License Plates: The Next Privacy Nightmare in Post-Roe America

Before an injustice becomes a reality, when the consequences are all very abstract, it can be easy to doubt and defer grasping how inevitable they are. Some people will write off what is plainly obvious to everyone around them as the misgivings of pearl-clutching doomsayers, the fallout of overactive imaginations. Thankfully, reality does wonders for perspective.

There can be no silver lining to the gutting of women’s rights this year, but we also can’t escape the outcome. The consequences (foreseen by many but treated as urgent by few) have plenty to teach us; particularly those who, for whatever reason, couldn’t see it coming. For instance: Anyone who also doubts that surveillance technology deployed for public safety can be turned on people exercising their reproductive rights on a dime — welcome to that future you didn’t plan for.

A lot of work is still being done to try and preserve what little privacy Americans have left. This week, for example, advocates raised a red flag over the rapidly expanding use of license plate readers blanketing U.S. cities ostensibly to curb crime. The reality is that decisions which might have seemed trivial even a year ago, like informing someone about the miracle of birth control, or offering a friend a ride to a medical clinic, are now potentially those crimes, actions today that can scrutinized by thousand electronic eyes.

The Guardian reported on Thursday that Flock Safety, a police contractor with over 1,200 law enforcement clients, has expanded its vehicle surveillance network to more than 2,000 neighborhoods in over 40 states. The company’s breakneck expansion — nary a week goes by without some local police force announcing a “partnership” — is giving rise to fears about the consequences in jurisdictions with oppressive reproductive policies.

Chris Gilliard, a tech fellow at Social Science Research Council, warned the paper of the potential for the technology to aid in further criminalizing those seeking reproductive health, eroding their “ability to move about their daily lives free from being tracked and traced.”

Dave Maass, an investigator at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized the surveillance firm’s response — that it merely provides a service and has no say in how police “wish to enforce their laws” — telling Guardian that Flock Safety’s position “illustrates how surveillance isn’t actually about benefiting society or protecting people – it’s about enforcing the political goals of those in power.”

“Our position at Flock remains consistent in response to the Dobbs decision. Our perspective is that we do not enact laws, and our mission is not specific to any particular laws,” Josh Thomas, vice-president of external affairs, said.

License plate readers and the surveillance nets they cast over a city are but one of many police tools falling under loud scrutiny since Roe’s repeal. U.S. lawmakers, many of them explicitly citing the June decision, have begun openly pressuring the federal government to disclose long-rumored use of and support for new surveillance tools secretively used and effectively unregulated.

“It is important to be mindful,” Congresswoman Anna Eshoo recently told Gizmodo, that old surveillance tools “may present new threats, as states across the country pass increasingly draconian bills restricting people’s access to abortion services and targeting people seeking reproductive healthcare.”

Preventing crime is always a noble endeavor, right up until the moment it isn’t. Technology engineered to stop crime far more often merely festoons ingrained patterns of abuse, yielding accountability to a black box designed by a software company with an instantly forgettable name. It may do very little to relieve or prevent injustice, but it can still be handy in a crisis: Those in power can always point to it when challenged and utter some nonsense like “How can a machine be biased?”