this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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466
Flock misread license plates in 71% of the alerts it sent to police in one California town (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 6 hours ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

In 2023 and 2024, Flock sent 1,427 alerts to the Roseville [CA] Police Department.

Roseville police found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of those alerts.

Max Isaacs, director of technology law and policy with the Policing Project at New York University's School of Law, described Roseville's misread data as "stunning."

"A 71% misread rate is really beyond the pale," he told Business Insider, referring to Roseville's reported error rate for stolen and felony vehicle alerts. He added that "in the absence of concrete rules that directly address the problem of misreads, this technology is not safe to be deployed in communities."

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[–] ItsNotImportant24@lemmy.ml 14 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

But on the other its not, as it can cause someone else with a similar plate number to be accused of a crime or infraction, etc that another committed.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Dozens of times so far. And the perpetrators point at each other, or simply refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing.

Edit: found the story I was thinking of! This guy was wrongfully added to these lists, and the sheriff only removed him locally after the news stated investigating. And that's only for one county, so the problem will repeat if he drives to a different county.

[–] ItsNotImportant24@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Yep, I knew it was happening. Wasn't aware this frequently already. Of course they point the finger at each other and refuse any wrongdoing, their lives aren't the ones at stake when shit like that happens. And guarantee the ones falsely accused still face the penalties.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Yup, just read an article about that the other day. They even acknowledged it was going to keep happening to the person whose vehicle was mistakenly flagged because of a partial ID match, and just advised him to keep the car at home until they figured out how to fix it. In his case it wasn't as big a deal since it was a rental, but can you imagine being told to not drive your own fucking car or the cops will be automatically called to come pull you over as a carjacker??

[–] ItsNotImportant24@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 hours ago

Wow, that is absolutely insane. I hate this current timeline so much.