Background

Silently, but constantly, the government is now watching, recording your everyday travels and storing years of your activities in massive data warehouses that can be quickly “mined” to find out when and where you have been, whom you’ve visited, meetings you’ve attended, and activities you’ve taken part in. This is all done by using an elaborate network of Automatic License Plate Recognition cameras, also known as tag readers.

ALPR is a technology of social control. The federal government has spent millions outfitting even the smallest towns around the country with this technology, and now the Department of Homeland Security is creating customized software that is able to integrate all the surveillance data obtained through all the different tag reader systems in use around the country. The federal government has a massive datastorage center for tag reader information located in Northern Virginia

Originally developed by the United Kingdom to be used against the Irish Republican Army, later deployed by the U.S. in Baghdad, tag readers have now been adapted for routine and massive deployment against civilians in the U.S.

It’s a system of mass surveillance and data warehousing on law-abiding persons and citizens. You’re being tracked routinely, without probable cause, without a warrant and without even a suspicion that you have committed a crime.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has spent years investigating and uncovering this mass surveillance grid that is being put in place in the United States in the absence of public awareness, scrutiny, debate or oversight. The public has a right to know about this program – and to stop it. The PCJF has established a national campaign, One Nation Under Surveillance, with a proactive website providing the tools and information you can use to take action now.

Watch us, watching them. View the interactive map to see our growing catalog of the documented instances of this web of spy cameras sweeping the nation. Participate, by submitting to us images and locations and other documentation of ALPR technology in your town or neighborhood.

Watch us, together, stopping them. Join with us, as part of an informed public taking action to ensure that our federal and local governments impose restrictions and regulations to ensure that ALPR and other mass surveillance technology is not implemented at the expense of our fundamental rights of privacy.