A YouTuber has received an unexpected visit from the police over an automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) camera he built to specifically track police cars, using the same technology law enforcement has infamously used to track ordinary citizens. In a video posted to his channel on October 7, Anthony Sistilli says two police officers showed up at his doorstep on September 20th to ask questions about the device, asking what his intentions were with the project.
Sistilli, a Canadian software engineer and YouTuber, pointed out the irony of the officers' concerns, explaining that they mirror the privacy concerns of ordinary citizens who are growing increasingly weary of the recent spike in blanket surveillance brought about by a mass installation of ALPR cameras. Flock Safety, a U.S. public safety technology company, recently scaled its centralized national surveillance network to over 120,000 cameras operating across 49 states, according to the company, capturing billions of vehicle scans every month.
The development sparked widespread public backlash, with critics arguing that Flock has quietly built a massive government surveillance dragnet without a public vote or federal oversight, since any police department on the network can search across state lines. Security researchers later discovered the network included 335,701 Flock cameras and created a “Flock Surveillance Map,” exposing their locations.
Similar ALPR camera surveillance networks exist in Canada, where Sistilli resides, prompting him to build his own device, but this time, encoded to exclusively track police cars. He detailed the build in several TikTok videos, describing it as “a personal Flock surveillance camera to Flock the Flockers.” He then posted a video of himself using the device in real life. The video brought Peel Regional Police, the local law enforcement serving Sistilli’s city, Brampton, Ontario, to his doorstep two weeks later.
“One of them [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 for any bad apples that might want to track them down,” Sistilli narrated. He went on to point out that these were the exact concerns ordinary citizens had about constant surveillance, suggesting there should be more policies and systems around such networks. The officers reportedly responded that there was probably no effective way to implement this without giving away details of active investigations to criminals.
After several investigative reports exposed incidents where officers misused Flock’s database, with instances of stalking of exes and their acquaintances, public backlash snowballed into physical resistance that has seen residents covering or destroying the cameras. Several municipalities, including major hubs like Los Angeles and Fullerton, have now suspended or outright canceled their Flock contracts due to constituent privacy concerns.
Flock and its proponents insist the network has helped lower crime, a claim critics say misreads the data. Sistilli’s video also details aggressive, arguably deceptive marketing tactics Flock uses to convince municipalities to accept cameras. Another issue is centered around the collection and handling of the data. The company says its cameras are protected by on-device encryption and only briefly store images before they are forwarded to its servers. However, hackers reportedly extracted over 27,000 clips and 1.6 million images, captured in a span of 21 days, from a stolen Flock camera.