On Flock License Plate Tracking Cameras

Schneier on Security recounts an incident in which someone was mistakenly arrested after police entered an incomplete license plate into Flock Safety's camera system. They recorded just the five large characters of the plate, omitting the smaller digit in the middle. When Flock's AI searched for that partial sequence, it matched any vehicle with the correct, full plate—including the vehicle he was driving. The flaw isn't isolated: several other vehicles with matching plate formats were flagged in Minnesota that same week. Flock blamed law enforcement, explaining their system alerts on partial matches because police often have incomplete information initially. But that design means any vehicle matching that partial sequence anywhere in the country could be wrongly flagged. The incident has surfaced broader concerns: police departments are using Flock cameras to search for specific people, not just vehicles, sometimes based on race, clothing, or other identifiers—raising questions about surveillance scope and the accuracy of automated systems deployed at scale.

Listen to this story

Hear this and more stories in a personalized audio briefing.

Open The Chonkerton