One minute, you are driving to the grocery store.The next, a camera above the road photographs your car and adds the sighting to a searchable database.
You probably will not hear a click or see a flash.In fact, you may never notice the camera mounted on a pole near the intersection.Automated license plate readers have quietly spread across the country.
As of our reporting, the open-source DeFlock map displayed about 119,000 readers across the United States.DeFlock is a community-powered project that maps reported camera locations using public submissions and data from OpenStreetMap.
Because the map relies partly on crowdsourced information, it may miss some cameras or include locations that have changed.Flock Safety cameras account for about 83% of the mapped total.California has the largest number of mapped readers, with more than 16,000.
Major clusters appear around Los Angeles and the Bay Area.Police say the cameras help locate stolen cars and vehicles connected to serious crimes.FLOCK SURVEILLANCE SPREADS ACROSS THE SOUTH AS RED-STATE LAWMAKERS SEEK TO AX '1984'-STYLE TRACKING TOOLSA solar-powered Flock Safety camera shows how roadside surveillance hardware can blend into the landscape while watching vehicles pass.
(Flock Safety)However, privacy advocates warn that the same network can reveal where ordinary people travel throughout the day.Each sighting can include a vehicle's plate number, appearance, location and the time it passed the camera.
Flock says its system can search by plate, vehicle type and visible features.CyberGuy Live: Missed "Sick of Spam?" Get the replay and checklistOur free CyberGuy Live class, "Sick of Spam?" has ended, but you can still watch the full replay and download our spam-stopping checklist.Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson walks you step by step through simple ways to reduce robocalls, spam texts, junk email and unwanted messages.
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