License Plate Readers Are Cataloguing More Than Just Plates

License plate readers are establishing a database of plates, but that’s not all. They are recording bumper stickers, whether you support Donald Trump, Planned Parenthood, and so on.

According to Wired:

These images were generated by AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers—all while recording the precise locations of these observations. Newly obtained data reviewed by WIRED shows how a tool originally intended for traffic enforcement has evolved into a system capable of monitoring speech protected by the US Constitution.

Anyone with access to the LPR system can search for common phrases or names, such as those of politicians, and receive photographs where the search term is present, even if it is not displayed on license plates.

You can see things on homes on the road.

Wired added:

Beyond highlighting the far-reaching nature of LPR technology, which has collected billions of images of license plates, the research also shows how people’s personal political views and their homes can be recorded into vast databases that can be queried.

“It really reveals the extent to which surveillance is happening on a mass scale in the quiet streets of America,” says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. “That surveillance is not limited just to license plates, but also to a lot of other potentially very revealing information about people.”

Mass surveillance is taking place rapidly, and we should be very concerned. There are no controls over it, and there is potentially a lot of information stored on government databases they can access with AI.

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