Symbols of Fascism During National No ALPRs Week

Photos: Paul Rosenblum ProBonoPhoto.org
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Over the last year, thousands of people across the US have risen up and said no to private, profit-driven companies blanketing communities in Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs).

In Palo Alto, California, the city has a contract with Flock, the best known of these companies.

Tim MacKenzie, an organizer with Safety Over Surveillance said, “Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) set up a network of mass surveillance, putting all of us at risk whether you have been involved in a crime or not. Only a fraction of a percent of collected data is ever used for an investigation, while the overwhelming supermajority captures patterns of movements of everyday citizens as we go about our daily lives that law enforcement accesses without a warrant.”

On August 20th, activists in Palo Alto, CA rallied against ALPRs during a national week of action with visuals created to represent a dystopian world in which handmaidens serve as spies with ALPRs in the place of bonneted heads. Music by the Mitchell Park Band and a sing along with the Raging Grannies was followed by speakers from organizations including Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America, the Council on American Islamic Relations, and the Services Immigrant Rights & Education Network amongst others.

This rally followed previous reports that Palo Alto's ALPR data was illegally searched by hundreds of out of state agencies. Although the city's police chief tried to downplay the data breach by claiming that none of the city's data was responsive to the tens of thousands of illegal searches, the US Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie vs. US that “whether something is a search does not depend on what it finds.”

“Everyone involved in our coalition is for public safety, unlike Flock, who is for profit,” said Tim MacKenzie. “Start ups like to move fast and break things, but they have broken the public trust by flouting carefully constructed guardrails. What is true of Flock will be true of other vendors: ALPRs are a dangerous technology that violate our basic protections against unreasonable searches.”