License to Spy

There are thousands of cameras following you, anyone can watch, and it’s all legal


Plate readers have become the most pervasive new crime-fighting tool in law enforcement, capable of providing instantaneous information on fugitives, suspects and missing persons. The technology helps investigators quickly pinpoint the whereabouts of a murderer, pick up the trail of a fleeing fugitive or locate your stolen Honda.

But the use of LPRs is nearly as invasive as the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs and the information far more vulnerable to abuse, according to privacy advocates and experts in LPR technology. While NSA data is highly restricted, scans of license plates, collected at police departments across the country, are highly susceptible to unauthorized access and official misuse. Equally troubling is that ordinary Americans are tapping into private LPR databases, including huge troves of plate hits housed by debt-collection firms, which are commonly shared with law-enforcement agencies. The average person can now track virtually anyone’s movements, sometimes with the immediacy depicted on cutting-edge dramas such as “Ray Donovan” and “Homeland.”

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-drive-to-spy-80c4f85b4335