Creepy Reality Behind the License Plate Cameras in Your Town

PCMag – “Those cameras you keep seeing? They’re run by Flock Safety, a private company that tracks more than just your car’s plates. Did you know that all those cameras you see on street corners in your neighborhood aren’t owned (and in some cases, aren’t monitored) by your local government or police department? Instead, the cameras are leased from and operated by Flock Safety, a private company. People in communities around the country are calling for the cameras to come down, so I asked Benn Jordan, a YouTuber who recently worked with security researchers and journalists at 404 Media to uncover vulnerabilities in those camera systems, about what the company and its cameras really do…“They have drones!” he said. “They have pan-tilt- zoom cameras that recognize people and zoom into their faces. You can even see what they’re doing on their phone. Their ALPR cameras can recognize people. They do store pictures of people. I know this because I’ve accessed the footage and found pictures of myself. I’m not a car or a license plate.”

…At one point, it was possible for random strangers, stalkers, and creeps of all kinds to track your movements around your city or town using misconfigured cameras connected to Flock’s network. According to a resident in a leafy Atlanta suburb, the stranger danger problem with Flock persists because some Flock employees can view camera feeds at any time.  Jason Hunyar lives in Dunwoody, GA, and attended several city council meetings over a period of months, while filing dozens of public records requests to learn more about the city’s contracts with Flock Safety. In a Substack post, Hunyar identified a Flock employee who accessed cameras in a children’s gymnastics room at the nearby Jewish community center…