Key Takeaways
We had a local story where the gist was the police said they searched ALPR for the welfare of a young woman, but it was actually more focused on a possible abortion. [1] "Unrelated" this same Sheriff was later charged with sexual harassment, perjury, and retaliation against a witness [2]. These are the types that are able to easily track you if they wanted to.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...
[2] https://www.fox4news.com/news/johnson-county-sheriff-arreste...
> camera:type fixed
> direction 340
> man_made surveillance
> surveillance:type ALPR
Which results in "Operated by: Unknown, Made by: Unknown". What am I supposed to do with that info I wonder. How would I find out if it's actually Flock or if law enforcement would actually have access to this particular camera.
Obviously, this website does nothing for us, just glance up at any egress or ingress to where you live (in the US) and note you've been tracked. Or feel free to update the node with better information if you have it.
You can see the requirements here https://deflock.me/report/id but the two you're looking for are.
manufacturer operator
I think they should add Siemens Sicore cameras to their known camera database, but they do show up on Deflock despite not being mentioned explicitly on the website. Here is an example in one of my contributions via OSM. https://deflock.me/map#map=18/53.786783/-1.551438
You could point a camera down the street you live on and record the license plate of every car that passes and video of every pedestrian for a few hundred dollars.
I thought about doing this a couple of years ago when there were a few instances of theft going on. To get into or out of my neighborhood, you have to drive by my home and I wondered if I could capture the license plate of the thieves.
And in most cases, the ones at home improvement stores are the only ones in the city. Salem (the state capital) only has them at Lowes. Eugene is an exception with many cameras (including Home Depot and Lowe's).
I'd be interested in when these cameras were placed. If recent, I'd wonder about an ICE/immigration response.
Just zooming around the map, here's a handful of citys I've seen...
Lowe's: Albany, Salem, McMinville, Vancouver WA, Fairview, Eugene, Bend, Redmond, Medford
Home Depot: Sherwood, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Cedar Mill (Beaverton), Tigard, Vancouver WA, Portland (multiple), Gresham, Oregon City
* Edit * Ah here's an article about this: https://www.404media.co/home-depot-and-lowes-share-data-from...
They aren’t going to do all that if it’s a relatively small value theft. And the big value stuff is usually locked down.
And if it’s for their own protection why be part of a bigger network shared with law enforcement for whatever they (LEO) wants?
This is totally configurable inside Flock. It's very easy for a police department to do. Sometimes they'll argue that they need to keep sharing open because sharing is reciprocal --- that's not true (in fact, you don't even need to have Flock cameras to get access to Flock data; that's a SKU Flock has!).
We piloted Flock with open sharing (my commission got consultation for the police General Order for ALPRs in our municipality, we pushed for no sharing alongside a bunch of other restrictions, we got most of what we wanted but not the sharing stuff). When the pilot ended and the board needed a go-no-go on deployment, another push got made on sharing and we got out-of-state sharing disabled as a condition of deployment. Then at contract renewal, when the writing was on the wall that we were killing the contract†, our police department turned off all sharing.
Even if you're not worried about stuff like reproductive health care (you should be), it doesn't make sense to allow departments that don't share your General Orders direct access to your telemetry.
† I wasn't a supporter on this for complicated reasons.
"Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)" (70 comments), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45487452
Adversarial computer vision and DIY OSS $250 RPi Hailo ALPR (2M views), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ
"Tire Pressure Sensor IDs: Why, Where and When (2015)" (30 comments), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45490202
So the impetus is twofold:
- Funding provided by programs such as Operation Stonegarden and other grants
- Activists agitate for Criminal Justice Reform --> Surge in crime --> The People clamor for Enhanced Security Measures and DIY
If you speak in a public place you should expect to possibly be recorded. If you want to share a message with the public, you should cower when people receive it. If you want privacy, then protest somewhere private.
How do we come back from this?
It's time to go to your city council meeting and demand they do not use this technology. It was time yesterday.
62 more comments available on Hacker News
Not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator. We simply enrich the public API with analytics.