Flock Cameras Can Surveil Cars Without License Plates
This is from a 2024 company presentation:
Officers can also tap into data showing a carβs decals, bumper stickers, back and top racksβalong with temporary and unique state tags.
Flock calls it a βVehicle Fingerprintβ and itβs touted as a way for law enforcement officials to get more information βeven when you donβt have full plate information,β the companyβs presentation shows.
The company gives police officers the ability to search that data as well, to βbuild stronger cases with less information upfront.β That includes being able to locate multiple vehicles law enforcement officials believe are moving together and what Flock calls a βmulti geo search.β
This kind of thing is older than AI; I wrote about it in my 2014 book Beyond Fear. Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was using cell phone location data to track phones that were habitually near each other.
As bad as Flock is, remember that anyone with broad access to cell phone location data can do the same thing.