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Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA
Built this over the last few days, based on a Rust codebase that parses the latest ALPR reports from OpenStreetMaps, calculates navigation statistics from every tagged residential building to nearby amenities, and tests each route for intersection with those ALPR cameras (Flock being the most widespread).
These have gotten more controversial in recent months, due to their indiscriminate large scale data collection, with 404 Media publishing many original pieces (https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/ https://www.404media.co/tag/flock/) about their adoption and (ab)use across the country. I wanted to use open source datasets to track the rapid expansion, especially per-county, as this data can be crucial for 'deflock' movements to petition counties and city governments to ban and remove them.
In some counties, the tracking becomes so widespread that most people can't go anywhere without being photographed. This includes possibly sensitive areas, like places of worship and medical facilities.
The argument for their legality rests upon the notion that these cameras are equivalent to 'mere observation', but the enormous scope and data sharing agreements in place to share and access millions of records without warrants blurs the lines of the fourth amendment.
- DivingForGold 10mo agohttps://archive.ph/et1uD https://archive.ph/et1uD
- runtimepanic 10mo agoOne thing this surfaces nicely is how scale changes the privacy model. Individually these look like “mere observation,” but once you can reconstruct routine movement patterns across counties, the data starts behaving more like long-term tracking than casual surveillance.
- wwweston 10mo agoRetention is one good line between enforcement and tracking. If we wanted to solve this problem while retaining the benefits, what we'd do is have stiff penalties for warrantless retention and required yearly independent audits of systems.
- hamdingers 10mo ago100% coverage seems like an inevitability in a country where filming in public is a constitutionally protected right and networked ALPR capability is possible (if not regularly offered yet) in commodity doorbell cameras.
- autoexec 10mo ago> 100% coverage seems like an inevitability in a country where filming in public is a constitutionally protected right a It really doesn't have to be though. The rights of individuals to record in public doesn't have to translate to the right of corporations (flock, amazon, etc.) to do it without restriction. Time, place, and manner restrictions on our rights already exist, it just needs to be found that this manner is unacceptable as an imposition on our freedom which should be protected under the fourth amendment.
- hamdingers 10mo agoIf a home or business owner sets up Ring cameras, is it fair to say Amazon is recording in public? That feels like blaming Canon for the behavior of a paparazzi, but perhaps there are reasons those aren't equivalent I'm not aware of.
- autoexec 10mo ago> hat feels like blaming Canon for the behavior of a paparazzi, but perhaps there are reasons those aren't equivalent I'm not aware of. The difference between ring cameras and paparazzi using a canon camera is that the photos recorded to film/local storage can't be automatically compiled with the footage captured from everyone else's canon camera to create databases of people and track their movements, activities, attributes, etc. It really depends on where the data goes and who can access it. I'd even go so far as to say that keeping that data on the cloud is fine as long as the data is encrypted, amazon doesn't access it beyond storage and deliver to the customer (meaning that they can no longer mine it for personal data) and amazon cannot give access to anyone else (including police who should have to request footage directly from the camera owners).
- joecool1029 10mo agoThe county lists are wrong, at least they are for my state of New Jersey. We have 21 counties, not 27. Is it picking up the bordering counties that might have overlapping contracts or something?
- pavel_lishin 10mo agoOne of those counties is Rockland, which is in NY. I wonder if it's counting bordering counties for states, since the assumption may be that the closest essential services for some Rockland residents may be in New Jersey.
- joecool1029 10mo agoI know at least in Rockland's case, their power utility extends slightly into NJ. Can see it on statewide power outage trackers like this one: https://projects.nj.com/data/outagetracker/ https://projects.nj.com/data/outagetracker/
- sodality2 10mo agoAh! This looks like a bug with cross-border calculations. Ideally it would not show a Rockland County, NJ - it might cross state borders to perform calculations but they should all have a 'home state' that matches to the right county. Thanks for the example case, I'll work on a fix
- sodality2 10mo agoIt pulls counties from OSM administrative boundaries of level 6, which according to the OSM wiki, is "State counties and county equivalents, Territorial municipalities" (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3aboundary=administrative https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3aboundary=administr...). It does lead to some weird oddities, like counties with under 10 homes... I'd rather not manually correct it, since I want to rely on pure OSM data. (Unless you mean there is an actual bug in the processing and there's counties listed that aren't in the right states...) I'll add a link to the OSM relation for the county to each county page, so you can see the source data on OSM to verify/edit.
- s1mon 10mo agoI understand why these statistics may be interesting, but all I really want to see is a map of the locations of the ALPR cameras. I would add an easy link to that data on this site.
- sodality2 10mo agoDeFlock is the first link in the "Related ALPR & Flock Projects" section, it contains a map.
- toomuchtodo 10mo agohttps://ringmast4r.github.io/FLOCK/ https://ringmast4r.github.io/FLOCK/ https://deflock.me/ https://deflock.me/
- yannyu 10mo agoI've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified of government overreach if we add any automation at all to enforcement. I don't know the solution, but I do know that in the US we've lost 10-15 years of progress when it comes to traffic fatalities.
- sodality2 10mo agoThese cameras are currently not used at all for traffic/speed enforcement. The best they would do is track more serious crimes like hit-and-runs by photographing cars in the area.
- yannyu 10mo agoAh, that's helpful and something for me to learn more about. Thanks for the info.
- chaps 10mo ago> but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. This is not what Flock seeks to curb.
- genewitch 10mo agoso what do they seek to curb? freedom of movement?
- thatcat 10mo agoIt's an opportunistic solution to a budget problem. Local governments have extra money from property price bubble increasing tax revenues. At the same time there are great open source image analysis models for companies to put on a pole using cheap android hw and a solar panel and make bold claims about solving all crime, then they can sell that data again to 3rd parties like insurance. Also can start buying access to more video feeds from ring cameras etc and resell that. They'll hire someone to make a ux to integrate it into PDs later, for a premium of course.
- Barathkanna 10mo agoThis is great work. Once ALPR coverage is dense enough that you can’t go anywhere without generating a permanent record, the “mere observation” argument falls apart. Mapping this openly is one of the few ways communities can actually understand what they’ve signed up for.
- ruthie_cohen 10mo agoIf I was American I would certainly be using this tool as a consideration when moving / buying a new house. I’ve watched a lot of the coverage by Benn Jordan on Flock cameras and their inherent vulnerabilities, and it’s deeply concerning. The applications of these technologies far outpaces appropriate checks and balances, and the increasing fusion between law enforcement, intelligence and private industry is largely ignored by the larger population. Thanks for developing this, it’s important to visualise the virus-like spread of these technologies and see where it is concentrated.
- aunty_helen 10mo agoNumber plates are just one of the privacy tracking technologies. Any modern connected car infotainment system will report and have that data sold or anything that has Bluetooth can be tracked.
- exhilaration 10mo agoRecent car tracking discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097624
- snarf21 10mo agoIncluding the camera and microphone in our pocket that pings every cell tower every time we move.
- sodality2 10mo agoAt least as per Carpenter v. United States, that data requires a warrant, not just any cop/LEO in the country typing in a license plate with reasoning as 'investigation'. That's a much better standard.
- sodality2 10mo agoTo an extent this data is within our reach to stop (buy old car, unplug cellular modules, etc). With ALPRs the only option is moving.
- 1970-01-01 10mo agoBluetooth? You're overthinking this. We've been mandated to carry 4-5 transmitters per vehicle broadcasting their UIDs at 315 MHz since the mid 2000s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_TPMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_TPMS
- EvanAnderson 10mo agoI have an SDR in a facility that is a public parking lot. It picks up TMPS incidentally and I'm definitely able to track individual vehicles.
- jcims 10mo agoI had a thought a while back about companies like Tesla, with cameras on the road and driving models that could classify bad drivers, being in a position to at least a) avoid those drivers if they are encountered on the road and b) record/report them to the police. Then I had an intrusive thought of a small squad of cybertruck 'enforcers' running around autonomously, tracking these drivers down via the live network of incoming video and doling out punishment to the chief offenders.
- rjsw 10mo agoOr the Tesla could just record where it is at all times.
- jcims 10mo agoI’m thinking more the Tesla could identify bad drivers around it and fire off a notification.
- gosub100 10mo agoAs an aside, there are currently companies that do this but for delinquent auto loans to expedite the repo process.
- ericmcer 10mo agoMy dream is huge drones that get dispatched and harpoon dangerous drivers cars and fly away with them. "Oh a lifted truck with a modified exhaust just swerved onto the shoulder to pass me at 85mph, and there it goes"
- snypher 10mo agoYeah, and then you get harpooned for reading an article about Kamela Harris five years ago.
- tptacek 10mo agoFrom just a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46170302 (Repeating: in a few months sites like this will be replaceable with a static HTML page that says "yes, you've been tagged by an ALPR".)
- xnx 10mo agoI'm surprised an app like Citizen hasn't tried to match Flock with a dashcam that automatically shares recordings.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- onetokeoverthe 10mo ago[dead]
- tamimio 10mo agoWhat about Ring cams? Is there a deRing site? Also, the flock cams are beyond ALPR, I saw a video before about some investigation and one of the things was how flock was used to recognize a car without a plate. Flock is an automated car recognition system, the plate is just part of it. Makes me wonder if having extremely unique or “cloaking” car design will fool it.
- duskdozer 10mo agoI swear it's about 75% of houses I come across that have ring (or similar) cameras
- renewiltord 10mo agoWhen it's against the law to not be on an ALPR camera, only outlaws won't be on ALPR cameras! Well, in SF, this is generally true because there is no enforcement of a missing license plate.
- genewitch 10mo agoHow come any area that has enough homes in the data set and ALPR have Veterinarians as the most surveilled, then Hospitals, then Libraries, usually over everything else, including food and church? The strange implication is that they're watching the vet office traffic to find people who are getting treated by vets instead of doctors? also my parish reports 0.0% across the board, and all the parishes near me. you have to get on the coast to get above 25%.
- renewiltord 10mo agoPerhaps there's some large chain of vets run by a PE firm where the PE firm did a blanket deal.
- genewitch 10mo agoI didn't mean to allude to this, but i heard that a lot of vet clinics are being bought by PE firms. The same way that a certain internet company is buying all the legal offices (and web medicine sites)
- sodality2 10mo agoVets/hospitals are far less common (and the former probably suffers from less tags as hospitals are more important) so the distance one must travel increases, so higher likelihood of crossing one. Especially compared to how common everything else is. If you check deflock.me, would you say that 0.0% aligns with what you expect?
- genewitch 10mo agoi suppose that makes sense. There's 6 cameras in the metro area per deflock.me, 3 at each Lowe's, and that's it. It's very easy to not get in range of those, at least on "my side" of the metro. How do we know that is all the ALPR in an area? Or rather, what's the confidence? I'd assume Home Depot would also have them, for example. note: maybe i need to restart firefox, but deflock.me is the slowest "map" based site i've seen since keyhole in the late 90s
- eliaspro 10mo agoSmall nitpick: you're writing OpenStreetMaps instead of OpenStreetMap (no trailing s) everywhere.
- sodality2 10mo agoThanks, pushed a fix for the home page!
- reallyaaryan 10mo agoCan you think of any use cases apart from government surveillance?
- DeathArrow 10mo agoSo you have a set of positions for some services (coffee shops, groceries), a set of positions for cameras and a set of positions for homes. But how you model people actually driving each day and their paths? Because the accuracy of your conclusions seems to heavily depend on the accuracy of modelling.
- sodality2 10mo agoI don't model daily paths as in 'coffee before work, then groceries on the way home'; I do straight shots from residences to each of these amenities. I don't know of a better way to do it than this; any more complicated model that tries to model 'daily routines' risks losing simplicity, as well as straying too far from actual driving behavior, and my main goal is extremely simple statistics.
- fpauser 10mo agoMass surveillance in the "Land of the Free" [tm]. LOL
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- flyinghamster 10mo agoData accuracy can be a problem. It lists 115 counties for Illinois, which is news to me since Illinois has 102 counties. For example, Kenosha County is in Wisconsin, not Illinois.
- T3RMINATED 10mo ago[dead]
- jollyllama 10mo agoI don't see how this provides actionable info for the individual. Unfortunately, this is just going to be a dashboard for pro-surveillance elements to see "how are we doing in our neck of the woods?", or a sales tool for Flock to find untapped markets.
- RankingMember 10mo agoI think we have a surplus of "awareness" tools/websites that are great at what they do, but not much "rubber meets the road" tools to guide the user in actually taking action based on the information presented. I, for one, feel a huge sense of fatigue at the amount of awareness I have of problems I don't have the tools/strategies/knowledge/time to solve. (This is not a negative comment about this post btw, more just commentary on how the fire hose of "look at how bad this is in excruciating detail" can be overwhelming.)
- sodality2 10mo agoMy goal is to provide actionable statistics for any 'deflock' movements in a certain county, by being able to point to specific statistics on surveillance. If even one motivated person uses my data to petition, I'll be happy; it doesn't have to be for the average person. There's tons of these movements, too. Deflock Olympia just succeeded: https://www.yelmonline.com/stories/commentary-olympia-joins-growing-list-of-de-flock-victories-but-looks-forward,392471 https://www.yelmonline.com/stories/commentary-olympia-joins-... Also, another answer to this is that there is no overarching goal; I just wanted to build a large scale data analysis pipeline for fun :) I am no stranger to side projects to distract me from finals unfortunately.
- jollyllama 10mo agoFair enough. I am sorry if my original post was too harsh or overly critical; my original thinking was simply that those would organize against surveillance are probably already aware of it, but perhaps this would be useful in the cases you mention, if the metrics could be used as "ammo", as you suggest.
- 10mo ago