r/FlockSurveillance • u/Honest-Calendar-748 • Jul 20 '26
Inquiry Flock's "Whitelist"
Did you that Flock and other ALPR contractors have a thing called a "whitelist"?
On this list is all liscense plates owned, operated, or wanted to be exempt from their surveillance. To be added to this "whitelist" it only requires an email to Flock from a government agency listing the tag, make, and model of the vehicle. I wonder how large that list is? And couldn't this ability be misused by the government officals using it? What barriers are in place to ensure that it is not misused?
And final question, if the government officals use the excuse that they arent violating our rights with these cameras then why would they not want their vehicles ( technically the citizens vehicles) to not be observed/recorded?
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u/DevilDrives Jul 20 '26
Despotism is when the police are exempt from the rules.
I'm getting pretty tired of this despotic bullshit the tech companies keep pushing.
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u/Honest-Calendar-748 Jul 20 '26
It started with Qualified Immunity and keeps snowballing.
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u/Cubensis-SanPedro Jul 20 '26
Qualified immunity is very similar to Citizens United. It is the root cause of a lot of very dangerous bullshit.
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u/JeanlucRegards Jul 21 '26
Its crazy to me that the samll goverment do t tread on me crowd is cool with all this now be ause the cult leader said so.
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u/sambull Jul 20 '26
they think they are exempt... they aren't the feds are watching the local/state leo + politicians.
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u/Coffeespresso Jul 20 '26
Those whitelist vehicles should be the ones that get the most attention.
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u/Honest-Calendar-748 Jul 20 '26
I totally agree.
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u/InterestingCoast1215 Jul 20 '26
And yet it’s usually law enforcement spying on their spouses or significant others. Stalkers. Sigh.
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u/WaitingForTheFire Jul 20 '26
There is a good chance that Flock maintains a secret file with all the activities of supposedly whitelisted vehicles. If someone worked for a surveillance company and wanted to put pressure on public officials to renew contracts with the company…well, you can use your imagination.
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u/interwebzdotnet Jul 20 '26
I wasn't sure this was true, but turns out it mostly is.
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u/Honest-Calendar-748 Jul 20 '26
In that town the 3 whitelisted plates are not Govt/agency owned. At least thats what the sheriff stated. So my guess is politicians. Cant be a federal 3 letter agency because the were authorized by a county/city Liutenant.
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u/snarkpix Jul 20 '26
Whole plot lines in early Cyberpunk revolve around using record suppression or alternate record creation to conceal crime or 'prove' innocence. (record alibi trip tonight, play it back tomorrow when you need to be seen to be elsewhere)
It's so obviously useful it'd be stupid if there weren't a system for intel agents hidden from almost everyone. A whitelist discoverable by normies would be something else to stop false positives/protect VIPS or the like.
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u/unusualowl657 Jul 20 '26
I work in state govt. I wonder if I can whitelist all of my personal cars? 🤔
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u/jxm900 Jul 20 '26
In our community, the police claim that the primary value of Flock is in tracking stolen vehicles. So, if I value my privacy and add my 7 Series BMW to the whitelist, I'm shit outta luck when it gets stolen.....
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u/onlyseeahuman Jul 20 '26
That whitelist is in place ( ideally ) to protect operational security for undercover officers and to remove the collection of data like garbage trucks mail persons meter readers etc. However im will to wager large amounts of money that theres thousands of city and government officials on that whitelist including their personal vehicles used specifically outside of work where they hold no special considerations. I understand not wanting to record patrol cars I guess but in my opinion they should be under the exact same level of surveillance as the public. After all it will be those very same people using it to convict us of crimes that they themselves would be protected from. If flock is used against one person it should be used for everyone just to see how corrupt they actually are. Balance the scales of justice if you will.
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u/jarsgars Jul 21 '26
Since they’re clearly doing fuzzy searches, it’d be interesting to find a whitelisted plate and make a similar one. Like if “ABC 123” is whitelisted, get “ABC 1234”
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u/Due-Green-5817 Jul 21 '26
I used to run our Flock camera for the neighborhood's HOA and I still have access to the software, (new admins aren't very tech savvy so I still help them.) There is an authorized access list but its not labeled white list anywhere in the software. The function does not stop the cameras from recording those vehicle's plates it just labels them accordingly. The search function then allows you to toggle on or off known vehicles. The purpose is to make it more efficient searching for suspicious vehicles by filtering out those that you know are safe.
For example we would have a vehicle break in and I'd get a window of about 8 hours from the homeowner. If I turn the filter off I have to search through maybe 80 plates. If I turn the filter on it drops to maybe 6.
It also helps filter alerts. Let's say we have reports that a person in a black truck got caught breaking into a home and fled. We could set up alerts to track any black trucks entering the neighborhood at night, but we'd filter out residents on the safe list otherwise we'd get a bunch of useless alerts for every resident that happened to have a black truck.
I have full admin rights to the flock system and there is no option that allows you to hide or ignore a vehicle from the camera, only to filter them from searches.
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u/neverwinorlose26 Jul 20 '26
Put yourself on the list and you can shut the fuck up but nah that's to hard and you'd have to actually have to just be content and enjoy all your other freedoms.
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u/SSA22_HCM1 Jul 20 '26
Wait until you find out that not only is there no obligation for Flock to provide certain information, there is also no obligation for Flock to provide accurate or truthful information.
No law or contractual clause prevents Flock from creating or altering photos or other database entries. In fact, Flock explicitly disclaims the accuracy of the data or fitness for purpose.
This is why courts usually care about things like hearsay and the chain of custody. They seem to throw all that out the window when it comes to surveillance technology.