These days, surveillance cameras are all around us, and they’re smarter than ever. In particular, many of them are running advanced algorithms to recognize faces and scan license plates, compiling ever-greater databases on the movements and lives of individuals. Flock You is a project that aims to, at the very least, catalogue this part of the surveillance state, by detecting these cameras out in the wild.
The system is most specifically set up to detect surveillance cameras from Flock Safety, though it’s worth noting a wide range of companies produce plate-reading cameras and associated surveillance systems these days. The device uses an ESP32 microcontroller to detect these devices, relying on the in-built wireless hardware to do the job. The project can be built on a Oui-Spy device from Colonel Panic, or just by using a standard Xiao ESP32 S3 if so desired. By looking at Wi-Fi probe requests and beacon frames, as well as Bluetooth advertisements, it’s possible for the device to pick up telltale transmissions from a range of these cameras, with various pattern-matching techniques and MAC addresses used to filter results in this regard. When the device finds a camera, it sounds a buzzer notifying the user of this fact.
Meanwhile, if you’re interested in just how prevalent plate-reading cameras really are, you might also find deflock.me interesting. It’s a map of ALPR camera locations all over the world, and you can submit your own findings if so desired. The techniques used by in the Flock You project are based on learnings from the DeFlock project. Meanwhile, if you want to join the surveillance state on your own terms, you can always build your own license plate reader instead!
[Thanks to Eric for the tip!]
I wonder how long it takes for one of these devices to detect a flock camera. Having one in a car might be nice.
This wouldn’t be hard to defeat. Nevermind that it won’t catch wired-only cameras. For wireless cameras, it’s easy enough to have them store data locally then turn on WiFi/Bluetooth/etc. and “phone home” only at certain times or when certain conditions are met. If there’s enough demand for such a “wifi turned off except when it is needed” wireless survellance camera, companies will add this as a feature.
That said, if there is NOT enough demand for a wireless-but-most-of-the-time-wireless-is-off camera, it won’t be cost-effective to put into mass production.
Respectfully, you don’t seem to know what Flock cameras are or how they work.
Now they use different wifi SSID for the cameras. New modems can set multiple ssid.
What about finding these little spy cameras that are available everywhere can someone build a reliable finder for them that actually works
Yes , I am wondering the same thing ! is there anything that can help to find hidden spy cameras ?
let’s say I have an ex boyfriend who’s been known to put spy wear in someones house . Can I detect them ? I don’t know ANYTHING ABOUT ELECTRONICS. thank you, S.A.
https://a.co/d/5aGnaFT Here you go.
That’s literally what this is.
WiFi ? Is Flock building out their own network ? Are they using, and paying for, someone else’s network ? In urban areas I might expect either but some of these are on roadsides where I wouldn’t expect a WLAN to reach and so, wouldn’t they be “phoning home” ?
Some Flock cameras have WiFi enabled, it is used for setup, it is unusual though for it to be left on. Additionally, Flock cameras with external batteries use BLE to monitor battery health.
Additionally, I wouldn’t be surprised if Flock cameras do, or will start soon doing BLE sniffing since everyone just leaves bluetooth turned on on their phone and it is an easy way to track someone’s movements with sufficient sniffing devices.
It’s easy to spot Flock ALPR cameras in my municipality, just look for the solar panel! The other model is the tow behind, Generac-esque looking thing. But interesting article for future use I’m sure… Besides I just use my smart phone and go Wardriving with the wiggle wifi app. Easy to spot with the help of Deflock!
In china there are plate reading cameras every 100m…
It’s not that big a town, so one each end of Highway 90 should do it. One near the (very pretty) church and one near Douget’s Crawfish Farm perhaps. For complete coverage a third up where North Broadway joins with Westbury will complete their coverage.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/9eLCFwWBzZbiYrdo7
The other China, the one in Maine, doesn’t really have that much of a town to cover.
They’re on traffic light poles at nearly every intersection in Santa Clara County (CA).
One guy was tracked 540 times in 3 months, this should be against the law.
FedEx is reported to be installing flock cameras on their trucks!
All of this is not alright in my book.
My friends and I used to joke that FedEx was part of a massive government surveillance program back in the 90’s; everywhere you went at the time, there seemed to be a FedEx truck nearby.
Damn them for stealing my ideas!
FedEx… that’s funny; I was thinking metro transit – a lot easier to get buy-in from city/county governments.
Does reflective paint help with tricking the cameras
Only if it is on the camera lens
Big brother is watching…
I remember doing a paper for Electronics class in high school on the feasibility of using the IF of a heterodyne receiver to detect and triangulate through DF the location of said receivers of certain frequencies. Its major failing was that there is more than one way to skin a cat; 1+3=4, but so does 2+2. And there’s not a whole lot of signal leakage in the process; the world is a noisy place.
I live in a town of under 10,000, near me another town slightly larger has one of these flock things, on a rural road. It’s not on the flockme map.
On my iPhone 6 I could use the front camera at night to see the infrared glow from security cameras. Also IR remotes can be checked for functionality. Haven’t tried it on my iPhone X yet. Used to use developed but unexposed 35mm color film for IR filters.
Are we compiling the data anywhere? Would be cool to tie this to some software and start aggregating…
What a crappy headline IMO.
ALPR is a good thing.
In my country (and I guess much of the EU), private entities cannot monitor outside their own ‘fence’. (There is an exception for banks).
So all ALPRs are run by the police either on their vehicles or on intercity roads, typically motorways.
We also only have one police force, so no small town two-person sherifs departments with their own ideas of use.
How many ‘vans with stolen goods’ get caught I do not know, but a lot of uninsured, untaxed, uninspected and unlicensed vehicles and drivers are cought. So many, that when ALPRs first came into use, most offenders had to be ignored because of workload.
The good part for my daily life? I do not get pulled and checked every month or so, as the police can concentrate on vehicles, that makes a ding in the police vehicle.
Omg! Uninsured, untaxed, uninspected, and unlicensed vehicles? That sounds terrifying!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate#List
Sort “Per 100,000 inhabitants”. Quick look at top 10, then scroll all the way to 111, USA.
Island countries and nanny states have few traffic deaths, USA has average traffic deaths. What am I supposed to be taking from this?
I guess EU are nanny states. You did notice USA is much worse than Russia, FFS?
Well, the US have orders of magnitudes more cars and drivers than Russia…
The problem is people have been dumbed down so much in this country. They no longer understand what freedom is much less the right to your privacy. Everybody is a Karen worried so much about what everybody else is up to! The Conservitives movement has spent the last 30 years scaring the hell out of everybody. So the could install their police state. People willingly give up their freedom for this promised protection from these Ghost criminals. Who are waiting on every street corner. To rape murder and make your kids do drugs! Hell now the gov just blatantly putting troops on the streets! People are just fine with that! But hey there #1 and free!
Where is the high crime again, and who is in charge there?
As it is basically capturing Wifi / BT beacon and filtering on the MAC address, I don’t get why this could not be an application on a mobile phone but needs a dedicated hardware ?
In the Portland area, the flock cameras are only at all the home depots. Weird.