cat

I just learned that Flock Safety, the most famous and widely adopted Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) company has innovated a new solution to crime which tracks and zooms in on your face whenever you’re in view. what the fuck

People like me already hated Flock because of their antithetical approach to privacy with their ALPRs, which use AI image recognition to record and track every car in view 24/7, regardless of who it is. You, an innocent commuter, are having your every move automatically logged when you pass within the view of one of these cameras. If you attend gay bars, counseling, strip clubs, protests, political opposition meetings, or your significant other’s home, it’s logged for an indefinite amount of time. In fact, Flock is regularly used by ICE to track and arrest immigrants, and has also been caught being used to track protest attendees. These cameras very intentionally follow and record everyone.

This isn’t CCTV. The “CC” of CCTV is “Closed Circuit,” meaning it’s only accessible through local storage. Flock is different because it can be allowed to share its footage and image recognition data with law enforcement everywhere, and even civilian subscribers. Flock has already been used to track a woman across state lines who left Texas to get an abortion. Benn Jordan and 404 media have had a really particularly easy time accessing these databases without permission, because Flock doesn’t require its customers to utilize proper security measures. I, a random and anonymous civilian, can access local police cameras, search for someone’s license plate, and see a list of places it has been. Any stalker worth their weight will have no problem whatsoever tracking their victims.

But don’t worry, it gets worse! ALPRs were pretty bad, and there was (well-founded) suspicion that they are being used to record people as well as cars. Worry no more, Flock has released a new product that is just as insecure and more creepy than their ALPRs: a camera which is designed specifically to record individual civilians, use AI to track them and zoom, pan, and tilt to keep them in frame so that it can identify individuals and record their specific location. This isn’t a theory, this isn’t a fiction dystopia, this is the capitalist cat escaping the bag and tearing liberty’s flesh from bone in a hateful show of spite.

I understand that this all sounds dramatic and paranoid, but I encourage you to look and see for yourself. ACLU, EFF, 404 media, Benn Jordan, Louis Rossmann, all pre-established and well-respected people, have looked at the surface of Flock (and Motorola Vigilant Solutions, and Genetec, and Leonardo, and Neology) and found nothing but corrosive disregard for liberty.

It’s strange, surveillance state dystopias always had some evil faceless government that imposed itself on its people, but it’s shaking out to be different. These are private corporations licensing mass-surveillance (in the strictest sense of the word) to law enforcement and civilians alike.

I care about privacy so, so much. To me, it’s a human right. The last 20 years have been an incredibly grotesque and painful wretching of the right to be left alone, and my passion goes so deep that I fall silent. I haven’t written about privacy yet not because I don’t know what to say, or how to say it, but because I have so much to say that pulling on that thread could end with such a long post that no one would read it.

But I’ve decided I will. Shit has gotten so out of hand that I think I might melt inside my own skin. I hope you feel the same.

cat

12/22/2025