Big Brother: LPR

That can't happen here, we have laws!

Illinois audit finds Forest Park police shared license plate reader data with immigration officials

By ABC7

September 5, 2025

Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias has ordered a suburban community to stop sharing license plate data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

An audit filed by Giannoulias discovered that the Forest Park Police Department gave CBP access to the data.

The data sharing was a violation of Illinois state law, Giannoulias said. Any data sharing capabilities have now been shut off.

[...]

Just last week, the Secretary of State's office discovered that Flock Safety gave border patrol agents access to its cameras across the state. That has also been shut down.

But... but... we were told that would never happen because there are laws...

Now suppose instead of immigration officials it was Texas looking for trans children getting treatment... or a woman going to a pregnancy clinic? You remember last year when Texas tried to get patient information from Seattle Children’s Hospital? Instead of going to the hospital for the information, con you imagine if they went to Flock Safety for a list of all the Texas cars in and around the Seattle Children’s Hospital. If past history with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is any indicator I would say their answer would be "Sure, between what dates?"

The license plate readers are everywhere! If you drive in Hartford down Maple Ave. where it meets the Berlin Turnpike, there is one there.

Syracuse University is installing controversial license plate readers. One privacy expert calls it a ‘big middle finger to immigrants’

Flock Safety, the provider of the license plate readers, and its relationship with federal agencies have been the subject of investigative reporting all over the country.

Central Current

by Patrick McCarthy

September 5, 2025

The students and families flooding Syracuse’s university neighborhood for move-in weekend may not have noticed the Syracuse Police Department license plate readers surveilling their vehicles’ movements. 

They almost certainly didn’t know that their destination, Syracuse University, may have surveilled them, too.

Syracuse University says it is installing AI license plate readers to surveil the movements of people on or near its campus — but won’t say whether the cameras are yet operational. 

The university’s new automatic license plate readers will record each vehicle that passes through their field of vision, documenting each license plate, car make and color. Software then compiles that information for storage in a database, where it will remain for 30 days, according to SU spokesperson Sarah Scalese.

No consider that all that data is being shared with Big Brother ops... I mean the Trump administration.

There is an article in the Hartford Courant,

Kevin Rennie: There’s a creeping menace in Connecticut. The question is about who will protect you

This year’s local politics should be different.

Municipal campaigns in odd number years usually feature differing views, often only mildly, on property taxes, funding education, economic development, and local control of zoning.

This year, voters ought to insist candidates for town and city councils and boards of selectmen disclose their views on the creeping menace of traffic control cameras. Those are red light and speed cameras that a 2023 state law allows municipalities to install and begin issuing citations and collecting fines after the state Department of Transportation approves local proposals.

I have long banged on in this space and other places about the dangers of this giant step into the surveillance state and the cancellation of traditional rights. Circumstances require another heave at stopping this money grab dressed up as public safety advance.

We live in a perilous moment for democratic rights and institutions. Both political parties have made this moment possible, though they bear unequal portions of blame. Democratic leaders have for nearly a century supported increasing the power of the presidency. Republican rhetoric frequently warned of the dangers of investing more power in the government. Now they embrace what the columnist George Will calls “the grotesque inflation of the presidency.”

What has long seemed normal and mostly innocuous can suddenly become dangerous. A government efficiency team seizes vast amounts of personal data and the public has no idea where it will land.  The administration is demanding voter registration records from states that their own laws prohibit them from sharing. If the recent past is any indication of future performance, some states will capitulate.

This is Big Brother... Russian style, this is what you see in Pyongyang, this is what China is doing, and now it is coming here... "1984" "The Brave New World" "Fahrenheit 451" "The Handmaid's Tale" we are here, we are now.

We can't put the genie back in the bottle, but we can chain him. We can make it a crime with jail time for turning the data over without a subpoena for an individual, and placing limits on how long the data can be keep.