Flock Safety’s car-tracking cameras have been spreading across the United States like an invasive species, preying on public safety fears and gobbling up massive amounts of sensitive driver data. The technology not only tracks vehicles by their license plates, but also creates “fingerprints” of each vehicle, including the make, model, color and other distinguishing features.
Through crowdsourcing and open-source research, DeFlock.me aims to “shine a light on the widespread use of ALPR technology, raise awareness about the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties, and empower the public to take action.” While EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance project has identified more than 1,700 agencies using ALPRs, DeFlock has mapped out more than 16,000 individual camera locations, more than a third of which are Flock Safety devices.
Flock Safety’s cease and desist later is just the latest in a long list of groups turning to bogus intellectual property claims to silence their critics.
Uh if the cameras are in public, they have no expectation of privacy, right?
Yeah but it’s a corporation. They get more rights than us humans.
There is a question on the constitutionality of automated surveillance technology, the type of data that is being collected, who has access to them, and how they are using it. Additionally, some other concerns I can think of off the top of my head are:
We appreciate your well thought out and constructive comment, but the one you were replying to was about the cameras themselves not having any expectation of privacy, a reversal of the common excuse from the camera owners that your comment addresses.
Oh, definitely not what I thought or intended. Thanks for the heads up and kind reply. For clarity, I believe those cameras shouldn’t be installed or used, especially under this administration.
Aggregating location data is very different from having a picture taken in public, wouldn’t you agree?
If it was a person maybe. But these are objects. Objects have no expectation of privacy.
You may have misunderstood my comment. I was joking about Flock being mad at their cameras being tracked, by using one of the arguments for public surveillance.