What's your point? To the extent they're a private company you're even less likely to get access to records from Flock ALPR cameras.

Just because the records created on behalf of the government are held by a private enterprise doesn't mean they aren't government records.

Right, I agree. My point is that the FOIA laws of many states forbid disclosing the data this web page purports to surface.

You of all people ought to know that your governments of all levels are routinely ignoring laws they find inconvenient.

You have masked secret police grabbing people off the street en masse with impunity, why would states care about pesky laws like FOIA?

Really? Me of all people? What about my Slovak ethnic identity do you think so attunes me to the concerns you're bringing?

It's clear in context that they mean your background in computer security and political activism, I don't know where you are getting the idea that it's an comment on your ethnicity.

The HN guidelines ask users to assume the most charitable interpretation/good faith. Even for "big name" accounts.

"You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks."

Is the response I get for my good faith arguments. This is a forum run by tech oligarchs. Speech is being modified on here.

Try speaking ill of a big tech CEO with links to YC and you'll find out quickly that that's not "curious conversation" lmao

Yes but: Privatization is an effective way to negate the public's right know.

eg Some companies have claimed trade secret protections to prevent public access. Infamously, election administration vendors like Diebold.

I imagine anyone trying to investigate govt activities conducted by Palantir (for example) will run into similar stonewalling. Even getting the fulltext of contracts can be challenging.

Not automatically. There's aleeady case law(0x1) that ruled that images captured by Flock ALPR cameras are public records, even though the data are stored by Flock (a private vendor), not directly by the city.

The court rejected the notion that “because the data sits on a private server, it’s not a public record.” Instead, it said that since the surveillance is paid for by the public (taxpayers) and used by a public agency, the data must comply with the state’s public-records law.

This shows that — in at least one jurisdiction — using a private company to run ALPRs doesn’t shield the data from public-records requests.

(0x1) https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...

Thanks for followup and link. Interesting.

IANAL: That court's decision was based on the contract w/ Flock. It does not move the needle wrt public records.

I may read the decision, testimony, and any amicus briefs. During the 00's, Wash Citizen's for Open Govt had a prominent blindspot wrt tension between privatization and public records (in the shape of Tony Nixon). I'm curious if they were involved with this case, and if their positions have matured.

> at the very least in my state (Illinois), it's not lawful for public bodies to disclose the license plate numbers read from ALPR cameras, so this data set is necessarily incomplete.

They're not a public body, that was my point

They de facto are because they only place cameras in public places and on public land by contract with the government in one form or another; be it with a treasonous sheriff or a treasonous state executive and legislature. The public would not be talking about Flock if they had not worked to create a treasonous surveillance state and instead only did things like monitored truck movements in a logistics depot. The private contracts for things like HOA neighborhoods and corporations, e.g., big box store loss prevention and customer data tracking, but those’s are a totally different issue that have nothing to do with the use of public funds and power for mass surveillance.

This feels a lot like "Yeah, but we'll do it anyways until a court makes us stop; because the profit is more than the fine"

but thry're not literally the government and the relevant laws only affect the literal government.

No, there is legal precedent that private companies who perform government services are subject to the same laws.

This is generally not the case.

Would they be subject to CCPA, then?

Yeah, and as an ex-employee, that's something they heavily "rely" on, and push as an end run around laws.

Like in my state, LE can't collect this stuff directly. Then they started saying "Well, we can do this..." and started contracting for private companies to do the collection on their behalf. When _that_ was legislated away, they've now pivoted to "Well, if the company is doing it of their own accord, we can still purchase the data since it wasn't, technically, created for us."