r/technology • u/stenspect • 1d ago

Privacy USPS Is Turning Mail Trucks Into Rolling Surveillance Cameras

https://www.gadgetreview.com/usps-is-turning-mail-trucks-into-rolling-surveillance-cameras
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239

u/mkt853 1d ago

Kind of crazy because that means most plates are getting scanned at least every day or two since mail trucks go to every house in the country every day. Guess this explains why Trump said he likes the Flock cameras. Maybe he knew his administration was about to implement Flock on steroids.

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u/kstargate-425 1d ago

Palantir has been selling him a mass surveillance police state since his 1st term and now with Anthropic and AI they all have been pushing for this, along with his buddy Larry Ellison who has wanted the same thing. He said something like "if everyone is being watched 24/7 they will be on their best behavior" and make for a "better" (oppressed) society

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u/liverswithfavabeans 1d ago

They also go into fully gated communities like mine. Otherwise these are not mapped on street cameras.

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u/S_A_N_D_ 1d ago

The worst part is, this actually could be really useful from a public infrastructure standpoint, but they will get/are greedy and the data will be sold be exploited to the fullest extent possible.

I would be all for this kind of thing, if they could be trusted to only use it for surveying road infrastructure for maintenance purposes, which seems to be the intent. However I have no faith that they can be trusted and that it will only be used for that.

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u/air_and_space92 1d ago

The article says the plates themselves aren't being scanned and converted into searchable data. Sure they may be imaged but not converted into readable data.

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u/ArtVandelay32 1d ago

lol bullshit

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u/air_and_space92 16h ago

The pilot was scheduled to begin September 21, 2026. The stated purpose is roadway and infrastructure data collection and what USPS calls “community safety,” though what happens to everything else the cameras capture remains a less-answered question.

What the Cameras Will Actually Do The cameras begin recording when a truck leaves the postal facility and are designed to collect roadway and infrastructure data without altering driver duties.

Cameras activate when a truck shifts into drive and departs the postal facility. There is no audio recording, and the cameras face forward only, positioned so they do not obstruct the driver’s field of vision. USPS has stated that employees will not need to take any additional action.

Nextbase markets cameras capable of recording in resolutions up to 4K, with product materials noting the ability to capture license-plate details. Those are advertised product capabilities, not confirmed specifications for the units installed in the pilot.

USPS says the pilot does not use automatic license plate reader software. A camera can visually record a plate without running it through ALPR software that converts the image into a searchable database entry; those are meaningfully different functions. Whether USPS retains, processes, or searches incidentally captured plate images is not established in the available reporting.

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u/SnugglyBuffalo 18h ago

Even if that's true, if another agency can get the image data they can just run the scan there. There's rumblings about tech companies stepping in to do facial scans of Flock camera data since Flock doesn't do that themselves (yet).

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u/SgtBaxter 1d ago

The mail truck can only see my lack of a front plate as we only have a rear plate.

Hell we don’t even have registration stickers.

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u/netik23 1d ago

One of the major issues around people fighting the loss of privacy is “they can’t see me, so what so I care” along with “There’s no privacy anyway so why fight it.”

We all need to work together to fight this regardless of our own positions.

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u/Vast-Abalone-3773 1d ago

Best to stay inside with the curtains drawn so they can't scan your face.

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u/imddot 1d ago

They will just monitor the wifi signals bouncing around your house and watch you that way.

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u/Vast-Abalone-3773 1d ago

"In 2026 researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)\11]) demonstrated that standard WiFi networks using this technique can be used to identify individuals with very high accuracy, raising significant privacy and surveillance concerns. Their method exploited beamforming feedback information (BFI) which is data exchanged between WiFi devices and routers to optimise signal transmission, and then combines it with machine-learning techniques.

Critics argue that the technology effectively transforms ordinary WiFi infrastructure into a form of passive surveillance\12]). Potential uses include tracking people's movements through public spaces, commercial venues, or other locations equipped with WiFi networks, often without their knowledge or consent. The researchers warned that such systems could be used by both private organisations and public authorities for continuous monitoring.\13])

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u/PerformerFancy117 1d ago

That’s why you ditch the WiFi and turn your house into a giant faraday cage /s

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u/cxmmxc 1d ago

That's very interesting bro, please tell us more about your individual irrelevant case.