The National Fight Against ALPRs

The talk looks at the national campaign against automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), drawing on years of research into the technology and its history of failed attempts at regulation. The speakers argue that the core recognition pipeline is simple and cheap to build, so vendors compete on add-on features and data sharing. Because their value is tied to how many plates they collect, restricting data sharing is commercially unattractive to them.

Drawing on about four years of public records requests and audit log analysis, the speakers describe networks that are nearly impossible to monitor, a vendor that reactivated cameras after a city tried to switch them off, and audit reason fields that were narrowed to vague categories. They contend that policy rules and technical feature limits have repeatedly failed to keep data contained, so the remedy they advocate is turning the cameras off. They also explain how city purchasing processes, decision-makers and transparency ordinances can be mapped and used as leverage.

The closing section covers organizing: coalitions that cross ideological lines, community literacy about contracts, and framing objections around procurement integrity and liability rather than purely ideological terms. Contract cancellations are the measure of success. The talk ends by encouraging attendees to support local groups, since these campaigns are won one city at a time.