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louwrentius • today at 8:33 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

The idea that a for-profit company is allowed to scan licence plates and make this data available and searchable without restrictions seems ludicrous to me.

In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance. The NL situation is not perfect, but it's on a different playing field.

With the absolute unregulated situation in the USA, the outcome has been predictable: cops stalking people and innocent people jailed for weeks due to mistakes.

I love Benn Jordan's work, including the video where they went to a Flock office building, filming employees. They didn't like being filmed, but it did not teach them a lesson unfortunately.

If you (still) work for Flock, don't think of yourself as a moral, decent person.


Replies

culi • today at 8:37 PM

How do you ensure privacy laws are being followed by police?

Also do you have any guarantees that national security apparatuses aren't able to access this data if they have the right excuse (e.g. counter-terrorism, narcotics enforcement, etc)

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officeplant • today at 8:42 PM

>In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance.

In my city/state (Southern USA) you often see plain unmarked cars with multiple ALPR cameras mounted to the rear of the car. These are usually private companies patrolling streets & parking lots to build databases for REPO/Towing operations. Wouldn't surprise me if they are selling plate location databases to databrokers & law enforcement.

Plus Axon is already replacing Flock in some areas. Unfortunately there are multiple players in this game and Flock going down is only slowing their spread slightly.