By Jason Koebler<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DeFlock has mapped the locations of more than a thousand ALPRs around the United States and thousands more around the world.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/content\/images\/size\/w2000\/2024\/11\/Screen-Shot-2024-11-11-at-6.11.18-AM.png\")
Image: DeFlock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nOn his drive to move from Washington state to Huntsville, Alabama, Will Freeman began noticing lots of cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo I moved to Alabama, and on my way there, once I started getting into the South, I saw a ton of these black poles with a creepy looking camera and a solar panel on top,\u201d Freeman told me. \u201cI took a picture of it and ran it through Google, and it brought me to the Flock website. And then I knew like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s a license plate reader.\u2019 I started seeing them all over the place and realized that they were for the police. And I didn\u2019t like that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201celiminate crime<\/u><\/a>\u201d with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible<\/u><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIn Huntsville, Freeman noticed that license plate reader cameras were positioned in a circle at major intersections, forming a perimeter that could track any car going into or out of the city\u2019s downtown. He started to look for cameras all over Huntsville and the surrounding areas, and soon found that Flock was not the only game in town. He found cameras owned by Motorola, and a third, owned by a company called Avigilon (a subsidiary of Motorola). 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/content\/images\/thumbnail\/og-banner.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, \u2018Can I make a database of these license plate readers?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock<\/u><\/a>. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock<\/u><\/a> to the posts holding up Huntsville\u2019s ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project<\/u><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/content\/images\/2024\/11\/Screen-Shot-2024-11-11-at-6.17.22-AM.png\")
<\/a>The printable sign Freeman encourages people to put on ALPRs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve become good at spotting them just because I\u2019m kind of subconsciously always looking for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want everyone to be aware that this is happening. And I don\u2019t think I can change people\u2019s minds\u2014some people will be fine with it. But some people won\u2019t be,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd hopefully enough people won\u2019t be fine with it and will do something to get them taken down [in their city] or at least better controlled, preferably taken down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt still just scratches the surface,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI added another page to the site that tracks cities and counties who have transparency reports on Flock\u2019s site, and many of those don\u2019t have any reported ALPRs though, so it\u2019ll help people focus on where to look for them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 parts of Flock\u2019s website<\/u><\/a> 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, has 677 cameras<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.404media.co\/content\/images\/2024\/11\/Screen-Shot-2024-11-11-at-6.19.15-AM.png\")
<\/a>A ring of Flock cameras in Huntsville’s downtown, pointing outward.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nPeople 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On his drive to move from Washington state to Huntsville, Alabama, Will Freeman began noticing lots of cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo I moved to Alabama, and on my way there, once I started getting into the South, I saw a ton of these black poles with a creepy looking camera and a solar panel on top,\u201d Freeman told me. \u201cI took a picture of it and ran it through Google, and it brought me to the Flock website. And then I knew like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s a license plate reader.\u2019 I started seeing them all over the place and realized that they were for the police. And I didn\u2019t like that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201celiminate crime<\/u><\/a>\u201d with the use of ALPRs and other connected surveillance cameras, a target experts say is impossible<\/u><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In Huntsville, Freeman noticed that license plate reader cameras were positioned in a circle at major intersections, forming a perimeter that could track any car going into or out of the city\u2019s downtown. He started to look for cameras all over Huntsville and the surrounding areas, and soon found that Flock was not the only game in town. He found cameras owned by Motorola, and a third, owned by a company called Avigilon (a subsidiary of Motorola). 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt went from me seeing 10 license plate readers to probably seeing 50 or 60 in a few days of driving around,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI wanted to make a record of these things. I thought, \u2018Can I make a database of these license plate readers?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so he made a map, and called it DeFlock<\/u><\/a>. DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock<\/u><\/a> to the posts holding up Huntsville\u2019s ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project<\/u><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve become good at spotting them just because I\u2019m kind of subconsciously always looking for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI want everyone to be aware that this is happening. And I don\u2019t think I can change people\u2019s minds\u2014some people will be fine with it. But some people won\u2019t be,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd hopefully enough people won\u2019t be fine with it and will do something to get them taken down [in their city] or at least better controlled, preferably taken down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt still just scratches the surface,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI added another page to the site that tracks cities and counties who have transparency reports on Flock\u2019s site, and many of those don\u2019t have any reported ALPRs though, so it\u2019ll help people focus on where to look for them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 parts of Flock\u2019s website<\/u><\/a> 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, has 677 cameras<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/a>