Police surprise Canadian YouTuber who was tracking patrol cars at his home

Canadian software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistili received a visit from two police officers after creating a camera with automatic license plate recognition programmed to track only police cars. According to him, the officers came to his home on September 20, and he described the conversation in a video posted on October 7. The case is reported by Tom’s Hardware.

Sistili has shown off the development in several videos on TikTok. The device uses the same type of technology that law enforcement uses to automatically recognize license plates and track vehicle movements.

The officers raised the question of their personal security

According to Sistili, the officers asked him what his intentions were with the project. One of them expressed concerns that the camera could reveal where employees live, when they start work and what they do during the day.

„One of them specifically mentioned how scary it would be for people to find out where they live, when they are on shift and what they do during the day,“ Sistili says.

According to him, the officers said that such data could put employees at risk if it ended up in the hands of criminals. Sistili said these are the same concerns that citizens have been expressing for years about mass surveillance systems.

The YouTuber insisted that such networks need additional rules and oversight mechanisms. According to him, the police responded that it would be difficult to create effective oversight without disclosing details of ongoing investigations.

The project is aimed at Flock systems

Sistili called his device a “Flock personal surveillance camera that monitors Flock users“, referring to the American company Flock Safety. It operates a network of more than 120,000 cameras in 49 US states, and similar license plate recognition systems are also used in Canada.

Flock Safety claims that its network helps reduce crime. The company also says the cameras use on-device encryption and store images briefly before sending them to its servers.

However, the system has come under criticism over privacy concerns and cases of data misuse. According to a journalistic investigation, over 27,000 videos and 1.6 million images taken in just 21 days were retrieved from the stolen Flock camera.

Sources: tomshardware.com, 404media.co