The headline wording makes it sound like Flock AI is incorrectly flagging this grandmother, but the issue is so much worse than that. The cameras and AI are reading the license plate correctly, and notifying police, as they were designed to do, but someone typed the offending license plate incorrectly.
The reason this is worse than a misbehaving set of hardware and software is that it shows how a company is blanketing a massive number of citizens in a product that is easily weaponized, but they haven’t defined processes to roll back any sort of errors. Then they put this product in the hands of a bunch of over-empowered thugs who are more interested in tickets and arrests than they are with serving their community. And then when
It’s like that old phrase about giving a handgun to a monkey, but we’ve instead made an electronic monkey that makes bullets, then handed out guns to a bunch of organic monkeys who are automatically delivered these bullets. Then, when the monkeys start shooting up people and places at unprecedented rates, the monkeys have no accountability because they’re monkeys, and the owners keep asking if people didn’t want monkeys to have handguns, then why do all of my monkeys keep getting my handguns and my bullets?
And when we ask how to correct this system (not even dismantle it), the employees at every level simply quote that the work is mysterious and important. This is just another dystopian grinding machine in the pile of dystopian grinding machines waiting to be fed.
Apologies: I mixed a lot of metaphors and kinda jumped all over the place. I could probably edit this to something more sensible, but then I’d have to wait longer to tap that shiny submit button.
False positives are profitable. When it’s not working, it’s working.
If you somehow haven’t seen Benn Jordan’s videos on Flock yet - you absolutely should: https://youtu.be/uB0gr7Fh6lY
Is there a summary I can read in lieu of watching a 42 minute video?
The pedophile class is building a mass surveillance prison for their working class genocide project.
Pretty soon ebikes in California will need a license plate and more people will become vulnerable to this unconstitutional surveillance network.
Are they seriously nursing both 0 and O on their license plates? I guess they’re also using I l and 1?
I’m guessing that they have quite a few more problems with misidentification
FFS, use base53 and be done with the problem
There’s someone around my area that has a license plate similar to this: “I1I1l1II” 😹 it’s hilarious
In my country, an O and a 0 count as the same letter/digit on a licence plate. Same with B and 8. I think there’s a few others. There are no two plates that only have the difference of these similar characters, the use of one counts as the other.
I’m finding it hard to explain, but I hope that makes sense.
They’re probably just using the cheapest OCR to capture the plates.
Edit: it seems this is unrelated to the error, but I stand by this statement.
There’s another Colorado guy that showed up on the news for the same thing who I heard about this week on a podcast. Even after the cops confirmed he wasn’t the guy with the plate they were looking for they said they can’t remove him as a suspect until they actually find the other guy.
The mistake is not hers. A suspect’s license plate was entered incorrectly—mixing up a zero and the letter O—and her completely valid plate now matches that bad entry in the system. To be clear, her plate is correct. The error exists in the database. The camera reads her plate correctly, matches it to the incorrect entry, and flags her as a suspect every single time.
So why hasn’t the police department corrected it? This lady should sue tf out of the PD.
A super simple fix is to just issue her a new license plate. A better fix is to have a license plate lettering schema that makes it impossible to have substitution errors - predictable numeric/alpha positions, skipping easily confused letters/numbers (0/O, 1/I, 2/Z, and I think a couple more), etc. An extra layer in either case is that before an arrest warrant or any judge order is written, there needs to be a proper second evaluation of the primary evidence - in this case, double-check the original photograph of the license plate.
Z and 0 should have lines through them anywhere that easy readability matters.
The simplest fix is to correct the db.
https://www.wired.com/story/null-license-plate-landed-one-hacker-ticket-hell/
It gets out sourced most likely. There is no money doing proper sync from a source of truth.
I wouldn’t bet on Wired being a shining beacon of truth, unless it’s to get truth - telling whistle blowers thrown in the brig.
Surprisingly, no… You can update the original record, but, you can’t guarantee that any subsequent records/documents/warrants/etc., will be found and also changed. If you simply giver her a new license plate, that connection more or less goes away.
e: If I were this person, I’d have gone and reported my plates as damaged and got new ones right away…
Why can’t SQL do it efficiently?
In the decades of experience I have with SQL, it is still unable to edit printed documents.
But also, it’s not one database, it’s thousands. Between missing/expired credentials, untested webhooks, changing data formats that the receiving end hasn’t made the required updates for, and more… On top, some only get new records, not updates. Some are updated by hand even.
Thank you for explaining this. I’m obviously not technically inclined, so I really appreciate it, and will try to reread it tomorrow so it hopefully clicks for me.
No worries :)
This is a normalizing of the flock cameras type of article:
- They call them Flock Safety cameras. I don’t care if that’s the name. We should know them by Flock
- This: “The system is widely used because it allows departments to extend their reach without putting more officers on the street.”
- This: “Flock cameras do not make errors in the traditional sense. They do exactly what they are programmed to do. The errors happen upstream, in the human process of entering information into databases, and the cameras simply amplify and repeat those errors at scale.”
Wow that last point. The 1980s wants their “computers don’t make mistakes” myth back.
Bugs aren’t actually errors. The program is doing exactly what it is programmed to do!
The worst thing is people probably believe that because they don’t know any better.
I would sue the shit outta Flock
So…you’re telling me that all the government surveillance, AI, and facial recognition in the world, and you still get the John Smiths, Jane Does, John Lees, and Anthony Johnsons of the world harassed over having the wrong name or the wrong plate?
Why do you have both zero and the letter O in your license plates?
Wow complete miss. Just not at all what we’re doing here
The error wouldn’t exist if the plates didn’t allow O and 0.
Atleast that’s what the article mentions.
Or have specific alpha/numeric positions, like a post code.
Vanity plates dude.
OP isn’t blaming the person, they’re saying it’s dumb for the state to use license plate characters that’re easily misread.
So you’re telling me that one of those characters is not part of the character set used on license plates?
I’m saying you’re helping to normalize fascism. This isn’t about alphanumerics, it’s about the spying on everyone that’s the issue
Of course
Flock is programmed to run it both as a zero and an O. It returns both as results to one car. The programmers were concerned it couldn’t recognize the difference.
So a plate of 123 MNO
Would return both
123 MNO
123 MN0
Some states may not use zeros at all, but most of them do today.
And unfortunately this lady has a tag that is similar to one a suspect used at one time.
I mean that’s just common sense? Even a person calling into the police wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Any sane jurisdiction has a single instance of confusing digits. So hence why flock works that way, it’s the objectively correct way.
How our jurisdiction handles custom license plates
And yet in non-flock instances, this is checked and verified before inconveniencing the person. And there’s not a network of cameras at every intersection to false-identify people.
So weird that scaling up a problematic response doesn’t fix the root problem!
And yet in non-flock instances, this is checked and verified before inconveniencing the person.
What…? What give you the idea that the police wouldn’t respond to someone calling a stolen vehicle in?
If someone calls in a stolen vehicle because of a misidentified plate, the cops are showing up. You can’t just make shit up to defend your point.
And the root of the problem is having license plates that can be confused with each other, Glock has nothing to do with this error, it’s purely a design issue of the plates. People make this mistake ALL the time, it’s why smart jurisdictions solved this decades ago. Even before tech was an issue mate…
Thats how to say “I didn’t read the article” without saying “I didn’t read the article”.
The mistake is not hers. A suspect’s license plate was entered incorrectly—mixing up a zero and the letter O—and her completely valid plate now matches that bad entry in the system.
If they weren’t illegally spying on us in the first place it wouldn’t matter
Actually, people make this mistake too, so jurisdictions should fix the root of the issue. Which is confusing characters even being allowed on the plate to begin with.
When you were saying “you” it was not clear you were asking about the state’s systems of distributing license plates containing both zero and O instead of this individual’s license plate. The number of downvotes on your original post suggests I was not the only one confused by your statement.
In your license plates
They pluralized it, it clearly isn’t about someone’s personal plate, they were speaking at large.
The number of downvotes on your original post suggests I was not the only one confused by your statement.
Yes, because one person (this being you) incorrectly called them out and caused people to just downvote without reading it. This is entirely on you dude.
They pluralized it, it clearly isn’t about someone’s personal plate, they were speaking at large.
Most jurisdictions I’m aware of have a plate on the front and back of the car. The plural still reads as a single car with my original reading.
I fully admit I had the wrong reading with the additional viewpoint. Can you now admit that there are multiple ways to interpret the original post even if my first reading wasn’t the correct one?
Account is either a troll or just act like one
Poster was unclear in what they were communicating. I get what they’re saying now, but it was easy to read a different meaning.
No, you just commented without thinking.
They clearly used the universal “you” and they pluralized the word “plates” making it non personal.
No, you just commented without thinking.
They clearly used the universal “you” and they pluralized the word “plates” making it non personal.
Most jurisdictions I’m aware of have a plate on the front and back of the car. The plural still reads as a single car with my original reading.
I fully admit I had the wrong reading with the additional viewpoint. Can you now admit that there are multiple ways to interpret the original post even if my first reading wasn’t the correct one?
Nope.
You’d have to intentionally misconstrue it to get that definition, most places require multiples plates so that’s stretching.
You also lost all right to defend yourself or get forgiveness for just being an outright ass to the user instead of addressing it politely in your original response
You wanted a “gotcha”, fucked up and are now trying to justify it, stop.
most places require multiples plates so that’s stretching.
Wait, you’re arguing in my defense now that a plural supports my reading of an individual instead of an entire system?
You’d have to intentionally misconstrue it to get that definition
So you’re saying what I did was intentionally say something I didn’t believe? That’s your argument? But wait, two posts ago you said my fault was different:
No, you just commented without thinking.
So which is it, was it carelessness on my part or did I intentionally misconstrue it?
You wanted a “gotcha”, fucked up and are now trying to justify it, stop.
Did you miss me admitting three posts up that I made a mistake? I don’t know why you’re searching so hard for a fault, when I already told you I made an honest mistake, and why I made that mistake.
Nope.
Then now you have become what you appear to hate. Your own position is now hypocritical. There are multiple readings, I have admitted my fault and now you are the only one that remains unapologetic for your mistake. Keep posting replies if you like. I am now thoroughly confused what you’re trying to accomplish.
My plates have 0, O and Q, I hate it
Slash Zero or else…
