By now you know about Flock Safety and its Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) system. You're likely familiar with the way it logs your car's location online and gets innocent people arrested. One thing I find to be glossed over in the media, though, is that other vendors of ALPRs are just as bad. It isn't just Flock we're fighting against, but any company that builds an online network based off your private information through its ALPRs.
Axon Enterprise
Axon Enterprise is the massive law enforcement conglomerate that originally brought tasers to market. They specialize in police and military cameras, gear, and online AI intelligence platforms to assist law enforcement agencies and "protect more lives."
Axon, admittedly, makes some pretty cool stuff like first-responder drones, drone detection devices, virtual reality law enforcement training technology, and bodycams, all stuff that can legitimately be useful to assist in real law enforcement operations.
Like Flock, though, Axon sells fixed public safety cameras under the names Outpost and Lightpost, which are essentially advanced ALPRs. These cameras can be paired with Axon Fusus, a digital dashboard that can take input from the cameras to identify cars by their "plate, color, make or attributes" and log their location histories.
Fusus is a huge cloud system that combines camera feeds from not only ALPRs, but also any other video or data feed an agency might have like body cameras and audio detection devices. Axon advertises it works well with its drones and ALPRs as well as any video feed the community wants to share with it. With Axon Community Connect, any business or resident can link their video feed with a local agency's Fusus instance for quicker responses in emergency situations and active police monitoring.
Axon is not an alternative to Flock cameras, it's another vendor to avoid. In 2024, a researcher reverse engineered a public Fusus API to leak over 100 law enforcement agencies who use Axon's Fusus to integrate public camera feeds into a large searchable database. Some locations have over 30,000 registered video feeds contributed by the police and the community, meaning the police can find out wherever you go and whenever you go there.
This is a scale larger than Flock, as instead of just its proprietary ALPRs it uses any type of video feed available to it. Since so many of the cameras are being contributed by private entities like individuals or businesses, police aren't even required to create or follow data retention and deletion policies.
If you want to learn more about Fusus, take a look at the EFF's write-up about it.
Genetec
Genetec's Security Center SaaS can partner with cameras and security systems, like its own AutoVu ALPRs, to do the same things Fusus and Flock's platform can.
Genetec's AutoVu ALPR system uses Advanced Vehicle Analytics to identify vehicles' "behavior and characteristics." The website states the analytics system can "automatically identify vehicles behaving suspiciously" and "provide data on a vehicle's speed, direction of travel, make and the state, province or country of origin of its license plate."
Genetec's platform allows users to host it on-premises or on their cloud. Its position on data retention and privacy is very hands-off; it allows its customers to do whatever it wants with the data, including setting custom retention and deletion policies.
This system suffers from the same issues as the rest, with its automated system logging way more information than it should on innocent civilians, while its customers do whatever they want with the data, including keeping it forever or sifting through it for reasons other than law enforcement, whenever they want.
Motorola Solutions
Motorola, a massive player in the digital techno-anything age, also develops ALPRs. Its website advertises the technology can "go beyond basic detection" to log and record your car's location, make, model, color, accessories, damage, and bumper stickers.
Just like the rest, Motorola allows its customers to set their own retention rules according to their own policy and manage their own data sharing.
Charli Reyes in California recently filed a class-action lawsuit against Motorola for making ALPRs that do what ALPRs do, claiming their advanced AI detection and logging are a violation of a Californian's privacy and California's own ALPR Privacy Act. In Illinois, another class-action is filed against Motorola for the same reason.
WIRED reports on a researcher who found over 150 Motorola ALPR cameras that have exposed their video feeds to the public internet, allowing anyone to view and save the footage. The accessible data includes photos of cars and license plates, while taking a look doesn't even require a username or password.
It also has a cloud software platform, VehicleManager, which "transforms LPR data into actionable leads." As always, this platform allows agencies to log and search through a history of identified license plates, tracking your car's location and physical features.
Other Vendors
ALPRs are a huge thing in law enforcement and surveillance, and with such a crowded field and so much money to be made, a crazy amount of companies are popping up or joining the game either manufacturing their own hardware or pumping out their own software to join the club. All of these have the same flaws and same privacy concerns.
It doesn't matter who manufactures or controls the ALPR technology, they all have the same creepy recognition features and do the same things that violate our constitution. Nobody should have such easy access to your location, that's something intimate and private that you only trust with your closest friends, family, or nobody. There are so many people who don't even know about it, who are having their location added to an online database that can send the police on their tail. You don't get to accept a terms of service. They don't tell you that it's happening. They just do it and hope you're dumb enough to keep quiet or remain ignorant.