Deflock hits 100k ALPRs Mapped in USA

SoftTalker

Nice to see some pushback in the most egregious abuses of privacy. I wonder why we are getting this with Flock but not seeing the same with private security cameras such as Ring, pervasive tracking of mobile devices by carriers and apps, and internet browser tracking. Is it just that there's a direct personal benefit with those devices, and people view the trade-off as being worth it?

convolvatron

this is great. I mean I'm all for the argument in the abstract. my commute is 2.5 miles one way, and I get tagged 20 times in each direction. that kind of brings it home.

kumarski

The senior director of connectivity there is former IDF. Probably nothing.

curiousgal

It's ironic seeing this here since Flock is YCombinator company.

SilverElfin

Speed cameras next. They’re just revenue generators and part of a safetyism Trojan horse for surveillance.

amazingamazing

Flock could easily get around this by paying people to put them on their own property. Then what? Put energy into legislation. Ring and Nest already do the same thing. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/ring-reveals-they-give...

alkonaut

How is this data storage even legal? I mean having cameras out that will sound an alarm if one of N specific wanted cars pass by is one thing. But do these cars just store stuff for later use and abuse? Who approved that?

mixmastamyk

Nice work all. But am quite unhappy with their new map. Doesn’t work with my hardened machine with webgl off or my old phone. For some obscure reason, the button to try the “legacy” map (from last month) does not come up most of the time. So several times recently the site has been inaccessible to me.

gentile

The 100k figure is an overestimate by a few percent. The OpenStreetMap data for ALPRs is pretty good, but there is some duplication. I (recently) programmatically identified ~2.5k such instances. https://pickpj.github.io/Mapping/FIock/similar.html It has openstreetmap links attached for those who want to help fix the data.

SV_BubbleTime

I see all the Lowe’s in my area are Flock’ed up. Home Depot from now on.

vivzkestrel

think of me as the stupidest person on the planet and explain to my how a flock camera is violation of privacy