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YouTuber Says Police Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Police Cars
Anthony Sistilli, a software engineer in Brampton, Ontario, built his own license plate camera to track police cars. He says two Peel Regional Police officers then came to his door to ask about his "intentions".
Image: © Anthony Sistilli / YouTube
A Canadian YouTuber says police showed up at his home after he built a license plate camera and pointed it at police cars. The story, reported by Hacker News, is a pointed example of how officers and the public see this technology differently.
The camera is a type of automatic license plate recognition, or ALPR, system. These cameras read license plates and log where and when each vehicle was seen. Flock is one of the best-known companies selling them, and it has been at the center of many controversies.
ALPR technology is not new, but its use has grown fast in the last few years. The report points to stories about misuse of the data, including stalking ex-partners, harassing immigrants and harming people who had done nothing wrong. Given that history, the report suggests, police may have good reason to be wary of cameras pointed at them.
The person at the center of this story is Anthony Sistilli, a software engineer and YouTuber from Brampton, Ontario. The city recently spent 2 million Canadian dollars on "high-resolution cameras, along with automated licence plate recognition technology." About a month ago, Sistilli built his own ALPR camera and set it up to track the movement of police cars.
He posted several TikTok videos explaining how he built the camera and how it works. He described it as "a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers."
According to a video Sistilli posted on YouTube earlier this week, two Peel Regional Police officers then came to his front door. He says they asked what his "intentions" were for the data he collected. This account comes from Sistilli's video, and the report describes the visit as alleged.
Sistilli says one officer explained why this would be frightening for police. In his words: "One of [the officers] took the time to specifically mention how scary it would be for them, because people would be able to find out where they lived, when they got on their shift and what they were doing throughout the day, and that that type of powerful information could put them personally at risk [from] any bad apples that might want to track them down." Sistilli points out the irony in that.
He uses the visit as a starting point for a long YouTube video about ALPR cameras. It looks at how companies like Flock market their products to cities, whether the cameras actually reduce crime, and the lack of transparency about how data is collected and kept.