Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals.
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https://infosec.exchange/@sycophantic/117123910793328413
this article here - Any time the media references Flock ALPR cameras:
Flock cameras use artificial intelligence to capture vehicle information from public spaces, including license plates, vehicle characteristics and other identifying details. Police departments and local governments can use the systems to search vehicle data.No, the CAMERA does not do that, the cloud systems where the camera uploads to, does that.
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Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals. Wired continues to do the Lord's work, taking Flock software apart and demonstrating its new AI tool comes preloaded with prompts like "find me witness" and "find relatives."
@evacide not even a tiny little shout out to Benn Jordan?
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The thing I constantly see media gloss over... The pole-mounted cameras are NOT doing any actual work, other than capturing cropped images and sometimes video.
It's the upload to AmazonAWS and whatever system they use in EC2 that can do ALL of the analytics and associations.
I would LOVE if the cameras did ALPR directly and uploaded TEXT, but they don't. They capture all motion, and use a YOLOv3tiny model to crop object, and upload that.
So, yes, EVERYTHING gets uploaded to AWS for further processing as they see fit.
So no, system capability is NOT based on camera models at all, it's all in AWS, always has been.
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@kajer @evacide I mean I don't want them doing that either.
And I'm not sure if it would even be less bad.
If they just did the CV and OCR, but didn't upload the image, we'd probably have *even more* false accusations since there's no image for a human to review when they pull the hit and possibly see that it doesn't match.
The only real solution, in any case, is fully tearing down this shit.
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@kajer I have always taken it for granted that people understood that the primary function of the cameras is to gather data for analysis. Perhaps I am wrong.
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Well yes, obviously. Next best thing is ALPRs being under state regulation and not part of any private parties at all. Think toll booths, and express lane infrastructure. You can FOIA that shit all day long, and usually those databased have much tighter controls than "poorly designed web portals"
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years ago, local PD put up a PTZ cam that had LoS in to a lot of people's back yards, and I posted a quip on Nextdoor (when it was new and somewhat still working as intended) and got ran off with the "if you have nothing to hide" fucking comments.
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years ago, local PD put up a PTZ cam that had LoS in to a lot of people's back yards, and I posted a quip on Nextdoor (when it was new and somewhat still working as intended) and got ran off with the "if you have nothing to hide" fucking comments.
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It looks to be very new because the campaign hasn’t gotten very far. Maybe that will change. I hope it does if it’s actually valid
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @evacide ??? The goal was $5K - he's got over $100K pledged. Now the problem is compute and time to generate patterns and test them against real pattern recognition software.
I backed it even though I expect the useful lifetime of any given obfuscation pattern is limited. Still, just because the latest software for various cameras might defeat a pattern, that doesn't mean that all the installed cameras in the field are up to date.
And I want the camera assholes and the people who buy them to know that people hate their bullshit enough to try to defeat it.
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Well yes, obviously. Next best thing is ALPRs being under state regulation and not part of any private parties at all. Think toll booths, and express lane infrastructure. You can FOIA that shit all day long, and usually those databased have much tighter controls than "poorly designed web portals"
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@GhostOnTheHalfShell @evacide ??? The goal was $5K - he's got over $100K pledged. Now the problem is compute and time to generate patterns and test them against real pattern recognition software.
I backed it even though I expect the useful lifetime of any given obfuscation pattern is limited. Still, just because the latest software for various cameras might defeat a pattern, that doesn't mean that all the installed cameras in the field are up to date.
And I want the camera assholes and the people who buy them to know that people hate their bullshit enough to try to defeat it.
Then it's mistake on my part I glanced at a field and it was probably a donation field that looked like where I read it mistakenly as money raised
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RE: https://chaos.social/@netzpolitik_feed/117111440305265690
You may have caught wind of this story .
Everything from vehicular paint jobs that look like a scrambled set of license plates to T-shirts covered in license plate numbers are now appearing as articles of clothing or decoration that defeat AI.
The effectiveness of these systems is open to question, but I love the idea that a colorful T-shirt or a pair of pants can completely defeat this stuff
It’s kind of like squirrels, defeating every effort to keep them from raiding a birdfeeder
Adversarial Generative Perturbations
Only works against very specific machine learning algorithms.
Having conversed with some heatedly #antiai folk, they don't consider ML to be 'true ai'
Though I consider that line of arguments a folly and distraction.As a fun experiment use the phrase "Adversarial Generative Perturbation" in conversation and witness some humans brains short and reboot
Maybe human and machine brains share similar vulnerabilities -
Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals. Wired continues to do the Lord's work, taking Flock software apart and demonstrating its new AI tool comes preloaded with prompts like "find me witness" and "find relatives."
@evacide
Wow, I'd really hate to see a teardown video of these cameras that runs down which components do what thing and how they might be salvaged for parts. That would be TERRIBLE. -
Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals. Wired continues to do the Lord's work, taking Flock software apart and demonstrating its new AI tool comes preloaded with prompts like "find me witness" and "find relatives."
@evacide Well it can't track "individuals", it tracks automobiles. The people who want to get a car sign away a lot of their freedom, it's always been the case.
If motorists weren't murdering more than 20 pedestrians per day in the USA, we might care.
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Adversarial Generative Perturbations
Only works against very specific machine learning algorithms.
Having conversed with some heatedly #antiai folk, they don't consider ML to be 'true ai'
Though I consider that line of arguments a folly and distraction.As a fun experiment use the phrase "Adversarial Generative Perturbation" in conversation and witness some humans brains short and reboot
Maybe human and machine brains share similar vulnerabilitiesSure, but I think the most important question to answer is if it's effective against flock and other surveillance systems.
And I too agree that AI is a stupid marketing term. I'm old enough to remember when "expert systems" were the terms used to refer to automated systems.
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@evacide Well it can't track "individuals", it tracks automobiles. The people who want to get a car sign away a lot of their freedom, it's always been the case.
If motorists weren't murdering more than 20 pedestrians per day in the USA, we might care.
@KittenKoder
@evacide
Well, they're adding Bluetooth scanning capability, so apparently that also applies to anyone who carries an electronic device while riding in a car, bus, bicycle, walking past, etc?It's fine if you're anti-car, but this is genuinely a bad take.
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2/
Trump always abuses DOJ powers to ensure he gets his cut of the public corruption.
The Shakedown President.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/18/dojs-probe-into-andreessen-horowitz-over-board-seats-baffles-vcs/
https://qz.com/saudi-arabia-ai-public-investment-fun-1851350604
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/andreessen-horowitz-firm-much-richer-21286440.php
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/12/11916896/capital-gains-andreessen-horowitz-fund
https://www.arabianbusiness.com/business/start-ups/silicon-valley-vc-25m-series-a-saudi-startup
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/19/business/saudi-arabia-investment-artificial-intelligence.html
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Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals. Wired continues to do the Lord's work, taking Flock software apart and demonstrating its new AI tool comes preloaded with prompts like "find me witness" and "find relatives."
@evacide [Garrett Langley, Flock chief executive]
“At a demonstration for police chiefs in Denver last year, Langley described the ability to search every camera in a city for cars tailing an armored truck, pulling up the registered owners of those vehicles and checking their arrest records, in under a minute.
**Investigators who try it, he said, get “addicted.”**
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Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals. Wired continues to do the Lord's work, taking Flock software apart and demonstrating its new AI tool comes preloaded with prompts like "find me witness" and "find relatives."
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Flock makes a point of saying that their system can't track individuals. Wired continues to do the Lord's work, taking Flock software apart and demonstrating its new AI tool comes preloaded with prompts like "find me witness" and "find relatives."
@evacide Flock is toast. Trump backs them so that's the kiss of death. He'll cash out and leave them to die.
Next MAGA technofash company to keep an eye on is Axon. They'll immediately take Flock's place in the domestic surveillance game and SCOTUS takes money from them.
