"EFF has long warned about the dangers of ALPRs, which scan license plates, log time and location data, and build a detailed picture of people's movements. Companies like Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions offer law enforcement agencies access to nationwide databases of these readers, and in some cases, allow them to stake out locations like abortion clinics, or create “hot lists” of license plates to track in real time. Flock's technology also allows officers to search for a vehicle based on attributes like color, make and model, even without a plate number."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-texas-cop-used-83000-cameras-track-her-down

#USA #Surveillance #PoliceState #ALPRs #LicensePlateReaders

"Earlier this month authorities in Texas performed a nationwide search of more than 83,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras while looking for a woman who they said had a self-administered abortion, including cameras in states where abortion is legal such as Washington and Illinois, according to multiple datasets obtained by 404 Media.

The news shows in stark terms how police in one state are able to take the ALPR technology, made by a company called Flock and usually marketed to individual communities to stop carjackings or find missing people, and turn it into a tool for finding people who have had abortions. In this case, the sheriff told 404 Media the family was worried for the woman’s safety and so authorities used Flock in an attempt to locate her. But health surveillance experts said they still had issues with the nationwide search.

“You have this extraterritorial reach into other states, and Flock has decided to create a technology that breaks through the barriers, where police in one state can investigate what is a human right in another state because it is a crime in another,” Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund, who researches both ALPR systems and abortion surveillance, told 404 Media."

https://www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-searched-license-plate-cameras-nationwide-for-a-woman-who-got-an-abortion/

#USA #Trump #Surveillance #PoliceState #Texas #LicensePlateReaders #ALPRs

"Flock Safety loves to crow about the thousands of local law enforcement agencies around the United States that have adopted its avian-themed automated license plate readers (ALPRs). But when a privacy activist launched a website to map out the exact locations of these pole-mounted devices, the company tried to clip his wings.

The company sent DeFlock.me and its creator Will Freeman a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that the project dilutes its trademark. Suffice it to say, and to lean into ornithological wordplay, the letter is birdcage liner.

Representing Freeman, EFF sent Flock Safety a letter rejecting the demand, pointing out that the grassroots project is well within its First Amendment rights."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/anti-surveillance-mapmaker-refuses-flock-safetys-cease-and-desist-demand

#USA #FlockSafety #ALPRs #Surveillance #IP #Trademarks #PoliceState

"Some Motorola automated license plate reader surveillance cameras are live-streaming video and car data to the unsecured internet where anyone can watch and scrape them, a security researcher has found. In a proof-of-concept, a privacy advocate then developed a tool that automatically scans the exposed footage for license plates, and dumps that information into a spreadsheet, allowing someone to track the movements of others in real time.

Matt Brown of Brown Fine Security made a series of YouTube videos showing vulnerabilities in a Motorola Reaper HD ALPR that he bought on eBay. As we have reported previously, these ALPRs are deployed all over the United States by cities and police departments. Brown initially found that it is possible to view the video and data that these cameras are collecting if you join the private networks that they are operating on. But then he found that many of them are misconfigured to stream to the open internet rather than a private network.

“My initial videos were showing that if you’re on the same network, you can access the video stream without authentication,” Brown told 404 Media in a video chat. “But then I asked the question: What if somebody misconfigured this and instead of it being on a private network, some of these found their way onto the public internet?” "

https://www.404media.co/researcher-turns-insecure-license-plate-cameras-into-open-source-surveillance-tool/

#CyberSecurity #Privacy #Surveillance #USA #LicensePlateReaders #ALPRs #DataProtection

«Huntsville-born #software engineer #mapping license plate readers nationwide: ‘I don’t like being tracked’»

https://www.al.com/news/2024/11/huntsville-born-software-engineer-mapping-license-plate-readers-nationwide-i-dont-like-being-tracked.html

«This is a kind of #tracking unlike tracking on your phone, because on your phone you can opt out just by simply not using your phone or not using services that do things with your data that you don’t like, but with these #ALPRs you can’t opt out of that».

#privacyMatters #privacy #cameras #MassSurveillance #freedom

"DeFlock runs on Open Street Map, an open source, editable mapping software. He began posting signs for DeFlock to the posts holding up Huntsville’s ALPR cameras, and made a post about the project to the Huntsville subreddit, which got good attention from people who lived there. People have been plotting not just Flock ALPRs, but all sorts of ALPRs, all over the world.

“I’ve become good at spotting them just because I’m kind of subconsciously always looking for them,” he said.

“I want everyone to be aware that this is happening. And I don’t think I can change people’s minds—some people will be fine with it. But some people won’t be,” he said. “And hopefully enough people won’t be fine with it and will do something to get them taken down [in their city] or at least better controlled, preferably taken down.”

When I first talked to Freeman, DeFlock had a few dozen cameras mapped in Huntsville and a handful mapped in Southern California and in the Seattle suburbs. A week later, as I write this, DeFlock has crowdsourced the locations of thousands of cameras in dozens of cities across the United States and the world."

https://www.404media.co/the-open-source-project-deflock-is-mapping-license-plate-surveillance-cameras-all-over-the-world/

#OpenSource #Crowdsourcing #Surveillance #LicensePlateReaders #ALPRs

"Imagine driving to get your nails done with your family and all of a sudden, you are pulled over by police officers for allegedly driving a stolen car. You are dragged out of the car and detained at gun point. So are your daughter, sister, and nieces. The police handcuff your family, even the children, and force everyone to lie face-down on the pavement, before eventually realizing that they made a mistake. This happened to Brittney Gilliam and her family on a warm Sunday in Aurora, Colorado, in August 2020.

And the error? The police officers who pulled them over were relying on information generated by automated license plate readers (ALPRs). These are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems that automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view, upload them to a central server, and compare them to a “hot list” of vehicles sought by police. The ALPR system told the police that Gilliam’s car had the same license plate number as a stolen vehicle. But the stolen vehicle was a motorcycle with Montana plates, while Gilliam’s vehicle was an SUV with Colorado plates."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/11/human-toll-alpr-errors

#USA #LicensePlateReaders #LicensePlateRecognition #ALPRs #Surveillance

🙄🤬This some serious…$h*t!
Did someone mention the “Fugitive Slave Act”…

“#ALPRs invade people’s privacy & violate the rights of entire communities, as they often are deployed in poor & historically #overpoliced areas regardless of crime rates,” EFF staff attorney Jennifer Pinsof said in a statement. “Sharing ALPR data w/law enforcement in states that criminalize #abortion undermines CA’s extensive efforts to protect reproductive health privacy.”#police
https://apple.news/ABaesuirrTai6ywGQCZqS_g