Man builds camera that only logs police plates
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
Canadian software engineer Anthony Sistilli built a DIY plate reader that flags only police cars.
Peel Regional Police officers then visited his home to ask about his intentions.
Background
Anthony Sistilli is a Canadian software engineer and YouTuber who became interested in automated license plate readers (ALPRs) — cameras that photograph passing vehicles and record plates, times and locations — after a wave of US outrage against Flock Safety, a company whose readers are used by police departments, businesses, schools and homeowners associations. Canada lacks a centralized corporate surveillance regime like Flock, but its police have been rapidly scaling a more decentralized ALPR network with cameras that work much the same way. Sistilli ordered a wall-mounted 4K camera, plugged it into his laptop and had an AI assistant write tracking software that would only flag police cruisers, then mounted the prototype on his car's dashboard to test it.
How it unfolded
- date unknownSistilli ordered a wall-mounted 4K surveillance camera online, plugged it into his laptop and had an AI assistant write software that would only flag police cruisers; he mounted the prototype on his car's dashboard to test it.
- date unknownSistilli said the footage was initially "super laggy" because the system was checking every car in full 4K while reading plates; after lowering the resolution and having the AI read a plate only once a vehicle was confirmed as a police car, the prototype worked.
- September (year not given)Two police officers walked up Sistilli's driveway and knocked on his door to question him about his camera.
- Oct 21, 2026An article reports that Sistilli built the Flock-style plate reader that only logs police cars, after which Peel Regional Police officers came to his home.
- Oct 22, 2026Proton, the Swiss privacy company behind Proton Mail and Proton VPN, hosts a free map of Flock surveillance devices on its servers.
- Oct 23, 2026An article reports that police departments across North America are spending millions of taxpayer dollars to install automated license plate readers.
Who’s saying what
- Sistilli
- Sistilli said it felt "really weird" that officers asked what his "intentions were," and that the privacy concern one officer raised about police being tracked is "the exact same concern that civilians have too."
- Police
- According to Sistilli, one officer said it would be "scary" for officers if people could find out where they lived, when they got on shift and what they were doing throughout the day.
- Flock CEO
- Flock CEO Garrett Langley said "any level of abuse greater than zero is unacceptable and makes me sick," pointing to audit logs and an optional tool to detect potentially abusive activity, and said the whole city shouldn't be held accountable for the bad decisions of a few.
Still unverified
Flock declined to say how many police department contracts it had suspended or terminated over abuse.