“This is not a surveillance tool,” Ozment added.
Bullshit. This is dragnet surveillance on all cars passing by these cameras.
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office is deploying a network of Flock automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras, expanding a private surveillance system across the region. Officials claim the technology is strictly for retrospective investigation of serious crimes like homicides and major thefts, not for live tracking or immigration enforcement. The system captures license plates, vehicle characteristics, and unique features, feeding the data into a network shared with other law enforcement agencies. While the sheriff’s office touts the system’s effectiveness by citing successes in other cities, the technology creates a persistent, searchable log of residents’ movements. Despite assurances that the cameras are not a ‘surveillance tool,’ the mass collection of location data by a for-profit vendor presents significant privacy risks and the potential for function creep beyond the stated mission.