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Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests
- JohnMakin 5mo ago"at least" is doing a lot of work here. That's just what was analyzed. You have to assume the behavior is much more prevalent.
- busterarm 5mo agoWhy? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published? I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything substantive.
- loteck 5mo agoThe data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.
- busterarm 5mo ago> Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public. "could" is doing a lot of work here... > where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. No, that's not what IJ said. From the article: "Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired." So not all 14 of these were "reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted". If you're trying to make significant social change, make the strongest argument that you are capable of.
- jasonlotito 5mo agoFor those following along, this was the original comment: > Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public. > "could" is doing a lot of work here... I'd be careful replying to someone commenting and editing with such large diffs without calling it out. Fairly deceptive.
- busterarm 5mo agoThere's no deception. I added to my comment before anybody replied. I didn't change a word of the original text. You're throwing unnecessary shade.
- stickfigure 5mo agoYou're asking us to believe that, absent evidence to the contrary, 100% of stalking cases were publicized enough to make this list. Your Bayesian priors desperately need an update.
- fitblipper 5mo agoI don't think "could" is doing a lot of work here at all. It seems logical that if cases where the misuse of flock systems were discovered only when the same officers misbehaved in other, more visible situations then there are officers that avoid the more visible situations and continue to use the system that does not expose their bad behavior (flock).
- busterarm 5mo agoLogical as in fits your world view or as in can be backed up by observable evidence? The IJ (which I financially support) is a very serious organization that understands datasets, rules-based evidence and also public relations. If there was a stronger case that they could have made with the data that they had available, they would have. I've already stated that I agree with the premise suggested, but I'm making the point that if you actually want to do anything about it, you need the evidence to back it up. I can't go to my boss with a proposal to do something significant without measurable evidence to back up my reasoning and neither can you. I have personally had a traffic ticket thrown out because the officer had a DV case brought by his spouse, who worked in the court. This caused the officer to be fired. I'm VERY aware of problems with LEO, but if you want to do something with a high administrative or human resources cost like any change to the status quo would obviously have -- you need real hard proof. Not "oh isn't it obvious"?
- cucumber3732842 5mo agoThis. They almost certainly use it for parallel construction 99% of the time. Just get lucky and "show up" when your spouse has someone over. These 14 just were sloppy and left such an egregious fact pattern in their wake that a public record was created (firing, charges filed, etc)
- JohnMakin 5mo ago> I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I don't believe your concern trolling tone here - I'm not asking anyone to do anything either. I'm pointing out this is likely much more prevalent, based on the absolute fact most abuse/stalking cases go unreported, so this is likely a small subset of a larger problem. The "evidence" is these cases existing at all. In any case, flock data is mostly invisible and the police that use it get very little oversight. So how do you suggest I get any evidence? Shall I hack into their systems? Get real. Even in the article: > Most incidents came to light only after victims reported the officers’ behavior to the police, typically in the context of a broader stalking allegation. > The 14 cases listed below are almost certainly an undercount. Not all police misconduct gets detected, and some cases likely get resolved quietly. Officers frequently cite vague or inaccurate reasons for their searches in ALPR systems, sometimes to evade detection of misconduct. And regarding this: > I'm trying to help you make your case. Nah, I don't believe you.
- argomo 5mo agoThe evidence is just "human nature". Honestly, it's just negligence at this point to give people power over others without due oversight and accountability. But it's nice we have concrete examples of abuse to help motivate action.
- jasonlotito 5mo ago> Why? FTA: The 14 cases listed below are almost certainly an undercount. I feel that supports the original comment, considering it's all subjective. Now, you are going to be tempted to start arguing that "almost certainly an undercount" doesn't support the original comment. But remember, it's subjective, and any reasonable person reading that comment and the article could see how "at least" could be seen as doing a lot of work.
- busterarm 5mo ago"almost certainly an undercount." isn't the same thing as "prevalent", which was the accusation by the comment I was responding to.
- snickerbockers 5mo agoLOVEINT.
- busterarm 5mo agoThis term was coined at the NSA where roughly 1 case is reported per year and overwhelmingly through self-reporting during polygraph exams. That's quite different from this situation.
- calfuris 5mo agoA "review of media reports" is not going to capture any incidents that the media didn't report on. That doesn't strike me as likely to capture every incident, or even a majority of incidents.
- Refreeze5224 5mo agoThe decades-long history of police abuse of power isn't enough? There is not a single power they have not abused eventually, and it's quite obvious that introducing new powers will inevitability be exploited.
- waynecochran 5mo ago"14x times" to me sounds like statistically "zero" since I assume the sample size would be in the millions "at least."
- bdangubic 5mo agoif 1 of those 14 was your daughter, wife, sister, mom you would not be writing this. 14x is exactly 14x too many
- bluGill 5mo agoIt is a given that any power will be abused. However not giving power out is often worse that the abuse of power. The real question is what do we do to detect and prevent that abuse so it is minimized. All too often people are "this person is mostly on my side so I will overlook their abuse" which is the wrong answer.
- bdangubic 5mo agoI agree but the combination giving power without doing anything to detect and prevent abuse in my opinion is worse than not giving power at all, in 100% of the situations - no exceptions. if 14 detected incidents here end up with 14 convictions and enough time in prison to deter anyone else from doing this ever again (5-10 years, per incident minimum), cool with me. it is no different than any other "law breaking" - people will people and law should be there to protect the citizens. but in our society it is obvious we cannot give power to people of authority cause whenever they abuse that power - there is either no law to charge them against or even if there is one they'd be immune to it
- clark_dent 5mo agoHow many millions of police officers do you think there are? How many of those do you think have open and available records for their use of surveillance tech?
- mrhottakes 5mo agoSo, as long as something only grievously harms a small percentage of people, it's fine. Good to know.
- jmclnx 5mo agoIn other news, the Sun rises in the East. Nice it was highlighted but the big question, will something be done about this ? I think we all know the answer to this. The only surprise is "14 times", I would expect hundreds of times.
- loteck 5mo agoIn my town, we have Flock. I request the audit logs that show how police are searching the Flock system. In November 2025 and prior, the logs were listed by USERID and I could independently correlate quantity of searches by USERID to detect unusual search behavior. This same methodology has been used to catch police stalking in at least one other city. In December 2025, Flock decided to "improve" its system. All searches on the audit log are now completely serialized, anonymized. This "improvement" came after 2025 turned out several cases of police stalking using Flock.
- tfrancisl 5mo agoI would guess the only way to make this data available long term is by regulation. Then again, I would hope Flock is subject to FOIA already if they are collaborating with state or local law enforcement...
- wahnfrieden 5mo agoYC CEO funded Flock and is involved in politics to remove police regulations To quote him responding to criticism against Flock: "You're thinking Chinese surveillance. US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims."
- echelon 5mo agoCameras are free speech and are a shield against property crimes and assault. Our building complex has rampant break-ins. We've needed more cameras for years and we're only now starting to add them. Worse, someone recently someone set fire to the roof which caused a 12-hour long debacle. Not sure what the "#-of-alarms fire" ranking it was, but several people lost their homes to months of remediation and they tore apart the roof. Cameras would have implicated the contractor responsible (we know it was a contractor, but there were no cameras or access logs). One theory as to why the number of violent crimes is going down in this country isn't that we just de-leaded the water and taught better conflict de-escalation, but that there are cameras and smartphones everywhere. All of that said - camera networks in the hands of an all-powerful state are bad. The state does not need access to these systems outside of a rigorously documented system with proper judicial oversight. We need regulations and even civil liberties that limit the scope of state access and state dragnets to these camera networks. But individuals, companies, and communities should be at liberty to hire surveillance tech to protect their persons and their property.
- therobots927 5mo agoWelcome to the panopticon, everyone! Law abiding citizens have nothing to fear. Keep drinking the kool-aid and don’t look behind the curtain.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- virgil_disgr4ce 5mo agoIs there a framework—any framework, however hypothetical—that actually makes police accountable and subject to the laws they supposedly enforce?
- infecto 5mo agoI have always gravitated towards a market model. Force police, like doctors, to have malpractice insurance. Let for-profit insurance companies model what that risk looks like. Now cities have to make a financial decision when hiring cops that is directionally accurate to the risk of said cop. Imperfect but I don’t believe perfect systems exist. But this goes back to government agencies never thinking about budgets. Modern politics is about marketing a tax reduction but never how that impacts the budget.
- danaw 5mo agoyeah market models are working so great everywhere else...
- infecto 5mo agoInstead of being hyperbolic why don’t you share your idea then? Markets are not perfect but on average they do a decent job of finding equilibrium. “Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried.”
- anonymars 5mo agoI'll join in to proffer that where they lack, it's often exactly the sort of thing you describe: some externality is missing in the price
- infecto 5mo agoAgree but better than the system we have today. There will always be issues with it but I think on average it would better incentivize hiring lower risk employees.
- randusername 5mo agoThis man alleges Flock employees show up in the logs snooping in on private business feeds for pools, gymnastics studios, etc. https://substack.com/home/post/p-193593234 https://substack.com/home/post/p-193593234 If you build it they will come.
- rounce 5mo agoWorth noting that these weren't low level employees watching the children's gymnastics areas but included the accounts of the Director of Growth, and the VP of Strategic Relations and Business Development among several other staff members. You really have to wonder what these people mean when they say "think of the children".
- j-bos 5mo agoGives the heebeejeebies, how is it that so many companies are so casual with spying.
- hk1337 5mo agoI wouldn't say I am a huge proponent of Flock, especially considering their lack luster security for the individual cameras at least in my area, but the title makes it sound like it's an institutional procedure that the department stalking their romantic interests instead of individual officers that need to be properly reprimanded.
- apwheele 5mo agoIt is institutional in the sense that Flock and the individual PDs have not put steps in place (either post auditing or pre not allowing bad queries) that prevent the abuse. Post auditing is obviously not taken seriously by these departments, and Flock could build tools to do this out of the box (identify weird search patterns) if they wanted to. Edit -- I see Flock does have some audit tools, https://www.flocksafety.com/trust/compliance-tools https://www.flocksafety.com/trust/compliance-tools. If those work as they should, it is more on PDs to use them properly.
- goolz 5mo agoPolice abuse of power in the US is a systemic problem. Your opinion is akin to thinking the Catholic church bears no burden for all the diddling they neglected to observe.
- busterarm 5mo agoDo you make any distinction between sheriff's departments that are elected into their office (e.g. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office) vs commissioned LEOs?
- goolz 5mo agoHonestly, a great question that I would have to think on. Whatever limits both their power, haha. Not really an answer, but I think what it boils down to is accountability. I work with a lot of state and federal cops. They are good people for the most part with good hearts. I am still incredibly weary of police on the whole. It seems that both commissioned and elected LEO lack the right level of accountability and we would do well to curb their immunity.
- childofhedgehog 5mo agoIt’s not surprising that no one is reviewing usage of these tools proactively, but it is disappointing. EDIT: typo
- assimpleaspossi 5mo ago>>media reports has identified at least 14 cases nationwide...since 2024. >>Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired.
- rationalist 5mo ago> by resigning Ah, so then they just resumed another law enforcement job in the next town over like so many do, whose investigations into their criminal activity was terminated because they resigned, and because they were never charged or fired, then they have a clean record to apply elsewhere.
- assimpleaspossi 5mo ago[flagged]
- rocketvole 5mo agocould try lobsters, pretty much everything posted is the same
- rationalist 5mo agoLast line: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- mring33621 5mo agosounds way low to me
- calvinmorrison 5mo agotime to get rid of license plates
- rationalist 5mo agoThese cameras record bumper stickers, dents, accessories, etc. Many vehicles can be uniquely identified by a computer without a license plate.
- calvinmorrison 5mo agoDo you think given how ubiquitous cameras and microphones are now, that we should change the doctrine around right to record in public, or the expectation of privacy? For example, I have no problem with people recording in public a news cast, or even taking down a sick trick on a skateboard, but I think generally people would say ' a camera that tracks my movements' violates my privacy in some way, even though I understand someone theoretically could post agents on every block and do so
- stronglikedan 5mo agoI'm shocked that one of the most abusive groups of people have engaged in such behavior!
- giraffe_lady 5mo agoI've mentioned this before but I've been a volunteer court watcher for domestic violence court for some years now. Cases where a state surveillance tool or database was used to stalk or harass the victim are completely routine. Very often it is someone in an administrative role who has access to the tool, and I think they get caught more often because it's easier for automated audits to flag their use as clearly unnecessary. LEOs have a lot of benefit of the doubt on that and, from what I can tell, are pretty much free to do what they want with these tools. I do follow up on cases, I'm not supposed to participate in court but I can contribute community impact statements about systemic patterns I've observed. I haven't so far ever seen one of the cops in front of another court for this behavior, even when it was clearly documented by an order of protection being granted in DV court. I assume this problem is far far worse than I can perceive. Victims will only bring this to court with a lot of support and clear evidence, and even then with the offender being police, it's risky and frightening. Our police are automatically placed on administrative leave if served an order of protection, so the local judges are extremely resistant to ever actually granting one.
- CobrastanJorji 5mo agoCan you tell me more about what a volunteer court watcher does? That sounds fascinating. What do you do when you see something questionable in a court? Are there broader organizations you raise concerns with or submit statistics to?
- giraffe_lady 5mo agoI volunteer for a local organization, most areas have one. Some are specialized around a specific kind of court, others are big enough to be broad and then have specialized training, usually following however your local jurisdiction divides up its courts. I fill out a form for each session and case and write descriptive notes about what happens in court, including things like language and tone of the judge, conduct of the counsel, etc. I don't evaluate "questionable" myself and I do nothing personally with the notes. They are submitted to the organization and eventually in aggregate make their way into data used by researchers, journalists, law schools, legislators.
- mulderc 5mo agoI am not against Plate Readers in theory but feel like you should have to have a warrant to look things up in the database.
- AngryData 5mo agoI don't see why any plates should be looked up for any reason without evidence of a crime. If someone isn't enough of a problem for their plate to be flagged otherwise, it is not the governments business to know who is where or when.
- joecool1029 5mo agoAround me these Flock cameras are spreading like fleas. Also, local psycho cop incidents seem to be on the rise. Last year a veterinarian and her bf were murdered by her ex (a state trooper) that blew his brains out after[1]. Just a month ago next town over one of the officers was arrested for placing tracking devices on his ex. [2] Around a decade ago I was harassed through the mail after a road-rage incident (plainclothes dude ran up to my car window after I parked to go to gym and claimed I cut him off, said: 'I'll remember you, you should be more careful'). He ran my plate and sent a vaguely threatening anonymous letter to my car's registered address. I opened a case with the Somerset County prosecutor's office of internal affairs. The prosecutor's office claimed there were no hits through the federal NCIC system, but in-state there was no audit log of plates checked through NJMVC, and even if there was a smart cop (or MVC employee, lots of people have access to it) could just ask a dispatcher to run it over the radio. They claimed that this system was getting moved to the New Jersey State police and it was expected this would have an audit log. So no resolution there, I found out who the guy was years later by chance when I saw him writing parking tickets and got his name off a ticket. I informally reported it to prosecutor's office at this point and they said something to the effect of 'Yeah, nobody likes the parking enforcement guy, if he pulls shit like this again let us know and we'll put an end to it' [1] https://nypost.com/2025/08/06/us-news/screaming-and-gunshots-heard-from-murdered-nj-vet-lauren-semanchiks-home/ https://nypost.com/2025/08/06/us-news/screaming-and-gunshots... [2] https://nj1015.com/clinton-police-stalking-arrest/ https://nj1015.com/clinton-police-stalking-arrest/
- AlexeyBelov 5mo agoCops have a disproportionally high level of spouse abuse.
- petiepooo 5mo agoA surveillance technology, intended only for lawful use, is being used unlawfully. Huh. Who could have seen that coming?
- tremon 5mo agos/intended only for/instituted under the guise of/ FTFY.
- Suppafly 5mo agoHonestly, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the unauthorized uses outnumber the legitimate ones.
- zombot 5mo agoJust as NSA employees use their toys to spy on their romantic interests. Surveillance tools without strict oversight and effective disciplinary measures will create abuse as sure as one plus one equals two.