Flock Noir for Raspberry Pi

Our Take

Credit to Valleytech Custom Solutions for digging into "Flock Noir" on a Raspberry Pi. We don't have full visibility into every technical detail of the build, but the broader point stands on its own: the kind of plate-reading hardware that cities are paying Flock Safety a premium for can, in some form, be approximated with a few hundred dollars of consumer electronics. That should give everyone pause, whether you're worried about corporate surveillance networks or the prospect of randos building their own.

This is exactly why DeFlock exists. When the barrier to building camera-based tracking infrastructure keeps dropping, the conversation can't just be about one vendor's contract with one police department — it's about how normalized constant automated monitoring of our cars and movements has become, period. Projects like this cut both ways: they can be used to understand and audit how these systems work, or they can inspire more unaccountable eyes on the road. Either way, the public deserves to know where these cameras already are.

If you haven't checked whether Flock or similar ALPR hardware is watching your own street, take a look at our camera map, and if you want to push back on surveillance creeping into your town, our take-action page has concrete next steps.