We’ve talked a lot about Flock cameras and the dangers they can pose to your privacy, but as one fellow automotive journalist recently found out, they can actually pose a physical danger as well. The Drive’s Director of Content and Product (and one of my dear friends), Joel Feder, and his wife found themselves on the wrong end of a very intense police detention situation after Flock AI surveillance cameras mistakenly pinged the license plate on the back of the Range Rover press car he was testing as stolen.
As detailed in Feder’s story on The Drive, Police in Plymouth, Minnesota, had been following him and the $155,000 Range Rover for days via cameras. While backing out of a parking spot at a strip mall, “four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in.” Officers then jumped out of the car, shouting at the two with their hands on their guns, and it was all because of a data error made 2,000 miles away in California.
Following a tense talk with the officers as Feder tried to explain why he was in possession of a six-figure SUV that wasn’t his but — crucially — wasn’t stolen (an interaction not completely alien to auto journalists who have been pulled over, trust me), he asked one of the officers why the hell this was all happening. This was the situation:
“The plates on this car are stolen,” Officer Ganshyn said. My face must’ve twisted in disbelief because he continued, saying they weren’t sure whether the car itself or just the plates were stolen. This made absolutely no sense. Car companies keep meticulous track of the fleets they loan out to the media. The vehicles all have special manufacturer or dealer plates that are logged every time one enters or exits. The officers eventually ran the Range Rover’s VIN, and it came back clean, but in their view, the plates were definitely stolen.
Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras.
Once one of these Flock cameras pinged that the Range Rover was in that particular parking lot, police got in position.
A data error
This was all a big screw-up on the part of Flock’s system. Obviously, Joel, a gem of a guy, didn’t steal a Range Rover. Hell, he didn’t even steal the license plate. Here’s what allegedly actually happened, according to The Drive:
The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.
Many of the vehicles in Jaguar-Land Rover’s press fleet run on New Jersey manufacturer plates (owing to the fact its North American headquarters is located in Mahwah, NJ) with the alphanumeric structure “34 ## DTM.” That means this issue could impact just about every JLR press vehicle in the U.S., including the plug-in hybrid Range Rover I’m slated to drive in a couple of weeks. Yippee. Other states’ manufacturer plates have their own quirks, as do dealership tags, so this is a problem that could affect a wide range of brands and people.
Want a couple of other fun tidbits from The Drive’s story? Well, as it turns out, the plate was never entered correctly in the system in the first place. Our hero Joel was sent the police report, which said: “The corporation had to report the plate as lost to law enforcement. The plate was reported as NJ 34DTM instead of NJ 3403DTM.”
Another fun thing: Plymouth police told the couple that if they had been pulled over in Minneapolis, the cops “definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.” Good lord. It’s great to know that the Minneapolis Police Department has learned nothing after the *checks notes* last decade of horrible stuff.
In any case, there’s a lot more to this story than what I’ve talked about here. Be sure to head over to The Drive for the full, exclusive scoop from the man who lived it.
