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.”
How can they suck that bad? A 29€ raspberry pi with a basic ML model can get 90% accurate results
You’re assuming that all people in the pipeline are competent
If you have a pi reading license plates, you are probably scanning a few dozen different plates a day, looking if they match a handful of possibilities. If the only plate that opens the gate is ABC123, nothing happens if it accidentally reads anything else, and I’ll probably get it right a second later.
When Flock scans plates, it reads thousand of them every second looking to read and match every possible plate variation from every state (which there are over 8000 of) to every reported stolen plate, in all weather and lighting conditions. It’s really no wonder if 71% of the times it reports it found a stolen plate it had got it wrong.
For a Trump admin approved device, we’re all shocked it read that well
I hope this results in their evidence being inadmissible to judges/juries.
If you’re ever on a jury remember this
I live in a relatively small mountain town near that City and the wonderful citizens of my town have taken a liking to absolutely fucking destroying those things to the point where we’re having a city hall thing on the 10th so that everybody can air their complaints.
Doing God’s work!
huh. i wonder if they don’t have them around my town because the test one they put on the bike route i take to the next town acquired so many holes without my help i felt i didn’t need to add.
this technology is not safe to be deployed in communities
The main point for AI
I’m pretty sure I could do better stoned. I mean, I’m typing with a much higher accuracy than 71%, and I’m stoned right now.
Get those criminals off the street.
