You probably know where the coffee shops and gas stations are in your neighborhood. But the cameras logging your license plate as you drive past? Those can be a little harder to keep track of.
Proton, the Swiss privacy company behind Proton Mail and Proton VPN, is helping make them easier to find by hosting a free map of Flock surveillance devices on its servers (you can explore the map on Proton's website). Flock tried to get the researcher behind the original project to take it down, according to The Intercept.
If you need a refresher on Flock, the company makes automated license plate readers used by police departments, businesses, schools, and homeowners associations. The cameras photograph passing vehicles whether or not their drivers are suspected of anything. Flock devices can record license plates, times, and locations, plus identifying details such as a vehicle’s make, model, color, and bumper stickers. According to Flock, its cameras log more than 20 billion vehicle sightings each month across 49 states.
Those records then go into Flock's cloud, where police can search them and share them with other agencies across city and state lines. You don’t have to be pulled over for your car to become part of a searchable record of where you’ve been — and that access has been abused. A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers accused or charged with misusing license plate readers, often to track people in their personal lives.
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