Flock license plate readers cost city big, deliver little

Re:Flock license plate readers cost city big, deliver little by pipejosh on Monday March 02, 2026 @12:35PM (#47221189)

$2 million a year to run 244,000 searches that advanced 361 cases... That's about $5,500 per useful search.

Meanwhile every car that drove past one of those cameras got logged, timestamped, and stored. These things aren't not law enforcement, they're mass surveillance with a badge.

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Re:Flock license plate readers cost city big, deliver little by lux-lux-lux on Monday March 02, 2026 @01:32PM (#47222053)

Also that $2 mil is the cost of the system, and doesn’t include all those man hours spent running unproductive queries.

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Re:Flock license plate readers cost city big, deliver little by NuclearPM on Monday March 02, 2026 @12:42PM (#47221292)

>These things aren't not law enforcement, they're mass surveillance with a badge.

That sounds like ChatGPT.

[ Parent | on HN ]