In news that will surprise no one, it turns out that police are only too happy to use automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras—the kind made infamous by Flock—to track ordinary citizens, but are considerably less enthusiastic about citizens using the same technology to track them.
While ALPR technology is not new, its use has exploded over the last few years, with Flock at the forefront of both widespread adoption and resultant controversies. There has been story after story about misuse of the data collected by such cameras, whether it’s stalking ex-partners, harassing immigrants, or ruining the lives of completely random people. It’s little surprise, then, that police might be leery of having ALPR devices pointed at them: they know only too well how the data gathered by these devices can be, and is, misused.
This point was demonstrated recently by Canadian software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistilli, of Brampton, Ontario, a city that recently spent 2 million Canadian dollars on “high-resolution cameras, along with automated licence plate recognition technology.” A month or so ago, Sistilli built his own ALPR camera and set it up to track the movement of police cars. He posted several videos on TikTok about the camera, explaining how he built it and how it works, describing it as “a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers.”
Local police got wind of this, because according to a video posted on YouTube earlier this week, two officers from Peel Regional Police allegedly turned up at Sistilli’s front door to ask what his “intentions” were for the data he gathered. In this video, Sistilli points out the rich irony of the situation: “One of [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk [from] any bad apples that might want to track them down.”
Sistilli’s long-form YouTube video uses the visit as a jumping-off point for an extensive discussion of ALPR cameras and their use, looking at how companies like Flock market their products in an aggressive (and, arguably, deceptive) manner to municipalities, whether they actually reduce crime (go on, guess), the lack of transparency about the collection and retention of data, and a bunch of other issues around the technology. It’s well worth watching.
Peel Regional Police did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.