Canadian builds DIY Flock-style camera to log police plates, gets a visit from cops (Oct. 27)
Quick Read
Anthony Sistilli, a Canadian software engineer and YouTuber in Brampton, Ontario, built a roughly $180 DIY automatic license plate recognition camera aimed at police vehicles.
He designed the system to flag cruisers first, then try to read plates, framing it as a personal Flock-style demo of how ALPR tracking feels when turned around.
In a YouTube video posted Oct. 7, he said two Peel Regional Police officers visited his home on Sept. 20 to ask about his intentions; reporting indicates no charges followed.
The hour-long roadside test was modest: it identified two of seven passing cruisers and struggled to read plates, but it sparked a wider debate about ALPR privacy.
A Canadian software engineer who built a homemade automatic license plate recognition camera to spot police cars says officers later knocked on his door to ask why he was tracking them. The project, documented by Anthony Sistilli of Brampton, Ontario, is a low-cost twist on the same ALPR technology behind U.S. networks such as Flock Safety and newer municipal camera deployments in Canada.
What he built
According to coverage from Tom's Hardware, Gizmodo, and TechSpot, Sistilli ordered an off-the-shelf camera that cost about $180, plugged it into a laptop, and used AI coding tools to write software that looks for police vehicles rather than scanning every plate in traffic.
Early builds bogged down trying to process 4K video while classifying cars and reading plates. He lowered the resolution and split the pipeline into two stages: first decide whether a vehicle is a police car, then attempt a plate read only after that match. He described the setup in TikTok and YouTube clips as a personal Flock-style camera built to "Flock the Flockers."
The demo was limited. In an hour-long test near Shoppers World in Brampton, reporting based on his videos says the system correctly identified two of seven police cruisers that passed and had trouble capturing readable plates. It showed the concept worked in principle, not as a reliable tracking network.
Why Brampton, and why now
Sistilli said he got interested as ALPR systems spread. Brampton has invested heavily in high-resolution cameras and automated licence plate recognition, and Peel Regional Police have equipped large numbers of cruisers with in-car readers, according to local and tech reporting. In the United States, Flock Safety markets networked ALPR cameras that let agencies search vehicle sightings across jurisdictions, a model privacy advocates have criticized as a warrant-light location database.
"I wanted to see whether it was feasible and use the irony to illustrate a point," Sistilli told Straight Arrow News, as quoted by Jalopnik. "Sometimes it's easier to show people what this kind of surveillance means by turning it around than by simply explaining what companies like Flock are doing."
The police visit
In a YouTube video posted Oct. 7, Sistilli said two Peel Regional Police officers came to his home on Sept. 20 and asked what his "intentions" were with the data. He said the officers were polite but worried that repeated observations could reveal where officers live, when they start shifts, and how they move through the day, information that could put them at risk.
Sistilli said he told them those were the same fears civilians raise about blanket license-plate surveillance. In his telling, officers also suggested stronger disclosure rules around police camera systems could tip off details of active investigations. Gizmodo reported that Peel Regional Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Separate coverage has said no charges or further enforcement action followed the visit; Willamette News has not independently confirmed a formal police statement.
The larger ALPR fight
Commercial ALPR networks go far beyond a dashboard prototype. They store time-stamped sightings and make them searchable across many cameras. Critics point to documented misuse cases in the U.S., including officers accused of using plate databases to stalk romantic partners, and to cities that have paused or canceled Flock contracts amid privacy pushback. Supporters say the tools help recover stolen cars and find missing people.
Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner has separately warned that ALPR systems can enable tracking over time and must comply with public-sector privacy law when police deploy them. Sistilli's DIY build does not create a Flock-scale database. What it did do, cheaply and publicly, was put the privacy argument in reverse: if plate trails feel dangerous when pointed at police, they also feel that way when pointed at everyone else.
Related stories
Cover photo: A Flock Safety automated license plate reader in Aurora, Colorado, June 27, 2024. Photo: Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Image illustrates commercial ALPR hardware of the kind Sistilli's DIY project was meant to critique; it is not his device.
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