kind of mass-surveillance in general, and I think that's kind of the point of this particular endeavor.

> I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

I feel that's like saying there's "nuance" when the police choose to pull someone over because--unlike the other car--they didn't have a "I Donated To Cops" license plate.

Yes, it's technically a difference, but if it matters then the police are abusing their power to play favorites.

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

If cops may neither too smart (legally [1]) nor too dumb hopefully (they presumably dress themselves) then who exactly is left but Joe average?

[1] https://abcnews.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story...

If you’re driving a publicly funded vehicle we can know where you are and what you’re doing. Seems straightforward.

We should be able to subpoena the GPS records of the car’s location as well - or potentially FOIA that information. Sunlight is good. The opposite should only be done by going through a metric ton of hoops. Otherwise you end up… where we are now.

Why do you equate government and the honorable Joe Average? The government works at the pleasure of the Joe Average, so it's natural that the said Joe is interested to watch how his servants perform their duties - after all, he elected them to do that and pays them for that. At the same time Joe might be not interested for his lowly servants to keep tabs on him - that's none of their business, after all they don't compensate him for that information, so why shouldn't we have cameras to watch the police while completely denying them to use cameras to watch us?

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average.

Let’s pretend that police will only use the footage for good. No one else has access? That seems unlikely.

The IT department? Flock employees? Contractors? Managers?

> The obvious next step, otherwise, is for someone to start OpenALPRMap and we all get to suffer together.

Start a company that does ALPR and facial recognition, but narrowly targeting politicians.

99% of law enforcement are suppose to be "average joes" though. They do not have some special Citizen Plus status. Anything cops can do to the people the people should be able to do to the cops.

cops are Joe Average with badges and a higher rate of spousal abuse.

  > I can see some nuance to this one. Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average. Tracking cops and then publishing that information is not exactly the same as turning Flock back on the Flockers.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-offi...

I see no issue with tracking and monitoring public servants, just how public servants see no issue with tracking and monitoring the public.

Cops usually are worse than average Joe on many negative statistics (domestic abuse, etc), and that's not even factoring in how numbers are skewed by the well established thin blue line.

It's safer to give your info to average joe population than cops.

I would feel better if only cops didn't have access to see me on flock cameras and cops had to request footage through a public reddit or something.

This is all a bit of a joke sure, but less than police access to flock cams is.

Under the American theory of government, Cops tracking people without warrant is the same amount of lawful as people tracking cops without warrant, in fact, the former is more restricted.

The only nuance possible here is either that the government is more trustworthy than the average person (rather than less, as has been repeatedly proven), or that the police deserve special immunity in their activities (rather than needing closer scrutiny, as has been repeatedly proven as well). Either that, or that Flock is somehow a more trustworthy steward of the data, in terms of controlling access by agencies and individuals. It's also been proven that they're not, though, so that can't be either. IMO, this entire thing is just stupid hypocrisy.

You could FOIA their cameras every week, cops have no privacy

Flock being only accessible to people who are statistically more likely to beat their wives doesn't make me like it more

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average

Joe Average would be charged by Flock per search, and could only afford to stalk his ex wife a couple of times via Flock, because it would get expensive soon.

Police officers can stalk their exes over 2000 times: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-...

Unfortunately, Joe Average knows a cop willing to sell their Flock credentials on the dark web so Joe can perform nationwide searches of his ex-wife.

You have to assume it’s not just used by sworn law enforcement officers, especially when Flock’s own civilian employees have abused it.

Well, actually mostly Average Joes become cops. As a matter of fact those Average Joes stalked on random people with 'LOL' in reason column.

This was in Canada so I don't know if the same laws apply. In the US the justification for this tracking without a warrant is that you are in public. That same justification allows for filming police in the public.

The intent of Flock in the US at least was just to use technology to get around the 4th amendment.

The police shouldn't be allowed to use automated tools like this without a warrant.

It’s completely reasonable that citizens should have access to this data, tracking cops is exactly the type of use case this technology is good for.

Flock has the rights of a private citizen. Police accessing flock cameras is like asking you for the security camera footage from the camera on your house.

I'm not sure how it is in Canada, but my understanding in the US is that data gathered by a public (government) entity (the police) is just that... public. And we've seen that play out in some cities where people asked for a copy of their town's Flock data, and everyone got all surprised pikachu on them because it turns out that's legal, and suddenly the government doesn't want to collect that data anymore.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=snPDoXl9ZPs&si=mxrTyJpsBrZ...

What nuance though? Did everyone give the state permission to sniff after them? Because I did not. And I am almost certain a majority would not be ok with it either. There is a reason people hate flock sniffers.

When the people turn it around and sniff on cops, why is that then any different suddenly?

> we'd need actual legislation

Can the people do legislation? It's always some judges and politicians who form a clique at the end of the day.

> Flock is intended to be searchable by law enforcement, not Joe Average

Then why can Lowes and Home Depot buy their own units, place them across properties that aren't theirs and search them nationwide?

bro we have PRISM what are you talking about?

people are in fact,

>> tracking locations of flock cameras (https://deflock.org/)

>> destroying/removing them (https://flockstats.org/)

>> litigating their use (https://www.aclu.org/campaigns-initiatives/get-the-flock-out)

What specific response from the general public would you like that it's arguably already happening?

> Am I missing something?

Just the part where you're supposed to be doing something about it, otherwise don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to call out others for doing the same thing?

I drove past one with a literal American flag planted on it today so maybe we are taking back the Homeland alas?

It was a beautiful thing.

The state ordered the cameras removed but they left the posts, someone stuck a flag inside the old post.

https://postimg.cc/q6vSQ01V

This happened in Canada

Because "1984" is one of those books that people pretend to have read so that they can use the word "Orwellian" to talk about surveillance they personally don't like while excusing the sort that's convenient or economically expedient for them.

(For what it's worth I haven't read ~half of the books on my shelf. "Simulacra and Simulation" is mocking me from across the room)

> USA laughed at China when they did the same

Why invoke China? The UK did this long before China.

The scenario is distinctly different: in one scenario the government had "control" over it and in the other a private corporation has "control".

> Am I missing something?

Yes you missed something big. A little too excited to get in the America dig, didn’t even bother reading the article to realize it happened in Canada.

ends up a good % of the US population is in favor of fascism. Same reason we elected orange mango man, same reason ICE is running around shooting people and imprisoning America citizens.

I remember a newspaper article where journalists dumped amd searched curbed trash of police commisioner and politicians and published their contents. Badass activism journalism.

Maybe the solution is more tech joins forces with the fourth institution

God I hope we (Canada) never drop to such a low standard for civil rights as our southern neighbours.

Can you explain your thinking?

Flock, at the core, isn't a public entity. They aren't a government. So they're a private entity, just like an individual, tracking who they want, when they want.

This person is doing the exact same thing as Flock, and suddenly it is a problem? Seems like a double-standard.

You feel that greater attention is typically paid online to undramatic things?

The police are like vampires. So long as you don't invite them, they can't come in. (with some exceptions of course, but that's not as pithy)

This is a great idea. I’ve been playing around with a cheap little SDR and seeing all these Tetra signal around. Kinda disappointing there isn’t really anything to do with them since it’s all encrypted. It’s kinda fun to see the meta data and whatnot…but this gives me some ideas!

Blockchain comes to mind. But what incentive miners will have to mine new blocks of information if it’s not money?

If anyone is allowed to do this, everyone should be allowed to do this. Which is to say that no one should be allowed to do this.

Is this sarcasm?

Morbid thought: what if there was a company that sold cameras that people could attach inside their windshield that uploaded license plates and their location as they drove around, and if you participated in uploading, you get access to the database to look up license plates?

Ah yes, a random irrelevant anecdote that doesn't prove anything

Well I mean the state does have the monopoly on violence.

In a functioning state, anyway.

So yeah, of course rules are different for normal people compared with people that have a special role as assigned by the democratically legitimized system.

Nice pithy statement, but police are able to do _many_ things that the general public aren't allowed to do, in order to do their jobs.

I'm not saying flock is good or anything like that, but arguing against it because the public can't do what the police can isn't a good argument.

Hell, you can already buy consumer solutions from companies like Ubiquiti that accomplish this. Just need a publishing mechanism connected to Unifi's API.

https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/physical-security-nvr/pr...

https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/uvc-ai-lpr

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058867233-UniFi-Pro...

Yes, it is.

A city member coming to your house to ask you about your intentions for something is different from you going to city council meeting. Police, city official, elected officials etc are public servants, they work for the public. The public does not work for public servants and public servants are expected only to ask members of the public their intentions under specific circumstances (common circumstances but specific circumstances - the cops can pull you over for a number of things but they, officially cannot pull you over at random or based on you exercising your 1st amendment rights, etc).

It was, but he talks about Flock-related situations in the US a lot in the video.

"You have no expectation of privacy in public, citizen."

"Officer, do you have any expectation of privacy in public?"

"That's different."

Your “private individual” wording is carrying a lot of weight here. I wonder if Google knows where all the cops with Androids are? Or if Meta lets you bid for ad impressions from users “interested in law enforcement”

What if I wanted to record the cops to schedule my lemonade stand?

Basically, the answer to “Who gets to surveil?” is: Everyone but you

That's an argument you could make if police had to obtain warrants to access them. But they do not, at least in the US (things might be different in Canada where this happened, but I doubt it). Instead, they rely on rulings that there is no expectation of privacy in public. By the same principle, it's perfectly valid and legal for a civilian (or group of civilians) to set up an equivalent system to track police.

I mean, the entire point of this project was to make a statement about mass surveillance and make the government feel uncomfortable about it.

You don't actually have to worry about "HN'ers setting up surveillance networks".

> I don't want HN'ers setting up surveillance networks anymore than I want them strapping a pistol to their hip and fighting crime.

In exactly equal measure: I don't want cops setting up surveillance networks any more than I want HN'ers doing it (less so, actually). So this post, bringing attention to that issue, is good, imo.

As long as random joe dropout with a badge from boss hogg can do it, and vc-backed visionary mr misanthrope can do it, so can the rest of the people. Cops and corps are only special to the degree that We The People want them to be. And speaking for the plurality of We The People [0]: we do not want them to be special in this way.

0 – https://www.reuters.com/world/us/who-likes-flock-ai-cameras-...

We can watch them, as is evidenced by the fact that he is watching them. Misrepresenting the police response as preventing his actions is clearly not true. Characterizing a polite conversation as "slavery" is disrespectful to people worldwide actually experiencing slavery.

Words have meanings

What he did was not illegal and he was not charged. Four cops came to his house to intimidate him but left when it did not work

this is not a good summary of the video

The YouTuber just forgot that they need more subscribers to unlock those perks.

You gain those at iirc 10 million or so? Even comes with a decorative plate for your wall.

Goverement has monopoly to use violence against own citizens. Legally. Why opposite is illegal?

Flock isn't "the government". This is an interesting conversation because often Flock is a circumvention to the police not being able to do these things.

Why deal with annoying oversight and restrictive governance and audits and usage monitoring when you can just offload it to a private company and stalk women without restraint?

Cops, like everyone, have no "reasonable expectation of privacy." Until then, they are in fact treated like everyone else.

What I saw was cops making up laws and trying to intimidate people into following them. Wouldn't be the first time.

Legal gray area is still a legal gray area...

Technically, it is home users volunteering data to a cloud provider, that then mines the disclosed data as a service for any creep.

It would be a constitutional matter, and the city would lose in court given precedent lawsuits... if police used direct surveillance to follow people around even on public property where there was no expectation of privacy. Sue, and remember to vote. =3

Police cars are painted differently to make them visible. They are public information. Police stations are visible. Cops addresses are not made public.

Police visiting a home is form of intimidation. That's not something to brush off.

>But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear.

Sure, but you haven't made the case for why the fear is anyone else's problem. If a person is too scared to be a cop there's an easy fix: stop being a cop. Unfortunately, regular citizens who can't afford to up and move to a country that has civil rights (that is, most of them) don't have the same recourse.

Hundreds of people have been tracked down and killed with flock cameras unnecessarily. The police routinely escalate interactions as a matter of procedure until they end in shootings.

On average over 1000 people are killed by police each year. A police officer is by far the most dangerous person you'll likely interact with on a day to day basis.

> But cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze so it's not a completely unwarranted fear.

Has this actually happened, or is it something you made up? Because I found articles with police spokesmen saying it _could_ happen, but nothing suggesting it has.

AFAIK every one of those "Waze police reports used to target cops for [bad thing]" stories fell apart under the slightest scrutiny.

Is there a specific (confirmed) case you're referencing?

> cops have been tracked down and killed by people using apps like Waze

Do you have a source for that? I can only find 2 examples vaguely similar but neither are really what that statement claims. Specifically one of them was just cops making stuff up about wayze which was factually incorrect.

> police have access but at least ostensibly have oversight from the legal system

We've already seen plenty of examples of cops tracking ex-wives and such similar abuses with no real accountability - nobody's lost their job over it

Cops know exactly what they do when they show up like this, it's meant to intimidate, there are also plenty of cases where cops have repeatedly crossed the line harassing citizens breaking no laws, it's disgusting

What a BS take. Do a cursory google search and you'll find many abuses of the Flock cameras. There is no oversight. How incredibly ironic:

>One of [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk [from] any bad apples that might want to track them down.

This is the exact reason Flock cameras shouldn't exist. Hell even you know how there is no oversight otherwise you wouldn't have used the word "ostensibly" with italics.

BTW did you just gloss over how they came to his home to intimidate him? Cops SHOULD be tracked because American cops are simply the worst bullies on the planet.

So the cops showed up to intimidate a law-abiding citizen for doing something they don’t like, but were not feeling bold enough to rough him up or cart him off to jail on some made-up charge. Yay.

Cops are (supposed to be) public servants. Risk is part of the job. If they don’t like it, they are free to pursue a different career.

In Georgia, a police chief was found to have tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter approximately 600 times.

In Texas, a sheriff's deputy utilized Flock ALPRs to locate a woman at the behest of her abusive partner.

Marin County Sheriff’s Office was sharing the sensitive location data of millions of drivers with out-of-state agencies and federal authorities, explicitly including ICE and CBP, circumventing California law.

So, yes, it's messed up that cops' fears are warranted, in your eyes, but not private citizens'.

> He was free to pursue his project

No, being intimidated by uniformed officers is not being "free".