Frequently asked questions

How StreetGuard turns a citizen's 30-second video into a court-defensible, officer-approved parking citation.

What is StreetGuard?

StreetGuard is an AI-powered parking and curb-enforcement platform for cities. It turns a 30-second video from any phone into a court-defensible parking citation — combining AI license-plate reading, GPS verification, and tamper-evident evidence, with a human officer approving every citation. It lets a city keep bike lanes, fire hydrants, bus stops, crosswalks, and permit zones clear without needing an officer on every block.

How does StreetGuard work?

In four steps. First, a citizen records a short video of a violation from any phone browser; the GPS location is captured automatically and the city is detected from that location. Second, the video is hashed, timestamped via an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp authority, and sealed into a tamper-evident manifest before anyone reviews it. Third, a multi-modal AI reads the license plate, classifies the violation, and checks it against the city's rules and geofenced zones. Fourth, a city officer reviews the flagged report and approves or rejects it; on approval a serial-numbered citation PDF is generated with the registered owner's address.

Does StreetGuard issue citations automatically?

No. The AI does the heavy lifting — reading the plate, classifying the violation, and checking the city's rules and geofence zones — but it never issues a citation on its own. Every citation requires a human officer to approve it. The AI's job is to filter and prepare the evidence; the decision to cite is always a person's.

Does a human officer approve every citation?

Yes. No citation is ever sent without a city officer's explicit one-click approval in the review queue. Officers can approve or reject each report, and the approving officer's name is recorded on the citation. StreetGuard is a decision-support tool for enforcement staff, not an automated ticketing machine.

How does StreetGuard prevent fake reports?

Through several layers. Each submission carries a GPS location captured at record time, so a report has to originate where the violation is. The video is cryptographically hashed and timestamped the moment it arrives, so it can't be altered or back-dated afterward. The AI independently reads the plate and checks the location against the city's geofenced rule zones. And, critically, a human officer reviews every report before any citation issues — so a fabricated, mistaken, or out-of-scope report is caught before it can become a ticket.

How does StreetGuard make evidence court-defensible?

Every piece of evidence gets a clean, independently verifiable chain of custody. At ingest the video is hashed with SHA-256 and given an RFC 3161 trusted timestamp from an external authority, proving when it was captured and that it hasn't changed since. Each city's audit trail is a per-tenant cryptographic hash chain — removing or modifying any event breaks the chain, and that break can be proven. Citations embed the evidence ID, its hash, the capture coordinates, and the approving officer, so if a driver contests, the city can show exactly what was captured, when, and that nothing was modified.

What cities is StreetGuard designed for?

StreetGuard is built for municipal parking and curb enforcement — any city or town that needs to keep bike lanes, bus stops, fire hydrants, crosswalks, and loading zones clear. It's multi-tenant, so each city gets its own isolated data, rule zones, retention policy, and citation numbering. Cities draw their own geofenced zones and configure their own rules; there's no special hardware to install and no GIS team required to get started.

How is StreetGuard different from camera-based enforcement systems?

Automated camera-enforcement systems — such as Hayden AI or Automotus — mount AI cameras on city vehicles or at fixed curbside locations to detect violations. They provide real coverage, but they require hardware to be procured, installed, and maintained on every route or block you want to watch, so a city sees only what its cameras happen to face. StreetGuard takes a different approach: there is no hardware to deploy. Coverage comes from citizen video captured on phones people already carry, so a city can enforce anywhere a resident is — not only where a camera was installed. And every StreetGuard citation rests on a tamper-evident chain of custody and a city officer's explicit approval; the AI prepares the evidence, but a person always makes the call.

How is StreetGuard different from traditional parking enforcement?

Traditional enforcement depends on officers physically patrolling — they can only cover so many blocks, and violations in between go unaddressed. StreetGuard lets any resident report a violation from their phone, so coverage scales with the community instead of headcount. The AI handles the plate reading and rule-checking an officer would otherwise do by hand, and the evidence is sealed and court-ready automatically. Officers shift from walking beats to reviewing a queue — more violations handled per officer, with a stronger evidentiary record than a handwritten ticket.

Does StreetGuard require a mobile app?

No — reporting works entirely in the phone's web browser today. A citizen opens the report page, records, and submits; there's nothing to download, no account to create, and no special hardware, and city staff review reports in a standard web browser too. A dedicated mobile app is under development that will add extra security and convenience, but it will stay optional — the browser flow isn't going away.