Flock license plate reader cameras are increasingly failing to identify objects correctly, mistakenly classifying them as license plates—yet these devices appear to be detecting people instead. The systems, designed to scan vehicles and license plates, have reportedly begun identifying pedestrians. One instance showed the software cropping an American flag patch on a rider’s saddlebag as if it were a license plate.
Hackers recently accessed a Flock camera installed above a road, disassembled it, and extracted its internal data before sharing it with technology observers. The findings reveal that the device’s software explicitly detects people alongside vehicles, license plates, and bicycles.
Analysis of weeks’ worth of logs indicates a single Flock camera generated over one million images using a processor comparable to a midrange smartphone. This device runs approximately 20 built-in applications for tasks including motion detection, image capture, data uploads, and software updates.
