Flock-Like Camera Tracks Police, Draws Privacy Visit

The project is less a practical surveillance product than a sharp accountability demo: reversing the watcher-watched relationship makes the privacy risks of ALPR systems immediately tangible.

• –Uses an inexpensive camera, laptop, computer vision, license-plate recognition, and GPS logging rather than proprietary Flock hardware.
• –Its selective design attempts to identify police vehicles first, instead of indiscriminately recording every passing car.
• –The police response exposes the asymmetry in surveillance debates: tracking officers is framed as dangerous, while mass civilian tracking is framed as public safety.
• –The prototype’s limited range and missed plates show the gap between a compelling proof of concept and an operational ALPR network.
• –Storing vehicle locations and timestamps still creates abuse risks, even when the targets are public officials. Straight Arrow News