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New ALPR Vulnerabilities Prove Mass Surveillance Is a Public Safety Threat


Government officials across the U.S. frequently promote the supposed, and often anecdotal, public safety benefits of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), but rarely do they examine how this very same technology poses risks to public safety that may outweigh the crimes they are attempting to...

When law enforcement uses ALPRs to document the comings and goings of every driver on the road, regardless of a nexus to a crime, it results in gargantuan databases of sensitive information, and few agencies are equipped, staffed, or trained to harden their systems against quickly evolving cybersecurity threats. For example, a team of computer scientists at the University of Arizona was able to find vulnerable ALPR cameras in Washington, California, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Congress members have sent a letter calling on the Department of Homeland Security to investigate how it provides funding to local police to deploy ShotSpotter amid reports of its inefficacy and racially-targeted locations.

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