Canadian YouTuber Builds Licence Plate Camera to Track Police Cars, Then Gets a Visit From Officers
Canadian software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistilli built his own licence plate recognition camera to track police vehicles. Two Peel Regional Police officers then reportedly came to his door.
Anthony Sistilli, a Canadian software engineer and YouTuber from Brampton, Ontario, says police visited his home after he built his own automatic licence plate recognition (ALPR) camera to track the movements of police cars. ALPR systems are best known through the controversies surrounding the company Flock, and police use them to monitor ordinary residents.
A homemade camera
About a month ago, Sistilli built his ALPR camera and set it up to follow police vehicles. He posted several videos on TikTok explaining how he made it and how it works. He described it as a personal Flock surveillance camera meant to watch the watchers.
Brampton recently spent 2 million Canadian dollars on high-resolution cameras and automated licence plate recognition technology.
The officers' visit
According to a video posted on YouTube this week, two Peel Regional Police officers allegedly came to Sistilli's front door and asked what his "intentions" were for the data he collected. By his account, one officer said it would be frightening for police, because people could learn where they live, when their shifts start and what they do during the day, and that such information could put them at personal risk.
Sistilli points to the irony of this, since similar data about residents is routinely collected. In his long video, he uses the visit as a starting point for a broader discussion of ALPR cameras: how companies such as Flock market them to municipalities in an aggressive and, in the author's view, arguably deceptive way, whether they actually reduce crime, and the lack of transparency in how data is collected and retained.
Misuse of data from Flock-style cameras has already been reported in several cases, including stalking of former partners and harassment of immigrants. Peel Regional Police did not immediately respond to Gizmodo's request for comment.
