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- Hacker News
- I think the biggest change I like to see is locking out users on suspicious activity, instead of waiting for police departments to police their own.by LazyMans
- I did not know about this when I wrote https://andrewpwheeler.com/2026/08/12/license-plate-reader-s... the day prior, but one of the things I did state was deleting data (except in the extreme case, like New Hampshire's 3 minute retention), will not prevent abuse. People just do illegal queries over and over again.
Part of the reason I wrote that post is it is better to retain the data indefinitely and have a warrant standard than continue to reduce the time period in which the data is retained.
by apwheele - The only acceptable change is the removal of these cameras.
I can't go walk my dog around the neighborhood without looking up and seeing police accessible cameras. They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants.
by user00005 - I am lucky to be in a city which has not rolled any of this out, but it's surrounded by cities which have gone whole-hog on rollout. I use DeFlock app to see camera locations (but do not route or give it GPS because it has Network permission), then manually create a route in OSMAnd~ (no Network permission) to avoid the cameras. OSMAnd really really needs to roll out an addon for ALPRs just like it has for speed cameras, like yesterday!by rustcleaner
- That isn't enough.
It doesn't deal with the lingering threat that remains of the people who would be willing to do this kind of stuff for money.
The problem is ultimately that there are people motivated to spy on their neighbours and bring about a totalitarian surveillance nightmare in exchange for money.
You're just playing whack-a-mole as long as these people can still operate in society. They'll be back, and more insidious and more determined to destroy society.
What's the solution to that?
by Teever - > They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants
My understanding is that IF they are tracking your historical movements over time from multiple different cameras, that constitutes a "search" and the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant in that case.
There have been slightly different variations to this in the courts lately, such as google location history and geofence warrants, but unless you know of a legal precedent (besides "they're getting away with it right now") that says historical movements don't need a search, I'm inclined to believe that they do.
Whether or not that is currently being successfully tested in court is another story.
- And they're objectively ugly as fuck. I am fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood with a two mile tree-lined path, and these are the only inorganic "scenery" besides the path and adjacent road. It's ruined my daily walks.
- There is no "fixing" Flock. It's an affront to our Constitutional rights. The company should be dissolved.
- I don't care what they change, I want Flock gone. I will not accept that this is "just how things are now".by illithid0
- I want all mass surveillance gone, regardless of the brand.by goda90
- > From the beginning, we have been clear that our customers own the data captured by their ALPR cameras. This has always been the case, but some of our contractual language has confused the public on this crucial point... The principle is simple: customers own the data, decide who can access it, and choose who they share it with.
I'm one of the general public that is continually confused by their usage of the word "own". I can't imagine that their language update will make it any more clear.
If the data is on Flock's servers (it is) and accessible by Flock (it is) then it is Flock who owns the data, not the PDs. Sure, they can allow the PDs to have say over what is done with the data, but ultimately Flock has the ability to use the data however they'd like.
This is not hypothetical: Flock have used previously shared data with DHS [0] without the so-called owner's permission and use data for their AI training [1] without option to opt-out.
Their definition of ownership is further contradicted later in this post:
> we will now require case codes for all law enforcement searches by the end of the year.
To be clear, I think this is a good change, but if PDs "own" their data, then they should be able to decide whether or not they want to use this feature.
All in all, this is not ownership.
[0] - https://apnews.com/article/immigration-abortion-license-plat...
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/...
by tyrust - The general public are not lawyers and will not always understand all the terms across the multi-page terms of service. For all intents and purposes. The customers “own” it. For a SaaS company. What this looks like legally is “licensing” of data to Flock from the customer. Terms like that are needed to properly and defensibly “handle” footage and assets. Manage storage, retrieve and serve the content, etc.
The ToS is negotiable. As it usually is when talking large sums of money. You can retrieve this with a FOIA request and see how they tend to be unique to each city. Some customers like to define the relationship differently or make additional restrictions for data handling.
I really just want to point out that layman terms and contract law are two different things.
I wouldn’t care if anonymized data is being used,I would care if I’m told I control sharing but it turns out I don’t. It’s not clear to me Flock did anything wrong. It sounds like that department inadvertently shared with a federal agency because it wasn’t obvious to them they were doing so. (Federal agencies are clearly marked as such now, product complies with state law to prevent accidental sharing)
by LazyMans - https://i.ibb.co/WWWYznHX/flock-future.png ;-)
See also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
by thangalin - For my miscellaneous Flock queries, I use case number "abc123".
My police chief is okay with it and the case number "abc123" is FOIA-exempt out of operational security concerns.
by runjake - The people running Flock are simply bad people with the completely wrong temperament.
We shouldn't have these cameras at all but even if we were forced to have them the people running Flock are the last people who should be in control of them.
The way they act on social media and in interviews they just come off (and surely are) fragile ego children.
by ethanwillis - I read the letter as the CEO feeling pressure from his bosses to give opponents less ammunition lest he be replaced with "sober leadership". Flock truly has been their own worst enemy.
We should anticipate a future where a more competent malicious actor like Axon is leading this industry. As the Kleenex of surveillance cameras, Flock has poisoned the category, so I don't think switching brands will fool anyone, but we will have less of an attack surface.
by jkestner - Flock can make all the promises it wants, but the reality is that once growth stalls out on camera installations, which it must, shareholders will immediately insist that they pivot into other monetization schemes. There aren't really any laws holding them back, just their already weasel-worded contracts that they could easily renegotiate once the police departments are putting pressure on the city/county/state/federal legislative bodies.
The possibilities are endless:
- Is your employee visiting your competitors? - Where has your husband/wife/lover been? - What medical buildings has this person been to? - Does this person go to churches / gun ranges?by ryandvm - > Flock can make all the promises it wants
They lost me when the CEO lied to a city official in a public meeting. ( https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c... )
by fusslo - Those are small potatoes. The obvious big customer is the federal government. Founders Fund was an early investor, Flock's enormous volume of data would be a great fit for Palantir, and as early as 2020, Flock was facilitating direct access for fusion centers:
> “FLOCK already has their license plate reader systems in several neighborhoods in North SA [San Antonio] now,” James Glass, the deputy director of the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, wrote in an October 2020 email to colleagues. “In order to be granted free access to search the FLOCK system for license plate reader hits, we are asked to agree to sign this MOU.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/talon-flock-safety-cameras-p...
by thaumaturgy - I look forward to purchasing this data and building whereismycrush.com. Enter someone’s license plate and find out where they are, where they’ve been, and who’s riding with them. No more guessing games! After all, people have no right to privacy in public—especially that special someone.by iamnothere
- Ironically, those questions are more legal than Flock's current usage. The vast majority of Flock's revenue comes from government, and government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly. Thus far, pervasive monitoring without a warrant has been considered an unreasonable search.
[Edit: I think Flocks "victims" have a decent argument for injunctions for the removal of the cameras on the basis that Flock is conducting an illegal search on behalf of the government.]
However, the government can generally do what the public is allowed to do. So, if there are companies serving a genuine market for monitoring your employees, etc. via video surveillance installed on private property... then the government would not be restricted from accessing what private businesses have access to buy.
by ClarityJones - I would encourage anyone concerned about cameras in their town to explore the DeFlock website map (and app). It allows crowdsourced reporting of camera locations.
I also would STRONGLY encourage people to actually go look for any ALPR reported in their town, because DeFlock also allows crowdsourced corrections to misreported instances.
Where I live, it had been reported that we had 9 ALPR cameras, which in fact were not ALPR cameras but rather traffic management cameras - or in two cases not cameras at all. It gave the impression of a problem that didn't exist here.
by pugworthy - Clearly, the stories in the press have hurt them, especially the police abuse. Requiring case codes is a good step, and proactively catching signs of abuse is a big change from "we're just an unopinionated tool; you should talk to your police department". They're still passing the buck on educating users on the limitations of their tool. I remain skeptical of any of their claims around data ownership.
Reading these actions, you can pick apart how to circumvent them, and the security audit is still pending — let's see how damning of a report they'll allow to be released.
by jkestner - I dont know why we're not looking at the obvious answer here. Encrypt the data behind warrants and require narrow parameters for the warrants. It will require state-by-state implementation + legal changes sure but it's the safest, simplest solution.
P.S: Anyone know how London has solved this problem?
by pj_mukh - > More than one-third of our customers have voluntarily adopted Audit Assistance.
Looks like they don't actually give a shit. These safeguards should be the required bare minimum.
by explodes