A cybersecurity researcher covered a Toyota in an AI-generated pattern to confuse Flock cameras

[RudyBob]

Flock cameras are demonized by some for purposes that are not there intended use.

I have watched presser's where bad guys are caught and eliminated because of Flock cameras. I have not seen a presser where a good guy was pulled over and beaten with a hose.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd strongly supports automated license plate readers and Flock camera systems, touting them as vital, life-saving tools for law enforcement. He emphasizes that the technology rapidly tracks down dangerous fleeing suspects, helps solve violent crimes, and locates missing, vulnerable people.

Sheriff Judd has publicly stated that these systems drastically cut down investigation times, noting that specific violent suspects or missing persons would be found immediately with active reader data.

Public Safety Value: He firmly believes the capability to intercept dangerous criminals outweighs general pushback, framing the infrastructure as an essential modern shield for communities.

I support Flock cameras because safety is governments primary role.

 

[GoldenGoat]

I heard thousands of innocent people have been pulled over by police at gunpoint because flock misread the plate.

 

[GTvon]

If your local, state, or federal government respected you as a human on any level, we wouldn't be reading this. I don't believe in a political truth, or any form of civic sports, but I do believe this is what it looks like for citizens to be taken advantage of. Feel however you want about that, just don't bother telling me about it.

So you're willing to talk but not listen.

 

[GTvon]

I heard thousands of innocent people have been pulled over by police at gunpoint because flock misread the plate.

And what happened?

 

[GoldenGoat]

And what happened?

People sue and your tax dollars pay them for being terrorized and sometimes injured.

 

[GTvon]

People sue and your tax dollars pay them for being terrorized and sometimes injured.

Could you link the Case files?

 

[dmatheson]

If you don't want people providing opinions on your opinion, probably a better idea to keep them to yourself instead of broadcasting them on a public forum.
Almost like driving is a privilege, not a right, and you have no right to privacy in a public space to begin with.

I hear you and don't disagree, but there's a balance BECAUSE law enforcement has so MUCH power and this kind of surveillance can be so easily and is on a daily basis, abused. But to be fair, some of our fellow citizens have always had to bear unreasonable scrutiny from law enforcement; it's just now that the rest of us have to deal with it that we're like, "Uh, this is not cool."

 

[Loadedaxe]

I heard thousands of innocent people have been pulled over by police at gunpoint because flock misread the plate.

"I heard thousands..."

Well, damn, case closed then.
Nothing establishes a statistic quite like "I heard."

But let's assume for a minute that Flock DID misread a plate and an innocent person was subsequently pulled over at gunpoint.

Who pulled them over?

Who decided an automated plate reader hit was sufficient justification for a high risk stop?

Who decided not to visually verify the plate, vehicle, or other information before escalating the encounter?

Flock?

No. The police did.

A false positive from technology is a technology issue. Treating that false positive as unquestionable gospel and pointing guns at someone without adequate verification is a police procedure and user error issue.

The system provides information. The human being using that information is still responsible for verifying it and deciding what action is appropriate.

Blaming Flock for every bad decision someone makes after receiving an alert is like blaming a smoke detector because a firefighter kicked down the wrong door.

There are legitimate privacy arguments to make about Flock. "The computer told the cop something and the cop stopped thinking" isn't one of them.

 

[dmatheson]

Flock cameras are demonized by some for purposes that are not there intended use.

I have watched presser's where bad guys are caught and eliminated because of Flock cameras. I have not seen a presser where a good guy was pulled over and beaten with a hose.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd strongly supports automated license plate readers and Flock camera systems, touting them as vital, life-saving tools for law enforcement. He emphasizes that the technology rapidly tracks down dangerous fleeing suspects, helps solve violent crimes, and locates missing, vulnerable people.

Sheriff Judd has publicly stated that these systems drastically cut down investigation times, noting that specific violent suspects or missing persons would be found immediately with active reader data.

Public Safety Value: He firmly believes the capability to intercept dangerous criminals outweighs general pushback, framing the infrastructure as an essential modern shield for communities.

I support Flock cameras because safety is governments primary role.

I'm not hearing that same sheriff admit SOMETIMES they get it wrong and terrify law-abiding citizens. What is the recourse for said citizens who are unfairly harassed? Law enforcement tends to be a pretty blunt instrument that thinks the apprehension of one bad guy totally justifies or at least gives cover for law enforcement's mistakes. High school teachers have to deal with the EXACT same populations as the police, and if they lay a hand or use foul language, their job is lost, and they're a pariah, but we accept horrible behavior from our "peace officers" as the cost of doing business because their job is so hard. When law enforcement lowers its blue wall and starts calling out and punishing its own for unacceptable behavior, then I'll reconsider my aversion to mass surveillance.

 

[Loadedaxe]

People sue and your tax dollars pay them for being terrorized and sometimes injured.

Who?

Flock or the Police?

 

[Loadedaxe]

I'm not hearing that same sheriff admit SOMETIMES they get it wrong and terrify law-abiding citizens. What is the recourse for said citizens who are unfairly harassed? Law enforcement tends to be a pretty blunt instrument that thinks the apprehension of one bad guy totally justifies or at least gives cover for law enforcement's mistakes. High school teachers have to deal with the EXACT same populations as the police, and if they lay a hand or use foul language, their job is lost, and they're a pariah, but we accept horrible behavior from our "peace officers" as the cost of doing business because their job is so hard. When law enforcement lowers its blue wall and starts calling out and punishing its own for unacceptable behavior, then I'll reconsider my aversion to mass surveillance.

I think you're arguing against about five different things at once, and most of them aren't what @RudyBob said.

If a police officer wrongfully detains someone, uses excessive force, fails to verify information, or otherwise violates someone's rights, then absolutely hold that officer and department accountable. I don't think you'll find many reasonable people arguing otherwise.

But what does any of that have to do with whether Flock cameras are useful?

If a Flock camera misreads a plate, that's a false positive that needs to be verified. The camera doesn't initiate a traffic stop, draw a weapon, handcuff somebody, or decide how much force to use. Human beings make those decisions.

And that's exactly WHY officers shouldn't blindly treat an automated hit as infallible.

The comparison to high school teachers is strange too. Teachers and police may encounter some of the same people, but their jobs, authority, responsibilities, and circumstances aren't remotely equivalent. My old algebra teacher wasn't generally expected to chase an armed robbery suspect down I-4.

You can oppose police misconduct.
You can demand accountability.
You can question data retention and privacy.
You can demand safeguards on automated technology.

AND you can recognize that license plate readers have legitimate uses in finding stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, and missing people.

Those positions aren't mutually exclusive.

Throwing every grievance you've ever had with law enforcement into the conversation doesn't demonstrate that Flock is bad technology. It demonstrates that you have a problem with how some police officers use their authority.

That's a legitimate conversation.

It's just a different one.

I think a lot of people here are so focused on the trees directly in front of them that they're forgetting there's an entire forest behind them.

Open your minds enough to separate the technology from the people using it, look at the entire picture, and put the blame where the blame actually belongs.

If the technology fails, blame the technology.

If the policy is bad, blame the policy.

If an officer makes a bad decision, blame the officer.

But blaming the camera for everything that happens afterward is like blaming the hammer because somebody swung it at the wrong nail.

 

[DEMinSoCal]

People sue and your tax dollars pay them for being terrorized and sometimes injured.

I could use some quick cash -- any idea how to get my car identified as "wanted and dangerous"?

 

[Junior S]

It's not only that.
"A person or car wearing the pattern would still appear in the footage, but the detection system may not flag it as a person or vehicle."
If you masquerade your car so that it can't be flagged as vehicle, a self-driving car may not recognize it as another car it should account for when maneuvering. This puts everyone around at risk.
I really wish there were less people like this "researcher" who act first and (eventually) think later.

Agreed. This also assumes the teacher had access to a flock camera feed and storage. They didn't

And while they may confuse the camera, a human eye would review it and determine the car looks like a kaleidoscope. It'd be pretty easy to locate

Attention seeking nerd. Nothing more.

 

[Au Contraire]

If you don't want people providing opinions on your opinion, probably a better idea to keep them to yourself instead of broadcasting them on a public forum.
Almost like driving is a privilege, not a right, and you have no right to privacy in a public space to begin with.

"The RIGHT of a CITIZEN to TRAVEL UPON THE PUBLIC HIGHWAYS and TO TRANSPORT HIS PROPERTY THEREON in the ordinary course of life and business is A COMMON RIGHT which he has under his RIGHT TO ENJOY LIFE AND LIBERTY.... It includes the RIGHT in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day; and under existing modes of travel includes the RIGHT to drive a horse-drawn carriage or wagon thereon, or TO OPERATE AN AUTOMOBILE THEREON for the usual and ordinary purposes of life and business. It is NOT A MERE PRIVILEGE, like the privilege of moving a house in the street, operating a business stand in the street, or transporting persons or property for hire along the street, which the city may permit or prohibit at will. Thompson v. Smith, 154 S.E. 579, 1929".

RIGHTS can not be voided by presidential fiat or congressional passage of a law, or by courts unlawfully, outside the LIMITS imposed by the Constitution, making law. Under our system, even Amendments cannot void the Bill of Rights; our Rights are not granted, but are pre-existing and guaranteed. So they can not be taken away. We can only surrender them, and if we choose not to . . .

shovelDriver, 2013-01-14 ( http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013...warrantless-blood-tests-in-dui-cases/#respond )

IIRC, someone responded to that comment by saying that the court decision was not binding except for that case. However, that begs the question of why any court decision is respected, since the law is supposed to apply equally to all. Obviously that is not accurate, but it does point out that courts make egregious mistakes all the time. That being so, what makes any court decision the correct one?

If we choose original intent, all we have to do is look at the history books. Licenses, gun laws, and almost every other administrative fiat was considered unconstitutional by the Founders. What changed? The so-called 16th Amendment (which even the Court acknowledged a few months afterward, had not met constitutional requirements for passage (but it's too late now), and everything that followed . . .

 

[Loadedaxe]

"The RIGHT of a CITIZEN to TRAVEL UPON THE PUBLIC HIGHWAYS and TO TRANSPORT HIS PROPERTY THEREON in the ordinary course of life and business is A COMMON RIGHT which he has under his RIGHT TO ENJOY LIFE AND LIBERTY.... It includes the RIGHT in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day; and under existing modes of travel includes the RIGHT to drive a horse-drawn carriage or wagon thereon, or TO OPERATE AN AUTOMOBILE THEREON for the usual and ordinary purposes of life and business. It is NOT A MERE PRIVILEGE, like the privilege of moving a house in the street, operating a business stand in the street, or transporting persons or property for hire along the street, which the city may permit or prohibit at will. Thompson v. Smith, 154 S.E. 579, 1929".

RIGHTS can not be voided by presidential fiat or congressional passage of a law, or by courts unlawfully, outside the LIMITS imposed by the Constitution, making law. Under our system, even Amendments cannot void the Bill of Rights; our Rights are not granted, but are pre-existing and guaranteed. So they can not be taken away. We can only surrender them, and if we choose not to . . .

shovelDriver, 2013-01-14 ( http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013...warrantless-blood-tests-in-dui-cases/#respond )

IIRC, someone responded to that comment by saying that the court decision was not binding except for that case. However, that begs the question of why any court decision is respected, since the law is supposed to apply equally to all. Obviously that is not accurate, but it does point out that courts make egregious mistakes all the time. That being so, what makes any court decision the correct one?

If we choose original intent, all we have to do is look at the history books. Licenses, gun laws, and almost every other administrative fiat was considered unconstitutional by the Founders. What changed? The so-called 16th Amendment (which even the Court acknowledged a few months afterward, had not met constitutional requirements for passage (but it's too late now), and everything that followed . . .

You really should have kept reading Thompson v. Smith after finding the paragraph you liked.

Yes, the court said citizens have a common right to travel on public highways, including by automobile. I guess you stopped there.

And then, almost immediately afterward, the court explains that the exercise of that right MAY BE REGULATED under the government's police power in the interest of public safety and welfare.

That's the part that always seems to mysteriously disappear when this quote gets passed around the internet.

Having a right to travel does not mean you have an unrestricted constitutional right to operate a motor vehicle however you please, free from licensing, registration, traffic laws, or other reasonable regulation.

We have a right to keep and bear arms too. That doesn't mean every regulation involving firearms magically ceases to exist.

We have freedom of speech. That doesn't mean every conceivable form of speech, in every circumstance, is immune from regulation.

Having a RIGHT and having that right be completely immune from REGULATION are two entirely different things.

But my favorite part is that after quoting an actual court decision, you apparently decided court decisions aren't trustworthy anyway...

"What makes any court decision the correct one?"

Then why did you just cite one as authority for your argument?

You can't simultaneously say "LOOK WHAT THE COURT SAID!" when you like the sentence and "WHO SAYS COURTS ARE RIGHT?" when the rest of the law becomes inconvenient.

And somehow we've now gone from Flock cameras to license plates to the Founding Fathers to driver's licenses to gun laws to the 16th Amendment.

At this rate, three more posts and we're going to be discussing whether the Louisiana Purchase was constitutional.

Guys, it's a license plate reader. In public!

 

[GoldenGoat]

"I heard thousands..."

Well, damn, case closed then.
Nothing establishes a statistic quite like "I heard."

But let's assume for a minute that Flock DID misread a plate and an innocent person was subsequently pulled over at gunpoint.

Who pulled them over?

Who decided an automated plate reader hit was sufficient justification for a high risk stop?

Who decided not to visually verify the plate, vehicle, or other information before escalating the encounter?

Flock?

No. The police did.

A false positive from technology is a technology issue. Treating that false positive as unquestionable gospel and pointing guns at someone without adequate verification is a police procedure and user error issue.

The system provides information. The human being using that information is still responsible for verifying it and deciding what action is appropriate.

Blaming Flock for every bad decision someone makes after receiving an alert is like blaming a smoke detector because a firefighter kicked down the wrong door.

There are legitimate privacy arguments to make about Flock. "The computer told the cop something and the cop stopped thinking" isn't one of them.

Maybe, but Flock technology isn’t perfect and its mistakes can be problematic. Courts seemingly agree with you that it’s the police at fault. You expect your tools to work correctly though. It’s typically the city that pays the legal settlements. Maybe police will learn to verify these, but I heard one car in LA got pulled over incorrectly three times, so I don’t know. I’m not a legal expert, but this is what I read so you can take it for what it’s worth. PS I’m not trying to argue a point, I’m just chatting on a forum.

 

[GrayDragon]

The real problem is that the government requires every single car to have have a standard, clearly visible ID code on the back (and usually front), and can have police pull you over for obstructing that government mandated ID code. Its going to be quite difficult to spoof any camera system for long, since they will have that clear, intentionally easy to read ID code to look for. Really, license plates themselves are just gross privacy violations, its obnoxious that the government was able to get people to accept them without a fight.

They also help if you lose your car, or it gets stolen, etc. -- it's not all bad. I have to say though, looking at the garment picture, it's like looking at a eye-bending visual puzzle. Not sure how popular it would be in an office if lots of people wore clothing like that.

 

[Loadedaxe]

Maybe, but Flock technology isn’t perfect and its mistakes can be problematic. Courts seemingly agree with you that it’s the police at fault. You expect your tools to work correctly though. It’s typically the city that pays the legal settlements. Maybe police will learn to verify these, but I heard one car in LA got pulled over incorrectly three times, so I don’t know. I’m not a legal expert, but this is what I read so you can take it for what it’s worth. PS I’m not trying to argue a point, I’m just chatting on a forum.

Fair enough, and now we're actually talking about the same thing.

I don't expect Flock...or any technology to be infallible. If it misreads a plate, that's absolutely a flaw that should be addressed.

Where I draw the line is blaming the technology for what happens after the alert. If a Flock camera says ABC123 is stolen and an officer sees ABC128, doesn't verify it, and conducts a felony stop at gunpoint, that's not Flock suddenly growing arms, putting on a badge and drawing a Glock. Did it misread it, absolutely...you know how many officers misread plates? That happens a lot, just go watch youtube.

These systems should be investigative tools, not substitutes for human judgment. They are Tools....plain and simple. Are they perfect? Nope, which is why verification needs to happen by the officers.

And if the same innocent car got stopped three times because nobody bothered to verify the information, I'd argue that actually strengthens my point. At some point you have to stop blaming the hammer and start asking questions about the guy swinging it.

Now if we want to have a discussion on police misuse of Flock, that is worth having. That seems to be the biggest problem right now.

 

[JamesBlond]

The real problem is that the government requires every single car to have have a standard, clearly visible ID code on the back (and usually front), and can have police pull you over for obstructing that government mandated ID code. Its going to be quite difficult to spoof any camera system for long, since they will have that clear, intentionally easy to read ID code to look for. Really, license plates themselves are just gross privacy violations, its obnoxious that the government was able to get people to accept them without a fight.

Well the problem with trying to hide is the camera's have built in Wi-Fi detection, Blue tooth detection, IAWD detection, Graphene detection, so basically its all a joke anyways.. they can track you no matter what we do