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ACLU: License Plate Readers Track Millions

Time and location data put in databases.

You don’t need to have a cellphone for law enforcement to track your whereabouts. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the use of license-plate-reading cameras has become widespread, with police building databases with millions of license-plate numbers. The readers are placed along roads or cruisers and scan plates to find cars that have been involved in crimes, but the readers also record and store every plate they scan and put them in a database with time and location data, whether they’re involved in a crime or not. Police say the databases are useful in future investigations, but the ACLU says the data collection is overly broad.