This is a quite scary map. They are all over my local area. It may technically be possible to route a drive around them, but if you take the most convenient path between any two points at least one camera will spot you. I'd have to leave my neighborhood through back roads and enter local shopping areas through sidestreets.
This data shouldn't even be collected in the first place, let alone consolidated into a national network that any police officer can decide to spy on me through.
Download osm data, extract roads and surveillance, gpd overlay how=difference, remove/edit the different osmid's, write to pbf file, convert to obf file w/ osmandmapcreator, import into OsmAnd.
Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs on your phone.
> Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs [that we -- regular people -- know about] on your phone [while still being observed by the ones we don't know about].
I made a version which does the avoidance dynamically at runtime, works for any tracks you want to use: https://alprwatch.org/navigation. It works fully offline after you download the maps and overlays
I can't speak to flock but I know that other vendors in the space have software designed to calculate optimal locations to maximize probability at least one license plate scan for every trip taken.
Presumably that software can then be used to upsell additional cameras because with an increased density your capabilities start to approximate real-time live position tracking instead of just getting approximate locations of hot plates.
It can be. FLOCK data was used to put Bryan Kohberger at the scene along with other people's security camera's. Cops regularly use FLOCK camera's to get hits for criminals that have warrants for violent crime.
I can see why people are ok with them when they're used to get criminals off the streets. However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop (where people are pulled out at gunpoint and detained) against a car they got a hit on - only to find out the person they really wanted wasn't driving or even in the car at all.
What's interesting is businesses and houses have so many cameras nowadays that the first thing cops do when they get to the scene of a violent crime is canvas the area for camera's. So yeah, you can avoid FLOCK, but there are most likely hundreds of other camera's that will capture you driving through any given area.
You can't rely on Flock's "transparency" reports either, they're woefully inadequate. In our County, the Sheriff spoke of a PD in the County getting a Flock hit. It was news to many, including Flock's transparency site, that that PD was a user of their services.
There's a disclaimer when you first open the page that the map is incomplete and that users need to submit the data. It's possible that data hasn't been submitted/parsed yet
I can't find anything corroborating that example either.
I've been seeing a lot of similar grandiose claims made in random comments/Tweets/etc recently that Flock solved this or that specific high profile case that have also turned up zero proof when I did research.
I'm not sure whether it's just individual techno optimist fantasy that somehow becomes confabulated in the brain with some other crime in the news as if Flock was actually used, an organized persuasion/lobbying/misinformation campaign, or something else. But I'm seeing it a lot now which feels a bit concerning.
There have been numerous instances where cops used it to stalk exes, etc. If it isn't already, it will be used to stalk a blacklist of dissidents. It will continue to happen as long as the system exists.
But the cameras that the law enforcement officers canvas in the area aren't centrally aggregated and tagged with meta data such that they can be queried at scale.
Which is fine, because those are owned by private citizens and companies and those citizens are giving their permission to the police to use them. That's the difference between centralized government survalience and CCTVs
> However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop
At what point do we accept that all systems are flawed? There could be many variables as to why the perp wasn't in the car. Maybe the perp stole the car. Maybe the perp borrowed the car. Maybe these systems do not work well in fog etc etc. I don't know how we're supposed to advance technology that makes us safer without getting into these muky situations from time to time.
Flock, like Palantir, is the Torment Nexus from the famous novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.
Considering the potential and demonstrated abuse there must be more robust guardrails than currently exist. The required level of safety is more like “nuclear launch codes” or “commercial airliner”, not “local used car lot landing page”.
They do, especially in cities and wealthy suburbs (and honestly a lot of poor rural areas too).
The difference is these typically don't zap that data up to a central database that any agency in the country can access, the way Flock does if only because the security people at Flock are a joke.
No they don’t. You are conflating “any” with “every”.
In my city, the plate reader cop cars have 4 smallish boxes, each mounted above a quarter panel. At most about 1/20 of the police cars for my local PD has these installed.
It’s more likely that private sector cars have them installed because car repo companies will pay bounties for license plate hits on a car they have an active repo contract for.
If you want to explore navigation I made an app: https://alprwatch.org/navigation. It works fully offline, you just need to download the maps and overlays
They are all over certain neighborhoods and areas in my metro.. At first I thought it was due to the wealth of the neighborhoods but.. Now I'm wondering if the maps is just not fully filled in :|
wow. quite literally the only ones in my area are surveilling the county park / community center. that's creepy. I'll just have to assume they're doing something creepier at the public library.
We are all being investigated by the Feds 24/7 — that's what dragnet surveillance is: indiscriminate investigation at scale to be used retroactively.
"Don't do anything bad and nothing will happen" is frankly asinine to me, personally. That same logic could extend to stop-and-frisk or random door-to-door visits to check for citizenship.
Uh speak for yourself but some of us are doing the good crimes and would rather like to continue that fight from outside prison and without being shot in the face.
If they're not already exempted by law, legislators are likely to carve out exemptions. Federally, the FOIA already exempts the government from releasing data that would violate privacy (which was one of the hurdles to releasing Epstein related documents prior to Congress passing a law to demand it).
Isn't the entire argument for these based on the fact that people don't have an expectation of privacy in a public place? Not that I'm sure they won't try to make an excuse as to why it's different, but as far as I'm aware, you're allowed to just film in public.
This is not an issue of being filmed in public, this is an issue of not having the choice to opt in or out of the aggregated data harvesting performed by unregulated AI models owned by unregulated for-profit corporations that have no legislative oversight or safeguards.
If a human followed me around in public recording me, went through every frame and highlighted my face, my car, my license plate, dents and scratches that identify my car, where I'm going, what I'm doing, cross referencing that to other public information to build a dossier, I would have a solid case of harassment against that person. That's some stalker shit.
The bills going through Washington's legislature (where the original parent was talking about re: release via public information laws) do try and address this such that the systems aren't massive dragnets of everybody, always but far more targeted, I think.
An agency may access, operate, or use an automated license plate reader system and its associated data only for the following authorized purposes:
(a) Any law enforcement agency may use an automated license plate reader system for the purpose of comparing captured automated license
plate reader data with:
(i) Data on any of the following watch lists maintained by either a federal or Washington state agency: The department of licensing, the state criminal justice information system, the federal bureau of investigation kidnappings and missing persons list, and the Washington missing persons list; or
(ii) License plate numbers that have been manually entered into a state or local automated license plate reader system database, upon an officer's determination that the license plate numbers are relevant and material to an investigation of a vehicle that is:
(A) Stolen;
(B) Associated with a missing or endangered person;
(C) Registered to an individual for whom there is an outstanding
felony warrant; or
(D) Related to or involved in a felony.
33
(b) Any parking enforcement agency may use an automated license
plate reader system for the following purposes:
(i) Enforcing time restrictions on the use of parking spaces; or
(ii) Identifying vehicles on a watch list for impoundment or immobilization under a local ordinance enacted under RCW 46.55.240,
provided the list includes only license plates of vehicles subject to
that ordinance.
(c) An automated license plate reader system may be used as a
component of photo toll systems authorized by RCW 47.56.795 or
47.46.105
(d) Any transportation agency may use an automated license plate
reader system for the following purposes:
(i) Providing real-time traffic information to the public,
traffic modeling, and traffic studies such as determining
construction delays and route use; and
(ii) Enforcing commercial vehicle systems at Washington state
patrol enforcement sites and weigh stations.
That said, the only thing that really stops them from being massive dragnets of everybody always would essentially be how they're configured, which obviously can change. I think we've seen enough misuse of systems and tools throughout history that it's worthwhile to be mindful of creating easily misused systems and tools.
Coincidentally, a nearby county has just announced that they have begun installing new Flock cameras [0].
Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts."
The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero.
EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials.
> Small counties generate huge revenues with traffic cameras.
Whether or not that is true, I suspect it is, the best way to avoid fines for breaking traffic regulations is to not break traffic regulations. They can't make anything from you that way if you do.
Until they start changing speed limits, adjusting the timing on yellow lights, or just saying you ran a stop sign when you didn't and - oops! - they happened to have their dashcam off or their car angled so the actual intersection was just out of view.
If they are that corrupt then you have problems beyond traffic fines. Get your own dash cam and such so you can prove they are lying. No, in an ideal world you shouldn't have to, but if you have a corrupt police force you aren't living in an ideal world.
A Sedgwick, Kansas, police chief used Flock Safety license plate readers to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles 228 times over four-plus months and used his police vehicle to follow them out of town, according to a city official and a report released this week by the agency that oversees police certifications.
Before posting that you couldn't Google the Milwaukee cop who got busted for abusing Flock camera access? From just a week ago?
If you want an absolute torrent of abuse search for cops running the IDs of their exes. That's why it's dead certain that Flock cameras will be routinely abused.
So you think you can solve police accountability and keep the cameras? I admire that level of ambition. Have you got the Nobel prize nominations lined up already?
> Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts.
Hot take: AMBER alert is a way to keep the public paranoid about child abduction by strangers, an evil but extremely rare act, and turn their paranoia into support for law enforcement. It may not be the intended purposes, but the (real) purpose of a system is what it does.
It is no surprise that Flock, like other parties pushing for the erosion of privacy and personal freedom, are following the same playbook. Don't you want your kid (or your doggo) to get home safe? If you don't let us spy on you your literally supporting child abductors. Checkmate libertarians.
The reality of AMBER alert is they overwhelmingly come from custody dispute cases where the child's safety is not in jeopardy, because they tend to be the only kind of cases where they know enough about the "abductor" to issue an alert that is not just "look for a man driving a white van." The reality of child abuse is you should be infinitely more worried about authority figures dealing with the child — parents, relatives, teachers, pastors, coaches and yes, the police — than strangers driving unmarked white vans.
I agree with the rest of what you wrote but the quote is an overly cynical tired cliche when applied in a blanket manner. There are specific situations involving bad faith actors where it is directly relevant, and there are also times where it can be a useful observation about the impact of perverse incentives that build on top of unintended consequences.
But the way you're using it there it's no better than other politically charged nonsensical slogans.
The only flock cameras indicated in my town are the canonical Home Depot arrangement. I'm pretty sure it's part of their standard operating procedures at this point. The effect these have had on the in store experience (at my location) is the primary thing that has me interested in limited deployments. Shopping at HD prior to the ALPRs was a horrible time. I think they finally caught the guy who was stealing the little screws out of the irrigation vacuum breakers. You can actually get a complete, unopened factory product most of the time now.
Woof. There is one that I basically must drive by everyday close to where I live. How can I figure out who is responsible for its installation so I can let them know how I feel (and will vote) about it?
I personally know 3 victims of brutally violent crime. Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases, where violence occurred in broad, open daylight near main roads and highways. Crimes occurred in left-leaning, anti-police small midwest city. All of the victims were women.
I would encourage anti-Flockers and anti-authority individuals out here to question their motives and make sure that their voices and actions are best aligned with protecting vulnerable individuals (this also includes trafficked illegal immigrants).
Seems like many folks here might be more concerned with preventing hypothetical/theoretical harm, instead of REAL harm (violent crime, trafficking, vehicle theft)
This implies that the harm caused by this broad surveillance technology is "hypothetical/theoretical", when there is long history in this country's government using private companies to launder otherwise illegal surveillance of political activists[1].
And even if you ignore the historical parallels, there are already cases of: officers using Flock systems to stalk dating partners[2][3], immigration enforcement using Flock data to track targets[4], and ICE/CBP bypassing the systems in place that let local jurisdictions choose not to share with federal agencies[5].
I'll acknowledge that there might be some abuses of the use of Flock data by authorities (thanks for sharing citations). I would argue that this is an access control problem: do police departments have broad, unrestricted, unmonitored persistent access to these video feeds? (I oppose this). Is Flock insisting that police departments should have this access?
> Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases
I'm glad you acknowledge this, because it highlights what has irritated me about the discussion of crime in the last ~6 years. People seem to expect that crime can be prevented. Our criminal justice system and system of civil rights can only intervene after the crime has occurred, which means it won't prevent anything. Maybe I've misread you personally, and I don't mean to put it all on you, but I think people with your position tend to vastly overstate the deterrent factor of proposed interventions.
Further, only reacting to crime and not seeking to "punish" people before a crime has occurred is exactly how our system should work. When reasoning about crime prevention, a large number of people seem to want police to intervene preemptively. Or they want to punish offenders out of proportion to actual crimes, to prevent recidivism that hasn't happened yet. This type of thinking seems to slide pretty quickly into the "pre-crime" concept of dystopian scifi. We called that stuff dystopian for a reason.
In my opinion what we should do instead to prevent crime is to promote social cohesion, in the form of preventing income and wealth disparity, funding a strong social safety net, help for drug addicts and the mentally ill, etc. People who live happier, more stable lives will have less reason to turn to crime.
(I will also note, crime is lower everywhere in America vs. a few decades ago. Violent crime peaked in the mid 1990s. So it is in some sense a misguided endeavor completely, focusing on problems that are relatively unlikely.)
1. I don't think crime can really be prevented per se, but location-based crime can be discouraged and deterred. Having cameras in public, highly visible places, might make violent criminals (especially professional ones) think twice before committing crimes in these places. This potentially creates safe routes for vulnerable individuals (women, children) where they are less likely to be a victim of crime when following these routes. Privacy-minded individuals willing to take additional risk might opt out by driving a different route.
2. I agree on social cohesion, but this seems impossible in USA, which is a country that is/was a melting pot of immigrants from every place in the world. Embracing a national identity seems like the natural solution for creating social cohesion, but nationalism seems unpopular with half of the country (USA invasions don't help the cause). What is your proposed solution?
3.I will also note, crime is lower everywhere in America vs. a few decades ago. Violent crime peaked in the mid 1990s. This is a macro high level generalization; generally true but not everywhere. I am currently located in the midwest and anecdotally saw crime increase in a small city from 2018-2023 (people I know affected were victims of crime,visible increase in homelessness and drifters). Admittedly, crime levels in 2024-2025 in my region seem to be shrinking, but it's too early to determine probable cause.
Gemini AI had this to say about crime levels, agreeing with your opinion but with caveats:
When looking at the broad stretch from the 1990s peak to 2025, the national story is one of a massive, sustained decline. In 1991, the violent crime rate was roughly 758 per 100,000 people; by 2025, that figure is estimated to have dropped by nearly 60%, reaching its lowest levels in nearly 50 years.
However, the "map of violence" has shifted. While the 1990s were defined by high-intensity violence in massive coastal hubs (NYC, LA), the 2020–2025 era has seen crime "decentralize" into the South, the Midwest, and even rural New England.
When we no longer have concentration camps whose victims are located via Flock, then I'll be okay with them. It's not hypothetical, it's happening right now.
They're putting people in pens and then murdering them, and using Flock cameras to round them up.
I don't want this either. Might this be better attributed to politics/administration/policies? So maybe you're opposed to technologies that assist the governement with tracking people? If Flock starts solving missing abducted trafficked persons cases, would this sway your opinion? Or if the data is highly restricted?
I don't care if Flock is used to cure cancer. It's being used to oppress millions of people right now. We need to stop the harm now. It can be reintroduced later when we have a less psychotic administration.
On a more 'logical' note: compare the number of people it theoretically could help, to the number of people non-theoretically being harmed by it right now. The latter number is higher. On a purely emotionless, mathematical point of view, it is a net negative. (And this is a charitable rationalization; using a theoretical future to justify a present harm is illogical)
It sounds like your point is that people should be willing to give up their privacy in return for the chance of detecting (not preventing) violent crimes.
I think it's also disingenuous (or at best, completely naive) to pretend like harm from Flock and other surveillance is hypothetical/theoretical. Here are just 2 recent examples of REAL harm:
I live in Sausalito just north of SF. We have a few cameras on the way into town. Seeing this map actually makes me feel safer. Sure there are hypothetical privacy issues, but for me they're easily outweighed by safety. I don't really get the issue. Ideally this information would be available to law enforcement, but would require a warrant. Is the problem that they can access all of this data without a warrant now?
Based on comments here, I'm thinking that a lot of the Flock opposition is affiliated with the anti-ICE movements. Flock seems to be viewed here as a tool to persecute and hunt down law-abiding government enemies, potentially bypassing civil liberties.
I don't deny that Flock systems could and may have been used in that manner, but that doesn't seem to be its main purpose or use. Presently I'm seeing Flock as a net win for most law abiding persons, and I believe that its use should and can be highly restricted and monitored as a tool to make the country safer. No reason to throw the baby out with the bath water
I mentioned "left-leaning, anti-police" because this particular city attempted to reduce its police force, due to a general distrust in (local?) police authority. It appears that USA police forces might be more violent because they are far more likely to encounter armed criminals (see source below). Thus it makes sense that some communities would prefer to reduce their police force, and might oppose technologies like Flock that increase the chances of police encounters:
Firearm Prevalence: U.S. officers operate in a society with high civilian gun ownership. A 2019 study published in PMC found that the strongest predictor of police being killed on the job—and consequently, their higher rate of using lethal force—is the level of household gun ownership in that state. In this context, U.S. "caution" often manifests as "command presence" to prevent a suspect from reaching for a weapon.
I'm glad the data is being catalogued and made available like this but the interactive map doesn't work for me at all. Seems to be missing clickable zoom controls and gestures on my trackpad only seem to be able to get it to zoom out, not in (I think maybe it's becoming entirely unresponsive when it first registers the zoom in event and dropping the rest of it). Did anyone actually bother to test this on a low end device?
More generally, if you're a webdev with a high end workstation it's really important to occasionally spin up a single core VM with less than 4 GB RAM, open a youtube video, and then check how well your page works in a second simultaneously visible window.
I added one a few months ago and went to go check it, and there are 2 others almost right on top of it pointing in different directions, I guess that can't be prevented? I'm fairly certain they didn't add two more ALPRs that close to each other.
It would be an interesting and potentially useful project to combine these camera locations with Maps routing -- similar to "avoid toll roads," we could "avoid surveillance cameras."
If you're in the US, stay away from Home Depot and Lowe's if you want to not be around them. It's not universal, but it's surprising how much they are often there.
I get it may have its application in theft recovery, but it also happens to have some strong potential for ICE raids for day laborers. I don't think it has much application to theft prevention as I doubt many people even know they are there.
Just anecdotally looking around my city, it's noticeable that the camera's locations have a much stronger correlation with areas of high wealth rather than high crime.
And, where I am, you're more likely to have a gun if you're poor, because there's more exposure to crime, resulting in a much more realistic understanding that the police won't save you in an emergency.
Weird. The city I live in has cameras, but only a few at random intersections. Most of the cameras are on a university campus, home depot, Lowes, and target. Are these normal places to put flock cameras for other cities?
Haha Sudbury and Napanee are the only places in Canada to have them. They are tiny cities where nothing happens. Bored police officers imagining situations where they are needed.
Same here, but just Lowes stores. That I know of. I surveiled the two local Lowes roughly a month ago and found two cameras not mapped, which I gleefully added myself. Want to send them a snail mail complaint at some point stating they won't be getting my business until they step back from turning us into a police state.
So, our city clearly has other cameras but they are from a different vendor (and don't show up on the map). I wonder how good/bad the other players in the industry are. Flock gets the press, is that just letting someone worse quietly fill in the gaps?
I volunteer for my city & county , and I'm a privacy advocate, so I have an ambivalent opinion on Flock cameras. Given the completely untenable demands on law enforcement, and extreme driver recklessness , the only practical way to enforce law and order with drivers is some sort of automated surveillance.
Since covid, driver recklessness has been out of control. Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common. Pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths remain extreme. At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law.
Imagine you are a policy maker, with worse driver behavior, and police force that are less able to enforce the law. What tools would you use to maintain law and order?
If you don't want surveillance, you will have to make some other tradeoffs to allow human beings to better monitor the public and enforce the law. They are not omnipotent and omniscient creatures.
Could be wrong but I don't think Flock makes speed trap or red light cameras. These are license plate readers that conduct constant surveillance of everyone at all times, whether or not you've broken any traffic laws.
plate reading allows police to identify known and unknown suspects. For known suspects (e.g. police have PC, suspect fled), plate reader can help find the suspect without high speed pursuit. For unknown suspect (e.g. citizen report of street racing), plate readers can develop a suspect pool and narrow down candidate suspects for further investigation.
Sure, I won't dispute that warrantless mass surveillance of everyone at all times makes it easier to track down criminals. I just want to be clear that that's what we're talking about. These don't only target people who are "Running reds" or driving at "extreme speed".
I chose reckless driving because it's relatable . The cameras help with all crimes. Many stores are putting them up to discourage shoplifting / armed robbery, for example.
Is your objection to convicting criminals or false convictions?
I wasn't necessarily making an objection, just an observation. But I suspect that warrantless government surveillance of the movements of millions of private citizens who have not been accused of a crime might be considered inherently objectionable by many regardless of what other effects it might have.
Consumers are overwhelmingly giving consent to surveillance via their apps. So when the government would like to it's a bad thing? why not improve policy so the government has guidelines for doing so, so they don't to conceal their agenda behind private enterprise?
plate reading help police track down suspects without pursuit. video recording in general help police collect evidence necessary to convict reckless driving.
solving crime and convicting criminals has first and n-order effects. For one, a few criminals commit most crimes, so locking people up reduces many crimes. Secondly, convictions are a deterrent.
Police just aren't doing their job in the US, who even knows what they're doing at this point. Basically no country had the post-covid driver issue as much as America. Some states basically halved fines lol, make them do their jobs.
Seriously. People run reds in front of cops and they do nothing. I was tboned and the person that hit me had no license or anything to identify and ran a red and still was let go without anything.
This is what happens to your country when you don't really care about public services (in many cases they're looked down upon, just look at teachers, federal workers but also police). There's difficulty recruiting and retaining police officers in the US (i'd imagine anywhere but especially the US) because it's not seen as a good job. I'm not a huge believer in IQ but intelligent and capable people just can't be convinced to go into this line of work unless they truly care about their community (very rare). Just way more fun to go to the big city and work in an office with an AC.
I'm sure there's a million other reasons why people don't want this job, but this reflects in how harsh you can be on (new) agents.
that is a big part of it. Directly, people don't give the police enough respect, and indirectly, they don't encourage politicians to develop policy to support the police.
The amount of times I've seen cops just sitting in their cars playing on their phones or loitering around chatting and ignoring everything around them is ridiculously high.
> At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law
Don't make excuses for them. If you're legally allowed to kill people on purpose, you (should) get oversight and tight constraints. We don't because of a lot of reasons, but we should
They get paid six figure salaries for not actually doing a whole lot, they can manage.
To what extent? Do you want infinite oversight and little-to-no crimes convicted? What are your expectations on law and order vs criminality? do you believe people naturally police themselves?
The reality is that most people are tolerant of, if not supportive of surveiling car traffic. If tracking vehicle movements on public roads is such a bad thing, there'd be overwhelming support for removing license plates from vehicles. The whole purpose of a license plate is to facilitate surveillance of vehicles.
But of course, most people aren't in favor of that. They realize that cars are dangerous and behavior like speeding and running red lights needs to be claimed down on. When people are victims of crimes they like it when the police are able to track down the perpetrators - and traffic cameras are good at facilitating that. Outside of the HN bubble there's at lot less reflexive rejection of cameras.
None in my area. Time to disperse. Get out of major cities like the pandemic promised. Fill in this great country we live in. Proliferate the governments surveillance for them.
Caveat: it does not seem to update camera statuses after initial reporting. I see several cameras that were removed long ago, or have been repositioned, but their old statuses remain.
DeFlock is powered by crowdsourced data from the OpenStreetMap community. The map is incomplete! New locations are always being added. Know of a missing ALPR? Contribute to the map: https://deflock.org/report/id
A more generous term is civil disobedience. I think the argument is the original theft was using tax payers dollars on fancy tracking devices in the first place.
You might wish to do some cursory research before arguing further. For example, as a starting point, the Wikipedia page on civil disobedience has an entire section labeled "Action" listing counterexamples.
> Civil disobedience is the active and nonviolent refusal to obey certain government laws, demands, or commands to achieve social change or protest injustice
Most associated with MLK Jr, who explicitly advocated breaking the law
Civil means nonviolent. There were laws against blacks sitting at certain counters in some areas of the US in the past. Those laws were broken without violence. That's civil disobedience.
Please at least try to understand what you're talking about; you're embarrassing yourself.
I don't remember him calling Linus a terrorist, though there were others that associated anything with a copyleft licence to be the loony left (or the commie left).
He certainly referred to both him and Linux as cancers though, that I do remember. He later changed his mind on that, and IIRC may even have publicly apologised for those statements.
He said Linux is a cancer, which was a stupid thing to say, but not the same as calling Linus a cancer. I say plenty of bad things about software that I would not say about the people who create it. I think Next.js is awful to use but that doesn't mean I think everyone at Vercel is an awful person, for example.
He may not have used the word cancer with respect to individuals, I can't find any such reference in a quick search, but he certainly had harsh words to say about proponents of Linux/OSS/similar.
Flock AI cameras run off small solar panels. Having run my own computer systems off small solar panels I know that even a minor shadow or a bit of bird poop on the panel can decrease the output enough the computer eventually cannot run and shuts down. I bet Flock cameras have the same response to a bit of bird poop like substance or shadow.
I've yet to see an amount of property crime that can get the cops to lift a finger. I've seen them ignore a low-six-figures-stolen string of after-hours break-ins at businesses, captured at multiple location on camera with clear shots of the vehicle, legible plates, and faces of the perps. Just straight-up gave the impression they thought anyone believing they might want to look into it was a moron. And no, given where this happened it wasn't because of that "prosecutors won't charge anyway" thing people complain about some places (it's led me to wonder how much of that is cops just looking to pass the blame on cases they had no intention of investigating anyway).
On the "coordinated efforts" front, some anecdata:
Three separate posts on Craigslist in the Community section about Flock Cameras, trying to increase local awareness. Posted to two different cities, various posting iterations (e.g. with links / without, pics / no pics, etc.). All appeared to post fine when entered, but never saw the light of day and were marked as removed within a few minutes.
But I'd like cameras in my neighborhood. Sure, there's a security risk but there's also a risk of not catching criminals due to lack of evidence. Tons of crimes aren't prosecuted due to the lack of evidence.
A security risk doesn't impact average people, and it can be handled more easily.
One of the main arguments against flock is their abysmal security, lack of transparency, and flagrant dishonesty. If they solved these problems then we can have a discussion about the cameras themselves. I personally would have less of a problem with them if the footage was locked down, encrypted and could only be accessed with a subpoena, but law enforcement really want dragnet surveillance, so that's unlikely to occur.
How do we make this site mainstream? The public would really start to push back if they could so viscerally experience that they are being surveilled multiple times per day.
These cameras aren't even enforcement, just surveillance.
I think we all know even with the best technology in the world the police aren't gonna get off their lazy asses if your car gets stolen. This is just a way to burn money.
So they're useless for crimes not involving a reported license plate? Sounds like a pretty worthless marginal gain. The Chinese have done it better since their mass surveillance apparatus isn't contingent on reported license plates, or even the involvement of a vehicle. Start a fight on the street and they'll find you. Is America really this incompetent that they can't match a 10+ year old system?
So what you're saying is that I can report your[1] car as being associated with a crime, and the police will show up wherever you and/or your car is and treat you like a criminal?
Flock cameras aren't enforcing anything. They collect your license plate and distinguishing details of your car. It's just car X with plate Y detected at location Z at time T.
Notably, they are not used for speed detection or 'good driving' detection.
You might think that having a constantly-present, objective, impartial camera enforcing a law is better than a sometimes-present, subjective, often not impartial beat cop doing that. But that's not what Flock does. Flock just turns that 'sometimes-present' beat cop into an 'always-present' beat cop, without addressing any of the other beat cop problems.
It's clearly true there have been abuses as a result of this technology. And its also clearly true criminals have been caught as a result of the cams, that otherwise would not have been.
If you believe the costs of the the abuses, and potential abuses, exceed the benefit, then at least be honest about the trade-off, because there are real benefits.
Personally, I believe the costs, on net, are worth the benefits. And in so far as the costs can be further reduced, without loosing most benefits, then great. This is not right or wrong. It's just a question of values, and how you weight the costs vs benefits.
My question to you is: how are you assessing the costs? Do you know how many crimes have been stopped as a result of these cams? Do you know the extent to which our privacy is being lost and our data is being used against us or others?
I take into account publicly available information (news articles), factor in personal anecdotes, and reason about human nature and incentives. I know the extent of reported abuses, and I do my best to extrapolate. It's not perfect, but such is life.
To be clear, even if we all agreed on the data, I still would not expect everyone to take the same position. There are subjective differences in values.
Flock has put out a report claiming 10% crime in the US is solved using their technology. There are of course counter argument, that claim this is not valid.
This is a quite scary map. They are all over my local area. It may technically be possible to route a drive around them, but if you take the most convenient path between any two points at least one camera will spot you. I'd have to leave my neighborhood through back roads and enter local shopping areas through sidestreets.
This data shouldn't even be collected in the first place, let alone consolidated into a national network that any police officer can decide to spy on me through.
Download osm data, extract roads and surveillance, gpd overlay how=difference, remove/edit the different osmid's, write to pbf file, convert to obf file w/ osmandmapcreator, import into OsmAnd.
Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs on your phone.
Edit: link https://github.com/pickpj/Big-B-Router - I tend to find ALPRs that are missing in the OSM data, so keep on updating OSM data.
> Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs [that we -- regular people -- know about] on your phone [while still being observed by the ones we don't know about].
fixed that for you. :-/
And a good chunk of your trips will have to be cancelled because no such route exists.
I made a version which does the avoidance dynamically at runtime, works for any tracks you want to use: https://alprwatch.org/navigation. It works fully offline after you download the maps and overlays
> It may technically be possible to route a drive around them
That's an interesting idea...
https://dontgetflocked.com/
Cool, but…
I was hoping for an online game, maybe Escape From Flockopolis.
Driving sim (using Google street view) where you try to avoid the Flock.
I can't speak to flock but I know that other vendors in the space have software designed to calculate optimal locations to maximize probability at least one license plate scan for every trip taken.
Presumably that software can then be used to upsell additional cameras because with an increased density your capabilities start to approximate real-time live position tracking instead of just getting approximate locations of hot plates.
>> This is a quite scary map.
It can be. FLOCK data was used to put Bryan Kohberger at the scene along with other people's security camera's. Cops regularly use FLOCK camera's to get hits for criminals that have warrants for violent crime.
I can see why people are ok with them when they're used to get criminals off the streets. However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop (where people are pulled out at gunpoint and detained) against a car they got a hit on - only to find out the person they really wanted wasn't driving or even in the car at all.
What's interesting is businesses and houses have so many cameras nowadays that the first thing cops do when they get to the scene of a violent crime is canvas the area for camera's. So yeah, you can avoid FLOCK, but there are most likely hundreds of other camera's that will capture you driving through any given area.
Do you have a source to your Bryan claim?
If you look at the map, there are zero flock cameras reported in that region.
None in Moscow Idaho where the murder happened, none in Pullman where he lived, and none showed between the locations.
You can't rely on Flock's "transparency" reports either, they're woefully inadequate. In our County, the Sheriff spoke of a PD in the County getting a Flock hit. It was news to many, including Flock's transparency site, that that PD was a user of their services.
So I'm not overly surprised by this.
There's a disclaimer when you first open the page that the map is incomplete and that users need to submit the data. It's possible that data hasn't been submitted/parsed yet
It's possible, but I can't find a corroborating news report, and it's the first I've heard this claim made about that case.
I can't find anything corroborating that example either.
I've been seeing a lot of similar grandiose claims made in random comments/Tweets/etc recently that Flock solved this or that specific high profile case that have also turned up zero proof when I did research.
I'm not sure whether it's just individual techno optimist fantasy that somehow becomes confabulated in the brain with some other crime in the news as if Flock was actually used, an organized persuasion/lobbying/misinformation campaign, or something else. But I'm seeing it a lot now which feels a bit concerning.
There have been numerous instances where cops used it to stalk exes, etc. If it isn't already, it will be used to stalk a blacklist of dissidents. It will continue to happen as long as the system exists.
But the cameras that the law enforcement officers canvas in the area aren't centrally aggregated and tagged with meta data such that they can be queried at scale.
Which is fine, because those are owned by private citizens and companies and those citizens are giving their permission to the police to use them. That's the difference between centralized government survalience and CCTVs
Sounds like it's working as intended. These systems don't track people, they provide objective clues and evidence.
By tracking everyone at all times.
> However, I've seen multiple times where cops initiate a felony stop
At what point do we accept that all systems are flawed? There could be many variables as to why the perp wasn't in the car. Maybe the perp stole the car. Maybe the perp borrowed the car. Maybe these systems do not work well in fog etc etc. I don't know how we're supposed to advance technology that makes us safer without getting into these muky situations from time to time.
Technology is a means to an end, not the end itself. If you can’t make it safe then don’t deploy it.
There must be some level of acceptable failure.
Flock, like Palantir, is the Torment Nexus from the famous novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.
Considering the potential and demonstrated abuse there must be more robust guardrails than currently exist. The required level of safety is more like “nuclear launch codes” or “commercial airliner”, not “local used car lot landing page”.
This juice ain’t worth the squeeze.
Why do anything at all?
Why even deploy such systems? I would support less for sure.
You should assume every police cruiser has a plate reader, too.
They do, especially in cities and wealthy suburbs (and honestly a lot of poor rural areas too).
The difference is these typically don't zap that data up to a central database that any agency in the country can access, the way Flock does if only because the security people at Flock are a joke.
No they don’t. You are conflating “any” with “every”.
In my city, the plate reader cop cars have 4 smallish boxes, each mounted above a quarter panel. At most about 1/20 of the police cars for my local PD has these installed.
It’s more likely that private sector cars have them installed because car repo companies will pay bounties for license plate hits on a car they have an active repo contract for.
You think more than 5% of the "private sector" cars on the road have ALPRs because of car repo bounties?
Regardless, you're being needlessly pedantic.
If you want to explore navigation I made an app: https://alprwatch.org/navigation. It works fully offline, you just need to download the maps and overlays
They are all over certain neighborhoods and areas in my metro.. At first I thought it was due to the wealth of the neighborhoods but.. Now I'm wondering if the maps is just not fully filled in :|
wow. quite literally the only ones in my area are surveilling the county park / community center. that's creepy. I'll just have to assume they're doing something creepier at the public library.
Saw two in my area on the map.
I drove out to investigate, ended up adding two more to the site.
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We are all being investigated by the Feds 24/7 — that's what dragnet surveillance is: indiscriminate investigation at scale to be used retroactively.
"Don't do anything bad and nothing will happen" is frankly asinine to me, personally. That same logic could extend to stop-and-frisk or random door-to-door visits to check for citizenship.
Uh speak for yourself but some of us are doing the good crimes and would rather like to continue that fight from outside prison and without being shot in the face.
Go team.
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One way to possibly get the cameras taken down: insist on requesting the data as it's public data and should be publicly accessible.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/wa-cit...
It only gets them deactivated until the state legislature "fixes" the "loophole".
Does that mean it shouldn't be done?
By all means go for it. It's just important to be aware that it's (most likely) a temporary stopgap as opposed to an actual solution to the problem.
And what is the "actual solution to the problem"?
How should I know? Presumably it's political.
Noticing a flaw doesn't mean one has a workable solution ready to go.
If they're not already exempted by law, legislators are likely to carve out exemptions. Federally, the FOIA already exempts the government from releasing data that would violate privacy (which was one of the hurdles to releasing Epstein related documents prior to Congress passing a law to demand it).
Isn't the entire argument for these based on the fact that people don't have an expectation of privacy in a public place? Not that I'm sure they won't try to make an excuse as to why it's different, but as far as I'm aware, you're allowed to just film in public.
This is not an issue of being filmed in public, this is an issue of not having the choice to opt in or out of the aggregated data harvesting performed by unregulated AI models owned by unregulated for-profit corporations that have no legislative oversight or safeguards.
If a human followed me around in public recording me, went through every frame and highlighted my face, my car, my license plate, dents and scratches that identify my car, where I'm going, what I'm doing, cross referencing that to other public information to build a dossier, I would have a solid case of harassment against that person. That's some stalker shit.
The bills going through Washington's legislature (where the original parent was talking about re: release via public information laws) do try and address this such that the systems aren't massive dragnets of everybody, always but far more targeted, I think.
See, for example, https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Ho... which would carve out:
An agency may access, operate, or use an automated license plate reader system and its associated data only for the following authorized purposes: (a) Any law enforcement agency may use an automated license plate reader system for the purpose of comparing captured automated license plate reader data with: (i) Data on any of the following watch lists maintained by either a federal or Washington state agency: The department of licensing, the state criminal justice information system, the federal bureau of investigation kidnappings and missing persons list, and the Washington missing persons list; or (ii) License plate numbers that have been manually entered into a state or local automated license plate reader system database, upon an officer's determination that the license plate numbers are relevant and material to an investigation of a vehicle that is: (A) Stolen; (B) Associated with a missing or endangered person; (C) Registered to an individual for whom there is an outstanding felony warrant; or (D) Related to or involved in a felony. 33 (b) Any parking enforcement agency may use an automated license plate reader system for the following purposes: (i) Enforcing time restrictions on the use of parking spaces; or (ii) Identifying vehicles on a watch list for impoundment or immobilization under a local ordinance enacted under RCW 46.55.240, provided the list includes only license plates of vehicles subject to that ordinance. (c) An automated license plate reader system may be used as a component of photo toll systems authorized by RCW 47.56.795 or 47.46.105 (d) Any transportation agency may use an automated license plate reader system for the following purposes: (i) Providing real-time traffic information to the public, traffic modeling, and traffic studies such as determining construction delays and route use; and (ii) Enforcing commercial vehicle systems at Washington state patrol enforcement sites and weigh stations.
That said, the only thing that really stops them from being massive dragnets of everybody always would essentially be how they're configured, which obviously can change. I think we've seen enough misuse of systems and tools throughout history that it's worthwhile to be mindful of creating easily misused systems and tools.
If you spot missing camera's - Flock or not - you can add them to OSM easily with https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance
Everydoor's UI is also quite nice for this. it even lets you enter in the orientation quite easily
https://every-door.app/
https://github.com/Zverik/every_door
There's also a application called deflock that lets you map them easy
Yes, that's the submission we're commenting on ;)
Haha. I meant an Android application. The website doesn't let you submit. The app makes it easy to submit.
Coincidentally, a nearby county has just announced that they have begun installing new Flock cameras [0].
Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts."
The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero.
EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials.
[0] https://www.ketk.com/news/crime-public-safety/new-traffic-ca...
[1] https://www.beltontexas.gov/news_detail_T11_R1277.php
Small counties generate huge revenues with traffic cameras.
I think reducing crime and road safety is an excuse.
There are true innovators in the traffic camera space but i think counties often choose vendors who give them best ROI.
Can you elaborate on true innovators? No shade, but I have a hard time conceptualizing what innovation would look like in this space.
Traffic camera along various sensors for emission control, sound and noise control, gunshot detection etc. to name a few.
Seat belt detection, phone detection, lane violations etc. at the application layer.
I can talk about Sensysgatso, where I used to work. They have quite some tech-forward platform.
> Small counties generate huge revenues with traffic cameras.
Whether or not that is true, I suspect it is, the best way to avoid fines for breaking traffic regulations is to not break traffic regulations. They can't make anything from you that way if you do.
Until they start changing speed limits, adjusting the timing on yellow lights, or just saying you ran a stop sign when you didn't and - oops! - they happened to have their dashcam off or their car angled so the actual intersection was just out of view.
If they are that corrupt then you have problems beyond traffic fines. Get your own dash cam and such so you can prove they are lying. No, in an ideal world you shouldn't have to, but if you have a corrupt police force you aren't living in an ideal world.
The odds are 100% that it will be abused.
Because they already are
Can you name just one incident of abuse?
https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...
A Sedgwick, Kansas, police chief used Flock Safety license plate readers to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles 228 times over four-plus months and used his police vehicle to follow them out of town, according to a city official and a report released this week by the agency that oversees police certifications.
Before posting that you couldn't Google the Milwaukee cop who got busted for abusing Flock camera access? From just a week ago?
If you want an absolute torrent of abuse search for cops running the IDs of their exes. That's why it's dead certain that Flock cameras will be routinely abused.
So then we need better access controls, and apparently the people who abuse it to stalk exes and such are already being prosecuted.
Doesn’t seem like the technology itself is the core issue here to me.
So you think you can solve police accountability and keep the cameras? I admire that level of ambition. Have you got the Nobel prize nominations lined up already?
Police in the US very rarely face accountability for misconduct.
The only way you could have moved this goal post faster is if you had edited your original comment.
I’m a problem solver.
If a technology, backdoor or capability exists, it's not a question of if it will be abused, but rather when, how, and by whom.
Stop being obtuse.
Technophobic take tbh
Edward Snowden. Everything after that is a no-brainer.
Hell, everything after Room 641A is a no-brainer.
Snowden, a true American patriot.
> Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts.
Hot take: AMBER alert is a way to keep the public paranoid about child abduction by strangers, an evil but extremely rare act, and turn their paranoia into support for law enforcement. It may not be the intended purposes, but the (real) purpose of a system is what it does.
It is no surprise that Flock, like other parties pushing for the erosion of privacy and personal freedom, are following the same playbook. Don't you want your kid (or your doggo) to get home safe? If you don't let us spy on you your literally supporting child abductors. Checkmate libertarians.
The reality of AMBER alert is they overwhelmingly come from custody dispute cases where the child's safety is not in jeopardy, because they tend to be the only kind of cases where they know enough about the "abductor" to issue an alert that is not just "look for a man driving a white van." The reality of child abuse is you should be infinitely more worried about authority figures dealing with the child — parents, relatives, teachers, pastors, coaches and yes, the police — than strangers driving unmarked white vans.
> the (real) purpose of a system is what it does
I agree with the rest of what you wrote but the quote is an overly cynical tired cliche when applied in a blanket manner. There are specific situations involving bad faith actors where it is directly relevant, and there are also times where it can be a useful observation about the impact of perverse incentives that build on top of unintended consequences.
But the way you're using it there it's no better than other politically charged nonsensical slogans.
> Hot take: AMBER alert is a way to keep the public paranoid about child abduction by strangers, an evil but extremely rare act
I thought they were mostly custody style kidnappings anyway.
They almost entirely are, 90% plus. And they're incredibly rare even including those, which you shouldn't.
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> I just don't understand the hate against these plate capture cams specifically.
Because the scope of information they gather is much larger than most law enforcement technologies.
> Law enforcement needs reform for sure
And the current protections are woefully inadequate.
I don't understand why you felt you needed to create a throwaway for that comment
Because it's nonsense. It's blatant "whataboutism" in support of authoritarianism.
The only flock cameras indicated in my town are the canonical Home Depot arrangement. I'm pretty sure it's part of their standard operating procedures at this point. The effect these have had on the in store experience (at my location) is the primary thing that has me interested in limited deployments. Shopping at HD prior to the ALPRs was a horrible time. I think they finally caught the guy who was stealing the little screws out of the irrigation vacuum breakers. You can actually get a complete, unopened factory product most of the time now.
And to think, all it cost was a significant loss of privacy nationwide
Home Depot didn’t have CCTV and loss prevention before Flock?
Wondering what the intersection is with Home Depot cameras and ICE?
I don't understand the connection?
What is the guy stealing tbe screw was to walk or bike ?
Woof. There is one that I basically must drive by everyday close to where I live. How can I figure out who is responsible for its installation so I can let them know how I feel (and will vote) about it?
It's probably your city/police.
I have two cameras in my small town, but I can avoid them, so I now go out of my way to cross town.
I personally know 3 victims of brutally violent crime. Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases, where violence occurred in broad, open daylight near main roads and highways. Crimes occurred in left-leaning, anti-police small midwest city. All of the victims were women.
I would encourage anti-Flockers and anti-authority individuals out here to question their motives and make sure that their voices and actions are best aligned with protecting vulnerable individuals (this also includes trafficked illegal immigrants).
Seems like many folks here might be more concerned with preventing hypothetical/theoretical harm, instead of REAL harm (violent crime, trafficking, vehicle theft)
This implies that the harm caused by this broad surveillance technology is "hypothetical/theoretical", when there is long history in this country's government using private companies to launder otherwise illegal surveillance of political activists[1].
And even if you ignore the historical parallels, there are already cases of: officers using Flock systems to stalk dating partners[2][3], immigration enforcement using Flock data to track targets[4], and ICE/CBP bypassing the systems in place that let local jurisdictions choose not to share with federal agencies[5].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Goals_Foundation
[2]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/01/12/menasha...
[3]: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2026/02/24/mpd-off...
[4]: https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-...
[5]: https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-t...
I'll acknowledge that there might be some abuses of the use of Flock data by authorities (thanks for sharing citations). I would argue that this is an access control problem: do police departments have broad, unrestricted, unmonitored persistent access to these video feeds? (I oppose this). Is Flock insisting that police departments should have this access?
> Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases
I'm glad you acknowledge this, because it highlights what has irritated me about the discussion of crime in the last ~6 years. People seem to expect that crime can be prevented. Our criminal justice system and system of civil rights can only intervene after the crime has occurred, which means it won't prevent anything. Maybe I've misread you personally, and I don't mean to put it all on you, but I think people with your position tend to vastly overstate the deterrent factor of proposed interventions.
Further, only reacting to crime and not seeking to "punish" people before a crime has occurred is exactly how our system should work. When reasoning about crime prevention, a large number of people seem to want police to intervene preemptively. Or they want to punish offenders out of proportion to actual crimes, to prevent recidivism that hasn't happened yet. This type of thinking seems to slide pretty quickly into the "pre-crime" concept of dystopian scifi. We called that stuff dystopian for a reason.
In my opinion what we should do instead to prevent crime is to promote social cohesion, in the form of preventing income and wealth disparity, funding a strong social safety net, help for drug addicts and the mentally ill, etc. People who live happier, more stable lives will have less reason to turn to crime.
(I will also note, crime is lower everywhere in America vs. a few decades ago. Violent crime peaked in the mid 1990s. So it is in some sense a misguided endeavor completely, focusing on problems that are relatively unlikely.)
Thanks for responding.
1. I don't think crime can really be prevented per se, but location-based crime can be discouraged and deterred. Having cameras in public, highly visible places, might make violent criminals (especially professional ones) think twice before committing crimes in these places. This potentially creates safe routes for vulnerable individuals (women, children) where they are less likely to be a victim of crime when following these routes. Privacy-minded individuals willing to take additional risk might opt out by driving a different route.
2. I agree on social cohesion, but this seems impossible in USA, which is a country that is/was a melting pot of immigrants from every place in the world. Embracing a national identity seems like the natural solution for creating social cohesion, but nationalism seems unpopular with half of the country (USA invasions don't help the cause). What is your proposed solution?
3.I will also note, crime is lower everywhere in America vs. a few decades ago. Violent crime peaked in the mid 1990s. This is a macro high level generalization; generally true but not everywhere. I am currently located in the midwest and anecdotally saw crime increase in a small city from 2018-2023 (people I know affected were victims of crime,visible increase in homelessness and drifters). Admittedly, crime levels in 2024-2025 in my region seem to be shrinking, but it's too early to determine probable cause. Gemini AI had this to say about crime levels, agreeing with your opinion but with caveats: When looking at the broad stretch from the 1990s peak to 2025, the national story is one of a massive, sustained decline. In 1991, the violent crime rate was roughly 758 per 100,000 people; by 2025, that figure is estimated to have dropped by nearly 60%, reaching its lowest levels in nearly 50 years. However, the "map of violence" has shifted. While the 1990s were defined by high-intensity violence in massive coastal hubs (NYC, LA), the 2020–2025 era has seen crime "decentralize" into the South, the Midwest, and even rural New England.
Source: https://usafacts.org/articles/how-does-crime-compare-by-city...
When we no longer have concentration camps whose victims are located via Flock, then I'll be okay with them. It's not hypothetical, it's happening right now.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-deaths-s... | https://atlpresscollective.com/2025/11/13/atlanta-police-flo... | https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/reported-ice-accessin... | https://jsis.washington.edu/humanrights/2025/10/21/leaving-t... | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo...
They're putting people in pens and then murdering them, and using Flock cameras to round them up.
They're putting people in pens and then murdering them, and using Flock cameras to round them up.
I don't want this either. Might this be better attributed to politics/administration/policies? So maybe you're opposed to technologies that assist the governement with tracking people? If Flock starts solving missing abducted trafficked persons cases, would this sway your opinion? Or if the data is highly restricted?
I don't care if Flock is used to cure cancer. It's being used to oppress millions of people right now. We need to stop the harm now. It can be reintroduced later when we have a less psychotic administration.
On a more 'logical' note: compare the number of people it theoretically could help, to the number of people non-theoretically being harmed by it right now. The latter number is higher. On a purely emotionless, mathematical point of view, it is a net negative. (And this is a charitable rationalization; using a theoretical future to justify a present harm is illogical)
It sounds like your point is that people should be willing to give up their privacy in return for the chance of detecting (not preventing) violent crimes.
I think it's also disingenuous (or at best, completely naive) to pretend like harm from Flock and other surveillance is hypothetical/theoretical. Here are just 2 recent examples of REAL harm:
https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/crime/2026/01/12/men...
https://kenoshacountyeye.com/2025/12/12/deputy-on-leave-accu...
You can guarantee that there are many more that haven't been caught.
Maybe they should require a warrant and log access? Do you think this could be solved with access control?
I live in Sausalito just north of SF. We have a few cameras on the way into town. Seeing this map actually makes me feel safer. Sure there are hypothetical privacy issues, but for me they're easily outweighed by safety. I don't really get the issue. Ideally this information would be available to law enforcement, but would require a warrant. Is the problem that they can access all of this data without a warrant now?
Based on comments here, I'm thinking that a lot of the Flock opposition is affiliated with the anti-ICE movements. Flock seems to be viewed here as a tool to persecute and hunt down law-abiding government enemies, potentially bypassing civil liberties.
I don't deny that Flock systems could and may have been used in that manner, but that doesn't seem to be its main purpose or use. Presently I'm seeing Flock as a net win for most law abiding persons, and I believe that its use should and can be highly restricted and monitored as a tool to make the country safer. No reason to throw the baby out with the bath water
My vehicle was stolen in an area with Flock cams. It did not help at all.
That sucks. Sorry to hear it
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This sounds like the usual talking points.
> left-leaning, anti-police
As if there is any correlation, or crimes don't occur in right-leaning locales.
> hypothetical/theoretical harm
Freedom is very real, and includes security from the state. The latter risks are hardly theoretical in history and very present today.
I mentioned "left-leaning, anti-police" because this particular city attempted to reduce its police force, due to a general distrust in (local?) police authority. It appears that USA police forces might be more violent because they are far more likely to encounter armed criminals (see source below). Thus it makes sense that some communities would prefer to reduce their police force, and might oppose technologies like Flock that increase the chances of police encounters:
Firearm Prevalence: U.S. officers operate in a society with high civilian gun ownership. A 2019 study published in PMC found that the strongest predictor of police being killed on the job—and consequently, their higher rate of using lethal force—is the level of household gun ownership in that state. In this context, U.S. "caution" often manifests as "command presence" to prevent a suspect from reaching for a weapon.
Source:
https://www.heinz.cmu.edu/media/2020/February/gun-ownership-...
I'm glad the data is being catalogued and made available like this but the interactive map doesn't work for me at all. Seems to be missing clickable zoom controls and gestures on my trackpad only seem to be able to get it to zoom out, not in (I think maybe it's becoming entirely unresponsive when it first registers the zoom in event and dropping the rest of it). Did anyone actually bother to test this on a low end device?
More generally, if you're a webdev with a high end workstation it's really important to occasionally spin up a single core VM with less than 4 GB RAM, open a youtube video, and then check how well your page works in a second simultaneously visible window.
I added one a few months ago and went to go check it, and there are 2 others almost right on top of it pointing in different directions, I guess that can't be prevented? I'm fairly certain they didn't add two more ALPRs that close to each other.
You can go onto Open Street Map and tidy up the data. I would recommend surveying the actual situation first to ensure you don't mess anything up.
Oh, they do. Sometimes its different providers.
This map is missing info for my area. It's hard to not be in that network
Some intersections have 4 or more cameras.
It would be an interesting and potentially useful project to combine these camera locations with Maps routing -- similar to "avoid toll roads," we could "avoid surveillance cameras."
If you're in the US, stay away from Home Depot and Lowe's if you want to not be around them. It's not universal, but it's surprising how much they are often there.
I get it may have its application in theft recovery, but it also happens to have some strong potential for ICE raids for day laborers. I don't think it has much application to theft prevention as I doubt many people even know they are there.
Deflock is awesome!
https://app.copdb.org is a similar project for mapping police & the violence they commit. Mostly in Utah but recently opened up to include ICE agents, which is talked about on their blog: https://copdb.org/articles/mapping-the-tentacles-of-state-vi...
Just anecdotally looking around my city, it's noticeable that the camera's locations have a much stronger correlation with areas of high wealth rather than high crime.
Generally, only addicts steal from poorer people.
And, where I am, you're more likely to have a gun if you're poor, because there's more exposure to crime, resulting in a much more realistic understanding that the police won't save you in an emergency.
wage theft is a much larger crime
police in the US also steal more than robbers, as a factual statistic
Weird. The city I live in has cameras, but only a few at random intersections. Most of the cameras are on a university campus, home depot, Lowes, and target. Are these normal places to put flock cameras for other cities?
Lowe's has their own contract with Flock. I've seen them outside a couple of Targets too
Haha Sudbury and Napanee are the only places in Canada to have them. They are tiny cities where nothing happens. Bored police officers imagining situations where they are needed.
Sudbury is 150k+ people so not exactly tiny in terms of Canadian cities (30th most populus).
UBC campus in Vancouver as well.
In my area I'm seeing a few random ones on roadways, but mostly clusters of them in the parking lots of Home Depots, Lowes, and Wal-Marts.
Same here, but just Lowes stores. That I know of. I surveiled the two local Lowes roughly a month ago and found two cameras not mapped, which I gleefully added myself. Want to send them a snail mail complaint at some point stating they won't be getting my business until they step back from turning us into a police state.
I contacted them about it too and got the most generic corpo pr about them being essential for the safety of their employees.
Are they Flock cameras or bog standard CCTV?
The Lowes cameras are definitely Flock. The look is unmistakable. See
https://deflock.org/identify
Interesting ... the police in this case are claiming to be the owners of the camera.
https://oaklandcounty115.com/2026/03/03/clarkston-man-accuse...
So, our city clearly has other cameras but they are from a different vendor (and don't show up on the map). I wonder how good/bad the other players in the industry are. Flock gets the press, is that just letting someone worse quietly fill in the gaps?
They are just as bad, and much better at lobbying and PR.
They might also be competent at securing access to the data, removing an obvious objection to continued relationships with Flock.
I volunteer for my city & county , and I'm a privacy advocate, so I have an ambivalent opinion on Flock cameras. Given the completely untenable demands on law enforcement, and extreme driver recklessness , the only practical way to enforce law and order with drivers is some sort of automated surveillance.
Since covid, driver recklessness has been out of control. Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common. Pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths remain extreme. At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law.
Imagine you are a policy maker, with worse driver behavior, and police force that are less able to enforce the law. What tools would you use to maintain law and order?
If you don't want surveillance, you will have to make some other tradeoffs to allow human beings to better monitor the public and enforce the law. They are not omnipotent and omniscient creatures.
Could be wrong but I don't think Flock makes speed trap or red light cameras. These are license plate readers that conduct constant surveillance of everyone at all times, whether or not you've broken any traffic laws.
plate reading allows police to identify known and unknown suspects. For known suspects (e.g. police have PC, suspect fled), plate reader can help find the suspect without high speed pursuit. For unknown suspect (e.g. citizen report of street racing), plate readers can develop a suspect pool and narrow down candidate suspects for further investigation.
Sure, I won't dispute that warrantless mass surveillance of everyone at all times makes it easier to track down criminals. I just want to be clear that that's what we're talking about. These don't only target people who are "Running reds" or driving at "extreme speed".
I chose reckless driving because it's relatable . The cameras help with all crimes. Many stores are putting them up to discourage shoplifting / armed robbery, for example.
Is your objection to convicting criminals or false convictions?
I wasn't necessarily making an objection, just an observation. But I suspect that warrantless government surveillance of the movements of millions of private citizens who have not been accused of a crime might be considered inherently objectionable by many regardless of what other effects it might have.
Consumers are overwhelmingly giving consent to surveillance via their apps. So when the government would like to it's a bad thing? why not improve policy so the government has guidelines for doing so, so they don't to conceal their agenda behind private enterprise?
> Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common.
How do these cameras prevent those crimes?
plate reading help police track down suspects without pursuit. video recording in general help police collect evidence necessary to convict reckless driving.
It sounds like you're talking about solving crimes, not preventing crimes.
solving crime and convicting criminals has first and n-order effects. For one, a few criminals commit most crimes, so locking people up reduces many crimes. Secondly, convictions are a deterrent.
Do you have a source for those claims?
“Those claims”
Police just aren't doing their job in the US, who even knows what they're doing at this point. Basically no country had the post-covid driver issue as much as America. Some states basically halved fines lol, make them do their jobs.
Seriously. People run reds in front of cops and they do nothing. I was tboned and the person that hit me had no license or anything to identify and ran a red and still was let go without anything.
What led to this?
This is what happens to your country when you don't really care about public services (in many cases they're looked down upon, just look at teachers, federal workers but also police). There's difficulty recruiting and retaining police officers in the US (i'd imagine anywhere but especially the US) because it's not seen as a good job. I'm not a huge believer in IQ but intelligent and capable people just can't be convinced to go into this line of work unless they truly care about their community (very rare). Just way more fun to go to the big city and work in an office with an AC.
I'm sure there's a million other reasons why people don't want this job, but this reflects in how harsh you can be on (new) agents.
that is a big part of it. Directly, people don't give the police enough respect, and indirectly, they don't encourage politicians to develop policy to support the police.
The amount of times I've seen cops just sitting in their cars playing on their phones or loitering around chatting and ignoring everything around them is ridiculously high.
> At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law
Don't make excuses for them. If you're legally allowed to kill people on purpose, you (should) get oversight and tight constraints. We don't because of a lot of reasons, but we should
They get paid six figure salaries for not actually doing a whole lot, they can manage.
To what extent? Do you want infinite oversight and little-to-no crimes convicted? What are your expectations on law and order vs criminality? do you believe people naturally police themselves?
This is probably not a helpful comment because it's basically a daydreamers fantasy, but here goes...
Doesn't all the surveillance concern go away if we just remove license plates from cars? Our plates identify us nearly perfectly.
The reality is that most people are tolerant of, if not supportive of surveiling car traffic. If tracking vehicle movements on public roads is such a bad thing, there'd be overwhelming support for removing license plates from vehicles. The whole purpose of a license plate is to facilitate surveillance of vehicles.
But of course, most people aren't in favor of that. They realize that cars are dangerous and behavior like speeding and running red lights needs to be claimed down on. When people are victims of crimes they like it when the police are able to track down the perpetrators - and traffic cameras are good at facilitating that. Outside of the HN bubble there's at lot less reflexive rejection of cameras.
Flock provide more than just ALPRs. They also have systems that track people.
It actually annoys me that people focus purely on the ALPRs when the other cameras are arguably much worse.
You can bet money theyre selling this data to private companies like repo men.
None in my area. Time to disperse. Get out of major cities like the pandemic promised. Fill in this great country we live in. Proliferate the governments surveillance for them.
Reminder that at least in Washington state, all images from Flock cameras are public data and thus subject to public records requests.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...
Great site.
Caveat: it does not seem to update camera statuses after initial reporting. I see several cameras that were removed long ago, or have been repositioned, but their old statuses remain.
You can use https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance to delete the cameras from OSM
DeFlock is powered by crowdsourced data from the OpenStreetMap community. The map is incomplete! New locations are always being added. Know of a missing ALPR? Contribute to the map: https://deflock.org/report/id
Are these the same as the speed limit cameras (we have a few of those -- no idea if they are Flock or continuously recording)?
Huh, none on the upper west side in NYC. Interesting.
A potentially nice addition to this map would be your closest hardware, paint, craft store, or other spray paint dealership.
Nice. The bike trail to my office and a few grocery stores doesn't have any of these.
All this does is incentivize crime doers to steal someone else's license plate first.
It has to be paired with vigorous plate fraud enforcement imo
Right, I'm sure they'll get right on it.
Jeez there’s a few all around my uni and surrounding areas, did not know about that at all.
I wonder how long until the site gets taken down. You know ... to protect the children.
The data is persisted in OSM. You can consult it with various non web Client
Remember, according to Flock's CEO, Deflock is a terrorist organization.
Lol, sure it is. Ridiculous.
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A more generous term is civil disobedience. I think the argument is the original theft was using tax payers dollars on fancy tracking devices in the first place.
It's not civil if it's law breaking.
That's literally exactly what civil disobedience is.
No that's uncivil disobedience. The difference is inaction vs action.
You might wish to do some cursory research before arguing further. For example, as a starting point, the Wikipedia page on civil disobedience has an entire section labeled "Action" listing counterexamples.
> Civil disobedience is the active and nonviolent refusal to obey certain government laws, demands, or commands to achieve social change or protest injustice
Most associated with MLK Jr, who explicitly advocated breaking the law
Civil means nonviolent. There were laws against blacks sitting at certain counters in some areas of the US in the past. Those laws were broken without violence. That's civil disobedience.
Please at least try to understand what you're talking about; you're embarrassing yourself.
That’s not a group associated with or really related to deflock. Deflock at most has stickers and signs to put up.
Yes, and according to Steve Ballmer (back in the day) Linux Torvalds was a terrorist. People are allowed to say stupid things.
I don't think this is true, I can't even find anyone else claiming this happened.
I don't remember him calling Linus a terrorist, though there were others that associated anything with a copyleft licence to be the loony left (or the commie left).
He certainly referred to both him and Linux as cancers though, that I do remember. He later changed his mind on that, and IIRC may even have publicly apologised for those statements.
He said Linux is a cancer, which was a stupid thing to say, but not the same as calling Linus a cancer. I say plenty of bad things about software that I would not say about the people who create it. I think Next.js is awful to use but that doesn't mean I think everyone at Vercel is an awful person, for example.
He may not have used the word cancer with respect to individuals, I can't find any such reference in a quick search, but he certainly had harsh words to say about proponents of Linux/OSS/similar.
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People are allowed to say stupid things....and those people should be held accountable for the stupid things they say
by "say stupid things," you of course mean "tell bald-faced lies"
The most notable one: "Developers, developers, developers!"
Everyone who is not content with the way I do business must be a terrorist for sure. o_o
Flock AI cameras run off small solar panels. Having run my own computer systems off small solar panels I know that even a minor shadow or a bit of bird poop on the panel can decrease the output enough the computer eventually cannot run and shuts down. I bet Flock cameras have the same response to a bit of bird poop like substance or shadow.
Birds tend to be attracted to seeds.
Why dont they put up a couple drones up high in the sky
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/camden-nj-homicide...
great resource but the expanding dots are a really terrible way to represent this
So silly question. Flock is making money off of my Name, Image, and Likeness can I request compensation for that?
When your car gets stolen, suddenly nobody can access the data.
Are there any coordinated efforts for widespread scrubbing or removal of these parasitic devices?
When your car gets stolen, even with camera data, the police will not do anything.
I've yet to see an amount of property crime that can get the cops to lift a finger. I've seen them ignore a low-six-figures-stolen string of after-hours break-ins at businesses, captured at multiple location on camera with clear shots of the vehicle, legible plates, and faces of the perps. Just straight-up gave the impression they thought anyone believing they might want to look into it was a moron. And no, given where this happened it wasn't because of that "prosecutors won't charge anyway" thing people complain about some places (it's led me to wonder how much of that is cops just looking to pass the blame on cases they had no intention of investigating anyway).
I do blame cops and prosecutors.
But it's also your neighbors, friends, and co-workers who yell at cops and prosecutors to not arrest nor charge property crimes.
The city might call you in a month when it gets towed wherever it was abandoned. The cops aren't going to look for it. That happened to me once.
On the "coordinated efforts" front, some anecdata:
Three separate posts on Craigslist in the Community section about Flock Cameras, trying to increase local awareness. Posted to two different cities, various posting iterations (e.g. with links / without, pics / no pics, etc.). All appeared to post fine when entered, but never saw the light of day and were marked as removed within a few minutes.
Any other subject: posts fine.
Try it yourself and see what you get.
Copper Cam.
I'm gonna get downvoted for this.
But I'd like cameras in my neighborhood. Sure, there's a security risk but there's also a risk of not catching criminals due to lack of evidence. Tons of crimes aren't prosecuted due to the lack of evidence.
A security risk doesn't impact average people, and it can be handled more easily.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
One of the main arguments against flock is their abysmal security, lack of transparency, and flagrant dishonesty. If they solved these problems then we can have a discussion about the cameras themselves. I personally would have less of a problem with them if the footage was locked down, encrypted and could only be accessed with a subpoena, but law enforcement really want dragnet surveillance, so that's unlikely to occur.
How do we make this site mainstream? The public would really start to push back if they could so viscerally experience that they are being surveilled multiple times per day.
I think you overestimate the public.
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If you know where some of them are, you can add the data yourself: https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance
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Maybe you could reach out to Flock directly and ask them to install cameras in your kitchen and bedroom too (for crime reduction reasons).
Enforcement is one way to reduce crime. Another way is to reduce poverty. Which will we choose? One road leads to South Africa. The other, Denmark.
These cameras aren't even enforcement, just surveillance.
I think we all know even with the best technology in the world the police aren't gonna get off their lazy asses if your car gets stolen. This is just a way to burn money.
Can you elaborate upon the kinds of crime reduction that these systems provide?
Isn't it obvious?
> License plate is reported to police associated with a crime.
> Cop looks up plate number
> Flock Camera shows general status and location of that license plate.
> Cops find the car involved with the crime, preventing further criminality.
So they're useless for crimes not involving a reported license plate? Sounds like a pretty worthless marginal gain. The Chinese have done it better since their mass surveillance apparatus isn't contingent on reported license plates, or even the involvement of a vehicle. Start a fight on the street and they'll find you. Is America really this incompetent that they can't match a 10+ year old system?
No, that's just one of the things you can search on.
So what you're saying is that I can report your[1] car as being associated with a crime, and the police will show up wherever you and/or your car is and treat you like a criminal?
I love this for you!
[1] the literal you, as well as the figurative
No, the comment is not saying that. You appear to have invented it.
If you think there's something wrong with my interpretation, then please explain what that is to me. I'm not seeing a problem with it.
(I may, in fact, be an idiot. Help me out here.)
Sure, you made up a bunch of things the comment doesn't say, and then said "so you're saying?". No, they are not saying.
You're just as [un]qualified to interpret the intent of the comment that I replied to as I am myself, comrade.
Neither of us wrote it.
We're policing future crime now?
I think they made a movie about that.
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love this , give me more cameras please , fuck those criminals.
Coming 2028: Dissent is a crime
Much prefer camera driven enforcement to cop-on-beat driven enforcement.
Flock cameras aren't enforcing anything. They collect your license plate and distinguishing details of your car. It's just car X with plate Y detected at location Z at time T.
Notably, they are not used for speed detection or 'good driving' detection.
You might think that having a constantly-present, objective, impartial camera enforcing a law is better than a sometimes-present, subjective, often not impartial beat cop doing that. But that's not what Flock does. Flock just turns that 'sometimes-present' beat cop into an 'always-present' beat cop, without addressing any of the other beat cop problems.
And automatically makes you a suspect in case any crime is committed in the area and you happened to be there.
This is great, we can see where more cameras need to be added around the neighborhood!
This is pretty cool. I think I'd want a few more on my block. Can an individual request and fund one?
It's clearly true there have been abuses as a result of this technology. And its also clearly true criminals have been caught as a result of the cams, that otherwise would not have been.
If you believe the costs of the the abuses, and potential abuses, exceed the benefit, then at least be honest about the trade-off, because there are real benefits.
Personally, I believe the costs, on net, are worth the benefits. And in so far as the costs can be further reduced, without loosing most benefits, then great. This is not right or wrong. It's just a question of values, and how you weight the costs vs benefits.
Don't down-vote this all at once.
Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My question to you is: how are you assessing the costs? Do you know how many crimes have been stopped as a result of these cams? Do you know the extent to which our privacy is being lost and our data is being used against us or others?
I take into account publicly available information (news articles), factor in personal anecdotes, and reason about human nature and incentives. I know the extent of reported abuses, and I do my best to extrapolate. It's not perfect, but such is life.
To be clear, even if we all agreed on the data, I still would not expect everyone to take the same position. There are subjective differences in values.
I get that but at the very least one should demand evidence to their efficacy
Flock has put out a report claiming 10% crime in the US is solved using their technology. There are of course counter argument, that claim this is not valid.
https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/how-many-crimes-do-aut...
I strongly agree with this take.