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I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer th

by tptacek 3mo ago

I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear[†] is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things. (To be clear: I think the current generation of ALPRs is a policy failure and that major changes need to happen inside state law enforcement systems before they can be deployed successfully. But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments.) [†] I heard arguments like these because I was deeply involved in getting the cameras disabled in the inner-ring Chicago suburb in which I live, getting the first ACLU CCOPS ordinance in Illinois passed there, and helping draft what are probably the most detailed ALPR police General Orders in any municipality, or at least were at the time. Which is a long and pretentious way of saying I spent a lot of time talking to people who are not Very Online.

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
aftbit 3mo ago
What was your answer then?
- akerl_ 3mo ago
  To spare you the search of his comment history, my memory is that it's roughly: the stolen car databases have tons of cars listed that weren't actually stolen, or have already been recovered, so you end up pulling over a ton of unsuspecting people just driving around.
  - tptacek 3mo ago
    To the actual question people ask, about getting stolen cars off the street, I don't have a good answer. It's a valid point! The stolen cars pose more of a threat to my neighbors than the police do; in reality, the median adult in my neighborhood doesn't believe any of the online rhetoric about how dangerous the police are to begin with. The reason the current generation of ALPR cameras doesn't work is the one you gave. Illinois LEADS was never intended for realtime enforcement and isn't updated reliably, so we ended up pulling over almost as many innocent motorists as we did stolen cars. To that, add: a plurality of all our camera-driven enforcement actions ended up being failure-to-appeal warrant enforcement, which effectively had our police force doing municipal debt collection for other suburbs, at enormous expense.
- tadfisher 3mo ago
  One answer is that ALPRs have much too high an error rate (John Oliver claims it exceeds 30%) to rely on them for dragnet surveillance. Maybe it makes sense to track specific vehicles, with safeguards such as warrants and also checking make/model/color, but it makes less sense to just give the government a 30-day rolling database of the public's movements in total, especially when 30% of those data points are inaccurate and thus not useful as evidence.
  - tptacek 3mo ago
    I don't know where this stat comes from. It doesn't square with our experience of Flock cameras. There is a truly high error rate in the underlying hotlist data the state maintains and the cameras rely on. But, like, cameras randomly flagging the wrong car, I don't think we saw that happen even once.
    - doc_ick 3mo ago
      Plenty of reports of that
    - _DeadFred_ 3mo ago
      One California town found Flock's license plate cameras were wrong 71% of the time https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/06/california-town-says-flock-cameras-misread-license-plates-71-of-the-time/ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/06/california-town-says-flo...
      - tptacek 3mo ago
        Seems implausible, for the reason I gave one comment back.
        doc_ick 2mo ago
        Your comment is anecdotal vs this report.
Teever 3mo ago
I see you make frequent comments on this subject and as time goes on I’m starting to have a harder and harder time following them. I’m starting to think that you’re having a conversation with yourself and your perception of people online, not actual people and the things that they’re saying.
unclebucknasty 3mo ago
>The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things. The "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" question is just a more specific variant of GP's "nothing to hide" question. i.e., the only people asking it are those who aren't stealing cars, thus have "nothing to hide". The answer is the same.
AdieuToLogic 3mo ago
>> Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide". > I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" These are the same Constitutional question. In order to determine what cars are stolen, all cars must be inspected. If all cars are inspected, there is a reasonable case that the 4th amendment is being violated: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[0] > But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments. See above. 0 - https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/
- tptacek 3mo ago
  They're not remotely the same Constitutional question. The people asking this aren't saying "I'm fine with being profiled because I've got nothing to hide unlike the people driving stolen cars". They're just as upset about abuses of these systems as you are (though: some of them think these cameras are no more intrusive than cell tower tracking). They just see an upside to the system that privacy advocates refuse to recognize. I get that this sounds like standard-issue message board rhetoric where I'm Mary Sue'ing normies to make my points for me, but I don't agree with my neighbors about this stuff, and you'll probably have to take my word for it that I'm not making any of this up.
  - AdieuToLogic 3mo ago
    >>>> Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide". >>> I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" >> These are the same Constitutional question. > They're not remotely the same Constitutional question. They absolutely are the same Constitutional question; surveillance by the State without a warrant supported by probable cause, verified by the judiciary and issued thusly, does not have "an upside" of coincidentally identifying criminality. Remember this portion of the 4th amendment: ... and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. How does ubiquitous surveillance used as evidence whenever possible not violate this section of the Constitution, if not others? And how could the question "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" be answered without "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide" being aligned? They are the same Constitutional question - to accept one is to accept the other.

by tptacek 3mo ago

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

aftbit 3mo ago

What was your answer then?

akerl_ 3mo ago
To spare you the search of his comment history, my memory is that it's roughly: the stolen car databases have tons of cars listed that weren't actually stolen, or have already been recovered, so you end up pulling over a ton of unsuspecting people just driving around.
- tptacek 3mo ago
  To the actual question people ask, about getting stolen cars off the street, I don't have a good answer. It's a valid point! The stolen cars pose more of a threat to my neighbors than the police do; in reality, the median adult in my neighborhood doesn't believe any of the online rhetoric about how dangerous the police are to begin with. The reason the current generation of ALPR cameras doesn't work is the one you gave. Illinois LEADS was never intended for realtime enforcement and isn't updated reliably, so we ended up pulling over almost as many innocent motorists as we did stolen cars. To that, add: a plurality of all our camera-driven enforcement actions ended up being failure-to-appeal warrant enforcement, which effectively had our police force doing municipal debt collection for other suburbs, at enormous expense.
tadfisher 3mo ago
One answer is that ALPRs have much too high an error rate (John Oliver claims it exceeds 30%) to rely on them for dragnet surveillance. Maybe it makes sense to track specific vehicles, with safeguards such as warrants and also checking make/model/color, but it makes less sense to just give the government a 30-day rolling database of the public's movements in total, especially when 30% of those data points are inaccurate and thus not useful as evidence.
- tptacek 3mo ago
  I don't know where this stat comes from. It doesn't square with our experience of Flock cameras. There is a truly high error rate in the underlying hotlist data the state maintains and the cameras rely on. But, like, cameras randomly flagging the wrong car, I don't think we saw that happen even once.
  - doc_ick 3mo ago
    Plenty of reports of that
  - _DeadFred_ 3mo ago
    One California town found Flock's license plate cameras were wrong 71% of the time https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/06/california-town-says-flock-cameras-misread-license-plates-71-of-the-time/ https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/06/california-town-says-flo...
    - tptacek 3mo ago
      Seems implausible, for the reason I gave one comment back.
      - doc_ick 2mo ago
        Your comment is anecdotal vs this report.

Teever 3mo ago

I see you make frequent comments on this subject and as time goes on I’m starting to have a harder and harder time following them. I’m starting to think that you’re having a conversation with yourself and your perception of people online, not actual people and the things that they’re saying.

unclebucknasty 3mo ago

>The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?". It's a much harder one to answer than the straw man questions we set up for these things. The "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" question is just a more specific variant of GP's "nothing to hide" question. i.e., the only people asking it are those who aren't stealing cars, thus have "nothing to hide". The answer is the same.

AdieuToLogic 3mo ago

>> Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide". > I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" These are the same Constitutional question. In order to determine what cars are stolen, all cars must be inspected. If all cars are inspected, there is a reasonable case that the 4th amendment is being violated: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[0] > But I also think people on HN have a real problem in convincing themselves about the obvious righteousness of their anti-surveillance arguments. See above. 0 - https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-4/

tptacek 3mo ago
They're not remotely the same Constitutional question. The people asking this aren't saying "I'm fine with being profiled because I've got nothing to hide unlike the people driving stolen cars". They're just as upset about abuses of these systems as you are (though: some of them think these cameras are no more intrusive than cell tower tracking). They just see an upside to the system that privacy advocates refuse to recognize. I get that this sounds like standard-issue message board rhetoric where I'm Mary Sue'ing normies to make my points for me, but I don't agree with my neighbors about this stuff, and you'll probably have to take my word for it that I'm not making any of this up.
- AdieuToLogic 3mo ago
  >>>> Abuse by police officers and other individuals with access to these systems is the answer to the stupid but common question "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide". >>> I never hear that question from Flock supporters. The question I hear is "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" >> These are the same Constitutional question. > They're not remotely the same Constitutional question. They absolutely are the same Constitutional question; surveillance by the State without a warrant supported by probable cause, verified by the judiciary and issued thusly, does not have "an upside" of coincidentally identifying criminality. Remember this portion of the 4th amendment: ... and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. How does ubiquitous surveillance used as evidence whenever possible not violate this section of the Constitution, if not others? And how could the question "why shouldn't we be pulling over stolen cars?" be answered without "why should I worry about surveillance if I have nothing to hide" being aligned? They are the same Constitutional question - to accept one is to accept the other.