I recently discovered the local police department had installed Flock cameras at every entrance to my quiet suburban neighborhood. I now cannot come or go from my own home without warrantless tracking of my movement.
In anecdotal conversations with neighbors I was absolutely shocked they were relatively indifferent. It looks like I’m going to have to move to have basic privacy and safety if these campaigns aren’t quickly successful.
There needs to be more to it than this. Flock's cameras for example, only use ALPR as one component. They identify vehicles by other characteristics, such as color (and even use differing panel colors as an identifier), bumper stickers and window decals, wheels and rims, tow hitches, roof racks, etc. It's not just the LPR.
Yeah the non-plate based stuff is way, way, way higher quality and way worse than people give it credit for. 10yr ago I was working on similar software in military contexts from the late 00s and it was scary then.
My two takes on the single minded focus on plate number records are as follow.
The cynic in me says it "is" about the LPR because the, roughly speaking, white collar middle class white people who suddenly now seem to care mostly drive new enough stuff to not be piled on with bumper stickers, have color mismatch, dings, etc, etc. and they care only so far as it effects them and they don't want to completely not track the poors and their sketchy vehicles.
The non-cynic in me says that breaking the information chain is good enough. Knowing a silver Camry has been coming and going and where doesn't really mean anything. It's being able to automatically tie that, via a plate number and corresponding records, back to a person. If someone at a later time decides the care can go looking, but it renders much harder a lot of bullshit "find me everyone who's too rich to be driving through Kensington because they're probably there for drugs" fishing from behind a keyboard expeditions, which is a huge plus.
I recently discovered the local police department had installed Flock cameras at every entrance to my quiet suburban neighborhood. I now cannot come or go from my own home without warrantless tracking of my movement.
In anecdotal conversations with neighbors I was absolutely shocked they were relatively indifferent. It looks like I’m going to have to move to have basic privacy and safety if these campaigns aren’t quickly successful.
There needs to be more to it than this. Flock's cameras for example, only use ALPR as one component. They identify vehicles by other characteristics, such as color (and even use differing panel colors as an identifier), bumper stickers and window decals, wheels and rims, tow hitches, roof racks, etc. It's not just the LPR.
Yeah the non-plate based stuff is way, way, way higher quality and way worse than people give it credit for. 10yr ago I was working on similar software in military contexts from the late 00s and it was scary then.
My two takes on the single minded focus on plate number records are as follow.
The cynic in me says it "is" about the LPR because the, roughly speaking, white collar middle class white people who suddenly now seem to care mostly drive new enough stuff to not be piled on with bumper stickers, have color mismatch, dings, etc, etc. and they care only so far as it effects them and they don't want to completely not track the poors and their sketchy vehicles.
The non-cynic in me says that breaking the information chain is good enough. Knowing a silver Camry has been coming and going and where doesn't really mean anything. It's being able to automatically tie that, via a plate number and corresponding records, back to a person. If someone at a later time decides the care can go looking, but it renders much harder a lot of bullshit "find me everyone who's too rich to be driving through Kensington because they're probably there for drugs" fishing from behind a keyboard expeditions, which is a huge plus.
About time! This is good work