636
Flock Leaked Cops’ License Plate Searches via DuckDuckGo, Bing
(www.404media.co)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2026
636 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
85699 readers
3726 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Could you explain what you mean further?
They're little computers with cameras that capture everything. I think some of these types of devices run Android. Many are very poorly secured, like the article suggests. A "license plate reader" sounds like it only reads license plates, these are surveillance platforms, with cameras and microphones. They can be accessed remotely to do more than just read a license plate.
I'm thinking the person says that couching it as a license plate reader is disingenuous, because it doesn't really convey the gravity of what the devices are capable of.
They're Android. And they're hella insecure. And hilariously jankilly implemented. I'd be ashamed if this was my states state surveillance infrastructure.
Related videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY
Yes, ALPR is a term used for the purpose of public relations. It does not accurately describe the technology.
Any "license plate reader" has a camera and can be used for anything. This was true before flock.
I didn't know "any license plate reader" also scanned your phone as you went by and added your dog to their database to better identify you as an individual.
They don’t just read license plates. They analyze faces/pets/distinctive clothing to ID people, scan nearby WiFi and Bluetooth signals to track devices, scan distinctive features of vehicles (dents, scratches, bumper stickers, etc) to track them even without a clear license plate, etc… Calling it a license plate reader vastly downplays their capabilities.
It’s like someone calling a fully automatic high-powered machine gun “a rabbit-hunting gun”. Sure it could be used to shoot rabbits, but that’s vastly understating the capabilities.
It's good to point this out, I don't drive but I forget they could probably track my bike still based on it's distinctiveness, calling them license plate readers really does obscure the insidiousness well. We've heard about automatic license plate readers for years, they weren't like this so it is really disingenuous to call them such.
oh yeah. like, if the police in town have figured out who i am from my trike, there's no way the ALPR hasn't. that thing is fucking distinctive. and i wave hi to everyone (the ALPRs with one finger)
It used to be finger prints people needed to worry about. It so far beyond that now.
Atlanta has them in the middle of parks too far from and facing away from parking lots to read any license plates.... they're there to use facial recognition on children playing on park equipment.
Oh wow.this is just blatantly anti-police. You think cops shouldn't get to masturbate, just because they're cops?
Not in their cruiser in the Walmart parking lot.
Then where. You can't really be asking them to get out of their cars!
By the dumpster in the alley behind Arby's. But not the Arby's on main, the one over across the tracks by the pulp mill.
This guy wanks it 🥸
And they probably sold the people in charge on the idea that it's to "protect the children" 🤮
ground squirrels. we use the atf tag (it's not mine, i don't know what it's called) machine gun to hunt ground squirrels. i mean you have to kill them for environmental regulation and agricultural control anyways, might as well have some fun.
It uses machine learning algorithms to identify vehicles independently of the license plate. Leaked documentation has also shown they operate facial recognition tech, in direct contradiction to the lies they tell the public. Flock is fundamentally an evil company, delivering the infrastructure for totalitarian rule, wrapped in the alluring false promise of eliminating crime. They know exactly what they are doing, which is why they are so heartily embraced by fascists in government, from the top all the way down.
On top of what everyone else saod, FLOCK can track your vehicle as you cross several plus states. I would say 90% if not more highways and freeways have them across the US.
Cool tool for stopping real crininals, bad tool on a civil rights side.
Pretty much everyone is a real criminal, it's just that most crimes are so minor that they are ignored (see: jaywalking, speeding, putting ice cream in your pocket). In some cases, the laws exist to provide a fig leaf for the powers that be when they want to fuck with someone.
People don't understand "real" criminal in deeply intertwined with regular people and regular cops and politicians. Most "regular" naive people think of criminals as some mythical thing but they are everywhere. It's almost as if the "straight" legal life is mirrored 1 to 1 with the dark side. And that part of maintaining the "legal" side is to market that the dark side is a myth, even though is there, part of the "legal" sides politics, economy, and culture.
This is basically what happened when people whine about the authority only take action when crime are commited. So now everyone are being watched in every corner.
Idk even know if it's that. This system works people against each other. They create the barrel of crabs and profit off all the bullshit as people claw their way out to get to the rights that a human should naturally have.
Everything is business. And suffering creates reason. It's a system.
Cool? Arguable. Useful? Not in practice.
They're just public cameras. They're notoriously used to capture and record the locations of vehicles via their license plates but realistically they totally could flip a switch and start using them for things like facial recognition overnight.
No switch to be flipped. Already used that way.
Source?
Dude, I think you're misunderstanding. i really wanted to understand. Thankfully Lemmy is awesome, and now I do.