ALPR Mission Creep: School Residency, Background Checks, and Noise Complaints
3 hours ago
- #accountability
- #privacy
- #surveillance
- EFF analysis reveals Flock Safety ALPR data used widely without warrants, extending beyond criminal investigations to low-level queries.
- Police use ALPRs for school residency checks, tracking families' movements, which raises significant privacy concerns.
- Employment background checks via ALPR searches documented by multiple agencies, despite being an unexpected use of surveillance.
- Noise complaints, like loud music or exhausts, prompted ALPR searches across thousands of networks, far from intended serious crime-solving purposes.
- Indiscriminate sharing of ALPR data across networks enables broad surveillance, affecting protesters, abortion-seekers, immigrants, and others.
- Mission creep evident as ALPRs transition from 'crime-fighting' tools to universal trackers of public movements without judicial oversight.
- Agencies like Buford City Schools show high volumes of residency verification searches, dominating ALPR usage in some cases.
- Despite privacy invasions, some agencies defend practices, citing fraud prevention, but lack transparency on suspicion thresholds and outcomes.
- Ridgeland Police Department exemplifies multiple misuse categories, highlighting systemic issues with ALPR deployment and accountability.
- Calls for increased accountability and changes in documentation practices arise from investigations into ALPR query abuses.