It is a marriage made in a Brave New World and 1984... it is a "Thought Crime" it is the marriage of AI and ALPRs! The feds are using a network of more than 120,000 cameras being fed into AI. It’s not about whether you have committed a crime, but whether you "may" be committing a crime according to an AI!
News NationSana AzemOct 27, 2026More American drivers are being pulled over as law enforcement agencies use automated license plate readers and Artificial Intelligence tools to deem their driving patterns “suspicious,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union.The civil rights group warns that police are using AI-identified driving patterns as a reason to pull people over, saying that the growing use of AI license plate surveillance from Flock and other companies is leading to more people being stopped, even if they did not do anything wrong.
Not that you are doing anything wrong... you are just acting ‘suspicious’ according to a computer!
In their report, ACLU spoke to a woman who was taking a road trip, which included driving through Oregon, Texas, and Louisiana, when she was stopped by an officer.When the woman reportedly left New Orleans, she noticed that a police car was following her, and although she was going at a normal speed, an officer pulled her over.The woman, identified as Grace Knowles in her 20s, said that the officer made an excuse for stopping her, which was that she had been in the left lane for too long. Knowles, according to the ACLU, told the officer she was taking a road trip. He asked her for proof, and when she showed the proof, he relaxed.The officer eventually identified himself as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was on a project for human and drug trafficking. He told her that he had to be sure because when he scanned her plate, he could see she had suspicious travel patterns.
Do you remember how in the novel 1984 surveillance by the Party was constant using two-way telescreens in homes and workplaces? Well the Institute for Justice writes:
As the number of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) has skyrocketed nationwide, erroneous stops, detainments and arrests are becoming increasingly common.Christopher IngrahamJuly 20, 2026In February of this year, a Flock camera in Sherwood, Arkansas, misread the license plate of an SUV, leading officers to detain an innocent couple at gunpoint while their six-week-old baby sat alone in a car seat in the back of the vehicle.“Those cameras are placed everywhere, and they hit license plates,” one of the officers explained as they uncuffed the couple after realizing their error several minutes later. “I’m not gonna say they’re completely perfect, because, you know, that’s modern technology.”As the number of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) has skyrocketed nationwide, errors like this one are becoming increasingly common. An Institute for Justice (IJ) review of media reports and court records finds there have been at least 27 such cases since 2018, with the majority of those happening since 2023.[...]“Every one of those stops is a high-risk encounter where a wrong move, a misunderstanding, or a moment of fear can turn deadly,” said Michael Soyfer, an IJ attorney who is representing residents of San Jose and Norfolk in lawsuits challenging their cities’ ALPR surveillance networks. “No one should have to prove their innocence on the side of the road because a camera couldn’t tell a zero from an O.”The recent uptick in ALPR errors owes largely to Flock Safety, which in the past several years has become the leading ALPR provider in the market. The company claims its cameras accurately capture 93 out of every 100 license plates that pass by them.
And I wouldn't brag about an error rate of 7%!
Also, people think that the camera photos are kept at the local police station in their town... WRONG! They go into a national database where a computer builds a profile on you: your habits, your favorite stores, the places you go to relax! Big Brother is watching you!
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