The Flocks of License Plate Readers

Now you can track Flock surveillance cameras and other automated license plate readers. Why is there a cluster of them on every approach to Tufts University in Massachusetts? Automated Surveillance of Car Traffic There are these things called “automated license plate readers” (ALPRs). They’re basically a camera, a computer, and a network interface that picks out and reports car license plate numbers, along with date/time/location stamps. They then report this data to various authorities, usually either police or some large institution that owns them (see below for an example of the latter). The license plate data then gets looked up in a state database to find the owners of the car, and with slight effort also in insurance databases to find the licenses of the associated drivers to get individual names. Key point: They do this all the time, without any discrimination whatsoever about which cars they grab. Pure unwarranted search (though court cases have apparently found loopholes for…