Open Source Project DeFlock Is Mapping License Plate Surveillance Cameras All Over the World (404media.co)
(Tuesday November 12, 2024 @05:50PM (BeauHD)
from the hide-and-seek dept.)
- Reference: 0175458469
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2115209/open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world
- Source link: https://www.404media.co/the-open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world/
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media:
> Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible. [...] Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country.
>
> "It went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around," [said Alabama resident and developer Will Freeman]. "I wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, 'Can I make a database of these license plate readers?'" And so he made a map, and called it [1]DeFlock . DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began [2]posting signs for DeFlock (PDF) to the posts holding up Huntsville's ALPR cameras, and [3]made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world. [...]
>
> When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has [4]crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world . He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping [5]parts of Flock's website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, [6]has 677 cameras .
>
> People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them. For example, all of the cameras in downtown Huntsville are pointing away from the downtown core, meaning they are primarily focused on detecting cars that are entering downtown Huntsville from other areas.
[1] https://deflock.me/
[2] https://deflock.me/deflock-poster.pdf
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/HuntsvilleAlabama/comments/1g40bv3/whats_with_all_the_new_license_plate_readers/
[4] https://www.404media.co/the-open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world/
[5] https://deflock.me/operators
[6] https://transparency.flocksafety.com/flock-safety-admins
> Flock is one of the largest vendors of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) in the country. The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible. [...] Flock and automated license plate reader cameras owned by other companies are now in thousands of neighborhoods around the country. Many of these systems talk to each other and plug into other surveillance systems, making it possible to track people all over the country.
>
> "It went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around," [said Alabama resident and developer Will Freeman]. "I wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, 'Can I make a database of these license plate readers?'" And so he made a map, and called it [1]DeFlock . DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began [2]posting signs for DeFlock (PDF) to the posts holding up Huntsville's ALPR cameras, and [3]made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world. [...]
>
> When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has [4]crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world . He said so far more than 1,700 cameras have been reported in the United States and more than 5,600 have been reported around the world. He has also begun scraping [5]parts of Flock's website to give people a better idea of where to look to map them. For example, Flock says that Colton, California, a city with just over 50,000 people outside of San Bernardino, [6]has 677 cameras .
>
> People who submit cameras to DeFlock have the ability to note the direction that they are pointing in, which can help people understand how these cameras are being positioned and the strategies that companies and police departments are using when deploying them. For example, all of the cameras in downtown Huntsville are pointing away from the downtown core, meaning they are primarily focused on detecting cars that are entering downtown Huntsville from other areas.
[1] https://deflock.me/
[2] https://deflock.me/deflock-poster.pdf
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/HuntsvilleAlabama/comments/1g40bv3/whats_with_all_the_new_license_plate_readers/
[4] https://www.404media.co/the-open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world/
[5] https://deflock.me/operators
[6] https://transparency.flocksafety.com/flock-safety-admins
Welcome (Score:2)
by imunfair ( 877689 )
... to the panopticon.
What about the car-mounted readers? (Score:3)
by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )
Where I live, police department vehicles have license plate scanners mounted on their vehicles. That's going to be a bit tough to map.
eliminate crime? (Score:2)
by Local ID10T ( 790134 )
> The company markets itself as having the goal to fully "eliminate crime" with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras
Surveillance does not eliminate crime -it just provides recordings of crime. Criminals know they are being recorded so they hide their identities. Unless you get lucky you just have evidence that a crime was committed -by someone.
If you really want to... (Score:3)
by Baron_Yam ( 643147 )
You can build your own. It probably won't be as good, but the cost is pretty marginal. I've considered adding a couple of cameras to my home security system for scanning plates to log vehicles just for fun, but there's a lot of extra information you can pull from that if you think about it.
Dumb cameras? (Score:2)
by nospam007 ( 722110 ) *
I guess none of them use AI to check if the license plate matches the car type and color?
License Plate reader (Score:3)
Around here the license plate is only on the back of the vehicle
Anyway I don't have a car, so Flock Them!