You’ve probably noticed them bolted to traffic lights and telephone poles. The sleek, white cameras scanning every passing car, logging your movements, building a map of your life. We are told these license plate readers are for public safety, for catching criminals, for keeping us safe. But what happens when the people holding the keys to this surveillance apparatus are the ones we need protection from?
Recently, a police officer was caught using a high-tech license plate reader to stalk a woman. When confronted about why he ran her plates, his defense wasn’t denial. It was a pathetic, almost cartoonish excuse: he claimed he saw “a shiny thing.”
Let’s be absolutely clear about what happened here. If he didn’t say “because I wanted to have sex with her,” he was lying. He wanted to track her down. He used a tool designed to hunt down violent felons to satisfy his own sexual predation. And the most chilling part? He thought he could get away with it.
When you give a badge to a predator, a license plate reader becomes a dating app with a search function.
The immediate reaction from the tech community is always the same: we need better access controls. We need stricter audit trails. We need to lock down the system. But this completely misses the point. Whining about a lack of access controls implicitly suggests that this system could, or should, exist safely if we just had the right passwords in place. It ignores the reality of police culture.
As one commenter who studied criminal justice noted, the culture inside law enforcement is like high school on steroids: drama, sleeping around, divorces, and a deeply ingrained abuse of power. Cops abuse every system given to them to varying extents. The technology isn’t the disease; it’s just the magnifying glass.
The CEO of Flock, the company that makes these cameras, recently went on a podcast and bragged about their audit trail. He called it a “honeypot” that roots out bad police. He basically admitted they know what a malicious request looks like—like an officer repeatedly pinging the same woman’s plates.
But here is the dark twist: the honeypot only catches the careless flies.
The audit trail doesn’t stop the abuse; it just gives us a receipt for the violation after the fact.
Catching one cop who was stupid enough to leave a digital paper trail doesn’t fix a system that normalizes entitlement. It doesn’t stop the officers who know how to game the system, who use unofficial channels, or who simply rely on the blue wall of silence to protect them. We are treating a cultural rot as if it were a software bug.
If you drive a car, your movements are already being logged. You are a data point in a database that can be accessed by anyone with a badge and a motive. The real risk isn’t a data breach by anonymous hackers. The real risk is the guy in uniform who feels entitled to know where you sleep, and the system that hired him, armed him, and gave him the keys to the panopticon.
We are building a surveillance state and handing the keys to the boys’ club, hoping a spreadsheet will keep us safe from their appetites.
FAQ
Q: Wouldn't better access controls stop this from happening?
A: No. Access controls only stop the people who follow the rules. A cop with a legitimate reason to access the system can still abuse it. You can't password-protect your way out of a cultural rot.
Q: What's the practical implication of this story for everyday drivers?
A: If you drive a car, your movements are a commodity. You are being logged into databases that can be accessed by anyone with a badge and a motive. The threat isn't a hacker; it's the guy in the uniform.
Q: Isn't the Flock CEO right that the audit trail catches bad cops?
A: It catches the dumb ones. It's a honeypot for the careless. The smart predators don't leave a digital trail, or they rely on their buddies to look the other way. The audit trail gives us accountability theater while the culture remains untouched.