MapQuest Adds Surveillance Layer Showing Flock License Plate Cameras

The layer is turned on by tapping the layer icon on the app's main navigation screen and using the toggle, ZDNET reported. Cameras appear as a small red eye, and a vision cone indicates the direction each camera faces. MapQuest does not offer a setting that routes drivers around license-plate-reading cameras; users can only see the camera locations and avoid them on their own.

MapQuest did not explain how it found the camera locations, and ZDNET said it had reached out to ask. Several online crowdsourced maps, including OpenStreetMap, show where Flock and similar license plate-reading cameras are located; ZDNET reported that MapQuest's data seems likely to be user-generated but appears reliable. Flock is actively fighting some crowdsourced maps, according to the report.

The Waze app identifies "police cameras," but that category also includes speed cameras, as well as general traffic and weather cameras, making it hard to tell which are surveillance cameras, ZDNET reported. The ZDNET reporter wrote that more than 30 cameras appeared across a medium-sized town of 80,000 people where the reporter lives, a detail the reporter described as a little unsettling.

MapQuest, once a leading name in turn-by-turn directions, has seen a bit of a resurgence as Google Maps, Waze and Apple Maps dominate, according to ZDNET. In August, the company announced that it was not changing the name of Lake Ontario, which led to a surge in new users, and it announced Android Auto support shortly after.