OpenALPR (Rekor Scout) compared to Platerecognizer

[wtimothyholman]

I guess as long as they keep the price affordable for the home user, we can't complain too much LOL.

I do know there are some others out there trying to do what you suggested about hotlists, so maybe they are waiting for someone to nail that down and then just buy it from them?

The problem with hotlists is that you'd have to keep them hidden from the Rekor end user. The police consider a stolen vehicle hotlist to be non-public information. The national NCIC hotlist is not accessible to anyone except law enforcement.

So Rekor (or anyone else) would need to set up a system that is encrypted such that the end user couldn't see the contents of the list. But the framework is already there, because you can't see the contents of the Amber Alerts list. They just need to extend it that to stolen plate hotlists.

 

[icpilot]

Rekor's biggest problem is that they want to be perceived as a "smart city / smart highway" company, rather than a company that sells top-tier LPR / vehicle recognition software. They bought OpenALPR and hired Matt Hill, but it's almost as if they consider Rekor Scout as a side product in the grand scheme of their corporate ambitions.

Fortunately Matt Hill continues to improve the OpenALPR client, but there is so much more Rekor could do with it. Case in point: I messaged him on the OpenALPR forum about the possibility of creating hidden police hotlists that could be integrated with the web server. Rekor Scout already has a non-editable hidden hotlist feature such that every camera running the client will flag an Amber Alert vehicle plate. It's a nationwide hotlist built into the software. My question to him: why doesn't Rekor create a web portal so that local police departments can generate daily license plate hotlists that a Rekor user could subscribe to? That way every Rekor Scout client becomes part of their local law enforcement's LPR network, even in cities where no municipal camera system is in place. It would motivate more people to run the Rekor Scout client on their cameras, and give Rekor a leg up on Flock Safety's products.

The response from Rekor? Total silence. I assume it doesn't fit into their corporate plans. It's frustrating, because I would love for my cameras to provide "hits" from an NCIC hotlist to the police in my city. Door checkers in stolen cars travel down my street a couple of times every month, but they are long gone by the time I forward the plate info to the local police precinct the next day.

While I agree with you and I too would be interested in being able to flag more known criminal types, for a growing company with national/international aspirations, closer alignment to law enforcement with a surveillance tool such as OpenALPR would be a legal nightmare. The ACLU is already waging legal battles against police use of mobile license plate readers in patrol cars. I'd imagine Rekor is evaluating the amount of capital that would be siphoned off into a legal morass, and deciding it's not worth it - at this point, anyway. But this is mere conjecture on my part. FWIW.

 

[CamCrazy]

I guess as long as they keep the price affordable for the home user, we can't complain too much LOL.

I do know there are some others out there trying to do what you suggested about hotlists, so maybe they are waiting for someone to nail that down and then just buy it from them?

It is a very attractive price for the home user, I appreciate that no doubt - I think paying more than $5-10 a month is too much for non commercial. Maybe these options will come in the future, hopefully they can also improve the GPU side in time.

 

[wtimothyholman]

While I agree with you and I too would be interested in being able to flag more known criminal types, for a growing company with national/international aspirations, closer alignment to law enforcement with a surveillance tool such as OpenALPR would be a legal nightmare. The ACLU is already waging legal battles against police use of mobile license plate readers in patrol cars. I'd imagine Rekor is evaluating the amount of capital that would be siphoned off into a legal morass, and deciding it's not worth it - at this point, anyway. But this is mere conjecture on my part. FWIW.

I think the ACLU, or public perception of LPR software in general, has far less to do with it than the fact that there are already several well-established companies serving municipal customers, and Rekor doesn't want to compete with them head-on. It's an uphill battle.

If there was massive public sentiment against LPR, you wouldn't see Flock Safety installing their cameras everywhere. You wouldn't see Vigilant cameras in cities all over the U.S. People who install them want to help the police. It's a self-selecting customer base. You hear the same criticisms of Amazon and Ring about violations of public privacy, but that doesn't stop homeowners from buying and installing Ring products. (How well they work, of course, is an entirely different issue.)

One could just as easily argue that Rekor's "Smart Highway" initiative is every bit as intrusive to privacy as OpenALPR, but they are making it their main business plan. No, there's some other reasoning behind what they are doing. I just think that they are missing out on an opportunity by not giving their customers a way to assist local law enforcement. Amazon constantly touts its Ring / law enforcement partnership program; why shouldn't Rekor do the same?