YouTuber Builds Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops—Then the Cops Show Up at His Door
YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
Canadian software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistilli built his own automatic license plate recognition camera to track police cars in Brampton, Ontario, calling it "a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers." After he posted videos explaining the build, two Peel Regional Police officers allegedly visited his home to ask about his "intentions" for the data—prompting Sistilli to point out the irony of police objecting to surveillance they eagerly deploy against the public.
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.
- petcat
Flock and ALPR usage is solved in USA if every state adopts New Hampshire's law:
* Illegal to collect every plate for later analysis
* Must delete "non hit" plate images within 3 minutes
* Strict forbidden to upload "non hit" camera imagery off the device
I would add that it should also require a warrant to access the ALPR data, but it's a great start.
https://gc.nh.gov/rsa/html/XXI/261/261-75-b.htm?utm_source=c...
- rootusrootus
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.
I think the best solution is to just say nobody can do this, including the government. Or that if we allow things like Flock to exist, then we'd need actual legislation that tightens considerably how available the data is to be searched, and what approvals are necessary to access it.
The obvious next step, otherwise, is for someone to start OpenALPRMap and we all get to suffer together.
- cryptoegorophy
Why is nothing being done about this? This is 1984 we were laughing about. USA laughed at China when they did the same, but when USA is doing the same people are not outraged shooting those down, painting over them. Am I missing something?
- tintor
Someone should build OpenFlock which only tracks and makes public movement of city council members who voted for Flock cameras in their city. For empathy.
- BeetleB
I called it a few days ago[1][2]:
> Balance of power. Not only can the cops watch you - you can watch them.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995885
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995811
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49995932
[2] As did many others, of course.
- jwsteigerwalt
It’s Canada, silly to expect the same standard of civil rights as their southern neighbors.
- erelong
They don't like getting a taste of their own medicine now, do they?
- vamos_davai
This is government overreach. Everyone should be allowed to run a surveillance system. People should be allowed to sell biometric data to each other, to corporations, or to the government. Such a restriction is preventing so many jobs from being created.