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Have I been Flocked? – Check if your license plate is being watched
- habinero 10mo agoI love these kinds of sites, since they're indistinguishable from honeypots. Sure, have my license plate and the information that I'm worried about being watched.
- Simulacra 10mo agoSounds like social media ;-)
- temptemptemp111 10mo ago[dead]
- RobRivera 10mo agoLmao I got honeypotted in h.s. by one of those 'does your crush like you' astrology sites
- alilikestech 10mo agoLol I actually tried it with my plate, i hope i don't get SWATed
- MangoToupe 10mo agoWho isn't worried about being watched? I am certainly not confident the government can tell their ass from their face, so anyone could be suspect.
- AdmiralAsshat 10mo agoWith no other identifying info, though, what can they do with a license plate number in isolation?
- rogerrogerr 10mo agoExactly - you can collect license plates numbers way easier than this. The best data they can really get is a connection to an IP address.
- CamperBob2 10mo agoSell it to the cops and/or ICE as belonging to "self-identified persons of interest."
- MangoToupe 10mo ago[flagged]
- pests 10mo agoSome states, like Michigan, you can request owner information (including address) by a in-person SOS visit and $15 a plate. I've always thought this should be PII and shouldn't be allowed on reddit, for example, where PII is banned. Post a driver with plate in Michigan and you may have doxxed them.
- antonvs 10mo ago> Some states, like Michigan, you can request owner information (including address) If the car is leased, wouldn’t this just give leasing company details?
- 747fulloftapes 10mo agoNo, because while the leasing company may own the vehicle (known as the title holder) the vehicle will be registered in the lesser's name (known as the registered owner.) In the case of a car purchased with financing like a loan, I believe the purchaser will be both the title and registered owner, but the lender will have a lien on the vehicle until the debt is paid off.
- antonvs 10mo agoAh thanks. Permanent rental it is then. :)
- 747fulloftapes 10mo agoThat, or, establish a trust to own the vehicle and grant yourself permission to use it. It's not exactly trivial to do and costs some money, but it's doable. You can do similar with an LLC, but that gets more complicated with the rules regarding using a "company" vehicle for personal purposes. IANAL Similar things are done for things like cellphone plans, firearm ownership, homes, etc. The only thing I am aware of that you can only do in your own name is register to vote. Almost all of the Michigan voter database can be FOIA'd. It's called the QVF - qualified voter file. Only a few fields in the database (ie, day and month of birth) as well as all voter records for victoms domestic battery are protected by statute.
- ccgreg 10mo agoMost people park at their home and many drive to work. If you have both of those data points, you can identify people.
- mertd 10mo agoThat's not very useful? For homeowners, the real estate transactions are public and majority of white collar people have LinkedIn accounts.
- drnick1 10mo ago> majority of white collar people have LinkedIn accounts. What a time to live in!
- hopelite 10mo agoLinkedIn has always struck me like a kind of contemporary slave management/market place, only one in which pick-mes try to be the best alpha slave they can be. The fact that you are linked in, as in a chain, sure does not help with dispelling my impression.
- jwiz 10mo agoYou're starting with the plate, getting the home, and then you can get the real estate info. Most people don't expect their identity to be discoverable from their driving.
- ragequittah 10mo agoWait really? I feel like this was happening in the 90s. Now every car has a full gps spy system integrated to the point I barely trust that my conversation is private in a modern vehicle. But I guess if you think it's just your car company, Android, Apple, roadside assistance, the local police, and probably the music you're playing that can pin your location you're probably ok.
- 10mo ago
- amazingman 10mo agoChecksum?
- dragonwriter 10mo ago> With no other identifying info, though, what can they do with a license plate number in isolation? For typical users not taking extra precautions, visiting a page in a browser is providing additional identifying info, a fact that monetization of the free-as-in-beer web relies heavily upon, but which can be leveraged in other ways, e.g., by a site that draws you in with privacy fears as a technique to get you to submit additional information that can be correlated with it.
- edm0nd 10mo agoYou just work backwards. Here's what I would do working off just a single license plate number w OSINT. I would pivot immediately into license plate databases that have been breached. For example, ParkMobile got popped in 2021 and the db has 20.9M license plates in it. prob have low success rate and iirc its pretty US centric. It has their full name, address, phone, email, all kinda data. If you had paid fancy tools, like Lexis Nexis, you could plug it into there and easily find the owner. There are also plenty of license plate look sites online where it will tell you the VIN and make/model details. Idk, would just take digging and keep spidering out with all new info you find. Would yield a few hits eventually.
- monerozcash 10mo agoSure, and so what? You can look up people on Accurint without license plates. Depending on what kind of account you have, you can just search by a zip code, or a state with no further identifiers. What would be the point of running a website collecting the license plate numbers of random visitors?
- rightbyte 10mo agoPairing IPs to persons?
- monerozcash 10mo agoYou can just get an API which does that and skip the middle steps? Or even skip the API part and just buy that data in bulk. Or just collect it from a variety of freely leaked databases.
- diydsp 10mo agoYou need to think more evil! Lets brainstorm! Theres a parking lot... what are the 10 wealthiest car owners...and the 10 frailest oldest people... or maybe the 20 women aged 19-25 blond under 150 pounds... and when do they get off work tired, drive home each day? What's the most isolated gas station,convenience store they stop at? Ones where few other cars pass by? Who's homes don't show a 2nd car in driveway? Owned by 6'5" 200 pound man? Who frequently visits a karate studio? Or: im a car salesman, in comes a customer, whining abt lowering the price bc Theyre broke... lemme just look up where they eat supper every night! How much time they spend at airports! What school they drop off their kids! Who comes to their house? Nannies? Oh look drug dealers, i can threaten them with blackmail! Sound ridiculous? All the data brings it into focus. A local detective told me theyre focusing on robberies of $ethnicity restaurants bc that group stockpiles cash in their homes... And this is all assuming good info, but when u get creative: ..what if we look for mistakes... hey that annoying $religious neighbor pissed me off with his loud music. His kids car shows up as visiting thr wrong side of town..probably a wrong digit but lets report him anyway!!! Or: Hey lets scan all the wifi dbs for ssids that seem like defaults, then offer them csam-insurance: you pay me $1000 cash rn and ill insure i dont browse csam from your network! And my alpr data says when youre home and your iot devs tell me when you go to sleep so we'll slip it in at before-bed-wank-time!
- JohnFen 10mo agoIn many states, car registration data is public information. If you have a license plate number, you can easily look up who the car is registered to, where they live, etc. License plate numbers are PII.
- nxm 10mo agoThis is simply not true.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 10mo agoThank you for the correction. This was absolutely true in my state, but your reply made me double-check the law. It has changed. Now, the unredacted registration information is more limited. If you aren't in the (fairly broad) category of people who are entitled to the unredacted information, you can still get the records but the items legally defined as PII will be redacted. That still makes the license plate PII, though.
- potato3732842 10mo agoFlag you as being worth watching, or up your composite score by a point or whatever.
- mikkupikku 10mo agoSuppose the guy behind this website keeps a log of the requests, even accidentally, and eventually gets bought out by Flock themselves (websites critical of companies selling out is unfortunately common). Now Flock has a list of plates of people alert to flock and this gets added to your Palintir threat matrix, so the next time a cop pulls you over for some minor infraction his computer can prime him to be jumpy and trigger happy by labelling you as a potential dissident.
- boomboomsubban 10mo agoThey list their sources, if you care but don't trust them you could replicate it on your own.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hopelite 10mo agoI totally understand your sentiment, but you could just check a random assortment of license plate numbers you collected while driving around, which also includes yours. At the very least that would effectively obfuscate your license plate sufficiently that it could not be attributed beyond other methods that likely already have done so.
- blitzar 10mo agoReminds me of the (legit) form to claim compensation for a privacy leak. Put in your name, address, phone number, dob, ssn and bank details - we will post you a cheque for $2.50
- boringg 10mo ago100% always feels like a trap.
- onetokeoverthe 10mo agojust enter 10 license numbers.
- tptacek 10mo agoBesides the obvious privacy concern: at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful for public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily incomplete. But, give it a year or two, and you can replace this whole website with a black background and 72 point white bold text "YES".
- calvinmorrison 10mo agoFlock is a private company, right. That's the whole schtick. Like, Flock can retain records indefinitely for example, they may sell those records to the government but they're a private party.
- tptacek 10mo agoWhat's your point? To the extent they're a private company you're even less likely to get access to records from Flock ALPR cameras.
- calvinmorrison 10mo ago> at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful for public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily incomplete. They're not a public body, that was my point
- hopelite 10mo agoThey de facto are because they only place cameras in public places and on public land by contract with the government in one form or another; be it with a treasonous sheriff or a treasonous state executive and legislature. The public would not be talking about Flock if they had not worked to create a treasonous surveillance state and instead only did things like monitored truck movements in a logistics depot. The private contracts for things like HOA neighborhoods and corporations, e.g., big box store loss prevention and customer data tracking, but those’s are a totally different issue that have nothing to do with the use of public funds and power for mass surveillance.
- user3939382 10mo agoCan’t wait for the Flock Equifax/SouthParkWereSorry-esque breach announcement any day. I should start a betting pool w my friends.
- pilingual 10mo agoIf YouTube personalities can break into the hardware, I wouldn't be surprised if foreign intelligence has already figured out a way. Clownin
- hopelite 10mo agoWhy would they break into individual hardware when they have unfettered access to the whole system in certain countries’ cases and can likely just hack into it in more adversarial cases? It is one of the several reasons why … yes, I know YC backed and funded Flock … the company and everyone in government that contracts for them to provide this mass surveillance service, is objectively and inherently treasonous. But don’t shoot the messenger just because people don’t like the message. “Whoopsie, my negligence I shouldn’t have been engaging in in the first place” is no exemption from being a traitor, betrayal. What that means for society and if and what it does about it is a different question. Based on historical trends, it all probably won’t matter since we’ve clearly crossed a threshold and the “PPP” tyranny (different from the trillion dollars in PPP loans that were forgiven and contributed to the inflation) is upon us because it wasn’t prevented when it still could have been. I don’t think people here are even tracking what is going on in TX, UT, LA (and soon to be nation wide); where as of Jan 1st all new accounts will have to provide government ID to install any app on a mobile device.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoWhy should I care if some low-ranking party official in China knows where I drive, when my actual government will use that data to deport me if I sufficiently piss it off?
- bigbuppo 10mo agoWell, it's nice to know which cars are in the parking lot of a Booz-Allen office all day, and that there's one guy that on Thursday nights they drive to an Off Track Betting parlor for a couple of hours before driving back to their gated community and the cameras in that gated community show that the person has just one car. Let's set a honey trap for him next week at the OTB parlor and find out what he does and if he's of use.
- opengrass 10mo agoHave I ran out of 100,000 requests?
- WalterSear 10mo agoDoes your significant other know about your car collection? You may have a car hoarding problem.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- pilingual 10mo agoPut up billboards around metros with a license plate reader that queries this database with each passing car and announce "White Tesla Model Y XYZ-1234 You've been focked for: Inv" What a sick society we live in.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- johnebgd 10mo agoDystopian society.
- VoidWhisperer 10mo agoThis unfortunately wouldn't work quite as well in states where cars arent required to have a front facing license plate (like florida)
- kmoser 10mo agoThe camera could be separate from the billboard, and point at the backs of the cars. The billboard would be a short distance past that.
- overfeed 10mo agoFlock cameras are oriented to read rear plates. One would need a camera similarly configured + a billboard some distance in front, or perhaps 2 billboards, a 1-2 setup + payoff combo, the camera behind the first billboard, and the dynamic text on the second. Pulling up other public data correlated to the plate - where legal - may make a splash. I'm thinking addressing the car owner by their first name.
- FireBeyond 10mo agoRight, but also remember that they're set up to analyze other vehicle traits, including but not limited to: color, make, model, body damage, panels that are a different color to the rest of the body, wheels, decals, bumper stickers, tow hitches, roof racks, etc., so even if they can't read your plate they can try to build a vehicle identity, and when they do get a plate capture, they can retroactively apply that to all other sightings of the vehicle. It really is fucking dystopian.
- bix6 10mo agoInteresting I can’t access this over VPN
- ccgreg 10mo agoWell, yeah. Clownflare
- mfkp 10mo agoSeems like the website has ran out of cloudflare worker credits on their plan: Please check back later Error 1027 This website has been temporarily rate limited
- nh43215rgb 10mo ago> You cannot access this site because the owner has reached their plan limits. Check back later once traffic has gone down. > If you are owner of this website, prevent this from happening again by upgrading your plan on the Cloudflare Workers dashboard.
- xer0x 10mo agoCloudflare making sites unavailable?
- tossit444 10mo agoNo, Workers free tier is 100,000 requests/day. Considering the error is on the main page, each visit is probably taking a minimum of 10+ requests, so it can easily be overwhelmed.
- eastbound 10mo agoThis is genius if you work in B2C and want to prevent your website from going viral.
- NewJazz 10mo agoDoes Cloudflare let you set hard limits when you are on a paid plan? Or they just do it for the free tier?
- wongarsu 10mo agoNo, the paid plan scales to infinity (without having to beg for limit increases like on some other clouds). But ther paid plan has a $5/month base fee, so it's tempting to stay in the free plan if you don't expect to go viral
- beeflet 10mo agoHave I been cloudflare'd?
- GaryBluto 10mo agoSlashdotted within 3 hours.
- asveikau 10mo agoNow there's a term I haven't heard in a while
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoYup. Nowadays, we say “hugged to death.”
- nosianu 10mo agoHacker-Noosed
- venturecruelty 10mo agoCloudflared. Although I guess that's ambiguous, lately.
- kazinator 10mo agoHave I been flocculated? Check your social security number to see whether you are considered pond scum.
- jmward01 10mo agoI wonder if I got a license plate holder that said 'I do not consent to selling my position information' if I could sue them.
- 7e 10mo agoYou have no right to privacy in public, at least in the US.
- __del__ 10mo agoclarity is good. i believe that was a reference to the futility of posting "i do not consent" messages on social media.
- edot 10mo agoBut don’t I have a right to not get stalked?
- ecb_penguin 10mo agoYes of course you do. If you're being stalked, contact your local police department.
- diydsp 10mo agoThat is oft-repeated, but case law is starting to show it's not strictly true: See Mosaic + Carpenter case which say “Yes, each scan is public; yes, aggregation is different. " Carpenter shows the Court recognizes that aggregated location data can be constitutionally significant. Individual observability vs. systemic observation: A passerby can note a single plate at a single place/time. But a system of ALPRs, distributed spatially and continuous in time, indexed and retained, can map a person’s entire movements, associations, repeated visits, and behavioral patterns. That’s exactly the “mosaic” insight: the whole reveals things the pieces don’t. (Maynard / Jones reasoning).
- ifh-hn 10mo agoSince the page is currently down and I have no idea what flocked means in the context of license plates, can I assume this is US specific?
- reactordev 10mo agohttps://deflock.me https://deflock.me
- lillecarl 10mo agoThis is dystopian as fuck
- reactordev 10mo agoWait till you find out about your cell phone…
- jeroenhd 10mo agoThat website is a bit misleading, their "worldwide" map includes ALL ALPR cameras, not just the ones operated by Flock or for-profit surveillance companies. The ones on their map near my location are all for automatic license plate recognition to enter parking garages. Not exactly the dystopian nightmare their homepage warned me about.
- hibf 10mo agoYou assume those aren't logged and accessible by the government. They are.
- jeroenhd 10mo agoOf course they are, that's how they track memberships, payment history, and that kind of stuff. Can't say I really care about a paid parking garage keeping a customer registry. I trust the government a lot more than some random third party company ("flock"), though.
- zombiwoof 10mo ago[dead]
- gotekom952 10mo agoVery problematic flock security video - how easy is to hack them https://youtu.be/uB0gr7Fh6lY?si=vC2Kyl_e30kVVmXT https://youtu.be/uB0gr7Fh6lY?si=vC2Kyl_e30kVVmXT
- dev_l1x_be 10mo agoHave I been HNed? [Yes] No
- BlarfMcFlarf 10mo agoI mean, we already had PRISM, why is anyone acting like this is a big deal?
- basilgohar 10mo agoIt's a big deal even if it's been happening for a while. It should not be something we shrug our shoulders to and move on. These are stepping stones to a greater police state.
- xboxnolifes 10mo agoBecause prism is a big deal too.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoThere can be multiple big deals at once.
- chzblck 10mo agoOh no my super secret license plate! definitely something that is normally hidden instead of being on the front and back of my car for anyone to see and photo.
- dietr1ch 10mo agoSure, but now there's a highly vulnerable network of cameras that reports wherever you pass to everyone way beyond the few people that saw you go around.
- chzblck 10mo agoOkay? so what. People can see that I drive? do you not think that verizon/ att /google cant see where you traveling by the phone you carry?
- phyzome 10mo ago"Oh no, my super secret movement data, which is now being made available to a large number of people" would be more accurate.
- chzblck 10mo agoOh no lots people can now see that I go to costco and publix.
- JimmyBiscuit 10mo agoOh no youre one druggie friend (that you didnt know about having a drug addiction) that visits you sometimes got caught by the cops. Oh no they think youre their drug dealer since his license plate got recognized in your driveway a few times. Oh no they are kicking your door in with a search warrant and shoot your dog.
- chzblck 10mo agoDon't need Flock to have that happen - https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-hears-case-family-victimized-police-raid/story?id=120881932 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-hears-case-fam...
- ourmandave 10mo agoVisit deflock.me/map to see if you live near a camera. https://deflock.me/map https://deflock.me/map
- The_President 10mo agoFlock creates a dossier that allows an individual to be stalked and framed. This permits rouge users clamoring for more power to consolidate their toolkit and expedite their rise. People get framed and stolen from all the time and this will certainly make it worse.
- herpdyderp 10mo agoAre you talking about the linked website or Flock itself?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- The_President 10mo agofixed
- amelius 10mo agoLicense plate numbers are old fashioned. Can't we get something more secure? E.g. plate numbers that change every hour would be a good start. I don't like to drive around with a giant cookie strapped to my car.
- nxm 10mo agoGreat, more expensive electronic crap in/on the car to break...
- amelius 10mo agoYou can say the same about a line of code.
- tjwebbnorfolk 10mo agoThe whole point of plastering a giant UID on your vehicle is so that it can be identified. Security isn't the purpose here.
- amelius 10mo agoBut the point is that security _can_ be addressed, while still allowing the vehicle to be identified.
- hellothereworld 10mo agoYou can search with „OUTATIME“. For any non-americans lurking in the comments.
- DivingForGold 10mo agoA met a guy once whom drives a PU truck, he lowers the tailgate and places an oversized piece of plywood in the bed as an excuse, he also places an opaque plastic cover over his front lic plate, which has been raised to a $300 fine in Texas, if caught. He now intends to place a series of bright strobe lights around his front plate to "bleach out" the sensors of these spy cameras.
- morkalork 10mo agoIs his name Rusty Shackelford by any chance?
- pxc 10mo ago> He now intends to place a series of bright strobe lights around his front plate to "bleach out" the sensors of these spy cameras. Isn't this a safety hazard?
- DonHopkins 10mo agoDoes he drive a hotdog shaped car? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLfAf8oHrMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLfAf8oHrMo
- CamperBob2 10mo agoHow does he plan to trigger the strobe lights?
- dwoldrich 10mo agoNow imagine every other aspect of modern life is enshittified similarly to some extent and all being dialed up. Nothing is sacred, and talk to the contrary is laughable. Government is a scummy grift, every big (money) cause is full of unaudited scammers. I hope you are never passionate about a pet government policy! You can buy local or do it yourself, but all of those are squeezed at the margins by enshittified inputs. Before even seeking to fix the problem, I try to work on me. First, I try (difficult) to not be sucked into useless wallowing, which keeps me exactly where the enemy wants me to be. I tend to skim 'news' headlines now, if that. Second, in my career I strive to produce uncommon quality so as to not add to the problem. I love to stand out and feel proud of my work. It makes me sad when coworkers are concerned/confused when I put in extra effort. I know where they're coming from. No one notices nor cares at $megacorp, and my work is internal and humble. I do it for self-improvement and to make the time I spend working for them worthwhile to me.
- smackay 10mo agoYou forgot to mention personal integrity and setting a good example to others.
- dwoldrich 10mo agoYou make a great point! Setting a good example by being ambitious creates the Pygmalion Effect. The unavoidable contagion of repeated improvement making people hungry for more. I also find everyone is hungry for kudos. I recommend being very liberal and publicly vocal with genuine kudos if you have them!
- supportengineer 10mo agoI believe that the full weight of the nations resources should come into play whenever there are missing or abducted people. CIA, NSA, satellites, all of it. I can’t fathom while we don’t do that already. But absent of that, Flock is the next best thing. Mainly because it reduces the friction to get this information in the hands of local law-enforcement officers. I have zero tolerance for crimes against children and fully support capital punishment for such.
- analogpixel 10mo agoYou guys really need to come up with at least ONE other reason to push every single policy besides "think of the children"; Just one to break it up a bit.
- lillecarl 10mo agoBut think of the children!!?
- supportengineer 10mo agoWell, let me ask you this. What is your expectation from society if you or your family is personally affected?
- venturecruelty 10mo agoI expect society to not track and extraordinarily rendition citizens and legal residents under the guise of "think of the children", for one.
- flag_fagger 10mo ago[dead]
- venturecruelty 10mo agoThe vast, vast majority of child abduction cases are either a domestic dispute between parents, or someone the child knows (also usually a family member). This scaremongering needs to stop, especially when it's used to justify the rapid erosion of our liberties at the hands of an authoritarian government.
- slicktux 10mo agoI’m curious; what database are they using? Or does Flock allow queries to their database?
- dopidopHN2 10mo agoFOIA the records
- hibf 10mo agoWhenever anyone does a search in Flock's database, Flock sends the metadata to the related customers. I.e., if someone does a statewide lookup in Nebraska, all Nebraska-based Flock customers receive the search metadata. Ostensibly, to be able to track if "their" ALPR data has been queried. Those audit logs are public record. This is also how IL discovered out-of-state agencies were using data from Illinois for immigration enforcement (after FOIA by a citizen, of course; apparently none of the IL law enforcement agencies audited their data for unlawful activity).
- dieselgate 10mo agoCool website, gave it a go. I am not a general advocate of license plate tracking but believe it’s a double edge sword. A former vehicle was stolen and recovered twice - likely due to tracking technology.
- beAbU 10mo agoCars can have tracking devices installed that remain dormant until remotely activated by the owner in case of theft. This is how Netstar and Tracker does it in South Africa. To massive success. So much so that a car without one of these installed is basically uninsurable. There is no need for external 3rd party tracking.