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Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World (404media.co) 35

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible. [...] Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country.

"It went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around," [said Alabama resident and developer Will Freeman]. "I wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, 'Can I make a database of these license plate readers?'" And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock (PDF) to the posts holding up Huntsville's ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world. [...]

When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world. He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping parts of Flock's website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, has 677 cameras.

People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them. For example, all of the cameras in downtown Huntsville are pointing away from the downtown core, meaning they are primarily focused on detecting cars that are entering downtown Huntsville from other areas.

Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World

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  • License Plate reader (Score:4, Informative)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2024 @05:21PM (#64941059)

    Around here the license plate is only on the back of the vehicle

    Anyway I don't have a car, so Flock Them!

    • Hopefully, /. readers are aware that it's local governments of all sorts adding these cameras; and, contrary to the media narrative, lots of liberal city councils are
      voting to install cameras.

      Democrat led Houston https://abc13.com/houston-secu... [abc13.com]
      Houston City Council approves ordinance that requires security cameras outside certain businesses
      ByTom Abrahams KTRK Wednesday, April 20, 2022

      And another

      https://www.govtech.com/public... [govtech.com]
      Ohio Cities Use Millions of ARPA Dollars for Surveillance - Several cities in No

      • Odd how pointing out that democrat run cities adding cameras to track citizens is modded down to -1.

        Then again the other party adding cameras to track people breaking the law is modded up to 5: insightful.

        I guess separating the "adding cameras to track people" and "political party involved" are hard to distinctly divide by readers.

  • ... to the panopticon.

  • by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2024 @05:30PM (#64941097) Homepage

    Where I live, police department vehicles have license plate scanners mounted on their vehicles. That's going to be a bit tough to map.

    • by Himmy32 ( 650060 )
      A license plate reader on a law enforcement vehicle that is used to alert on outstanding warrants, amber alerts, etc. seems like a more reasonable use case than an interconnected system of static cameras that can be used track movements of any individual over time.
      • The fact that the car-mounted units are not static, does not in any way prevent them from augmenting the web of those static cameras, tracking the movements of individuals over time.

    • To track mobile license plate readers, use a license plate reader to track where the vehicles with license plate readers go. Anyone can run a plate reader if they want to.
      • Sounds easy enough! So how do you get your hands on the list of license plates for cars that have readers? Otherwise, you're just reading license plates.

  • The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras

    Surveillance does not eliminate crime -it just provides recordings of crime. Criminals know they are being recorded so they hide their identities. Unless you get lucky you just have evidence that a crime was committed -by someone.

    • It's always marketing and advertising, and these assholes figured out how to make the taxpayer fund their marketing and advertising research. I mean, knowing that that the person that lives at 391A Bumshuckle Street goes to the grocery store every Saturday at 3:15pm, two hours after the mail is usually delivered would be a great thing for Big Multinational Foods, Inc to know, so they can stuff your mailbox full of ads and coupons specifically on Saturdays so they can influence you to by Givesyoubeetus bread

    • Most criminals are not that smart. Look at the any number of convenience store/robberies/murders. You want to believe surveillance won't be helpful, but think about it logically it can help. Surveillance doesn't help when there either aren't enough cameras, or police don't bother to use it because they dont have time or care (this is probably where AI can help). You'll note from this reference, https://www.ncja.org/crimeandj... [ncja.org] that "Officers don’t download video for most serious, unsolved crimes on

    • by haruchai ( 17472 )

      "Surveillance does not eliminate crime -it just provides recordings of crime"
      Yes, bodycams often do, unless the criminal being recorded turns it off

  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2024 @05:41PM (#64941131)

    You can build your own. It probably won't be as good, but the cost is pretty marginal. I've considered adding a couple of cameras to my home security system for scanning plates to log vehicles just for fun, but there's a lot of extra information you can pull from that if you think about it.

    • As far as I'm aware, access to vehicle plate databases is restricted to law enforcement and auto insurance agencies. Am I mistaken?
      • Nothing stops you from building your OWN database and looking for patterns in it.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The law might, depending on your jurisdiction.

          In Europe licence plates and location data (even if only implied by the location of the camera) are considered personal data. That means you would need to put a sign informing people that you are collecting it, and have a "legitimate interest" basis for collecting it. Curiosity doesn't count, but stuff like security of your property does.

          You would also need to provide contact details and respond to GDPR requests from anyone who asked.

          So it's probably more hassle

          • I'm generally pro-privacy, and I'd have an issue with people putting their cameras on the Internet, but GPDR covering public spaces recorded by private security cameras seems a bit much.

            My cameras mainly cover my own property, but I have a bit of throw up and down the street so anyone who does something to my property can be seen on approach or departure with a hope of catching their car. Perfectly legal here.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              There was a case recently in the UK about this: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-co... [judiciary.uk]

              Fairhurst v Woodard.

              The judgement was that while something like a doorbell camera or CCTV camera that mostly covers your own land and only incidentally covers public areas is covered by legitimate interests in improving security, your cameras might not meet that requirement if they were deliberately positioned to capture part of the street and could not easily be adjusted to avoid it. You would have to argue that the security b

              • My cameras do record audio 24/7 though that's (sadly) legal here and I know I'm not spying on anybody. I do a function check once in a while and I'll check the driveway cam to see if the garbage has been picked up yet, but listening to audio or reviewing old recordings only happens if there's an issue. And when I installed the cameras I made sure the neighbor whose side yard was visible knew where the cameras were aimed and their intended use, and they were OK with it.

                Mainly laws are required because of p

      • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2024 @07:32PM (#64941451)

        Auto dealers, private parking enforcement come to mind. I think if you set your mind to the problem, finding loopholes in privacy laws would be pretty easy.

        Ever park somewhere and swipe a credit card and then enter your plate number? The contractors that operate these systems on behalf of cities have built their own large databases from these entries.

  • I guess none of them use AI to check if the license plate matches the car type and color?

  • Cameras that take unregistered cars of the road, Locate stolen cars or at least their plates. If they are being used to track people who did something bad and help police ok. But if they are being used to track innocent people on their daily business or could be misused and abused by a stalker then that is a bad idea. 677 cameras for a population of 50,000 thats seems excessive. Why and who installed them.
  • Its crazy how many of these my relatedly small town has. I can't leave my neighborhood without driving through a set.
  • ... works pretty well on my 4x4. Sorry about that slop on my plates.

  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2024 @08:23PM (#64941539)

    "this project will likely show how infeasible traveling without being tracked actually is in America"

    There are multiple online services that will return the license plate numbers that are present in images you send them. They can sometimes show what kind of car it is and other details. In the USA you can't legally get the owner of the plate unless law enforcement, but you can definitely get a personal log of all car plates that pass across your camera.

  • Some states they are illegal, but in mine they aren't. I use a Fresnel lens license plate cover on the front & rear of my plates. From DIRECTLY behind my vehicle, the plate is easy to read. At an angle or above, it is 100% blocked.
  • There was a similar project in NYC back around Occupy Wall Street to map out fixed stationary cameras and provide users a way to route around them. I actually had this on a rainy day project and am glad someone else has taken this initiative, it's precisely how I envisioned it.

  • The USA is looking like a police state.
    And it's about to get worse. Scary!

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