Flock Cameras: Crime-Fighting Tool or Big Brother With a Solar Panel?

Let's start with the basics.

What the fuck is flock? Flock Safety is a private technology company that sells safety and security systems, both the hardware and the software, to law enforcement and other government agencies, as well as things like schools, homeowners associations, private businesses.

It's a lot more than just the solar powered license plate cameras along the road that you may or may not have seen reports about people interfering with, shall we say.

But I think it's important to note that license plate readers have been around for decades.

The first license plate reader systems were actually invented back in 1976 in the United Kingdom to combat terrorism.

Needless to say, the technology has come a long way since then, but the concept and use by law enforcement is nothing new.

But Flock is more than just that.

It is an entire public safety ecosystem.

It's license plate readers, conventional video cameras, mobile security trailers for use at big events, audio detection, and even drones, as well as all the software and integrations necessary designed to bring all these systems together to theoretically help keep people safer.

So for this episode, I'm primarily focusing on the automated license plate readers because that's the part that you and I and our cars are most likely to encounter while driving around and running our errands and minding our own business.

I wanted to mention the other systems because they all do play into it.

It's used for law enforcement and it's also potential abuse and privacy concerns.

But let's just start with the basic process of the license plate cameras.

You drive down a public road and you pass by one of these cameras.

The camera captures multiple photographic images.

It's not recording video.

It is capturing five to six images, they say, that create what's called a vehicle observation record.

And the information it can glean from those pictures using AI and image recognition can be things like the license plate number and the state in which it was issued.

Those are the most important things.

The date and time that the car passed by the camera, where the camera is located, and certain information about the vehicle itself to help identify it.

Things like the make and model and body type, the color.

a temporary or missing license plate, whether it has certain distinguishing characteristics like a roof rack or a bike rack on the back, stickers, aftermarket wheels, toolboxes in the bed, even damage or other aftermarket modifications to the vehicle.