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Flock Flocked up: How a license plate camera misread unraveled one man's life

18 pointsby text0404today at 5:57 PM4 commentsview on HN

Comments

p0w3n3dtoday at 6:49 PM

I didn't read it all but it seems 80% of it is a poem on how the flock helps

dlcarriertoday at 6:29 PM

Unless I'm missing something, the pertinent license-plate misreading happened when the vehicle was pulled over. It's one thing if a false positive shows a stolen vehicle or license plate where it isn't, but all that means is any resources put into locating it will go wasted.

Pulling over a vehicle, and incorrectly thinking it is stolen, is an entirely different and much greater mistake. In this case the actual vehicles actual license plate did not match anything stolen.

I'm against law enforcement vehicles having continuously-operating license-plate cameras, but if there were cameras to identify the vehicle currently being pulled over, I'd be fine with that, as it would likely have a much, much lower error rate than the human chain currently doing the verifying.

kotaKattoday at 6:24 PM

“In 2021, the research firm IPVM independently tested Flock's LPR cameras, concluding in a report that it misidentified which state a license plate was from for around 1 in 10 reads, and that the system regularly misclassified license plate state, vehicle type, and make. IPVM said that Flock subsequently blocked it from purchasing its cameras for testing.”

Whatcha got to hide, Garrett?

shablulmantoday at 6:21 PM

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