during church???!
Do I have it right that cops are saying he shot one of the cameras while he was in church?!!
Tennessee congressional hopeful accused of shooting license plate cameras
An independent congressional candidate in Tennessee faces four felony vandalism charges after allegedly shooting four automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras between July 14 and 22. According to the Blount County Sheriff's Office (site geo-restricted), Adam Lee Heimerman, 37, is accused of targeting three cameras in Blount …
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 20:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Size
He's running as an Independent, this means that neither Democrats nor Republicans (who are voting a straight ticket) would vote for him.
However, after this, I'm sure republican voters, and centrist democrat voters would consider voting for him. for his sake, I hope he wasn't standing in the r.o.w., or across the road from them when he shot them.
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 13:46 GMT Pussifer
Re: Allegations?
Despite the kit the USA has, it is still very much a developing nation - developing an adult social character(?). A lot of American citizens have characteristics similar to toddlers in real developed nations - I have one in mind particularly at the moment! Many are like teenagers, not necessarily to be trusted with positions of trust.
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 18:50 GMT martinusher
Re: Allegations?
I'm a bit puzzled about how police could use Flock cameras for stalking since they're owned by a commercial company and the product -- the camera's information -- is sold. So, yes, there's probably violations of NDAs or theft of information going on that can enable stalking but directly tying camera information to stalking is really just normalizing the government's ownership of the camera network. (Its a subtle point which may be lost on people in the UK because cameras there are owned and operated by the government; they can't do this directly in the US because of the Fourth Amendment. Normalizing some ostensibly prohibited practice is the precursor to the Supreme Court allowing it.)
As for the cameras, they're all over the place. There's a website that tells you where they are but once you know what to look for they're easy to spot. Since they're solar powered (at least around here) and communicate wirelessly theycan be erected in almost minutes on a traffic signal (remember that most of our signals are on booms across the roadway so have a substantial pole to support that boom -- the Flock cameras are attached to the vertical pole with a couple of metal straps).
The clever bit about these cameras is we don't use those easy to read old school license plates that are mandated for UK vehicles, we've got a whole variety of styles and colors that vary widely from state to state. This doesn't much of a challenge for modern ALPR software. (ALPR does explain why the California Highway Patrol suddenly got all hot and bothered about missing front license plates -- they never used to bother much because they don't really fit most vehicles but suddenly it became a thing a few years ago.)
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 20:22 GMT Henry Wertz 1
Re: Allegations?
Flock only claims to own the info from the cameras to evade privacy laws. If a state, county, municipality says the police or government must not run surveillance, Flock claims the cameras are run on behalf of the police or local gov't.. If laws restrict private companies from doing so, they claim they provide the service but the local muiniciplaity is running them and it's their info.
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 21:03 GMT DS999
Flock's business only exists because of the police
The police have horribly weak controls on being able to access this information, making it super easy for corrupt officers to stalk.
They could make it so you needed the approval of higher ups to access that information, and have logs of what you looked at available to citizen review committees who would insure the police weren't using that capability corruptly or conducting wide scale fishing operations rather than using it to investigate specific crimes. But they won't, because police generally cover up for corrupt officers or look the other way, and they absolutely hate having anyone looking over their shoulder at what they do.
Teachers don't carry guns or have the ability to jail people, but they are subject to tons of oversight. I don't get why so many people support the police having zero oversight.
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 21:58 GMT HereIAmJH
ALPRs
As for the cameras, they're all over the place.
There is another method of deploying them. You know those trailers they use for temporary road signs and construction work lights? Well they use those for ALPRs too. I noticed several pop up while the FIFA world cup was in town. They are the orange trailers with the small box like a road sign, but instead of a sign there is a mast with an object at the top. These can be towed anywhere and assembled in about an hour. The ones I saw were off the side of the interstate highways, scattered around town.
For plate recognition they snap a picture of every vehicle that drives past them. They send those pictures to their database and AI generates metadata for them. Including plate number, make, model, and color of the vehicle. And any distinguishing characteristics like stickers, dents, or scratches. So they absolutely know about your Fuck Flock sticker.
As far as abuse, Flock is taking a hands off approach on access. They sell access to agencies and log the queries that get run, likely because they bill on a per query basis. But they state out right that it is up to the client to control who can run queries and what policies should be followed. And they don't just sell to government agencies. I've see stories about HOAs (Home Owner Associations) installing Flock cameras.
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Wednesday 5th August 2026 09:43 GMT Sproggit
Re: Allegations?
"I'm a bit puzzled about how police could use Flock cameras for stalking since they're owned by a commercial company and the product -- the camera's information -- is sold. So, yes, there's probably violations of NDAs or theft of information going on that can enable stalking but directly tying camera information to stalking is really just normalizing the government's ownership of the camera network."
I'd like to take another go at this part of your question, because I think you touch on something fundamentally important to any citizen, in any country.
As an ANPR system, Flock is "always on" and "always scanning" for vehicle license plates. Flock has no interest in whether or not your vehicle or you as the driver or owner - or even passenger - has ever committed a criminal act. Put another way, Flock is a system that has as it's sole purpose the gathering of data for "law enforcement purposes", but simultaneously has no view on whether or not you have committed any crime.
In other words, Flock completely erodes your right to a "presumption of innocence" the moment you use a vehicle that has a license plate attached to it.
*This* is the key element of your question that relates to stalking, the bit that is too easy to overlook.
Let me try and explain why.
Say you're a parent and a police officer and you discover that your teenage daughter has a new boyfriend who - shock, horror - owns a motor vehicle. Before the days of Flock, if you wanted to learn more about the boyfriend, you'd be limited to running a criminal background check [which is going to flag up in an audit of searches] or maybe asking your fellow officers. But now, with Flock, *so much* data is collected that the information you gather won't be limited to whether or not your daughter's boyfriend has a criminal record... You can get a detailed history of his driving habits - where and when he drives. Depending on camera angles and such, you may get to see if he has passengers in his vehicle, and who they are. By linking together the cameras the boyfriend triggers with times, you can get a picture of regular routes he takes. Once you know a regular route, you can follow him, or wait for him. In other words, it makes stalking easy.
But let's go one further.
Say you're a police officer and you're young and single... You're out on patrol and you happen to spot a very attractive person in a motor vehicle. You get the license plate. Now you can go back to your precinct and run a Flock search on that attractive person... Now you can also wait for them. Or follow them. Congratulations: you're now a stalker.
The reason I think your question is fair - and the reason I think it's important to answer it thoroughly, is because of the one critical legal premise it destroys: which is the presumption of innocence. If the Flock cameras only recorded convicted criminals - or people committing crimes - that would be OK. But it records everyone, guilty and innocent alike. It ignores your presumption of innocence and it generates such a valuable reservoir of data that it becomes a valuable target for data thieves and even abuses by authorized users.
Like nuclear material, data is toxic when it gets concentrated in one place. Collect too much of it - and it goes from "toxic" to "dangerous".
That's where we're at now.
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Sunday 9th August 2026 11:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Allegations?
You missed a key abuse, that of a government hell bent on suppression of it's people building a database on it's people, with deliberate leakage of details to those on SSRI's and easily directed and triggered to eliminate those whom that government deem 'problematic'. That potential pales Chinese 'social credit' worries into insignificance.
And when many tech companies out source code to off shore software writers who can say just how many hidden backdoors are in the code allowing 'others' to access and track 'targets', it's not just 'civilians' and civil infrastructure related vehicles that can be tracked, military vehicles, thus senior officers, can be too and Opsec compromised.
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Wednesday 5th August 2026 10:56 GMT Wade Burchette
Re: Allegations?
The US constitution states that the government needs a warrant to invade your privacy, not a private company.
The constitution also states that the government may not censor speech; it does not say a private company cannot censor speech. So, what has happened is that many administrations, both republican and democrat, have "asked" -- with implied threats -- to censor ideas they find unacceptable. Technically, the government didn't do it, a private business did. But it was a threat. "Nice business you have there, be a shame if it was under investigation."
In the same way, Flock is not the government and therefore technically not bound by the limitations imposed on the government by the US constitution. It is a loophole that the federal and state governments exploit. If the constitution prevents you from doing, pay or force a private company to do it instead. The constitution would not allow any police department from running Flock type cameras, it doesn't address private companies running them.
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Tuesday 4th August 2026 14:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
There's a "well, duhh": in here, I know it.
"Many police departments claim the technology makes policing crimes ranging from vehicle thefts to murders much easier, as it allows them to track the movements of vehicles with ease."
To state the obvious (please note, this is not a criticism of the article), the convenience and efficiency of law enforcement agencies does not outweigh the Constitution's protection of individual liberties.
The US political establishment seems to have forgotten all about that except for the part about allowing heavily-armed nutjobs to roam the place at will.
Gods below, but we're stupid.
Anon for the obvious reason.
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Wednesday 5th August 2026 06:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: So.. complaints about police misusing surveillance technology, going back decades..
I suspect it's easier to move country if it wasn't for the fact that Americans haven't earned that sterling a reputation abroad either. Not always deserved, merely being associated with an Orange baboon is sometimes enough to be tainted.
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Wednesday 5th August 2026 12:13 GMT Bebu sa Ware
dealing with Flock's expansion *the American way*
" … necessary to the security of a free State the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
Note that "A well regulated militia" part is, as is customary, omitted… or is understood to mean one or more homicidal gun crazies.
"Keep and bear Arms" where keep means to own as many firearms of any type whatsoever and bear means to discharge those firearms at whoever or whatever has got in your tits, or for no particular reason at all.
I imagine the inhabitants of the American States really got their rocks off during their 1861·65 whack·a·thon.
If this Heimerman drop·kick had half a neuron he might have used consumer drone to destroy these cameras. I am sure you could easily approach a camera from above without entering the field of the camera. I can imagine any number of ways of disabling a camera from a drone: attaching and detonating small charge of gelignite would be the least imaginative. More theatric, spraying napalm over the camera against a Walkürenritt soundtrack.
Guns are not cool. The gun is the most concrete symbol of the most abject of human failings.
