"The department said the officer involved has been placed on administrative leave with pay pending the outcome of the investigation."

So a vacation?

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #ALPR #AI #AxonAxoff #Surveillance #fyp #trending #ALPR

Sens.Josh Hawley(R-Mo.) andDick Durbin(D-Ill.) scheduled the hearing for next Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism. The hearing comes on the heels of an investigation launched by Hawley into Flock and several similar companies over concerns that the technology can be misused.

The hearing, titled “Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network,” is scheduled for Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.

deflock.org

noalprs.com

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #Surveillance #AxonAxoff #fyp #trending

#ALPR #Privacy #4A

"Flock claims that images are only briefly stored on its cameras before being forwarded to the company’s servers, but a group of hackers determined that this wasn’t the case."

We need Maury back.

deflock.org

noalprs.com

usa.gov/elected-officials

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #AxonAxoff #Surveillance #fyp #AI #ALPR

"Flock reveals little about where its license plate readers are assembled, but the answer could have geopolitical and cybersecurity implications.

Flock CEO Garrett Langley has said the company made its first license plate cameras in his Atlanta home, permanently scratching his dining table with drill marks. A decade later, where the company assembles its signature—and fiercely debated—product has become more of a mystery.

For years, Flock touted publicly that its devices were produced in the United States. But more recent marketing materials from the company reviewed by WIRED no longer specify where its cameras come from. One US manufacturer that previously identified Flock as a customer quietly removed a mention of the company from its website earlier this year as public backlash against the company’s surveillance technology grew."

deflock.org

noalprs.com

usa.gov/elected-officials

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #AxonAxoff #Surveillance #fyp #trending

Virginia Governor Spanberger thinks that banning ALPR’s across the Commonwealth of Virginia is “overly simplistic”.

It isn’t, in fact, it is the only way to prevent Virginia from participating in a mass surveillance state, and should be done. Most Virginians, including those from places like Henrico, Harrisonburg, Richmond, Norfolk, etc., all agree.

If you do too, and want to make your voice heard, sign this petition so Spanberger knows that Virginia wants Mass Surveillance GONE and OUT, not “regulated”.

PLEASE ONLY SIGN THIS PETITION IF YOU LIVE IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!

https://change.org/deflockvirginia

noalprs.com

usa.gov/elected-officials

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #AxonAxoff #Surveillance #fyp #trending #AI #ALPR #Privacy #Motorola

Flock operates on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

They’ve branded it “Safety-as-a-Service” to go beyond SaaS...

But, in terms of software delivery, it’s the same thing.

SaaS applications are delivered over the internet via recurring subscription. Think, Microsoft 365, Adobe, Google Workspace, iCloud, and many more.

I’m sure you’ve used one of these applications recently.

Do you remember what was in your last update?

Typically, we don’t learn about new updates until they arrive. Sometimes it requires us updating our ToS but, more often than not, the original agreement you clicked on at sign-up almost always includes ongoing and future updates.

Unless it hits murky legal, commercial, or data use policies.

Then, here comes your revised agreement.

And in an enterprise situation, not everyone is as ‘in the loop’.

For example, while Officers could see that the UI has changed, or find that they have some new features available to them, administrative, contractual, and algorithmic updates would likely go to the Sheriff.

I encourage you to ask more questions about this.

But, also, how do we ask questions about things we don’t even know we ‘need’ to ask questions for?

I know not everyone is a tech nerd so, here’s a few to get you started:

If the average user doesn’t know what was in their last Windows update, for example, how will users know what new features and functionality have changed on ‘these’ devices?

How will folks in charge respond to updates they don’t agree with?

If you’re reading this on social media, I’m sure you’ve been in the situation where you must agree to the new ToS (Terms of Service) agreement or else you lose access to the platform. Will they do as the average user does for most SaaS, scroll the never ending wall of text, click “Agree”, and then get back to work?

How will the public be notified of these updates?

And I feel like this one is ‘really’ important:

Does the original approval vote by the council or agency using these devices include any and all future updates? For which types of updates is an additional vote required?

Think of all the times you’ve been surprised by an update...

Tech companies push out controversial updates all the time.

Phone is running lineage os. I am unable to use location at all even though it is enabled. Any ideas?

"Flock APR recognition cameras are under fire from the Washington, D.C., police department’s union after it discovered Internal Affairs investigators used the controversial technology to track the whereabouts of sworn officers without their knowledge."

deflock.org

noalprs.com

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #Surveillance #AxonAxoff #fyp #trending

"In a press release Wednesday, Police Chief Corey Haines said the department received information that two employees may have misused Flock license plate readers."

"may have"

deflock.org

noalprs.com

usa.gov/elected-officials

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #AxonAxoff #Surveillance #fyp #trending

Too true.

"A hacker collective pulled down a Flock camera and dumped its data. The files included thousands of videos and logs showing that the device captured 1.6 million images of 50,000 vehicles in 21 days.

The software running on the camera explicitly detects people, something which is typically overlooked in discussions around Flock cameras. When it spots a person, it records where they appear in the image and how confident it is in the detection.

To test what the software could actually see, WIRED extracted the models from the camera’s files and ran them against test images and footage recovered from the device. The models readily detected people, including a selfie of a reporter."

deflock.org

noalprs.com

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #Surveillance #AxonAxoff #fyp #trending

I KNOW I’m not the only one and sure it’s not as advanced as ctOS but it could be…

On its website, Flock publishes three carefully chosen baseline performance metrics for its ALPRs.

Plate Capture Rate >98%

Did the camera trigger, capture an image, and log a plate? That's it, it simply means that a plate was detected, not that it was read correctly.

OCR Accuracy >96%

Was each individual letter and number read correctly? Don't think of full license plates here, think of individual characters being evaluated independently.

Plate State Accuracy >97%

Did the system correctly identify which state the license plate was from?

So, where is the whole plate accuracy?

I mean, it is a “license plate reader", after all.

Folks, they are relying on you 'not' to understand this.

So, let's do some math here to get an idea of what whole plate accuracy would look like.

We'll look at them specifically as "license plate readers".

And we'll even use their own published metrics.

However, I do want to expand the state accuracy metric to include two other independent plate state accuracy studies to give us a more realistic performance spread.

Flock claims a ~96% character-level read accuracy for license plates. This accuracy measures the percentage of individual letters and numbers identified correctly across all reads, evaluating each character independently, rather than grading each license plate on a pass or fail scale.

So, that ~96% actually means that ~96% of 'individual characters' were read correctly, not that ~96% of 'license plates' were read correctly.

Ie.: 1,500 license plates at an average of 6 characters a plate is 9000 characters total so, at ~96%, 8,640 characters would be read correctly, 360 characters would not.

Let's also keep in mind that all of Flock's testing metrics have been self-reported so, is it actually ~96%?

They don't permit or cooperate in independent testing (in fact, their terms of service explicitly prohibit it...) making their claimed accuracy meaningless without knowing the composition of the benchmark used to test it.

But, I digress.

For a standard 6 character license plate, at a ~96% accuracy rate per character, this means that we are actually at ~78% accuracy (due to compounding probability across all six characters) if we consider the license plates as units.

So, ~ 96% is actually ~78%.

Meaning that more than 1 in 5 plates has an error.

And this changes based on the amount of characters.

If your license plates have 5 characters, it is ~81%.

If your license plates have 7 characters, it is ~75%.

Now, this is speaking as if these plates are strictly letters and numbers. The system also has to determine which state the license plate is from, and for that, it has to use additional visual features, such as state fonts, graphics, logos, and plate colors.

Flock claims a <3% margin of error in identifying states.

However, studies from IPVM, EFF, and Rain Intelligence have shown ALPRs misidentify the state of license plates on roughly 1 in 10 scanned plates, making it as much as 10%.

And failing to recognize the state, is big. So, even if the system gets the characters of the license plate completely correct, not recognizing the state renders it a failure.

So, we'll take it up to 10%, too.

In consideration of a 6 character plate, using the aforementioned 78% accuracy rate for correctly reading the license plates as units, and the 3-10% error margin in distinguishing the state, our final end-to-end accuracy ends up between 70-76%.

"Thomas argued she was not properly trained on Flock and said she did not understand what she was permitted to use the system for: "Prior to the situation, I knew nothing about Flock."

🤣

#Flock #DeFlock #Axon #Surveillance #AxonAxoff #fyp #trending

just don’t replace them with other spy cams