EFF – “Across the country, private companies are deploying vehicles mounted with automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to drive up and down streets to document the travel patterns of everyday drivers. These systems take photos of every license plate they see, tag them with time and location, and upload them to a central database. These companies—who are essentially data brokers that scrape information from our vehicles—sell this information to lenders, insurance companies, and debt collectors. They also sell this information to law enforcement, including U.S. Department of Homeland security, which recently released its updated policy for leveraging commercial ALPR data for immigration enforcement. The Atlantic has called this collection of our license plates “an unprecedented threat to privacy.” This data, collected in aggregate, can reveal intimate details about our lives, including what doctors we visit, where we worship, where we take our kids to school, and where we sleep at night. Companies marketing this data claim that the technology can predict our movements and link us to our associates based on which vehicles are often parked next to each other…”

See also the Washington Post – “Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance…It will use facial recognition and artificial intelligence to analyze and understand the mountain of incoming video evidence; to track suspects, spot suspicious behaviors and even predict crime; to coordinate the work of emergency services; and to monitor the comings and goings of the country’s 1.4 billion people, official documents and security industry reports show.”