Flock faces controversy as NJ issues multiple #flockcamera #licenseplatenaming #surveillanceissues

Our Take

The video, from Auto News, does a fair job laying out the technical wrinkle: New Jersey (and other states) sometimes issue the same plate number twice, differentiated only by a tiny suffix character that's easy to miss on a camera capture. That's a real bureaucratic problem, and we're glad someone's documenting it. But framing this as mainly a "registration policy" issue rather than a Flock issue lets the surveillance company off the hook a little too easily.

Here's the thing: duplicate plates have existed for years without turning into police stops at gunpoint. What changed is the scale and speed of automated plate reading. When a single officer runs a plate manually, there's a moment to double-check. When a nationwide network of Flock cameras is silently logging every plate that passes and auto-flagging "hits" against stolen-vehicle databases, a tiny character mismatch becomes a trigger for a police response — often before anyone verifies the read. The technology doesn't just expose old flaws in plate issuance, it amplifies them into split-second law enforcement decisions with real danger attached.

That's the core problem with mass ALPR deployment: it takes ordinary, low-stakes inconsistencies in government paperwork and turns them into dragnet surveillance triggers affecting innocent drivers everywhere, all the time. Credit to the creator for surfacing the plate-duplication wrinkle, but don't let the "it's the DMV's fault" framing distract from the bigger picture. Check our camera map to see how many of these systems are watching your own drives, and visit our take-action page if you want to push back.