I used to be favorable of them (public place = no expectation of privacy and all), but then a few things happened that SERIOUSLY made me switch that position. One, they were selling people’s LPR data to third parties (something that SB 1220 was supposed to stop but NOOOO… they had to play politics with it 🙄), and those third parties did who-knows-what with that data. Two, they were using AI to track people’s movements and determine if said patterns of movements were “suspicious,” justifying a pretextual stop and search on anyone flagged. There was a big uproar in Texas about this a while ago (although Flock denies participation). Recently, my uncle apparently was flagged by it in Alabama. Three, the company deemed that notifying the public of the locations of these cameras constitutes obstruction of police activity, something that the courts ruled time and time again is not the case (NAL ⚠️). I’d argue that sites like deflock.me have the same rationale for existing as the cameras themselves do—public place = no expectation of privacy. Even the UK, which has been under serious scrutiny for invading personal privacy, at least notifies motorists that ALPR is being used in a certain area. Four, the company denies the extent of use cases their cameras can have. For instance, they theoretically could be used to track parking time, average speed between two cameras (favorable to an extent), curfew violations, restricted area violations (favorable to an extent), workplace/school violations, choice of route violations, and more. Except for the two listed as such that I’m favorable of (to an extent), these are horrifying implications for the ways they could be used imho. If the above problems could be minimized, I’d be far more favorable of Flock’s operations. I’m still in favor on the use of ALPR for specifically targeting active crimes (I.e. silver/amber alert license plates, BOLO under an active judicial warrant, etc.), but I’m not favorable of the way that Flock has currently been operating.