YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops

In news that will surprise no one, it turns out that police are only too happy to use automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras—the kind made infamous by Flock—to track ordinary citizens, but are considerably less enthusiastic about citizens using the same technology to track them. While ALPR technology is not new, its use has exploded over the last few years, with Flock at the forefront of both widespread adoption and resultant controversies. There has been story after story about misuse of the data collected by such cameras, whether it’s stalking ex-partners, harassing immigrants, or ruining the lives of completely random people.

It’s little surprise, then, that police might be leery of having ALPR devices pointed at them: they know only too well how the data gathered by these devices can be, and is, misused. This point was demonstrated recently by Canadian software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistilli, of Brampton, Ontario, a city that recently spent 2 million Canadian dollars on high-resolution cameras, along with automated licence plate recognition technology. A month or so ago, Sistilli built his own ALPR camera and set it up to track the movement of police cars.

He posted several videos on TikTok about the camera, explaining how he built it and how it works, describing it as a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers. Local police got wind of this, because according to a video posted on YouTube earlier this week, two officers from Peel Regional Police allegedly turned up at Sistilli's front door to ask what his intentions were for the data he gathered. In this video, Sistilli points out the rich irony of the situation: one of the officers took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk from any bad apples that might want to track them down.

Sistilli's long-form YouTube video uses the visit as a jumping-off point for an extensive discussion of ALPR cameras and their use, looking at how companies like Flock market their products in an aggressive and, arguably, deceptive manner to municipalities, whether they actually reduce crime, the lack of transparency about the collection and retention of data, and a bunch of other issues around the technology. It’s well worth watching. Peel Regional Police did not immediately respond to Gizmodo's request for comment.

在令人毫不意外的新闻中，警方对自动车牌识别（ALPR）摄像头——例如因Flock公司而声名狼藉的那些——用于追踪普通公民的态度极为积极，但对公民使用相同技术追踪他们却相当冷淡。尽管ALPR技术并不新鲜，但其使用在过去几年中爆炸式增长，Flock公司处于广泛采用和由此引发的争议的前沿。关于此类摄像头收集数据的滥用故事层出不穷，无论是跟踪前伴侣、骚扰移民，还是毁掉完全随机的人的生活。因此，警方对ALPR设备对准他们感到担忧也就不足为奇了：他们非常清楚这些设备收集的数据可能被滥用，而且确实正在被滥用。这一点最近得到了加拿大安大略省布兰普顿的软件工程师兼YouTuber Anthony Sistilli的证明。布兰普顿市最近花费了200万加元购买高分辨率摄像头，以及自动车牌识别技术。大约一个月前，Sistilli自己制造了一个ALPR摄像头，并设置它来追踪警车的移动。他在TikTok上发布了几个关于该摄像头的视频，解释了他如何制造它以及它如何工作，将其描述为个人Flock监控摄像头，以追踪Flock的追踪者。当地警方得知了此事，因为根据本周早些时候在YouTube上发布的一段视频，皮尔地区警方的两名警官据称出现在Sistilli的家门口，询问他收集数据的意图。在这段视频中，Sistilli指出了这种情况的巨大讽刺：其中一名警官花时间特别提到，对他们来说，如果人们能够知道他们住在什么时候、什么时候上班以及整天在做什么，那将有多么可怕，因为这种强大的信息可能会使他们个人面临任何想要追踪他们的坏苹果的风险。Sistilli的长篇YouTube视频以这次访问为出发点，对ALPR摄像头及其使用进行了广泛讨论，审视了像Flock这样的公司如何以激进且可以说是欺骗性的方式向市政当局推销他们的产品，他们