The genie isn't just out of the bottle; he’s looking for a paycheck. You know how in Sports they have something called Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) rules? In that world, players own their "brand." They control where their face appears and who gets to profit from their stats. We need the exact same rules for ALPRs and other surveillance databases! If my car’s "image" and my "location stats" are being harvested, shouldn't I have the NIL rights to that data?
We are currently witnessing a massive expansion of the "Open Door" policy. It is no longer just law enforcement that needs to be controlled; it is the commercial interest. Suppose in the future—a future that is closer than we think—a business wants to buy a list from a data broker to advertise their store to everyone who drives by based on their license plate history? Or a grocery store that installs facial recognition software to track exactly how you walk through the aisles, what you look at, and what you put back?
But more troubling is Big Brother's use of the data;[
NPR News
March 4, 2026
By Kat Lonsdorf, Jude Joffe-Block, & Meg Anderson
On an evening in late January, Emily was driving through her Minneapolis neighborhood doing something that had become part of her routine in recent weeks: patrolling for ICE.
Emily, who NPR is only identifying by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government, says she followed an ICE vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot. "And then someone leaned out of the passenger side of that SUV and took a picture of me and my car," she says.
Emily says she decided to leave at that point, but the SUV made a sudden U-turn and barreled towards her, braking next to her driver's side window. A female agent wearing a gaiter-style mask rolled down the window, leaned out — and addressed Emily by name.
]Creepy, scary! Big Brother is watching you!
"She yelled, 'Emily, Emily, we're going to take you home!' Then she looked at her phone and she recited my home address," she says.
Emily says she didn't acknowledge the agents and drove away, but was so shaken that she didn't drive home, afraid the agents might follow her there. Instead she went to a nearby restaurant and waited for hours.
If that does freak you out... I don't know what will.
They are using databases to identify you and scare you out of your Fist Amendment rights of free assembly or protest.[
Emily's experience mirrors that of many other people across the country. To understand how federal agents are using various Department of Homeland Security surveillance tools in real time, NPR collected dozens of accounts — through interviews and court documents — describing confrontations with federal immigration officers in recent months.
Activists and journalists spoke of tactics they felt were intimidating: agents photographing their faces or license plates; calling them by name; or leading them to their homes. Immigration lawyers told NPR their clients had been subjected to facial recognition technology. One ICE agent, testifying under oath, spoke of an app that showed the likely home addresses of people targeted for deportation.
]And that is exactly what they are trying to do! They are treating to remain silent on the oppression of our Constitutional rights![
In Minnesota, the ACLU is suing the administration for violating the First Amendment rights of protesters and observers like Emily. In the lawsuit, more than 30 people gave statements under oath describing similar encounters with immigration agents.
In the lawsuit, attorneys for the government denied that the conduct of federal agents has violated the Constitution.
DHS did not respond to a question about why its agents are demonstrating they know the names of observers and where they live, but the agency did say in a statement, "DHS will not reveal law enforcement methods or tactics."
]Those facts alone show a consorted effort to suppress the votes from address grievances, We have seen an outright attack to our abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.[
But federal immigration agents are using a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify and U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently signed a contract with Clearview AI, a facial recognition company that has accessed billions of images of peoples' faces off the internet.
]Stop right there! did you get the part where they say " a facial recognition company that has accessed billions of images of peoples' faces off the internet." you know those horrible driver license photos, well they are all on ICS's database now![
"Part of what's so pernicious about it is that people don't know what's going on," Wessler says. "Nobody should have to wonder if they are merely being intimidated or actually being subjected to an invasive biometric scan that's really just incredibly corrosive in what is supposed to be a free and open society."
In a statement to NPR, DHS stressed that Mobile Fortify, which was developed under the Trump administration, "does not access open-source material, scrape social media, or rely on publicly available data."
]All to suppress your Constitutional Rights! Surveillance has become a business; surveillance for policing and now to surveillance for profit. Do you remember when
Madison Square Garden uses facial recognition to keep out enemy lawyers in 2023?
Since then we have made a quantum leap forward in the networking of databases! And many companies are jumping in to make money off that knowledge![
In a hearing in the farmworker case, an ICE agent identified by the initials J.B. testified about another app, called ELITE made by Palantir, that he described as being similar to "Google Maps" that shows locations of people who may be deportable and the likelihood they live there.
J.B. described using the app as providing "leads" to choose where to do an operation.
]That is what is really scary! Tying databases and using unverified can lead to arresting and detaining the wrong person. Our TIL is for sale to anyone who got the cash!
Cleveland State University College of Law Blog
In an age when our identity seems constantly accessible online, how do we protect our personal data from those who eagerly collect every sliver and cache it away for potentially disturbing purposes?
According to an article published by Science Direct, “Today, data is captured, produced, and reproduced with such regularity that its collection, utility, and value can go largely unnoticed.” Professor Shoshana Zuboff coined the phrase “surveillance capitalism” to describe this phenomenon of massive personal information collection for profit in her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
[...]
Zuboff defines the term as “the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data.” The data gets computed, packaged as prediction products, and sold into behavioral futures markets. These markets teem with business customers who have a vested commercial interest in knowing our every movement, both now and in the future.
In an interview with The Harvard Gazette, Zuboff called for new laws and regulations “that specifically address the mechanisms and imperatives of surveillance capitalism.” Existing privacy and antitrust laws are not sufficient to address the pervasive threats of this new industry.
So that trip to the abortion clinic or the trans girl who visited her doctor's office can be access by Texas! This causes erosion of privacy, when governments or companies routinely collect and share personal data it causes people begin to assume they are constantly watched. People cut back on attending protest rallies when they fear government surveillance, people cut back on political discussion, and cuttings back political discussion! Fear is the commodity that ICE deals out
