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this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
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This stood out to me. Call me cynical, but I don't think this is a mistake. I think they're calling all of these "misidentified" license plates a "license plate" to simply establish plausible deniability for collecting this data. It would be pretty trivial for their backend system to interpret the images server side and build an identification profile for each vehicle. This way, even if you remove your plate, your vehicle can be identified.
I wonder how quickly they could build a profile on every vehicle in the US simply by having cameras up in every major city? When we defeat flock/axon, what's stopping the next surveillance company from buying that data and using it?
That's likely. In the article you can see the flag being tagged as a plate with a confidence score way below most minimums. That means the detection model itself is pretty sure it's not looking at a license plate but Flock is still keeping that patch tagged. Maybe there are legitimate real life reasons for accepting such low confidence scores, but I'm skeptical about that.
If they're seeing the code on the camera end it is very likely that the low confidence detections are not sent. The reason that you'd run local segmentation and detection is to reduce the amount of data being sent back. If they wanted maximum data from these devices they'd simply send the video and archive/process it all on the server end.
Image segmentation/classification models give false positives, it's unavoidable. It isn't evidence of anything other than the fallibility of computer vision technology.
I'm not saying that they're not collecting other information about vehicles. We know that they also collect bluetooth identifiers and tire pressure monitoring sensors and other visual data about the car.
Only that the information in the article only shows that they're doing segmentation and classification on the camera end. They don't need "plausible deniability" as the original comment implies, there is nothing illegal about what they're doing or anything that would leave them open to liability. (Obviously it's creepy, immoral, and eroding personal freedoms... but I was only speaking of things that the Justice system cares about.)
They already are.
That's what Nightshift/OS whatever the fuck they changed the name to, the law enforcement portal that makes use of the camera feeds and cross references with/across the various law enforcement databases, empowers.
The publication briefly mentioned it obliquely, but the article is about the camera software itself and they're being remarkably restrained in their reporting. To avoid legal challenges perhaps.
1000% they are. Since bumper stickers, etc. commonly stay on a vehicle until the elements disintegrate them (vehicle or bumper sticker), and because they're often uniquely placed, they're basically unique car tattoos.