Canadian YouTuber Anthony Sistilli built a homemade licence-plate recognition system designed to track police vehicles in Ontario. On 20 September 2026, officers reportedly turned up at his home and questioned what he intended to do with the location data his cameras collected.
According to Straight Arrow News, Sistilli said Peel Regional Police officers spent approximately 30 minutes discussing his experiment and whether he planned to create a map of police movements.
The encounter exposed an uncomfortable question in the surveillance debate: if tracking police vehicles raises privacy and safety concerns, what safeguards should protect ordinary motorists whose movements are recorded by similar technology?
YouTuber Builds His Own Police-Tracking Camera
Sistilli began experimenting with automated licence-plate recognition (ALPR) after following the controversy surrounding Flock Safety cameras in the United States.
His homemade system used an inexpensive camera, a laptop and machine-learning software to identify vehicles resembling police cars. When the software detected a possible police vehicle, it attempted to read its number plate. His phone supplied GPS information to the laptop, allowing the system to store images, timestamps, locations and plate numbers in a searchable database.
Unlike commercial ALPR networks that can capture large numbers of passing vehicles, Sistilli designed his prototype to focus on suspected police cars.
During a test near a police station in Brampton, he said five police vehicles passed in approximately an hour, but his system recorded only two.
Camera positioning, obstructions and distance affected its performance. Sistilli said his goal was not to build an extensive surveillance network. Instead, he wanted to demonstrate how collecting vehicle-location data might feel when the people being monitored were police officers.
Police Arrive After His Videos Gain Attention
Sistilli published his first short video on 4 September, followed by another on 9 September. His experiment attracted significant attention online before officers reportedly visited his home on 20 September.
According to Sistilli, officers questioned his intentions and raised concerns that a shared map of police movements could expose sensitive information, interfere with investigations or put officers at risk.
He said he had collected very little information and had not publicly released actual number plates or identifying information about individual officers. Some viewers suggested creating a shared tracking map, while others posted comments about violence or tracking individual officers. Sistilli rejected those suggestions and said he did not condone them.
Sistilli described the visit as 'incredibly ironic' but acknowledged the safety concerns raised during the discussion. His stated aim was to encourage greater transparency without exposing sensitive police operations.
The account of the conversation comes from Sistilli, and the officers' full reasoning has not been independently established.
Peel Police Already Use Licence-Plate Readers
The encounter is particularly relevant because Peel Regional Police already use ALPR technology across hundreds of patrol vehicles.
According to the force's official website, approximately 415 Peel Regional Police patrol vehicles are equipped with ALPR systems. The technology photographs number plates and compares them against 'hot lists' to help identify vehicles associated with offences, suspended or prohibited drivers and stolen vehicles.
Peel Regional Police says scans that do not match a hot list are retained for 24 hours, while matching records are stored for 30 days. These vehicle-mounted systems differ from Flock Safety's broader network of cameras, which allows authorised users to search recorded vehicle sightings.
The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario updated its guidance for police use of ALPR systems in December 2024. It outlines legal obligations and recommends safeguards covering issues including data collection, retention, security and transparency.
The commissioner's website notes that some of the guidance is under review following changes to Ontario's privacy laws.
US Judge Raises New Questions About Flock Surveillance
A single number-plate sighting may reveal relatively little about a driver. Combining records from numerous locations, however, can allow investigators to reconstruct a vehicle's movements over time.
Flock Safety markets its technology as a tool for investigating crimes and locating vehicles of interest. Privacy concerns have grown alongside the expansion of ALPR networks, with regulators and civil liberties advocates questioning how vehicle-location data is collected, retained, searched and protected.
That debate gained fresh attention on 1 October when US District Judge Sara E. Hill ruled that a deputy's warrantless search of historical ALPR records in Oklahoma violated a woman's Fourth Amendment rights.
Hill described the technology at issue as 'a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance' and ordered evidence obtained following the unconstitutional search to be suppressed.
The decision applied to the circumstances of that case and did not establish a binding nationwide precedent. It also did not rule that photographing a licence plate visible on a public road is inherently unconstitutional. The ruling focused on using historical ALPR records to reconstruct a vehicle's movements without a warrant.
Sistilli's homemade system was considerably smaller and less capable. Nevertheless, it relied on a similar basic principle: turning individual vehicle sightings into stored, searchable location records.
Who Should Be Allowed to Track Vehicle Movements?
Sistilli did not build a nationwide tracking network or publish a database of police movements. He said his prototype was intended to challenge how people think about surveillance.
The concerns reportedly raised by officers also deserve consideration. Publishing detailed police movements could expose sensitive operations or create safety risks. At the same time, extensive records of ordinary motorists' journeys raise questions about privacy, accountability and potential misuse.
Police have legitimate reasons to use ALPR systems in investigations, while the public has grounds to expect clear rules, transparency and safeguards governing how location data is used. Addressing one concern does not require dismissing the other.
That leaves the central irony of Sistilli's experiment intact. Officers reportedly wanted to know who was tracking their vehicles and what would happen to the information. His argument is that ordinary motorists should be able to ask those same questions when surveillance cameras record their movements.
