[HN Gopher] Have I been Flocked? - Check if your license plate i...
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Have I been Flocked? - Check if your license plate is being watched
Author : pkaeding
Score : 286 points
Date : 2025-12-06 03:16 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (haveibeenflocked.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (haveibeenflocked.com)
| habinero wrote:
| I love these kinds of sites, since they're indistinguishable from
| honeypots. Sure, have my license plate and the information that
| I'm worried about being watched.
| Simulacra wrote:
| Sounds like social media ;-)
| RobRivera wrote:
| Lmao I got honeypotted in h.s. by one of those 'does your crush
| like you' astrology sites
| alilikestech wrote:
| Lol I actually tried it with my plate, i hope i don't get
| SWATed
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Who isn't worried about being watched? I am certainly not
| confident the government can tell their ass from their face, so
| anyone could be suspect.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| With no other identifying info, though, what can they do with a
| license plate number in isolation?
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| Exactly - you can collect license plates numbers way easier
| than this. The best data they can really get is a connection
| to an IP address.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Sell it to the cops and/or ICE as belonging to "self-
| identified persons of interest."
| pests wrote:
| Some states, like Michigan, you can request owner information
| (including address) by a in-person SOS visit and $15 a plate.
| I've always thought this should be PII and shouldn't be
| allowed on reddit, for example, where PII is banned. Post a
| driver with plate in Michigan and you may have doxxed them.
| antonvs wrote:
| > Some states, like Michigan, you can request owner
| information (including address)
|
| If the car is leased, wouldn't this just give leasing
| company details?
| 747fulloftapes wrote:
| No, because while the leasing company may own the vehicle
| (known as the title holder) the vehicle will be
| registered in the lesser's name (known as the registered
| owner.)
|
| In the case of a car purchased with financing like a
| loan, I believe the purchaser will be both the title and
| registered owner, but the lender will have a lien on the
| vehicle until the debt is paid off.
| antonvs wrote:
| Ah thanks.
|
| Permanent rental it is then. :)
| 747fulloftapes wrote:
| That, or, establish a trust to own the vehicle and grant
| yourself permission to use it. It's not exactly trivial
| to do and costs some money, but it's doable.
|
| You can do similar with an LLC, but that gets more
| complicated with the rules regarding using a "company"
| vehicle for personal purposes. IANAL
|
| Similar things are done for things like cellphone plans,
| firearm ownership, homes, etc.
|
| The only thing I am aware of that you can only do in your
| own name is register to vote. Almost all of the Michigan
| voter database can be FOIA'd. It's called the QVF -
| qualified voter file. Only a few fields in the database
| (ie, day and month of birth) as well as all voter records
| for victoms domestic battery are protected by statute.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Pay a thousand bucks to a Montana agent to register you
| an pseudoanonymous LLC and put an old 90s Corolla into an
| LLC with a permanent registration plate (since anything
| 15+ years old can have a 'perm' plate on it.
|
| Then never think about it again.
| 747fulloftapes wrote:
| While some people do get away with this, it carries some
| risk.
|
| Without using an LLC, most every state requires you to
| register your vehicle where you live within 30-90 days
| with some exceptions (ie college students).
|
| Even with the LLC, if you catch the attention of the
| state, I believe you might be risking being charged with
| tax evasion even if your goal was to protect your
| privacy. This is especially true if you can't prove the
| LLC to be a legitimate business venture.
|
| Yeah, the Corolla won't be mistaken for a supercar, but
| many states have begun cracking down on residents with
| Montana plates such as Georgia, Ohio, and New York.
|
| Also, insuring a car with out of state registration can
| be committing insurance fraud. Rates and fees are
| different between states due to different regulations.
| Further, depending on your policy, the insurer could deny
| claims because the car wasn't garaged in the state it was
| registered.
|
| Really, if the privacy is of sufficient priority, the
| best solution is to just do things properly and move to
| rural Montana instead.
| 747fulloftapes wrote:
| This is intentionally not PII. You accept this burden when
| you decide to register a vehicle.
|
| Keep in mind you don't need to have a license plate or to
| register a vehicle to drive it only on private property.
|
| Your license plate is required to be readily visible so
| that it can be used to find out who the registered and,
| presumably, responsible party is.
|
| Consider if you skip out on paying for parking at a garage,
| where you agreed to pay the fee by parking there in the
| first place. How is the business supposed to identify you
| to collect the money owed?
|
| Otherwise, how else would automatic private toll roads know
| where to send the bill?
|
| In Michigan, I believe the law only permits someone to
| request registration details for certain listed reasons.
| They don't verify that, but if you're caught submitting a
| fraudulent request, you can get in trouble - I don't know
| if it's a fine or crime. Probably depends on the
| circumstance.
|
| PS Hello from Grand Rapids!
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You can screech about "not a right" all you want but
| there's federal law (DDPA) that limits how easily states
| can reveal driver's PII. Usually a documented business
| purpose (i.e sending spam mail) is required.
|
| This Michigan thing sounds like it walks right up to the
| line if not over it.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721
| ccgreg wrote:
| Most people park at their home and many drive to work. If you
| have both of those data points, you can identify people.
| mertd wrote:
| That's not very useful?
|
| For homeowners, the real estate transactions are public and
| majority of white collar people have LinkedIn accounts.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > majority of white collar people have LinkedIn accounts.
|
| What a time to live in!
| hopelite wrote:
| LinkedIn has always struck me like a kind of contemporary
| slave management/market place, only one in which pick-mes
| try to be the best alpha slave they can be.
|
| The fact that you are linked in, as in a chain, sure does
| not help with dispelling my impression.
| jwiz wrote:
| You're starting with the plate, getting the home, and
| then you can get the real estate info.
|
| Most people don't expect their identity to be
| discoverable from their driving.
| ragequittah wrote:
| Wait really? I feel like this was happening in the 90s.
| Now every car has a full gps spy system integrated to the
| point I barely trust that my conversation is private in a
| modern vehicle. But I guess if you think it's just your
| car company, Android, Apple, roadside assistance, the
| local police, and probably the music you're playing that
| can pin your location you're probably ok.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Isn't that the whole idea of licence plates? So you're
| identifiable?
| ccgreg wrote:
| So, from home and work, you identify me. Then you figure
| out which church I attend, and which strip club I attend.
| interloxia wrote:
| "Wait, user compliance scan identified location traces
| associated with participitation in community groups
| prohibited by EasyLife Health(tm) policy update
| 2025-12-06b. Recommend to annul contract."
| amazingman wrote:
| Checksum?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > With no other identifying info, though, what can they do
| with a license plate number in isolation?
|
| For typical users not taking extra precautions, visiting a
| page in a browser _is_ providing additional identifying info,
| a fact that monetization of the free-as-in-beer web relies
| heavily upon, but which can be leveraged in other ways, e.g.,
| by a site that draws you in with privacy fears as a technique
| to get you to submit _additional_ information that can be
| correlated with it.
| edm0nd wrote:
| You just work backwards.
|
| Here's what I would do working off just a single license
| plate number w OSINT.
|
| I would pivot immediately into license plate databases that
| have been breached. For example, ParkMobile got popped in
| 2021 and the db has 20.9M license plates in it. prob have low
| success rate and iirc its pretty US centric. It has their
| full name, address, phone, email, all kinda data.
|
| If you had paid fancy tools, like Lexis Nexis, you could plug
| it into there and easily find the owner.
|
| There are also plenty of license plate look sites online
| where it will tell you the VIN and make/model details.
|
| Idk, would just take digging and keep spidering out with all
| new info you find. Would yield a few hits eventually.
| monerozcash wrote:
| Sure, and so what? You can look up people on Accurint
| without license plates. Depending on what kind of account
| you have, you can just search by a zip code, or a state
| with no further identifiers.
|
| What would be the point of running a website collecting the
| license plate numbers of random visitors?
| rightbyte wrote:
| Pairing IPs to persons?
| monerozcash wrote:
| You can just get an API which does that and skip the
| middle steps?
|
| Or even skip the API part and just buy that data in bulk.
| Or just collect it from a variety of freely leaked
| databases.
| diydsp wrote:
| You need to think more evil!
|
| Lets brainstorm!
|
| Theres a parking lot... what are the 10 wealthiest car
| owners...and the 10 frailest oldest people... or maybe
| the 20 women aged 19-25 blond under 150 pounds... and
| when do they get off work tired, drive home each day?
| What's the most isolated gas station,convenience store
| they stop at? Ones where few other cars pass by? Who's
| homes don't show a 2nd car in driveway? Owned by 6'5" 200
| pound man? Who frequently visits a karate studio?
|
| Or: im a car salesman, in comes a customer, whining abt
| lowering the price bc Theyre broke... lemme just look up
| where they eat supper every night! How much time they
| spend at airports! What school they drop off their kids!
| Who comes to their house? Nannies? Oh look drug dealers,
| i can threaten them with blackmail!
|
| Sound ridiculous? All the data brings it into focus. A
| local detective told me theyre focusing on robberies of
| $ethnicity restaurants bc that group stockpiles cash in
| their homes...
|
| And this is all assuming good info, but when u get
| creative:
|
| ..what if we look for mistakes... hey that annoying
| $religious neighbor pissed me off with his loud music.
| His kids car shows up as visiting thr wrong side of
| town..probably a wrong digit but lets report him
| anyway!!!
|
| Or: Hey lets scan all the wifi dbs for ssids that seem
| like defaults, then offer them csam-insurance: you pay me
| $1000 cash rn and ill insure i dont browse csam from your
| network! And my alpr data says when youre home and your
| iot devs tell me when you go to sleep so we'll slip it in
| at before-bed-wank-time!
| monerozcash wrote:
| Oh no, I can think very evil. I just don't see what kind
| of evil thinking would arrive at "Hey lets use this
| website to collect IP address/license plate pairs at a
| small scale"
|
| That just doesn't strike me as a very efficient way of
| doing evil.
|
| You can just go on accurint and find the oldest people
| living alone in the richest neighbourhoods near you. You
| can even fairly reliably find out whether or not they
| have living relatives.
|
| All this deeply sensitive data is already readily
| available. I don't think IP+license plate data would be
| particularly interesting unless you're Google and able to
| gather that at an _absolutely_ massive scale. But even
| then, you 'd be using it for extremely boring kinds of
| evil.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In many states, car registration data is public information.
| If you have a license plate number, you can easily look up
| who the car is registered to, where they live, etc. License
| plate numbers are PII.
| nxm wrote:
| This is simply not true.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Flag you as being worth watching, or up your composite score
| by a point or whatever.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Suppose the guy behind this website keeps a log of the
| requests, even accidentally, and eventually gets bought out
| by Flock themselves (websites critical of companies selling
| out is unfortunately common). Now Flock has a list of plates
| of people alert to flock and this gets added to your Palintir
| threat matrix, so the next time a cop pulls you over for some
| minor infraction his computer can prime him to be jumpy and
| trigger happy by labelling you as a potential dissident.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They list their sources, if you care but don't trust them you
| could replicate it on your own.
| hopelite wrote:
| I totally understand your sentiment, but you could just check a
| random assortment of license plate numbers you collected while
| driving around, which also includes yours. At the very least
| that would effectively obfuscate your license plate
| sufficiently that it could not be attributed beyond other
| methods that likely already have done so.
| blitzar wrote:
| Reminds me of the (legit) form to claim compensation for a
| privacy leak.
|
| Put in your name, address, phone number, dob, ssn and bank
| details - we will post you a cheque for $2.50
| boringg wrote:
| 100% always feels like a trap.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| just enter 10 license numbers.
| tptacek wrote:
| Besides the obvious privacy concern: at the very least in my
| state (Illinois), it's not lawful for public bodies to disclose
| the license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras, so this data
| set is necessarily incomplete.
|
| But, give it a year or two, and you can replace this whole
| website with a black background and 72 point white bold text
| "YES".
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| Flock is a private company, right. That's the whole schtick.
| Like, Flock can retain records indefinitely for example, they
| may sell those records to the government but they're a private
| party.
| tptacek wrote:
| What's your point? To the extent they're a private company
| you're even less likely to get access to records from Flock
| ALPR cameras.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| > at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful
| for public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers
| read from ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily
| incomplete.
|
| They're not a public body, that was my point
| hopelite wrote:
| They de facto are because they only place cameras in
| public places and on public land by contract with the
| government in one form or another; be it with a
| treasonous sheriff or a treasonous state executive and
| legislature. The public would not be talking about Flock
| if they had not worked to create a treasonous
| surveillance state and instead only did things like
| monitored truck movements in a logistics depot. The
| private contracts for things like HOA neighborhoods and
| corporations, e.g., big box store loss prevention and
| customer data tracking, but those's are a totally
| different issue that have nothing to do with the use of
| public funds and power for mass surveillance.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| This feels a lot like "Yeah, but we'll do it anyways
| until a court makes us stop; because the profit is more
| than the fine"
| immibis wrote:
| but thry're not literally the government and the relevant
| laws only affect the literal government.
| svnt wrote:
| No, there is legal precedent that private companies who
| perform government services are subject to the same laws.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is generally _not_ the case.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Just because the records created on behalf of the
| government are held by a private enterprise doesn't mean
| they aren't government records.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right, I agree. My point is that the FOIA laws of many
| states forbid disclosing the data this web page purports
| to surface.
| stackghost wrote:
| You of all people ought to know that your governments of
| all levels are routinely ignoring laws they find
| inconvenient.
|
| You have masked secret police grabbing people off the
| street en masse with impunity, why would states care
| about pesky laws like FOIA?
| tptacek wrote:
| Really? Me of all people? What about my Slovak ethnic
| identity do you think so attunes me to the concerns
| you're bringing?
| pppppiiiiiuuuuu wrote:
| It's clear in context that they mean your background in
| computer security and political activism, I don't know
| where you are getting the idea that it's an comment on
| your ethnicity.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes but: Privatization is an effective way to negate the
| public's right know.
|
| eg Some companies have claimed trade secret protections
| to prevent public access. Infamously, election
| administration vendors like Diebold.
|
| I imagine anyone trying to investigate govt activities
| conducted by Palantir (for example) will run into similar
| stonewalling. Even getting the fulltext of contracts can
| be challenging.
| diydsp wrote:
| Not automatically. There's aleeady case law(0x1) that
| ruled that images captured by Flock ALPR cameras are
| public records, even though the data are stored by Flock
| (a private vendor), not directly by the city.
|
| The court rejected the notion that "because the data sits
| on a private server, it's not a public record." Instead,
| it said that since the surveillance is paid for by the
| public (taxpayers) and used by a public agency, the data
| must comply with the state's public-records law.
|
| This shows that -- in at least one jurisdiction -- using
| a private company to run ALPRs doesn't shield the data
| from public-records requests.
|
| (0x1) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-
| court-rules...
| dehrmann wrote:
| Would they be subject to CCPA, then?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yeah, and as an ex-employee, that's something they heavily
| "rely" on, and push as an end run around laws.
|
| Like in my state, LE can't collect this stuff directly. Then
| they started saying "Well, we can do this..." and started
| contracting for private companies to do the collection on
| their behalf. When _that_ was legislated away, they've now
| pivoted to "Well, if the company is doing it of their own
| accord, we can still _purchase_ the data since it wasn 't,
| technically, created _for us_. "
| hopelite wrote:
| There is already case law that makes the records collected by
| government through these methods no different than any other
| public records, especially since they are publicly visible
| license plate numbers.
|
| That has its own problems because it shields/deflects from the
| bigger issue of being treasonous, i.e., grotesque violation of
| the law of the Constitution, through mass surveillance that has
| also already been abused for various kinds of criminal acts by
| law enforcement.
| diydsp wrote:
| Rule 1. Do not comply in advance. Do not accept it as
| inevitable. Do not give away your power without friction.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| tptacek writes on here sometimes about their activity in
| local politics. This perspective (from my reading) is that it
| has a lot of strong support that is difficult to oppose, not
| that we should give up. Read "give it a year or two" as "give
| it a year or two of things going as they are".
| potato3732842 wrote:
| He also lives in a "nice" suburb of Chicago IIRC
|
| I strongly suspect a neighborhood in Chicago composed of
| the kind of demographics the "nice" suburb's residents are
| worried about would have a very different take on the
| issue.
|
| And by "strongly suspect" I mean "know because I live in
| that kind of neighborhood in a different city in a
| different state".
| tptacek wrote:
| It's genuinely funny how wrong you are about this, or
| about what my intersection with Flock is. Go on, keep
| extrapolating!
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I'm pretty confused by the innuendo in the posters
| comment to even get what they are saying, but I can
| report from the south side of chicago that surveillance
| cameras are largely popular across demographics.
| tptacek wrote:
| He's suggesting that Oak Park is supportive of Flock
| cameras because we're afraid of Black folks.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _strongly suspect a neighborhood in Chicago composed of
| the kind of demographics the "nice" suburb's residents
| are worried about would have a very different take on the
| issue_
|
| I live in Jackson Hole. None of my neighbours knew what
| these were. They're getting taken out.
|
| Don't presume what folks are worried about without asking
| them.
| mycall wrote:
| * While our most recent data is from 12/4/2025, there may be
| significant historical gaps.
|
| * Most agencies don't proactively publish audit logs Records
| requests can take months or years to fulfill Some agencies
| heavily redact their logs
|
| * We may not have requested logs from your local agencies yet
| sp332 wrote:
| In New Hampshire, we banned both public and private ALPRs. You
| can see on the map that the only ones are at toll booths. Those
| got explicit exemptions in the law.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Isn't that the state with license plates that say "live free
| or die?" Unless, of course, you have a moral objection to
| that statement, cf. Wooley v. Maynard.
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| I'm sure that's their state license plate motto regardless
| of your moral objection
| monerozcash wrote:
| In Wooley v. Maynard SCOTUS held that NH could not
| require it's citizens to use a license plate displaying
| the state motto.
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| It's still their license plate motto and it's still not
| dependent on your moral objection
| monerozcash wrote:
| Do you see anyone claiming the opposite? The point is
| that they will not write the motto on your license plate
| if you object.
|
| I get that HN attracts a certain amount of pedantry, but
| I can't figure out what exactly you're even trying to be
| pedantic about. There's not single comment here that
| could be reasonably interpreted as suggesting that "live
| free or die" isn't their motto
| jabbywocker wrote:
| His pedantic point is that due to the way the original
| question was written, the answer is "yes" regardless if
| you object or not.
|
| The question was "isn't that the state with license
| plates that say 'live free or die'?" And even if you get
| a license plate that doesn't say it, NH is still the
| state with those plates
| 9rx wrote:
| Free as in beer.
| hibf wrote:
| You're right that the dataset is incomplete, but it contains
| searches done by police, not plates read by Flock.
|
| The search logs are public record even when alpr data is not;
| quite a few come from IL.
| tptacek wrote:
| I have no doubt that local agencies are screwing up the law,
| which is very new, but in Illinois "ALPR information" means
| information gathered by an ALPR or created from the analysis
| of data generated by an ALPR (everything after the quotation
| marks is a straight excerpt of the statute), and is
| confidential.
|
| Do not get me started on small public bodies screwing up
| FOIA.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful for
| public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers read from
| ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily incomplete
|
| It's not a dataset of license plate numbers read from ALPR
| cameras. It's a dataset of license plate numbers that have been
| entered into search tools. Enter a license
| plate to see if it's one of the 2,207,426 plates seen in the
| 27,177,268 Flock searches we know about.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yeah, and Illinois law defines that as "ALPR data" and
| restricts its disclosure.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Sorry.
|
| I commented before realizing that someone else already made
| the same point earlier, and you already explained that the
| law covers more than what you mentioned in your first
| comment.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Can't wait for the Flock Equifax/SouthParkWereSorry-esque breach
| announcement any day. I should start a betting pool w my friends.
| pilingual wrote:
| If YouTube personalities can break into the hardware, I
| wouldn't be surprised if foreign intelligence has already
| figured out a way. Clownin
| hopelite wrote:
| Why would they break into individual hardware when they have
| unfettered access to the whole system in certain countries'
| cases and can likely just hack into it in more adversarial
| cases? It is one of the several reasons why ... yes, I know
| YC backed and funded Flock ... the company and everyone in
| government that contracts for them to provide this mass
| surveillance service, is objectively and inherently
| treasonous. But don't shoot the messenger just because people
| don't like the message.
|
| "Whoopsie, my negligence I shouldn't have been engaging in in
| the first place" is no exemption from being a traitor,
| betrayal.
|
| What that means for society and if and what it does about it
| is a different question. Based on historical trends, it all
| probably won't matter since we've clearly crossed a threshold
| and the "PPP" tyranny (different from the trillion dollars in
| PPP loans that were forgiven and contributed to the
| inflation) is upon us because it wasn't prevented when it
| still could have been.
|
| I don't think people here are even tracking what is going on
| in TX, UT, LA (and soon to be nation wide); where as of Jan
| 1st all new accounts will have to provide government ID to
| install any app on a mobile device.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| I've got $10 on compromised six months before they had their
| first customer.
| khannn wrote:
| Hello, we at Flock are very sad to announce that your data was
| leaked, but due to the fact that we operate in a legal grey
| area to get around laws and are nothing more than the domestic
| surveillance equivalent to a PMC operating overseas, we invite
| you get fucked
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| No worries; after Flock gets breached, you'll be compensated
| with one free year of their services.
| kotaKat wrote:
| My breach compensation will be my choice of 3 Flock Cameras
| from any location in the US with a pole saw.
| opengrass wrote:
| Have I ran out of 100,000 requests?
| WalterSear wrote:
| Does your significant other know about your car collection? You
| may have a car hoarding problem.
| pilingual wrote:
| Put up billboards around metros with a license plate reader that
| queries this database with each passing car and announce "White
| Tesla Model Y XYZ-1234 You've been focked for: Inv"
|
| What a sick society we live in.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Dystopian society.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| This unfortunately wouldn't work quite as well in states where
| cars arent required to have a front facing license plate (like
| florida)
| kmoser wrote:
| The camera could be separate from the billboard, and point at
| the backs of the cars. The billboard would be a short
| distance past that.
| overfeed wrote:
| Flock cameras are oriented to read rear plates. One would
| need a camera similarly configured + a billboard some
| distance in front, or perhaps 2 billboards, a 1-2 setup +
| payoff combo, the camera behind the first billboard, and the
| dynamic text on the second. Pulling up other public data
| correlated to the plate - where legal - may make a splash.
| I'm thinking addressing the car owner by their first name.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Right, but also remember that they're set up to analyze
| other vehicle traits, including but not limited to: color,
| make, model, body damage, panels that are a different color
| to the rest of the body, wheels, decals, bumper stickers,
| tow hitches, roof racks, etc., so even if they can't read
| your plate they can try to build a vehicle identity, and
| when they do get a plate capture, they can retroactively
| apply that to all other sightings of the vehicle.
|
| It really is fucking dystopian.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That'd be a great place to test one's plate for legibility to
| the toll and speed cameras.
| bix6 wrote:
| Interesting I can't access this over VPN
| ccgreg wrote:
| Well, yeah. Clownflare
| mfkp wrote:
| Seems like the website has ran out of cloudflare worker credits
| on their plan: Please check back later
| Error 1027 This website has been temporarily rate limited
| nh43215rgb wrote:
| > You cannot access this site because the owner has reached their
| plan limits. Check back later once traffic has gone down.
|
| > If you are owner of this website, prevent this from happening
| again by upgrading your plan on the Cloudflare Workers dashboard.
| xer0x wrote:
| Cloudflare making sites unavailable?
| tossit444 wrote:
| No, Workers free tier is 100,000 requests/day. Considering
| the error is on the main page, each visit is probably taking
| a minimum of 10+ requests, so it can easily be overwhelmed.
| eastbound wrote:
| This is genius if you work in B2C and want to prevent your
| website from going viral.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Does Cloudflare let you set hard limits when you are on a
| paid plan? Or they just do it for the free tier?
| wongarsu wrote:
| No, the paid plan scales to infinity (without having to
| beg for limit increases like on some other clouds). But
| ther paid plan has a $5/month base fee, so it's tempting
| to stay in the free plan if you don't expect to go viral
| beeflet wrote:
| Have I been cloudflare'd?
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Slashdotted within 3 hours.
| asveikau wrote:
| Now there's a term I haven't heard in a while
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup.
|
| Nowadays, we say "hugged to death."
| nosianu wrote:
| Hacker-Noosed
| kazinator wrote:
| Have I been flocculated? Check your social security number to see
| whether you are considered pond scum.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I wonder if I got a license plate holder that said 'I do not
| consent to selling my position information' if I could sue them.
| 7e wrote:
| You have no right to privacy in public, at least in the US.
| __del__ wrote:
| clarity is good. i believe that was a reference to the
| futility of posting "i do not consent" messages on social
| media.
| edot wrote:
| But don't I have a right to not get stalked?
| ecb_penguin wrote:
| Yes of course you do. If you're being stalked, contact your
| local police department.
| diydsp wrote:
| That is oft-repeated, but case law is starting to show it's
| not strictly true:
|
| See Mosaic + Carpenter case which say "Yes, each scan is
| public; yes, aggregation is different. "
|
| Carpenter shows the Court recognizes that aggregated location
| data can be constitutionally significant.
|
| Individual observability vs. systemic observation: A passerby
| can note a single plate at a single place/time. But a system
| of ALPRs, distributed spatially and continuous in time,
| indexed and retained, can map a person's entire movements,
| associations, repeated visits, and behavioral patterns.
| That's exactly the "mosaic" insight: the whole reveals things
| the pieces don't. (Maynard / Jones reasoning).
| ifh-hn wrote:
| Since the page is currently down and I have no idea what flocked
| means in the context of license plates, can I assume this is US
| specific?
| KomoD wrote:
| "Flock Safety" is a company that makes "ALPR" cameras
| (automated license plate recognition, in reality they go far
| beyond just reading license plates), they've been getting a lot
| of attention recently because people are worried about privacy
| and abuse.
|
| There's a bunch of articles about them here:
| https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/
| stanac wrote:
| I would also recommend Benn Jordan's YT channel, he has a
| couple of videos covering flock cameras. His latest one is:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB0gr7Fh6lY
|
| edit: grammar
| junon wrote:
| I love Benn Jordan. If you liked this one, go check out the
| one where he stores a JPEG inside of a living bird.
|
| https://youtu.be/hCQCP-5g5bo?si=K_TGBR6FNpjI0qFk
| monksy wrote:
| Unrelated but he's been getting threats of violence. I'm
| not sure whats going on with that.
| reactordev wrote:
| https://deflock.me
| lillecarl wrote:
| This is dystopian as fuck
| reactordev wrote:
| Wait till you find out about your cell phone...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| That website is a bit misleading, their "worldwide" map
| includes ALL ALPR cameras, not just the ones operated by
| Flock or for-profit surveillance companies.
|
| The ones on their map near my location are all for automatic
| license plate recognition to enter parking garages. Not
| exactly the dystopian nightmare their homepage warned me
| about.
| hibf wrote:
| You assume those aren't logged and accessible by the
| government. They are.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Of course they are, that's how they track memberships,
| payment history, and that kind of stuff. Can't say I
| really care about a paid parking garage keeping a
| customer registry.
|
| I trust the government a lot more than some random third
| party company ("flock"), though.
| reactordev wrote:
| The point isn't _what is the company doing with the data_
| but rather _how secure are these IP cameras?_
|
| Some are for government spying while others _are for
| government spying_ and other bad actors.
|
| I'd love to gain access to said parking garage meter
| camera and scan plates too, only I'm looking for high
| value targets that just got to work and thus, left their
| home.
|
| I'm looking at software used to capture, track, and pull
| data from all these sources in an attempt to build a
| dragnet like service where you can ask "where is license
| plate <bingo>"?
| iso1631 wrote:
| ANPR cameras which the rest of the world (and apparently
| America) have had for decades have recently become big news in
| America, I believe because they're now being used for
| immigration purposes?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
|
| I'm not sure why these are so bad but generally everyone loves
| things like Ring cameras which do the same thing but with
| people rather than vehicles. I suspect there's something in the
| American Psyche and how they treat cars, and the inherent trust
| of the billionaires and distrust of "The Feds"
| rescripting wrote:
| It's trivial for law enforcement to track your movement with
| ALPR cameras. Information feeds into a single database, paid
| for by law enforcement agencies, and they just connect the
| dots.
|
| Ring camera footage requires law enforcement to get a warrant
| or for individuals to give consent to supply the footage.
|
| Now tell me which system makes it easier for a cop to stalk
| their ex.
| ifh-hn wrote:
| This comment went right off a cliff at the end...
| saint_yossarian wrote:
| Why do you think so?
|
| LOVEINT is indeed a thing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT
| ifh-hn wrote:
| I know it's a thing.
|
| That was just my reaction reading the OP.
|
| First paragraph: reasonable, if ignoring that access it
| not likely to be unrestricted willy-nilly.
|
| Second paragraph: not as reasonable given that Amazon
| likely comply without issue with us intelligence, and
| sell the data to third parties, which the police could
| just buy (similar has been done) to avoid consent or
| legal obstacles.
|
| Third paragraph: out of nowhere, focus on police. No
| mention of intelligence agency staff or say Amazon staff
| doing the same thing.
|
| I just had a wee chuckle to myself was all.
| Dusseldorf wrote:
| Out of nowhere? The entire comment is talking about law
| enforcement (police) and law enforcement agencies (police
| departments) purchasing access to commercially owned
| surveillance databases. No warrant is required to use
| them, and in some cases that access is indeed
| "unrestricted willy-nilly."
| sigwinch wrote:
| I think the logic totally follows, if your ex is a cop
| and you're thinking of getting a Ring camera.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| If a police officer potentially stalking his ex is the
| worst failure mode this guy can come up with, let's keep
| the Flock cameras.
|
| With the right access controls and approval processes,
| that can be fully solved in a week.
| hansvm wrote:
| Ah, you mean like if we had some sort of knowledgeable,
| impartial third-party to grant the police permissions.
| They could, get this, "judge" whether the absolute bare
| minimum of evidence is likely to exist. So long as Flock
| didn't provide a way to circumvent an approval process
| like that, you could maybe reduce the instances of
| abusers stalking their victims to "acceptable" levels.
|
| What do you think the chances are that we could invent a
| system like that? You don't think Flock and the police
| would find a way to circumvent it do you?
| thih9 wrote:
| All this is assuming one travels exclusively by car. Bikes,
| public transport, or walking are not as easy to track using
| this system.
|
| Then again, these modes of transport are less popular in
| the US; I guess such a surveillance system is extra
| effective in the US because of that.
| garciasn wrote:
| Less popular because it's not feasible for many. I live
| in MN. Biking 20mi to work when it's -10F and in 6" of
| fresh snow on top of the 12" received so far this season
| just isn't something that's safe to do.
|
| Please don't make it seem like it's a "popularity" thing;
| it's a necessity thing.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Hardly anyone lives in MN - half the poulation of New
| York City alone.
|
| The vast majority of Americans live in cities. Half live
| in just 8 metro-areas, just as the vast majority of
| Europeans live in cities. Europe is far more dispersed
| though.
| antiframe wrote:
| I bet the local community plows the roads but not the
| bike infrastructure, though? I get why, people probably
| drive more than bike.
|
| But, in Canada, there are local communities that plow
| bike infrastructure and locals bike in their deep winter.
|
| It's a chicken or egg problem of building infrastructure
| for users and users demanding infrastructure. It's not
| some fact of nature that it's impossible. Different
| communities have different priorities. So, necessity is a
| bit strong of a word.
| thih9 wrote:
| Finland is a cold country with similar population count
| and larger area. For national domestic trips, 55% of
| people there use cars[1]. For MN i only found stats for
| MN metro area, but I'd expect public transport to be more
| developed there. The car usage is still 83%[2].
|
| [1]: https://www.traficom.fi/sites/default/files/media/pu
| blicatio... page 6
|
| [2]: https://metropolitan-
| council.github.io/TBI_Household_Synthes... "Driving
| remains the predominant mode of travel in the region,
| representing 83% of trips in 2023."
| 8note wrote:
| driving is also not feasible in those conditions. with
| the availability of remote work you should really stay
| home.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > public transport
|
| Some European cities I remember having pervasive cameras
| in public transport a decade ago, ostensibly to prosecute
| vandals.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Not yet. Facical recognition in 2025 is where LPR was in
| 2010.
|
| As the cost of compute and wireless communications
| continues to drop, facial recognition will be prolific.
| There are more limitations with cameras, but AI will make
| it easy to backtrack movement to a place where they get a
| clean shot that can identify you.
|
| As an example, the transit authority in NYC Metro was
| able to plug existing security feeds from trains into
| Amazon Rekognition to count heads, which feeds their
| ticketing app -- you can see which carriages are full. As
| time goes on, they'll become able to track the
| breadcrumbs individuals from seat to platform. (If not
| already)
|
| Detectives do this manually today. I was on a jury where
| the purse snatcher was followed by various cameras until
| he got on a bus. They pulled the bus passes and tracked
| his pass back to his girlfriend.
| hibf wrote:
| This automated already, and you don't need a face. Flock
| does it.
|
| https://haveibeenflocked.com/news/reid
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It does. But more like "the black male with the red
| hoodie is here"
|
| They don't say "hibf just walked into the 7-11" yet. The
| Feds probably have a system that can do that for car
| passengers traveling on "drug corridors" (ie. I95) today.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| There was an article posted recently announcing that Flock
| reached an agreement with Amazon to ingest Ring cameras
| into their system.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most ring users contribute their data and no warrant is
| required. If they don't, the majority of people are
| cooperative.
|
| Ring is problematic in some ways but doesn't produce
| trivially searchable metadata.
| slickdifferent wrote:
| I think it's mostly just a privacy issue. The idea that your
| every movement is being recorded by the government is
| Orwellian, especially when they try to hide its existence,
| lie about its capabilities, and you have no say in the matter
| (referencing NSA metadata monitoring). The average person
| thinks their ring camera is like their coffee maker, an
| individual piece of technology they own and control. If it
| were released that everyone's ring cameras were being fed
| into some NSA program running facial recognition to track
| citizens movement I'm sure they would be upset about that
| too.
| lynx97 wrote:
| Did you somehow miss the introduction of mobile phones?
| Came out of a coma recently?
| xandrius wrote:
| Because people started caring about something, we're
| going to mock them because they don't care about
| something else too?
|
| Let people slowly get interested in protecting their
| privacy; as they say, better late than never!
| iso1631 wrote:
| But these cameras have been around for 30+ years, including
| in the US. Why is it suddenly in the news.
|
| The cameras don't track me either. They track a car. They
| have no idea who is driving the car.
|
| > If it were released that everyone's ring cameras were
| being fed into some NSA program running facial recognition
| to track citizens movement I'm sure they would be upset
| about that too
|
| That's the interesting bit, how did ANPR get into the US
| public consciousness now, rather than over a decade ago
| when it started to be used on toll roads
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They've gotten cheaper and aggregated into nationwide
| networks. The older devices were expensive and in police car
| scenarios required pretty significant effort to install. The
| mobile flock just gets bolted to the dash.
|
| In my city, most vehicular movement between neighborhoods and
| in/out of the city is logged. Your safety and civil liberties
| are dependent on agencies following and auditing their work
| rules, as the law didn't anticipate this gives them a lot of
| discretion.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Americans (the general public) are a lot more weary of
| government surveillance than other developed nations. Its one
| thing that you can get a lot of liberals and conservative to
| agree on.
|
| Unlike ring cameras which people voluntarily install and the
| government needs a warrant to access, flock cameras are
| pretty much exclusively for the government to actively
| monitor citizens without any court oversight.
| iso1631 wrote:
| People install ring cameras which record me walking past.
| Those cameras then push the data to private companies for
| processing, and are made available to police on a simple
| request.
|
| ANPR has been a thing for 30 years. Is America just slow on
| the uptake? Even then it looks like they've been in use for
| a long time there.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >and are made available to police on a simple request.
|
| That's a "santa claus for adults" rumor.
|
| Ring only complies with requests that they are legally
| obligated to. Otherwise users need to voluntarily share
| the footage, which more often than not they do.
| airstrike wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, Ring cameras film people at
| _my_ doorstep and are for my personal use, so dont know how
| they 're similar at all even if you don't trust Amazon
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Well, now Ring has partnered with Flock, so...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > have had for decades have recently become big news in
| America, I believe because they're now being used for
| immigration purposes?
|
| That is one aspect.
|
| But they are also now "using AI to analyze vehicle movements
| for suspicious patterns and proactively alerting police to
| investigate". What could possibly go wrong with that?
|
| Or that there are microphones in certain Flock devices, and
| they've discussed their intent to activate those and do that
| with speech analysis.
|
| Garrett Langley, the CEO, has a disturbingly Minority Report-
| esque vision for a world with, in his words, "no crime",
| "thanks to Flock".
|
| And these are all steps towards it. Interesting you mention
| Ring, because Flock has partnered with Amazon and is opting
| all Ring footage into Flock's network and analyses.
| gotekom952 wrote:
| Very problematic flock security video - how easy is to hack them
| https://youtu.be/uB0gr7Fh6lY?si=vC2Kyl_e30kVVmXT
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| Have I been HNed? [Yes] No
| BlarfMcFlarf wrote:
| I mean, we already had PRISM, why is anyone acting like this is a
| big deal?
| basilgohar wrote:
| It's a big deal even if it's been happening for a while. It
| should not be something we shrug our shoulders to and move on.
| These are stepping stones to a greater police state.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Because prism is a big deal too.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Visit deflock.me/map to see if you live near a camera.
|
| https://deflock.me/map
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Holy shit! I had no idea they were everywhere!
|
| Do they get permission or permit to install them?
| blamazon wrote:
| Some are installed on private property, and supply data to
| the property owner. Some are installed on public property,
| and supply data to the government.
| chzblck wrote:
| Oh no my super secret license plate! definitely something that is
| normally hidden instead of being on the front and back of my car
| for anyone to see and photo.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| Sure, but now there's a highly vulnerable network of cameras
| that reports wherever you pass to everyone way beyond the few
| people that saw you go around.
| chzblck wrote:
| Okay? so what. People can see that I drive? do you not think
| that verizon/ att /google cant see where you traveling by the
| phone you carry?
| phyzome wrote:
| "Oh no, my super secret movement data, which is now being made
| available to a large number of people" would be more accurate.
| chzblck wrote:
| Oh no lots people can now see that I go to costco and publix.
| JimmyBiscuit wrote:
| Oh no youre one druggie friend (that you didnt know about
| having a drug addiction) that visits you sometimes got
| caught by the cops. Oh no they think youre their drug
| dealer since his license plate got recognized in your
| driveway a few times. Oh no they are kicking your door in
| with a search warrant and shoot your dog.
| chzblck wrote:
| Don't need Flock to have that happen -
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-hears-case-
| fam...
| chzblck wrote:
| Downvote all you want but adtechs like magnite, ttd, and
| applovin Have way more personal data on you and use it to
| influence. I'll take safety over ads any day of the week.
| driverdan wrote:
| It's not one or the other. Everyone should be opposed to
| both.
| The_President wrote:
| Flock creates a dossier that allows an individual to be stalked
| and framed. This permits rouge users clamoring for more power to
| consolidate their toolkit and expedite their rise.
|
| People get framed and stolen from all the time and this will
| certainly make it worse.
| herpdyderp wrote:
| Are you talking about the linked website or Flock itself?
| The_President wrote:
| fixed
| amelius wrote:
| License plate numbers are old fashioned. Can't we get something
| more secure? E.g. plate numbers that change every hour would be a
| good start. I don't like to drive around with a giant cookie
| strapped to my car.
| nxm wrote:
| Great, more expensive electronic crap in/on the car to break...
| amelius wrote:
| You can say the same about a line of code.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| The whole point of plastering a giant UID on your vehicle is so
| that it can be identified. Security isn't the purpose here.
| hellothereworld wrote:
| You can search with ,,OUTATIME". For any non-americans lurking in
| the comments.
| DivingForGold wrote:
| A met a guy once whom drives a PU truck, he lowers the tailgate
| and places an oversized piece of plywood in the bed as an excuse,
| he also places an opaque plastic cover over his front lic plate,
| which has been raised to a $300 fine in Texas, if caught. He now
| intends to place a series of bright strobe lights around his
| front plate to "bleach out" the sensors of these spy cameras.
| morkalork wrote:
| Is his name Rusty Shackelford by any chance?
| pxc wrote:
| > He now intends to place a series of bright strobe lights
| around his front plate to "bleach out" the sensors of these spy
| cameras.
|
| Isn't this a safety hazard?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Does he drive a hotdog shaped car?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLfAf8oHrMo
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| How does he plan to trigger the strobe lights?
| dwoldrich wrote:
| Now imagine every other aspect of modern life is enshittified
| similarly to some extent and all being dialed up. Nothing is
| sacred, and talk to the contrary is laughable. Government is a
| scummy grift, every big (money) cause is full of unaudited
| scammers. I hope you are never passionate about a pet government
| policy!
|
| You can buy local or do it yourself, but all of those are
| squeezed at the margins by enshittified inputs.
|
| Before even seeking to fix the problem, I try to work on me.
|
| First, I try (difficult) to not be sucked into useless wallowing,
| which keeps me exactly where the enemy wants me to be. I tend to
| skim 'news' headlines now, if that.
|
| Second, in my career I strive to produce uncommon quality so as
| to not add to the problem.
|
| I love to stand out and feel proud of my work. It makes me sad
| when coworkers are concerned/confused when I put in extra effort.
| I know where they're coming from. No one notices nor cares at
| $megacorp, and my work is internal and humble.
|
| I do it for self-improvement and to make the time I spend working
| for them worthwhile to me.
| smackay wrote:
| You forgot to mention personal integrity and setting a good
| example to others.
| dwoldrich wrote:
| You make a great point! Setting a good example by being
| ambitious creates the Pygmalion Effect. The unavoidable
| contagion of repeated improvement making people hungry for
| more.
|
| I also find everyone is hungry for kudos. I recommend being
| very liberal and publicly vocal with genuine kudos if you
| have them!
| supportengineer wrote:
| I believe that the full weight of the nations resources should
| come into play whenever there are missing or abducted people.
| CIA, NSA, satellites, all of it. I can't fathom while we don't do
| that already. But absent of that, Flock is the next best thing.
| Mainly because it reduces the friction to get this information in
| the hands of local law-enforcement officers. I have zero
| tolerance for crimes against children and fully support capital
| punishment for such.
| analogpixel wrote:
| You guys really need to come up with at least ONE other reason
| to push every single policy besides "think of the children";
| Just one to break it up a bit.
| lillecarl wrote:
| But think of the children!!?
| supportengineer wrote:
| Well, let me ask you this. What is your expectation from
| society if you or your family is _personally_ affected?
| slicktux wrote:
| I'm curious; what database are they using? Or does Flock allow
| queries to their database?
| dopidopHN2 wrote:
| FOIA the records
| dieselgate wrote:
| Cool website, gave it a go. I am not a general advocate of
| license plate tracking but believe it's a double edge sword. A
| former vehicle was stolen and recovered twice - likely due to
| tracking technology.
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