CONNECT WITH US
Tech

Tech

This Flock Camera map shows more than 300,000 devices

Mashable - Tech logo

Published on

Add as a preferred source on Google
This Flock Camera map shows more than 300,000 devices

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.



Source link

Disclaimer

We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We TheMorningPulse.fyi want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It's possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.