Lately, it’s felt like like every piece of new tech is inevitable, whether we want it or not. CNET recently asked: “Who’ll own your inevitable AI assistant?” The Wall Street Journal suggested that “Smartglasses Are Inevitable.” A New York Times headline proclaimed: “It’s Inevitable – You’re Going to Get Hacked.” We’ve heard about how AI-driven job losses, AI-generated music and journalism, and AI-integrated nuclear weapons are all just a matter of time. Oh, you don’t like this vision of the future? Doesn’t matter! It’s coming.
But there’s one piece of technology that’s felt less inevitable recently: automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, the flagship product of Atlanta-based Flock Safety. ALPRs have been around in some form for years, meant to catch unlawful drivers and other kinds of criminal activity, but back in the day, they were simply doing what their name suggests: reading license plates automatically.
Today, with the help of AI, Flock’s ALPRs can “look at bumper stickers, ID the make and model, even locate scratches” on vehicles, according to one expert. And, while the company’s website states that their devices “are not designed to search for people, scan faces, or track individuals,” Wired reported last month that the company can “identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone.”
Perhaps most significantly, Flock ALPRs can store information in a centralized database. If a local government or police force installs Flock cameras, they can automatically share whatever data they collect with law enforcement across the country. Flock also markets to homeowners’ associations, giving them the option to share their data with this nation-wide law enforcement network as well.
All this data can easily be weaponized by bad actors – and it already has. As Flock’s ALPRs have popped up across the US, there have been more than 100 reports of the tech's misuse by law enforcement personnel. Newsflash: stalking your ex-girlfriend doesn't count as official police business.
There are broader privacy implications, too. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it: “If there are Flock cameras in your city, they are tracking, logging, and sharing your movements without a warrant.” And Flock’s centralized database, paired with its network of cameras spread across the country, facilitates a level of surveillance that has never been technologically possible.
The backlash across the US has been sudden, passionate, and even bipartisan, a true rarity in modern politics. Across the US, Flock ALPRs have been vandalized, protesters have gathered, and nearly four hundred Flock contracts have been terminated across 36 US states. Last Friday, Flock reportedly announced a voluntary severance program for employees as the company keeps losing customers. Other competing companies, like Axon, have received similar heat, albeit at lower levels; Flock’s alleged track record of dishonesty makes it feel particularly untrustworthy, even among peers in the surveillance cam industry.
The Canadian backlash against ALPRs has been far more muted, but the technology appears deeply unpopular in both countries.
If it’s Flock versus the people of America, the people of America seem to be winning. In Canada, the fight looks a bit different. Flock doesn’t operate here; instead, we have homegrown versions of the same tech (elbows up?). Montreal-based company Genetec is similar to Flock in that its cameras can detect and store information about license plates and other car characteristics, including make, model, and colour.
Genetec is less invasive overall. While Flock data is stored centrally and can be accessed across multiple police forces, Genetec data is stored locally, limiting the potential scope of surveillance. You couldn’t be easily tracked by Genetec cameras across jurisdictions, but it doesn’t prevent your local creepy cop from following your movements.
ALPRs are gaining momentum in Canadian law enforcement, and they’ve been introduced in places like Toronto, Brampton, and Montreal. In the wealthy Toronto neighbourhood of Rosedale, residents themselves arranged for the installation of Flock-like cameras – provided by NHBR, which is, per the Toronto Star, “the company that owns the rights to Flock in Canada.”
But as Flock-related public outrage grows, Canada’s ALPRs are coming under scrutiny, too. The website panopti.ca, which locates and maps ALPRs across Canada, popped up earlier this year, and a CBC News video about ALPRs in Canada recently received 1.1 million views on TikTok, along with hundreds of concerned comments. Last month, a Genetec ALPR was removed by the police force in Montreal, following a Radio-Canada article about the camera.
Certainly, the Canadian backlash against ALPRs has been far more muted compared to the US, but the technology appears deeply unpopular in both countries. Between contracts being cancelled and cameras getting removed, perhaps the widespread use of Flock-style ALPRs isn't so inevitable after all.
And if Flock isn’t inevitable, maybe the rest of it isn’t either: getting hacked, seeing AI-generated tunes in your Spotify Wrapped, being replaced by an AI agent at your job. We might feel powerless against the tide of technological progress – indeed, we really can’t control which particular technologies are invented. But we can control what kinds of tech we actually welcome into our lives – which is easy to forget, until something like Flock gives us an important reminder.
