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Flock Cameras Can Surveil Cars Without License Plates

Chimera readability score 56 out of 100, Graduate reading level.

This is from a 2024 company presentation:
Officers can also tap into data showing a car’s decals, bumper stickers, back and top racks—along with temporary and unique state tags.
Flock calls it a “Vehicle Fingerprint” and it’s touted as a way for law enforcement officials to get more information “even when you don’t have full plate information,” the company’s presentation shows.
The company gives police officers the ability to search that data as well, to “build stronger cases with less information upfront.” That includes being able to locate multiple vehicles law enforcement officials believe are moving together and what Flock calls a “multi geo search.”
This kind of thing is older than AI; I wrote about it in my 2014 book Beyond Fear. Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was using cell phone location data to track phones that were habitually near each other.
As bad as Flock is, remember that anyone with broad access to cell phone location data can do the same thing.
Clive Robinson • July 3, 2026 9:18 AM
@ Bruce, ALL,
With regards,
It’s not just “cell phone location data”
Use a laptop, netbook, or tablet etc only on WiFi, and you are still being tracked.
Then there are all those “wearables” to consider and in some cases implanted medical electronics.
Oh and in some cases payment card info, public transport cards and even RFID devices in your possessions.
All can be crosslinked in software that started becoming noticed at the turn of the century
I consulted for a company that linked up with AT&T Wireless to use SS7 and other cell network information to compile “traffic census” reports.
Whilst we tried to anonymize user mobile device and network numbers it was clear that others were not.
One thing that became clear was that you could do a couple of things,
1, pull out new numbers in an area.
2, pull out numbers breaking habit.
Both of which are valuable to not just investigators but prosecutors.
As it was shortly after 9/11 there was “pressure” to remove the anonymizing from the data…

Sentinel — Human

Confidence

This text exhibits characteristics of human-authored commentary, blending technical reporting with personal experience and historical context, making it highly unlikely to be purely synthetic content.

Signals Detected
low severity: Sentence length variance is erratic; shifts from short, factual statements to longer, complex, historical exposition. The use of direct, informal address ('@ Bruce, ALL') further indicates a personal/journalistic style.
low severity: The text successfully shifts between different modes—corporate reporting, historical context, and personal testimonial—lacking the uniformly passionate, middle-of-the-road tone typical of pure AI synthesis.
low severity: The transitions are organic (e.g., moving from Flock to Snowden, then back to personal consulting), rather than relying purely on mechanical conjunctions like 'however' or 'moreover'.
low severity: Claims about historical context (Snowden, SS7) are presented as background knowledge, which is typical of human-informed writing. The personal anecdotes anchor the technical claims in a way that suggests direct experience.
Human Indicators
Presence of highly specific, non-standard formatting (the immediate shift to an informal internal communication/email), which is a strong human stylistic marker.
The blending of third-party facts (Flock presentation) with first-person expertise and observational history suggests a narrative driven by a specific personal viewpoint rather than pure aggregation.