> Cameras that automatically capture images of vehicle license plates are being turned off by police in jurisdictions across Washington state, in part after a court ruled the public has a right to access data generated by the technology.
The defense of the photos not being government business until accessed seems shaky. That the physical camera installations were purposeful intentions to conduct government business in those areas is a reasonable line; this doesn't set precedent for Google's information becoming public records because the police might do a google search, to use an extreme example.
The proposed legislative amendment that would exclude Flock footage from public records (which would make this judgment moot) makes sense in the light of red light cameras already being excluded by the same legislators. However, I'd like to see a more incisive law covering both that would compel a reasonable amount of public insight into the footage.
"The masses/general populace are the enemy" - once you understand that this is the fundamental belief at the root of the elites behaviour, everything will make sense. Flock cameras and AI surveillance is designed to reign in 'the enemy'.
I think the person requesting to access the data was doing the right thing and I agree with the judge’s ruling.
The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured.
These cameras are popping up all over the nation and if people realize how much data is being captured and where that data is going (or who it’s being sold to) and how it’s being used by government and private entities they would be appalled.
There’s been exposés about these cameras, everything from AI misidentification of “stolen” (not) vehicles and erroneous arrests and police encounters, to analysis of shopping patterns being sold back to private entities for better ad targeting. It’s wild.
I might be good with legal guarantees, meaning jail time for those involved, that the only place images on these devices went was local to the municipality collecting them and that they were only accessed for very well defined reasons by very specific people.
The core issues are that aggregation and exfiltration of this data means that privacy is dead and the AI world allows analysis for almost no cost. We need an idea in our laws that puts back the limited scope that technology has removed. If the police have to expend one person's worth of time to listen to a wiretap then it really isn't possible to get out of control. We need that level of cost associated with ALPR and all surveillance so that the abuse of these systems doesn't get out of control. Make it appropriately hard and it won't be a problem.
I am less worried about Flock ALPR (which are aimed in the direction of traffic flow to read rear number plates) as I am about the THOUSANDS of facial recognition cameras installed in the last year in all four directions at nearly every intersection in southern Nevada and many many cities in southern California (LA notably excepted). These are mounted above the stoplights and aimed against traffic at stoplights to read faces.
I mention these locales specifically only because I have directly observed them. I would be surprised if this isn’t also happening in many other US metro areas, given how eagerly DHS/TSA/CBP/ICE are mass collecting facial geometries at every available opportunity.
> Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said the city disagrees with the ruling and is concerned about who could obtain the footage. “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.”
These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping the cameras but not allowing the public to see the data will stop domestic abuse or stalkers. We've already seen these cameras used to stalk people and it wasn't random members of the public doing it, it was police officers. As long as this data is being collected it will be abused. If not by the public, then by police, or by Flock employees, or by hackers. The only way to protect people is to not gather the data at all. Anyone who keeps these cameras doesn't actually care about the public's safety.
I always think that the best way to get stuff regulated is make those in power feel the risks.
So if people started using something like flock to embarrass politicians, business leaders, or newspaper leader writers then suddenly privacy might become a big issue.
For reasons I have been unable to articulate, I have believed that if license plate readers are a thing, someone should open-source one that the general public could share.
When a comment comes back that someone malicious will use the tech to stalk someone I really have no answer for that. That is indefensibly a bad thing.
Of course the tech exists nonetheless (not open source as far as I know) and it could be argued it is even being used maliciously—or at least without the kind of judicial oversight we assumed would be in place. But one actor behaving badly does not justify the use of the tech by everyone.
I read about the citizens of Minneapolis using decidedly low-tech means to track ICE vehicles prowling their community and it suggested a scenario where an open license-plate-tracking solution could "balance the scales" a bit (that is if you believe the scales to be imbalanced).
I imagined not a license-plate reading dragnet but rather software where you had first to enter in very specific strings of ASCII characters and the software would only announce when there was a specific string match from the camera.
To that end I vibe-coded an app for iOS in about 15 minutes using iOS's Vision framework and the built-in phone camera. Anyone could do the same.
Nonetheless I only tested it with "HELLO" and "WORLD" using scraps of paper in my kitchen and never tried it outside as the craziness in Minneapolis seemed to have quieted down.
Ive wanted to know this for a long time. Why isn't there some package I can download to a raspberry pi with a camera, and contribute to a public website that shows things like, oh I don't know real time positions of government vehicles...
Please contact your representative in Olympia and tell them to kill the bill that would exempt this footage from public record requests. It passed the Senate on Feb. 6.
My issues is with false arrests due to people blindly following AI. People pulled out of their cars are gunpoint due to the AI misreading a single letter on the plate, the lady who was arrested for stealing amazon packages just because flock saw her enter and exit a neighborhood and she had to get doorbell camera to prove her innocence.
Also i think it should be public record about every single point of data flock collects and retention period. I am not saying they have to release the data itself, but I want to know what my tax dollars are collecting, how long they are keeping it, who can access it and who they are selling, er i mean sharing it with.
31 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] thread> Cameras that automatically capture images of vehicle license plates are being turned off by police in jurisdictions across Washington state, in part after a court ruled the public has a right to access data generated by the technology.
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/washington-state-cities-turn-o...
https://www.everettpost.com/local-news/everett-temporarily-s...
The defense of the photos not being government business until accessed seems shaky. That the physical camera installations were purposeful intentions to conduct government business in those areas is a reasonable line; this doesn't set precedent for Google's information becoming public records because the police might do a google search, to use an extreme example.
The proposed legislative amendment that would exclude Flock footage from public records (which would make this judgment moot) makes sense in the light of red light cameras already being excluded by the same legislators. However, I'd like to see a more incisive law covering both that would compel a reasonable amount of public insight into the footage.
Why does that not convince me?
The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured.
These cameras are popping up all over the nation and if people realize how much data is being captured and where that data is going (or who it’s being sold to) and how it’s being used by government and private entities they would be appalled.
There’s been exposés about these cameras, everything from AI misidentification of “stolen” (not) vehicles and erroneous arrests and police encounters, to analysis of shopping patterns being sold back to private entities for better ad targeting. It’s wild.
- https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
- https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyis...
The core issues are that aggregation and exfiltration of this data means that privacy is dead and the AI world allows analysis for almost no cost. We need an idea in our laws that puts back the limited scope that technology has removed. If the police have to expend one person's worth of time to listen to a wiretap then it really isn't possible to get out of control. We need that level of cost associated with ALPR and all surveillance so that the abuse of these systems doesn't get out of control. Make it appropriately hard and it won't be a problem.
I mention these locales specifically only because I have directly observed them. I would be surprised if this isn’t also happening in many other US metro areas, given how eagerly DHS/TSA/CBP/ICE are mass collecting facial geometries at every available opportunity.
Those cameras are for traffic detection, so the signal can turn green when a car comes. They aren't reading faces.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping the cameras but not allowing the public to see the data will stop domestic abuse or stalkers. We've already seen these cameras used to stalk people and it wasn't random members of the public doing it, it was police officers. As long as this data is being collected it will be abused. If not by the public, then by police, or by Flock employees, or by hackers. The only way to protect people is to not gather the data at all. Anyone who keeps these cameras doesn't actually care about the public's safety.
So if people started using something like flock to embarrass politicians, business leaders, or newspaper leader writers then suddenly privacy might become a big issue.
When a comment comes back that someone malicious will use the tech to stalk someone I really have no answer for that. That is indefensibly a bad thing.
Of course the tech exists nonetheless (not open source as far as I know) and it could be argued it is even being used maliciously—or at least without the kind of judicial oversight we assumed would be in place. But one actor behaving badly does not justify the use of the tech by everyone.
I read about the citizens of Minneapolis using decidedly low-tech means to track ICE vehicles prowling their community and it suggested a scenario where an open license-plate-tracking solution could "balance the scales" a bit (that is if you believe the scales to be imbalanced).
I imagined not a license-plate reading dragnet but rather software where you had first to enter in very specific strings of ASCII characters and the software would only announce when there was a specific string match from the camera.
To that end I vibe-coded an app for iOS in about 15 minutes using iOS's Vision framework and the built-in phone camera. Anyone could do the same.
Nonetheless I only tested it with "HELLO" and "WORLD" using scraps of paper in my kitchen and never tried it outside as the craziness in Minneapolis seemed to have quieted down.
I moved on to other projects.
This is the bill: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=6002&Chamber=...
Find your reps: https://leg.wa.gov/legislators/
Washington State Legislative Hotline: 1-800-562-6000
Also i think it should be public record about every single point of data flock collects and retention period. I am not saying they have to release the data itself, but I want to know what my tax dollars are collecting, how long they are keeping it, who can access it and who they are selling, er i mean sharing it with.