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#flocksafety#alpr#adversarialmachinelearning

Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras

Benn Jordan

1.4M subscribers • 10 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 6 people: 6 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Benn Jordan
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

3.7M views1 year ago6 recommendations

SecurityAI and machine learningPrivacy and surveillanceComputer visionReverse engineering

Benn Jordan explains how Flock Safety license plate cameras track vehicles and demonstrates how adversarial computer vision can defeat them.

If you live in the United States, it's very likely that a private startup has been logging and sharing your vehicle's location without your consent. In this video we explore how AI can defend against being tracked by 3rd party police and retail AI tracking cameras. 💗 Support this channel and join an amazing community: patreon.com/bennjordan 👀 Stalk me on social media for more frequent updates (Github link here): linktr.ee/BennJordan 🔴 Subscribe To My Streaming Channel. I stream weekly! youtube.com/watch?v=geaIEWGhgsI Video links: Reject Convenience video: youtube.com/watch?v=iX3JT6q3AxA ⚡Those lovely custom acoustic panels in the background: psyacoustics.com

Why it's here

6 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended for its eye-opening look at license plate reader surveillance and practical demonstrations of adversarial machine learning to bypass them.

athrowaway3zon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety”

link to this video Benn Jordan did a great video on this. People on here regularly bash the EU's GDPR, but blocking this kind of corporate-driven police state is a heavy point in its favor.

dmschulmanon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The FBI Wants 'Near Real-Time' Access to US License Plate Readers”

Funny you should mention this. Benn Jordan, on the heels of his Flock camera research, reverse engineered a non-flock ALRP unit and built his own system using some off the shelf parts, a tablet, and 3D printer. He did it mostly as an experiment but also due to the fact that Flock's algorithm for image detection is astoundingly bad and has a high incident of reading plates incorrectly. There are a handful of open-source models for license plate detection, I forget exactly which model outperformed the rest, but it was an excellent watch and help me really understand just how inefficient these commercial systems are and how easy they can be to defeat: link to this video

Barbingon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department's Use of Flock Safety”

For a video overview of this stuff: “Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras”, Benn Jordan 36min, 1.7m views, 9d ago link to this video

strangattractoron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Flock's gunshot detection microphones will start listening for human voices”

…company is doing the surveillance the debate remains the same. 1. Pervasive surveillance has the potential to be used inappropriately by authorities. Discussion is needed. 2. The data collected by a company such as Flock but not necessarily Flock could be used inappropriately or sold for other purposes. Benn Jordan has a good video on the subject link to this video 3. The claim that Flock is responsible for %10 of solved cases seems dubious but without data it is difficult to know or believe. Given that Flock is in YC's portfolio makes it even more suspect. Flock or a company like Flock may try and become pervasive and indispensable before a public discussion places any limits on their behavior.…

gorgonicalon Hacker News • Recommends

On “US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology”

Musician-turning-tech anarchist (?) Benn Jordan is making a very interesting series of videos about Flock cameras, their poor safety, and their gray-area interfacing with local governments: link link link link to this video I recommend them.

ocrowon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Americans Are Smashing Flock Cameras”

It's rational to oppose Flock cameras in particular, while admitting that secure publicly accountable camera use for police purposes may have a legitimate place. YouTuber Benn Jordan did a pretty decent break down of how Flock is not that. link to this video

Rhea_Kartyon Hacker News • Mentions

On “PlateShapez – Tool for generating adversarially perturbed license plate overlays”

Background: from this video ( link to this video ) Floxk AI is a startup that apparently runs highly suspicious police data collection services. As a fun bonus, it sells this data to private bidders and retains no liability for any mess-ups. Apparently, it uses a Bluetooth system to relay some of this information. And seems to generally have awful security... Any thoughts? Or further projects on this?

walterbellon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Dissecting Flock Safety: The Cameras Tracking You Are a Security Nightmare [video]”

"Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)" (70 comments), link Adversarial computer vision and DIY OSS $250 RPi Hailo ALPR (2M views), link to this video "Tire Pressure Sensor IDs: Why, Where and When (2015)" (30 comments), link

walterbellon Hacker News • Mentions

On “How Cops Are Using Flock's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists”

Local strategies, "The Cameras Tracking You Are a Security Nightmare" (90 comments), link "Find Nearby Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR)" (70 comments), link Adversarial computer vision and DIY OSS $250 RPi Hailo ALPR (2M views), link to this video "Tire Pressure Sensor IDs: Why, Where and When (2015)" (30 comments), link

robszumskion Hacker News • Mentions

On “We put Flock under surveillance: Go make them behave differently [video]”

Same author talked about adversarial license plates that trick these cameras with a sequence of black blocks, discussed here in original form 1. He is interested in breaking both the plate detection (ideal) and character recognition (good). The examples are pretty cool looking. 1: link to this video

phyzomeon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves”

Sure, around 33:00 here: link The other video is link to this video but I don't recall which one goes more into it. It's also possible I'm just remembering Flock-specific stuff from other sources, and the things he shows in these videos are more general issues with security camera companies (using Flock as the example). It would be great if this stuff was (also?) published as blog posts so that it could be easily skimmed...

vmh1928on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Flock Hardcoded the Password for America's Surveillance Infrastructure 53 Times”

Just a reminder here of this experiment using adversarial techniques to confuse the license plate readers. Just an experiment, may not be legal in all locations, check your local laws. link to this video