“Are you armed?” The police officer shouted. “get out of the car!”
On a typical Sunday afternoon in late June, I decided to take my wife to run some errands in the $155,000 Range Rover I was test driving that week. Little did I know that this choice would set off a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement that would lead to my wife and I being surrounded by police with guns drawn in a Kohl’s parking lot in suburban Minnesota.
After dropping off our Amazon returns, we were back in the Range Rover and in reverse, maybe two feet away from that spot, when four police cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in. The officers jumped out and started shouting. This is a situation that can get worse quickly and frequently, so as unprepared as I was, I followed his orders, got out with my hands up and tried to figure out what was going on.
Finally, after a stressful hour, I did. The Plymouth Police Department had been tracking me for several days using flock license plate cameras, waiting for the right moment to come, because they thought I had stolen the Range Rover. And the reason I was identified as a dangerous car thief was a simple data error made 2,000 miles away in California, creating an edge case within an edge case that Flock’s AI camera network was unable to handle.
We now live in a surveillance state where cameras at stoplights are keeping an eye on our cars, our appliances, our pets, and even us. This is just the beginning; Subsequently, these cameras can be activated using our children’s school buses. Whether you actually stole a car or were just rolling down the street and did nothing wrong, like me, once these systems have you in their sights, there’s almost only one way out. Welcome to the future. It’s scary there.
Back in the Kohl’s area, I stood with my hands up, still recovering from the shock of throwing the Range Rover into reverse and watching four police cars flash the backup cameras. Officer Max Ganshin then asked me if I was armed or had any firearms in the vehicle, while two officers circled around the passenger side to get my wife out. He patted me down, and when he realized I was no threat, he asked for my ID. Then he asked who was the owner of the Range Rover.
“That’s a complicated answer, and I’d be happy to explain, but I need you to be patient,” I replied. what i tried to explain drive This is, what I do for a living, and how I drive a six-figure luxury SUV that’s not mine. A confused look appeared on his face. “Yeah, I’m not a car guy,” he said. Luckily, one of the other officers had heard about us.
On the other side of the car, the officers were busy interrogating my wife; Our stories lined up because we were telling the truth, and there was a slight sense of relief in them. But they still were not letting us go. I saw my opportunity and immediately asked: What is happening here, and why are we being detained?
Officer Genshin said, “This car’s plates have been stolen.” My face must have contorted in disbelief because he added that he wasn’t sure whether the car itself was stolen or just the plates. It made no sense at all. Car companies keep careful track of the fleets of vehicles they loan to the media. All vehicles have special manufacturer or dealer plates that are logged every time they enter or exit. Authorities eventually ran the Range Rover’s VIN, and it came back clean, but in their view, the plates were definitely stolen.
Before I could process that, another officer revealed a big surprise: They had actually been tracking me around town for several days via swarm cameras. But they kept losing track, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been seen turning up at Kohl’s that morning, they immediately set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to exit the store and get into the SUV.
I was stunned, but somehow still had enough courage to ask if I could see the camera footage. One of the officers took out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of a New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and the vehicle MFR below. Crucially, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure the New Jersey manufacturer uses for plates.
Again, I tried to explain that I had no idea why a license plate on a press car would be marked that way. “Can you get a Range Rover on the phone?” Officer Gunshin asked. A tall order on a Sunday. As I began dialing, they told me the plate had been reported stolen by a Jaguar Land Rover dealership in Los Angeles.
After a few tries, I managed to get through to someone at JLR and handed over the phone to the executive, who spoke to him for about 10 minutes. He hung up the phone and came back with an explanation that cleared everything up in an instant, but somehow made it even worse.
New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from LA dealer 34 03 dtmNo 34 10 dtm. But when the police report was made and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was recorded as 34 dtm. Only five capital letters, no small numbers in between. And when Flock’s AI technology started picking up the Range Rover around town it wasn’t registering that non-standard little number. just saw this 34 dtm On a large scale and started alerting the local police.
As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I added the last point. A number of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have New Jersey manufacturer plates with the same alphanumeric structure – 34##DTM – and Officer Ganshin observed that this means this is now a nationwide issue. Wherever a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other car owned by JLR with the same plate composition will be flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## dtm According to Officer Ganshin, cars were being monitored around Minnesota that week. I was the first one to be caught. The only way to stop this would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s systems, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to complete after the phone call.
Still, he warned me to go straight home, park the Range Rover and leave it there. If I were to go to a neighboring city, I would probably be marked again and have to go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they’d definitely be coming at you with guns.”
How ironic that this was happening not even two weeks after we published a report on the privacy risks of turning flocked license plate cameras into a ubiquitous surveillance system. The article went viral and was shared thousands of times on social media. I guess Officer Genshin didn’t see it. Can’t say I saw myself falling into the system so quickly, but here we are.
A few days later, I received a copy of the police report with a fun kicker added to it. Turns out, the 34 03 DTM plate that set everything off was not, in fact, stolen. It reads, “One of the fleet vehicles with NJ 34(03) DTM was used in a photo shoot in Los Angeles. During the photo shoot, that plate of the vehicle was lost.” “The corporation had to report the plate lost to law enforcement. The plate was reported as NJ 34DTM instead of NJ 3403DTM.”
It’s embedded above for your enjoyment. It was also fun to read the medical description of how the police looked at me before putting me in the box. “I observed the driver, who was a white male wearing shorts and a green shirt, as he was placing something in the back seat of the car. I could also see a white female climb into the front passenger seat. As the driver began to sit in the driver’s seat, officers began placing a box and pin on the vehicle.”
Also: “Both the driver and passenger cooperated and exited the vehicle without any problems.” I told driveK’s EIC, Kyle Cheromcha, I’d like it in my permanent file.
But finding at least some humor in one of the most ridiculous things I’ve experienced in 15 years of reviewing cars doesn’t negate how completely insane and avoidable it all was! A simple data-entry error, amplified and disseminated across the country by a growing surveillance network operated through an opaque partnership between a private company and public agencies, prompted the police to identify me as a car thief and set up a sting to nab me. I mean, there was even a drone flying above them during the “explosion.”
And the more I sit with the results, the more I’m thinking about what could have happened, in a different city with a different group of officers, or with a different unsuspecting driver. 34 ## dtm Had the New Jersey plates been collected a little less, it could have ended so badly. Thank God our children were not with us. I’m not sure whether I would have been able to react so calmly.
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