Source: Cato Institute
by Matthew Cavedon & Laura Bondank-Harmon
“ALPRs (which, again, stands for ‘automated license plate readers’) are omnipresent and, at this point, misnamed. Over 6,000 cities nationwide have ALPRs, each of which can scan up to 2,000 vehicles per minute. Over 130,000 of these devices have been deployed across the U.S. ALPRs are misnamed because they do not simply read license plates anymore. The leading ALPR manufacturer, Flock Safety, used to insist that this was all its technology could do. Yet according to August reporting by Wired, Flock ‘has now built … an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone.’ … Law enforcement is using tools that can tell officers who you associate with, where you sleep, and what you believe. They call it safety. The law should call it a search and impose the safeguards and remedies that accompany one.” (10/06/26)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/law-cant-keep-flocks-ai-surveillance