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Comment by Noaidi | Hacker News Reader

Flock does not just read license plates, it makes a fingerprint of your car. This is far beyond ALPR.

What does this mean exactly? Pretty much any reasonably modern ALPR system also records make/model/type/color of vehicle along with the plate reading these days. Obviously some are better at this than others, but even my Unifi cameras do this these days.

The “secret sauce” of Flock is the extensive nature of the camera network and database correlation.

Directly from the serpent's mouth:

"No more gaps – just evidence.

A license plate is just a start. Flock’s Vehicle Fingerprint® tech turns footage into evidence that solves cases by pinpointing vehicles by make, color, type, and unique characteristics like decals, bumper stickers, and accessories. This capability proved to be instrumental in a recent case in Catoosa, OK where police were able to track down the suspect connected to a mass murder after their vehicle was spotted by a Flock camera."

https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/6-benefits-of-lpr-for-law-e...

So we need color changing cars and we need to make changes to stickers, wheels, and accessories more frequently. It will be like the characters in cyberpunk novels with the odd face paint and stickers that they can change so as to frustrate facial recognition.

“… any substance, reflective matter, illuminated device, spray coating, covering, or other material that can be dynamically altered so that it interferes with the legibility or detectability of a vehicle/license plate pair (“fingerprint”) – or with the ability of a device to determine the vehicle fingerprint and to record it … shall be illegal.”

Some law, any day now.

magnetic bumper stickers are the way to go.

Color, make, model, body damage, panels that are a different color to the rest of the body, wheels, decals, bumper stickers, tow hitches, roof racks, etc., so even if they can't read your plate they can try to build a vehicle identity, and when they do get a plate capture, they can retroactively apply that to all other sightings of the vehicle.

Yep, I have seen it used IDing cars without plates

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