More License Plate Reader Mission Creep: School Residency Verification, More

eff.org

43 pointsleephillips4 comments

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In my city, our police recently reported that in one year, they searched the ALPR database 240,000 times.

Of those searches, approximately 165 of them assisted any police case, in any way.

What is ALPR being used for the other 99.8% of the time?

Apparently Flock's ALPR helps police to track activists, demonstrators, protesters. :-/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo...

Are you assuming that any use that fails to assist on a place case must have been a use for for some other purpose?

There are two possibilities: One is that Flock is genuinely only being used for legitimate law enforcement purposes and proves useful in less than 0.1% of cases -- a data point the taxpayers footing the bill certainly deserve to know; the other is that there are a very large number of illegitimate uses, which any reasonable citizen should oppose.

Why are people like you so eager to defend Flock rather than simply expecting transparency on its uses?

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