Beware those peddling untested fixes to public safety | Opinion

Matthew Guariglia is a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation working on issues of surveillance, privacy, AI and government use of technology. Beryl Lipton is a senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, working on government transparency and law enforcement surveillance technology.

There’s a debate happening in Maine and every other corner of this country about whether automated license plate readers (ALPRs) have any place in our communities.

For the compelling but very complicated problem of “public safety,” ALPRs and other police surveillance technology have become easy, lucrative “solutions” to sell. Despite their capacity to obliterate privacy and facilitate abuse, these devices can now be found in every state in the country, spurred by marketing and police spending.

Fortunately, the public has become more aware of just how dangerous this technology is, and people across the country are responding with successful calls to end this technology in their communities.

These AI-powered cameras monitor roads in the U.S., and the details of the cars and people who pass them are logged in databases shared with police and government agencies nationwide. They make it easy to search for a person’s past locations or get an alert when someone enters a particular city.

In towns with ALPRs, it can be as simple as a search for your license plate number, vehicle type or bumper sticker to get a report on the places you’ve driven today, this month, or all year — no warrant necessary. There are now hundreds of thousands of ALPR cameras, many connected to a nationwide data sharing network accessible to thousands of government employees, in and out of state.

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Abuse of these extensive networks is well-documented. ALPR platforms have facilitated nationwide high-tech police stalking. They have helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) harass our immigrant neighbors. They have been used to track and spy on abortion seekers across state lines.

During ICE raids in Maine, agents ran license plate information through government databases to threaten and follow protesters (it’s not clear whether ALPRs were also used). There are real dangers posed by government actors who can access personal information and use these surveillance systems for intimidation and harm.

Even though the tech’s big claims of success are backed, at best, by a dubious track record of lowering crime rate, surveillance salespeople remain just that: salespeople, eager to take the credit when crimes go down, sell you more products when it goes up and keep you locked into a subscription in the meantime.

Flock Safety, one of the largest ALPR companies, has grown fabulously wealthy convincing people that we need to live under constant surveillance to combat crime both large and small. “There are 18,000 cities to go after,” CEO Garrett Langley has said of Flock’s rapid expansion, referring roughly to the total number of policing agencies in the country, each one a sales target. The company is now worth billions of dollars across a portfolio of products that also includes drones and AI analysis.

Should tax dollars go to indiscriminate surveillance? Should we be paying to help some police officer in Texas pull up your last drive down the coast or up to camp? Mainers have the opportunity and the responsibility to ask their community leaders to do more with their money than install mass surveillance on our telephone poles and in our forests.

It’s not news that people in this state understand that doing the right thing and doing the established thing can be very different. Your privacy is a priceless resource, one almost
impossible to renew or restore once it’s gone.

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York, Auburn and South Portland recently decided to pause their use of ALPRs. They are
among the approximately 400 towns and cities across the country that have canceled their contracts with Flock this year.

ALPRs are just one of the surveillance technologies being used, and Flock is just one company peddling surveillance. Drones are being deployed as flying cameras. Advanced AI systems are using data from police and data brokers to map out networks of friends and family. Predictive policing is making insinuations about who might commit crimes, undermining our right to a fair criminal justice system.

As the mega-corporations of the world race to extract and monetize every personal detail, cloaking unbridled surveillance as a necessity for public safety, now is not the time to let sales speak be a substitute for common sense. Crime is a real societal problem that requires thoughtful, empathetic and evidence-backed action, not surveillance-as-a-solution.

In our city councils, our budgets and our streets, let’s focus on the genuine needs of our communities and remain skeptical of anyone trying to sell dangerous technology as a one-size-fits-all fix for public safety.

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