alt Hacker News>>Flock and law enforcement regularly cite documented cases where LPR helped solve violent crimes, recover stolen vehicles, and locate missing persons. Those outcomes are real.
My opposition wouldn't change regardless but are those outcomes real?
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I have no doubt that provided a vast camera network covering every ingress and egress into a city, and every major intersection, plus a database of when and where a license plate was last seen, cops can find their suspect
It used to be that news articles would claim that the police used “CCTV from local businesses” to catch a crook. Even back then I knew this was cover for Ring, Flock and who knows what else. they just didn’t want the bad press.
At this point you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to understand that parallel construction happens all the time. They have more tools that we know about, and they want to keep it that way.
Everyone should throw some money to 404 media. They are independent and doing the best work right now to keep these things in the public eye.
Yes. Prior to flock, my city trialed LPRs attached to the local power company’s poles. In the first month, they recovered more stolen cars than any prior years total recoveries. I’ve got mixed feelings about Flock, LPRs, and what it allows people and governments to do.
I’m 100% sold on the results.
guess what prolific career criminals do with crime cars?
they look for a car that is very similar if not exact make and model of thier stolen vehicle, then they "clone" the victims license plate with a sheet of embossment copper and a stylus, apply paint at thier shop and affix the imposter to the crime vehicle. that buggers the whole LPR thing.
they can replicate dozens of plates in a day and offer the service for contras.
Flock's position, statistically, is that if during the course of an investigation into a crime, a detective queries Flock, and the crime is later solved, that Flock "helped solve a crime", regardless of the merit or value of the query. "Saw a vehicle, look it up, "nope, unrelated", but still "helped solve".
The AI slop in that quote sure is real.
In Seattle at least, the majority of homicide cases are solved with the assistance of surveillance cameras (though what % of said cameras are specifically Flock, I'm not sure): https://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2026/03/05/new-analysis-rtcc-...