5mo ago

She Got an Abortion. So A Texas Cop Used 83,000 Cameras to Track Her Down.

www.eff.org

In a chilling sign of how far law enforcement surveillance has encroached on personal liberties, 404 Media recently revealed that a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. The officer searched 6,809 different camera networks maintained by surveillance tech company Flock Safety, including states where abortion access is protected by law, such as Washington and Illinois. The search record listed the reason plainly: “had an abortion, search for female.”

26 comments

If those cameras were in France they would rip them up and set them alight in a bonfire on the Champs-Élysées.
- Doesn’t France have extensive camera coverage of public areas? Though for sure the French would riot were they misused in this fashion.
  
  There's a big difference between a passive surveillance camera and a network of devices that logs every time you go past one of the 83k+ spots or a car equipped with them. It's warrantless tracking and a constitutional violation. They've already been declared illegal in several criminal cases, but it hasn't reached a higher court yet. There is a lawsuit over these but I haven't heard anything about it in awhile.
  Edit: It survived a motion to dismiss and is moving forward in federal court.
  www.yahoo.com/news/flock-camera-case-could-local-190000699.html
- It's Texas. Most of those people approve of this.
  If it happened in LA, you'd see more than cameras on fire.
Welcome to Gilead.
- Not just Texas. They can access them nationwide without warrants. An attempt to crowdsource a db of installations is at https://deflock.me/
well we now know when cops are really motivated they can find the person they are looking for. the problem is what they are motivated by.
- https://i.imgflip.com/9vy202.jpg
States allowing this access over state borders and ICE presence are complicit with the policies of the states it is coming from. People from the US have to realize, that the people abusing this, being chosen for ICE, and working to detain ICE detainee's illegally, are operating from very specific states. This bloodless civil war has cost the US its democracy, and it's f-ing hilarious how people think they are going to have legit midterms.
- The issue is that this data is held by a private company, not the government, which is how governments can get around restrictions regarding searches and data collection. You also see this with ICE and border patrol just buying 'marketing data' from airlines to figure out who was on what flight.
  
  I think that problem is due to nothing equivalent to GDPR, and privacy laws in the US that are handled at the state level, badly.
- and it’s f-ing hilarious how people think they are going to have legit midterms.
  You and I have very different senses of humor
- The US already fought one civil war over the states overreaching their jurisdictions by abusing federal legislation.
What’s the end result though
- The end result is that this poor woman didn’t have the privacy she deserved. It doesn’t matter if they don’t do anything else. This alone is a violation that would have anyone freaked the fuck out.
  Edit: we all deserve privacy and these tech fucks are taking it away.
- The end result is that her civil rights were likely violated.
Does trump want America to be like an extremist religious government? Like in Iran? Like in the Handmaids tale? The F***????????????????????????????????????????????????
- You should look up the Dominionists. The speaker of the house is one of them and at least one Justice. They are in power and that should scare us.
It sounds like police searched this system because her family reported her missing. I get the implication, that this system can potentially be used by awful governments in awful ways, but the police weren't looking for this woman because she had an abortion like this headline implies
- Directly from the article:
  The search record listed the reason plainly: “had an abortion, search for female.”
  
  If you read the entire article, it explains her family reached out to the police concerned about her safety after she had an abortion and they didn't hear from her. That the term "abortion" was included in the reason for this search makes little difference to what actually happened, because the reason listed could be anything, this is just what her family reported.
  The problem is this database exists at all, but the example listed here is not a good one to highlight the evil this sort of surveillance can perpetuate, because the outcome here is "woman found safe."
- That would be a bit over the top imo
  
  https://youtu.be/ZIBj2GIbGo0?t=87
  I can't stress enough how just one more could have been a disaster.
Extend of Bodily autonomy in the land of free. /s

26 comments