With no warrant requirements, limited guardrails, and deficient audit processes, ALPR databases have fostered a culture of unrestricted access to everyone’s location information. This culture of abuse has allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine, permitting the tracking of the movements of everyday citizens for low-level complaints, personal whims, and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols.
When I worked for a healthcare software company one of my roles was technical support on a controlled substance monitoring program on a state-by-state basis.
Cops had a separate login portal, and had to go through quite a process to get their account. Once they did, they could submit a search, but had to justify it with a reason that included the warrant number. And even then, it required secondary approval of the search request by a state-level employee.
Why the fuck is that not the minimum for searching someone’s whereabouts?
(To add, I think such programs are unethical when available to cops. For doctors, it was used to make sure a patient wasn’t doc-shopping for opiates, and even then I’m hesitant. It has a potential to save lives via intervention upon finding someone’s 'shopping, but I don’t think it’s usually used as a safe intervention.)
When I worked for a healthcare software company one of my roles was technical support on a controlled substance monitoring program on a state-by-state basis.
Cops had a separate login portal, and had to go through quite a process to get their account. Once they did, they could submit a search, but had to justify it with a reason that included the warrant number. And even then, it required secondary approval of the search request by a state-level employee.
Why the fuck is that not the minimum for searching someone’s whereabouts?
(To add, I think such programs are unethical when available to cops. For doctors, it was used to make sure a patient wasn’t doc-shopping for opiates, and even then I’m hesitant. It has a potential to save lives via intervention upon finding someone’s 'shopping, but I don’t think it’s usually used as a safe intervention.)