License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool ⇥ 404media.co

Joseph Cox, 404 Media:

Flock’s new product, called Nova, will supplement license plate data with a wealth of personal information sourced from other companies and the wider web, according to the material obtained by 404 Media. “You’re going to be able to access data and jump from LPR to person and understand what that context is, link to other people that are related to that person […] marriage or through gang affiliation, et cetera,” a Flock employee said during an internal company meeting, according to an audio recording. “There’s very powerful linking.” One Slack message said that Nova supports 20 different data sources that agencies can toggle on or off.

According to Cox’s reporting, this includes the usual smattering of creepy data brokers but, also, private data made public due to illegal breaches. One may consider that “open source” in much the same way as Meta benefitting from pirated books, which is to say that it is something for which a normal person would be criminally prosecuted, but is apparently fine for corporations. It may be unwise for the limits of our privacy to be governed by the greed of capitalism.