PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. A software engineer in Ontario built a Flock-style camera that ignores ordinary traffic and tries to read the plates of police cars only. Two officers from Peel Regional Police then showed up at his front door. Peel police confirm they met with him, and say they decided no further action was needed.
The engineer is Anthony Sistilli, a YouTuber with about 140,000 subscribers, according to Straight Arrow News, which broke the story on Oct. 7. His first short video on the project went up Sept. 4. The officers came on Sept. 20, at about 11:37 a.m. by his telling, and stayed roughly 30 minutes. Here is what is confirmed, what rests on his word alone, and why it matters beyond one YouTube channel.
What Sistilli’s Flock-style camera did, and how well it worked
Sistilli says he used a camera that cost about $180 on Amazon, a laptop and software he wrote with AI help in about 20 minutes, per Straight Arrow. A Flock Safety camera photographs every plate that passes. His system tries to read a plate only when it is confident the vehicle is a police car. A phone feeds it GPS data, and each hit lands in a database with the picture, time, place and plate.
The results were modest. His first test, outside a police headquarters, caught nothing because he had picked a building with no patrol traffic. At a police station in Brampton he recorded two of the five cruisers that passed in an hour, Straight Arrow reported. Outlets differ on the count, with Jalopnik saying seven drove by, but they agree his camera caught two, and TechSpot reported the plates were hard to read.
His first Flock-style camera prototype also struggled with 4K video, so he lowered the resolution and split the job in two, detecting a police vehicle first and reading the plate second, according to Security Boulevard. He told Straight Arrow that a camera at ground level is far weaker than the pole-mounted units police use, which he says is why it missed several cars.
What police said, and what rests on Sistilli’s word
Peel Regional Police gave a statement to INsauga. A spokesperson said the force received information about a YouTube channel showing plate recognition technology used to identify and track marked police vehicles. Officers met Anthony Sistilli to understand the video, the technology and its purpose, and police then determined that “no further action was required.” No charges have been reported.
What the officers said at the door comes from Sistilli alone. Gizmodo noted the account is his, and Peel police had not answered its request for comment at publication. By his account, one officer said people could learn where officers live, when their shifts start and what they do all day, and that this could put them at personal risk. Sistilli also told Straight Arrow the officers argued their own cameras were less concerning than he suggested.
Sistilli says he collected very little data and never published plates or anything identifying an officer. In his words, he “never intended to create a giant network mapping every police officer.” He told Straight Arrow in a follow-up report that police have not contacted him again, and that he plans to move on to data centers. His long video about the visit had passed 815,000 YouTube views by Oct. 14.
Why the officers’ concern is not frivolous
Logging one group’s movements over time can expose routines, whether that group is police or ordinary drivers. Security Boulevard called the officers’ point a fair one, noting that repeated observations could reveal patterns that compromise operations.
Sistilli says some online reaction went further than he wanted. Some commenters wanted to build a shared map, and others talked about violence or tracking down individual officers, he told Straight Arrow. He said he does not condone that. A single backpack test is not a network, but the officers were weighing what the idea could become in other hands.
That is the tension in this story. A Flock-style camera built by Anthony Sistilli proved a point about transparency, yet it also showed how little it takes to start logging a group of people. Any license plate reader, whether a backpack rig or a pole-mounted unit, raises the same questions about who can see the data, how long it is kept and who checks the searches. Officers and drivers alike have a stake in the answers, and neither side has been given many of them yet.
The bigger fight over who watches the watchers
Flock is believed to run more than 120,000 devices in 49 states, per Straight Arrow, and its cameras log every passing plate in databases that agencies in other cities and states can often search. Straight Arrow also reports that local police ran Flock searches on behalf of federal immigration agents, that dozens of officers have been arrested or fired for misusing the data, and that at least 153 cities have refused or canceled Flock cameras. Those counts are Straight Arrow’s. We have not audited them.
Canada has its own version of the debate. Mayor Patrick Brown called Brampton the first municipality in Canada to install this kind of system, according to CP24, which put the program’s cost at C$11.4 million. The city says all 50 intersections are now equipped and that the cameras have assisted police in more than 200 investigations. They capture plate numbers, date and time, and vehicle make, model and colour, per the city.
Peel police say about 415 patrol vehicles carry plate readers, and that scans with no match are kept 24 hours and matches 30 days, on the force’s own page.
| Measure | Sistilli’s prototype | Peel police patrol cars | Brampton intersection cameras |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scale | One low-mounted camera and a laptop | About 415 vehicles | 50 intersections |
| What it reads | Only vehicles it believes are police | Plates checked against “hot lists” kept by the OPP and the Ministry of Transportation | Plate numbers, date, time, vehicle make, model and colour |
| Cost | About $180 for the camera | Funded by the Province of Ontario | C$11.4 million program, with C$2 million reported for plate-reading cameras |
| Data kept | Not published. He says very little | 24 hours if no match, 30 days if a match | Not stated on the city pages we reviewed |
| Results | Two police cars in a one-hour test | Not published on Peel’s page | More than 200 investigations assisted, per the city |
Ontario’s privacy commissioner has said police use of plate recognition raises significant privacy concerns. Its guidance for police calls for privacy impact assessments, written policies and limits on how long non-hit data is kept. That guidance is aimed at police services, not at someone with a camera and a laptop. Sistilli also argues, as INsauga reported, that people in Canada cannot easily see records of police searches on these cameras the way some U.S. portals allow.
Whether it is lawful to log police cars in public depends on where you are, how the data is collected and what you do with it, according to Security Boulevard, which called the legal questions unsettled.
For readers new to the technology, a license plate reader is a camera paired with software that turns a plate into searchable text, along with the time and place it was seen. Anthony Sistilli’s Flock-style camera did the same thing for a narrow target. That is why the idea resonates. The hardware is cheap, the software can be written in an afternoon, and the hard questions are about retention, access and oversight. A license plate reader in the wrong hands, or even the right ones, builds a record of where people go.
What happens next
Anthony Sistilli says he is done with the topic for now. The Flock-style camera idea may not be, since Straight Arrow reports that online discussions suggest others want to copy and improve on it, mostly in the United States. If they do, expect more knocks on more doors, and more questions about who is allowed to keep a database of movements.
For more on how cameras and car data are reshaping privacy, see our earlier piece, Car Surveillance Mandate 2027 Meets Your Corner’s Cameras. More coverage is on our Law Enforcement page.
I back the people who wear the badge, and I am not going to call an officer’s worry about a stranger logging his cruiser silly. Nobody should cheer for violence against cops, and Sistilli says he does not.
But here is the part I cannot get past. The fear those two officers voiced is the same fear every regular driver should have about a database that logs where they go and when. One guy with a $180 camera and a backpack caught two cruisers in an hour. The real systems run around the clock, and the people with the keys have not always been trustworthy.
The fix is boring and fair to everybody: short retention, audit logs and public reporting on who searched what. If police want privacy for their movements, they should be the loudest voice asking for it for ours. A Flock-style camera on a backpack made that point better than any press release.
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Rocci J. Stucci is the founder and CEO of Stucci Media and host of The Rocci Stucci Show.
