Automatic number-plate recognition

All of those were really, really important to the Framers because it meant that police couldn't just go about searching willy-nilly on their own discretion.

It meant that there was a judge who was disinterested, who was controlling the scope of their discretion when they invaded people's security.

If I'm correct in understanding that the areas that you're focusing on is involves municipalities' use of surveillance tools like flock safety and ALPRs, automated license plate readers, broadly.

Is that exclusively your focus, or is there any attention you're giving to private sector, like exclusively private sector surveillance-related things, like companies independent of governments doing the same sort of monitoring?

IJ exists essentially to sue the government, to enforce our rights against the government.

Do you have a...

Is there a...

Is there a picture of success for IJ with regard to this pursuit around FLOC, ALRPs, or ALPRs, and mass surveillance? How would you like municipalities to be behaving? How would you like, if you'd like FLOC to change at all, how would you like them to change?

Becca Eastwood, Deputy Policy Director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, was a guest speaker at the event.

The ACLU has long been an advocate against the installation and usage of ALPRs across the country, citing concerns regarding the security of the cameras, recorded information, their overall growth around the nation, and the relative lack of policy governing their use.

Our goal in this work is to increase the control you have over your personal information and make sure that the growth in surveillance technology doesn't hinder your privacy rights, Eastwood said.

Freedom from unreasonable government spying is a foundation of liberty in our country.

It's why we have the Fourth Amendment.

The goal of the presentation was to educate Dubuque residents on the several different types of ALPRs and the broader databases to which they connect, said Sister Nancy Miller, a member of Building Bridges Dubuque.

Building Bridges is a local organization dedicated to supporting local refugees and immigrants through education and fundraising programs, and it sponsored Eastwood's presentation on Thursday due to concerns over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's potential usage of ALPR databases.

We really hope to educate people and give people correct information so that they have a better understanding, Miller said.

We talked about the surveillance grid.

We talked about ALPRs, which is these automated license plate readers.

And the snitch state is what I've been calling it.

But I also played a video by Ben Jordan that talked about Axon versus Flock, where he seemed to indicate, again, that Axon was better in some ways than Flock.

And there's, again, a lot of responses, I believe, to this.

No, no comments? Amazing.

This is excellent work, by the way, to identify this and how it's being integrated from prosecutors to cops to ALPRs to federal.

They're trying to... create another nationwide.

So that was really interesting.

The narrative then obviously completely shifted and they were able to exonerate the ex-husband through other means such as CCTV and ANPR, automatic number plate recognition.

But what the detective said to me is that if that had been maybe 10 years earlier and they hadn't been able to rule out the ex-husband, that he might well have been serving a prison sentence for a crime he hadn't committed because circumstantially it looked like him.

I mean, it didn't seem unimaginable that some stranger would have done this that lived above the victim.

Of course.

And of course, we've got many advantages now over what we had previously with technology, with ANPR cameras and the great work that the guys that I have been working with at SOC have done.

That's Automatic Number Plate Recognition Cameras and State Operations Command Center for people who are here at home.

No,

It's my understanding you had to have probable cause to surveil someone to begin with.

So do we have probable cause to use the surveillance cameras, the automatic license plate readers, so that we can, what, then get probable cause for indictments later? Or does the probable cause come after you found somebody which you think is doing something wrong on these cameras? I'm a little confused because according to this report, no specific federal legislative framework exists that governs federal law enforcement use of ALPRs.

It does go on here to say that the Department of Justice does provide guidance for federal law enforcement agencies regarding the use of race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, which specifies what type of information may or may not be used.

in law enforcement and intelligence activities, even when law enforcement activities involve automated systems or artificial intelligence.