In news that will surprise no one, it turns out that police are only too happy to use automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras—the kind made infamous by Flock—to track ordinary citizens, but are considerably less enthusiastic about citizens using the same technology to track them.

While ALPR technology is not new, its use has exploded over the last few years, with Flock at the forefront of both widespread adoption and resultant controversies. There has been story after story about misuse of the data collected by such cameras, whether it’s stalking ex-partners, harassing immigrants, or ruining the lives of completely random people. It’s little surprise, then, that police might be leery of having ALPR devices pointed at them: they know only too well how the data gathered by these devices can be, and is, misused.

This point was demonstrated recently by Canadian software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistilli, of Brampton, Ontario, a city that recently spent 2 million Canadian dollars on “high-resolution cameras, along with automated licence plate recognition technology.” A month or so ago, Sistilli built his own ALPR camera and set it up to track the movement of police cars. He posted several videos on TikTok about the camera, explaining how he built it and how it works, describing it as “a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers.”

i built a personal flock surveillance camera to flock the flockers (only tracks police cars)

Local police got wind of this, because according to a video posted on YouTube earlier this week, two officers from Peel Regional Police allegedly turned up at Sistilli’s front door to ask what his “intentions” were for the data he gathered.

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