I added one a few months ago and went to go check it, and there are 2 others almost right on top of it pointing in different directions, I guess that can't be prevented? I'm fairly certain they didn't add two more ALPRs that close to each other.
Caveat: it does not seem to update camera statuses after initial reporting. I see several cameras that were removed long ago, or have been repositioned, but their old statuses remain.
This is a quite scary map. They are all over my local area. It may technically be possible to route a drive around them, but if you take the most convenient path between any two points at least one camera will spot you. I'd have to leave my neighborhood through back roads and enter local shopping areas through sidestreets.
This data shouldn't even be collected in the first place, let alone consolidated into a national network that any police officer can decide to spy on me through.
Just anecdotally looking around my city, it's noticeable that the camera's locations have a much stronger correlation with areas of high wealth rather than high crime.
Haha Sudbury and Napanee are the only places in Canada to have them. They are tiny cities where nothing happens. Bored police officers imagining situations where they are needed.
Woof. There is one that I basically must drive by everyday close to where I live. How can I figure out who is responsible for its installation so I can let them know how I feel (and will vote) about it?
I volunteer for my city & county , and I'm a privacy advocate, so I have an ambivalent opinion on Flock cameras. Given the completely untenable demands on law enforcement, and extreme driver recklessness , the only practical way to enforce law and order with drivers is some sort of automated surveillance.
Since covid, driver recklessness has been out of control. Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common. Pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths remain extreme. At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law.
Imagine you are a policy maker, with worse driver behavior, and police force that are less able to enforce the law. What tools would you use to maintain law and order?
If you don't want surveillance, you will have to make some other tradeoffs to allow human beings to better monitor the public and enforce the law. They are not omnipotent and omniscient creatures.
How do we make this site mainstream? The public would really start to push back if they could so viscerally experience that they are being surveilled multiple times per day.
None in my area. Time to disperse. Get out of major cities like the pandemic promised. Fill in this great country we live in. Proliferate the governments surveillance for them.
Coincidentally, a nearby county has just announced that they have begun installing new Flock cameras [0].
Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts."
The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero.
EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials.
The only flock cameras indicated in my town are the canonical Home Depot arrangement. I'm pretty sure it's part of their standard operating procedures at this point. The effect these have had on the in store experience (at my location) is the primary thing that has me interested in limited deployments. Shopping at HD prior to the ALPRs was a horrible time. I think they finally caught the guy who was stealing the little screws out of the irrigation vacuum breakers. You can actually get a complete, unopened factory product most of the time now.
Weird. The city I live in has cameras, but only a few at random intersections. Most of the cameras are on a university campus, home depot, Lowes, and target. Are these normal places to put flock cameras for other cities?
So, our city clearly has other cameras but they are from a different vendor (and don't show up on the map). I wonder how good/bad the other players in the industry are. Flock gets the press, is that just letting someone worse quietly fill in the gaps?
47 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 59.8 ms ] threadAre there any coordinated efforts for widespread scrubbing or removal of these parasitic devices?
Caveat: it does not seem to update camera statuses after initial reporting. I see several cameras that were removed long ago, or have been repositioned, but their old statuses remain.
This data shouldn't even be collected in the first place, let alone consolidated into a national network that any police officer can decide to spy on me through.
Since covid, driver recklessness has been out of control. Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common. Pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths remain extreme. At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law.
Imagine you are a policy maker, with worse driver behavior, and police force that are less able to enforce the law. What tools would you use to maintain law and order?
If you don't want surveillance, you will have to make some other tradeoffs to allow human beings to better monitor the public and enforce the law. They are not omnipotent and omniscient creatures.
Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts."
The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero.
EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials.
[0] https://www.ketk.com/news/crime-public-safety/new-traffic-ca...
[1] https://www.beltontexas.gov/news_detail_T11_R1277.php
https://oaklandcounty115.com/2026/03/03/clarkston-man-accuse...