To The Surprise Of No One, Cops Are Using ALPR Cameras To Stalk Their Exes

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/07/to-the-surprise-of-no-one-cops-are-using-alpr-cameras-to-stalk-their-exes/

Appleton, WI follows Oshkosh's lead and ditches Flock. Progress!

Appleton ending use of Flock cameras
https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/local-news/appleton-ending-use-of-flock-cameras/

#flock #flocksafety

Flock’s Sales Pitch Included Recordings Of Kids’ Gymnastic Classes

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/05/05/flocks-sales-pitch-included-recordings-of-kids-gymnastic-classes/

Does anyone have any links to good rad #zines to print and share?

I’d love zines presenting left/anarchist/anti colonial perspectives on:

- the #Iran war
- genocide in #Gaza #WestBank and #Palestine
- #MutualAid #FoodNotBombs
- #BigTech #AI #Surveillance #FlockSafety
- #MeshTech
- #AntiPolice #PoliceAbolishion #AntiICE

#ACAB #FlockSafety

"Colorado Grandma Keeps Getting Pulled Over Because Police Cameras Cannot Tell the Difference Between a Zero and the Letter O
Olivia Richman

A 76-year-old woman in Colorado did not expect her golden years to involve repeated run-ins with law enforcement. Yet here she is, getting pulled over again and again, not for speeding, not for running red lights, but because of a one-character error tied to a police database. That tiny typo has turned her ordinary drives into recurring traffic stops, and she has no easy way to stop it.

If this sounds familiar, it should. We covered a nearly identical case in Cherry Hills that has been making the rounds, where a Colorado driver was repeatedly pulled over after Flock Safety alerts flagged his vehicle incorrectly.

The culprit is a system from Flock Safety, which uses automated license plate readers to alert officers when a vehicle of interest is spotted in the area. It is designed to catch stolen cars and flag plates associated with criminal activity. In her case, it has flagged her vehicle as having stolen plates, which is incorrect. Every time she drives through certain areas of Colorado, the cameras pick up her plate, run it against the database, and send officers out to pull her over.

The mistake is not hers. A suspect’s license plate was entered incorrectly—mixing up a zero and the letter O—and her completely valid plate now matches that bad entry in the system. To be clear, her plate is correct. The error exists in the database. The camera reads her plate correctly, matches it to the incorrect entry, and flags her as a suspect every single time

(. . .)

Flock Safety is a private company that provides automated license plate reader technology to police departments across the country. The cameras are typically mounted in fixed locations, and they capture images of passing vehicles and their plates. When a plate matches one flagged in a database, an alert is sent to law enforcement in real time.

The system is widely used because it allows departments to extend their reach without putting more officers on the street. One camera can theoretically monitor thousands of vehicles per day. For legitimate cases involving stolen cars or vehicles connected to serious crimes, the technology can be a useful tool. The problem arises when the underlying database contains errors, because the camera does not know the difference between a typo and the truth.

It simply reads the plate, checks the list, and sends the alert.

(. . .)

What makes this story particularly troubling is that it is not a one-off glitch. After the Cherry Hills story aired, multiple Colorado drivers reached out to say the same thing was happening to them. All of them had been wrongly entered into a police database. None of them had been given a clear process for getting removed.

That is a significant problem. If these errors are widespread enough that a single news segment prompted multiple people to come forward, the question becomes how many people are silently dealing with the same issue without knowing they have any options at all. The common thread is not the drivers—it is the database. Each case traces back to incorrect plate entries that the system continues to treat as valid."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/colorado-grandma-keeps-getting-pulled-172923771.html

https://dominusmarkham.com/your-neighbours-camera-is-watching-you/

#FlockSafety
#SurveillanceState
#PrivacyRights
#DigitalRights
#CivilLiberties

Palo Alto license plate data searched by hundreds of out-of-state agencies

Despite local officials’ claims to the contrary, hundreds of law enforcement agencies from around the country searched data from Palo Alto’s automatic license plate reader cameras.

The city’s ALPR cameras, operated by Flock Safety were made available to out-of-state and federal agencies beginning in late 2023.

#PaloAlto #SiliconValley #alpr #flocksafety #surveillance #privacy

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/police/2026/04/22/palo-alto-license-plate-data-searched-by-hundreds-of-out-of-state-agencies/

So I will tell everybody that follows me and everybody else in the general space that if you want to talk about #flocksafety, and what flock safety is a company does and who funded it, and what the technology actually does and why it’s data is being used to violate basic human rights, I’m one of a few former flock safety employees that you can talk to to get that understanding

#trans #queer #lgbtia #policestate #surveillance #orwell #1984 #dystopia #thiel #palantir