Dystopian Surveillance Fear has Become Reality in Texas

Saturday, May 31, 2025

Law enforcement used license-plate readers in several states to search for a woman who had an abortion

Posted by Corky at 04:39 PM | 5 COMMENTS | permalink

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of "lo and behold, the dystopian thing that women and activists warned would happen ends up happening".

This time the issue is automated license plate readers (ALPRs), which capture (no prizes for guessing!) license plate data and allow law enforcement to build a picture of where a particular vehicle has been.

There's no opting out of being tracked:

if you drive, you should simply assume that these cameras, which are sometimes hidden in objects like traffic cones, are logging your movements.

And you should assume that this license plate data can be combined with other surveillance data to paint a very detailed picture of your life. Privacy only exists for our billionaire overlords these days.

The rest of us are just data points.

Comments

"There are obviously plenty of legitimate uses to ALPRs. Their proponents will wax lyrical about how they can help solve carjackings and kidnappings.

But, like all technology, they are ripe for abuse. They are particularly ripe for abuse in an increasingly authoritarian US, full of lawmakers who want to control women's bodies."

"Unfortunately, all these experts have been proved right. This week 404 Media reported that a Texas police officer used Flock to perform a nationwide search of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras while looking for a woman who had had an abortion.

Abortion is almost entirely illegal in Texas but law enforcement reportedly looked at cameras in states such as Washington and Illinois where abortion is legal."

Big Brother is a fat, red-capped Cultist in Texas.

Who knew?

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2025-05-31 04:42 PM