Flock, the company whose automated license plate reading cameras have spread across American towns and cities, has a marketing problem of its own making.
According to Wired, Flock posted videos on its YouTube channel spotlighting police departments that use its technology — and at least four of those departments have since had officers accused of misusing it. In other words, the same agencies the company chose as showcases for how well the system works are now examples critics can point to when arguing it can be abused.
Wired also reports on internal plans that suggest Flock wants to go further than the pole-mounted cameras it is known for. The outlet's reporting describes company plans involving rideshare dashcams — putting camera coverage into privately owned vehicles moving through cities all day — and a role in coaching police departments.
Those two threads land in the middle of a broader stretch of surveillance and security news covered in the same Wired piece: a judge ruling that "cell tower dumps," a technique that sweeps up records of every phone near a tower, are unconstitutional; hacks of water utilities spreading to a dozen states; a phishing email that opened up the inbox of a missile-parts supplier; and a ransomware boss sentenced to 16 years.
The details of the individual misuse allegations, and how the departments involved responded, are laid out in Wired's reporting rather than summarized here.
Why it matters: license plate readers work by logging where ordinary people drive, whether or not anyone suspects them of anything, and the safeguard usually offered is that police will only look up what they are supposed to. Allegations against departments the vendor itself chose to feature go straight at that promise — and the expansion into rideshare dashcams would widen the same system before the question of who polices the lookups has been settled.