[dropcap size=big]S[/dropcap]ome local police departments are acting like your grandparents accepting any old Facebook friend request, by giving out your license plate data to almost anyone that asks – including ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and even the IRS.
Automated License Plate Readers, or ALPRs, are cameras that can be placed on top of cop cars and light poles, and are used to photograph and record licenses plates, dates, and locations of vehicles. Cops can slap one of these bad boys on their patrol car, cruise around, and import the time and locations of thousands of license plates.
All of this information is sent to a database and stored by police departments across the nation. This unnerving practice becomes Orwellian when these law enforcement departments share this information with hundreds of other entities, many that are tiny or nowhere near you.
For starters, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's department shares data with 21 entities including nearby police departments, like Bell, and the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC).
Bell Police Department shares its ALPR data with a whopping 298 entities, mostly police departments across the country, including weird ones like the City of White in Georgia, who only had two cops on payroll — both of whom were arrested on charges of extortion and false imprisonment in 2016.