SpyVeillance: License Plates, Ring Doorbells... Neighborhoods Flock'ing to Full Bore 1984

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Oct 24 20:55:46 PDT 2021


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/license-plate-scanners-were-supposed-to-bring-peace-of-mind-instead-they-tore-the-neighborhood-apart/ar-AAPQcTp

https://www.flocksafety.com/flock-for-neighborhood-security/
http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/05/12/11-17892.pdf
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/06/23/opinion-at-gunpoint-police-handcuffed-me-because-of-a-license-reader-error/
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/aurora-police-detain-black-family-after-mistaking-their-vehicle-as-stolen

It is not the errors, but the system itself,
route around, shut it all down.

"License plate readers are rapidly reshaping private security in
American neighborhoods," reports the Washington Post, as
aggressively-marketed $2,500-a-year "safety-as-a-service" packages
"spread to cover practically everywhere anyone chooses to live in the
United States" and "bringing police surveillance tools to the masses
with an automated watchdog that records 24 hours a day." Flock Safety,
the industry leader, says its systems have been installed in 1,400
cities across 40 states and now capture data from more than a billion
cars and trucks every month. "This is not just for million-dollar
homes," Flock's founder, Garrett Langley, said. "This is America at
its core..."

Its solar-powered, motion-sensing camera can snap a dozen photos of a
single plate in less than a second — even in the dark, in the rain, of
a car driving 100 mph up to 75 feet away, as Flock's marketing
materials say. Piped into a neighborhood's private Flock database, the
photos are made available for the homeowners to search, filter or
peruse. Machine-learning software categorizes each vehicle based on
two dozen attributes, including its color, make and model; what state
its plates came from; and whether it had bumper stickers or a roof
rack. Each "vehicle fingerprint" is pinpointed on a map and tracked by
how often it had been spotted in the past month. The plates are also
run against law enforcement watch lists for abducted children, stolen
cars, missing people and wanted fugitives; if there's a match, the
system alerts the nearest police force with details on how to track it
down...

Flock's customer base has roughly quadrupled since 2019, with police
agencies and homeowners associations in more than 1,400 cities today,
and the company has hired sales representatives in 30 states to court
customers with promises of a safer, more-monitored life. Company
officials have also attended town hall meetings and papered homeowners
associations with glossy marketing materials declaring its system "the
most user-friendly, least invasive way for communities to stop crime":
a network of cameras "that see like a detective," "protect home
values" and "automate [the] neighborhood watch ... while you sleep."
Along the way, the Atlanta-based company has become an unlikely
darling of American tech. The company said in July it had raised $150
million from prominent venture capital firms such as Andreessen
Horowitz, which said Flock was pursuing "a massive opportunity in
shaping the future...."

Flock deletes the footage every 30 days by default and encourages
customers to search only when investigating crime. But the company
otherwise lets customers set their own rules: In some neighborhoods,
all the homeowners can access the images for themselves...

Camera opponents didn't want the neighborhood's leaders to anoint
themselves gatekeepers, choosing who does and doesn't belong. And they
worried that if someone's car was broken into, but no one knew exactly
when, the system could lead to hundreds of drivers, virtually all of
them innocent, coming under suspicion for the crime. They also worried
about the consequences of the cameras getting it wrong. In San
Francisco, police had handcuffed a woman at gunpoint in 2009 after a
camera garbled her plate number; another family was similarly detained
last year because a thief had swiped their tag before committing a
crime. And last year in Aurora, 30 miles from Paradise Hills, police
handcuffed a mother and her children at gunpoint after a license plate
reader flagged their SUV as stolen. The actual stolen vehicle, a
motorcycle, had the same plate number from another state. Police
officials have said racial profiling did not play a role, though the
drivers in all three cases were Black. (The license plate readers in
these cases were not Flock devices, and the company said its systems
would have shown more accurate results...)

The Paradise Hills opponents were right to be skeptical about a local
crime wave. According to Jefferson County sheriff's records shared
with The Post, the only crime reports written up since September 2020
included two damaged mailboxes, a fraudulent unemployment claim and
some stuff stolen out of three parked cars, two of which had been left
unlocked. "I wouldn't exactly say it's a hot spot," patrol commander
Dan Aten told The Post...

The cameras clicked on in August, a board member said. In the weeks
since, the neighborhood hasn't seen any reports of crime. The local
sheriff's office said it hasn't used the Flock data to crack any
cases, nor has it found the need to ask.
Flock's founder, Garrett Langley, nonetheless tells the Washington
Post, "There are 17,000 cities in America.

"Until we have them all, we're not done."


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