From highways to small towns, the high-tech surveillance grid is being exposed and is provoking outrage among fully informed citizens. Recently, we saw Seattle police deactivate a Wi-Fi surveillance network, after it was exposed that the little white boxes identified across the city were really a mesh network that could surveil any member of the public possessing an Internet-ready device.

The same is beginning to happen with license plate readers, where we can offer a couple of notable examples that are setting a precedent for eliminating this intrusive technology across the board.

The Big Brother Police State has sought to convince citizens that any time they leave their house, they are entering the public domain; a place where there can be no expectation of privacy.

In Utah, the federal DEA tried to initiate a blanket sweep of all license plates traveling along Interstates 15 and 70, with the intent to store the information in a centralized database. As noted by the ACLU which attended a hearing about the roll out, this federal agency intended to employ a scanning technology called ALPR to collect data from “unspecified other sources and sharing it with over ten thousand law enforcement agencies around the nation.”

At the core of the matter is that a license plate contains a vast amount of personal information about who exactly is responsible for that vehicle, regardless of who is driving it at the time. In the case of this section of highway through Utah along I-15 (clearly inland), the Beaver County Sheriff listened to the public outcry over privacy violations and decided to halt the plan immediately, while the Washington Country Sheriff has requested additional information. […]