Once again, if this were labeled a person (since corporations have personhood rights) you’d get a restraining order for stalking. Especially in light of the SCOTUS decision to invalidate geofence dragnet surveillance…
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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starting to push back
So many city officials are barely more than brand-ambassadors for this technology.
In Troy, the political standoff remains unresolved. After the city council voted to block funding for the cameras, Mantello declared a state of emergency to renew the contract
The blatant lies to try to get around any restraint on their power
The real reason for data centers is obvious.
I don't get why the cities let this level of intrusion in the first place
I mean Chicago literally sold their parking meters to JPMorgan or something crazy like that. JP made all their money back in the first year and the lease is for 75.
Cities are not ran by the best or brightest, but the most well funded and well connected unfortunately.
And by people who only have the next 2-4 years to think about.
Make a quick 500 million this year makes your numbers look good, even if you cause the city to lose money for the next 74 years.
Money?
License plate cameras are scanning 13 times as many vehicles as exist in the world? Every month? That's impressive.
Maybe it would have been less sensationalist to say they're scanning vehicles 20 billion times a month.
Nah those numbers are weak. If you think about how the scanner probably runs at 20-60hz or something you could x20-60 those numbers for every second they were scanned!
That said, theres at least 4 scanners at every intersection in the main city near me that are definitely scanning the same car 4 different ways every time it passes. So i could believe 670million scans a day.
About 670million times a day too many still.
License plate cameras are scanning 13 times as many vehicles as exist in the world? Every month? That’s impressive.
Not that impressive. Each driver just needs to drive by at least one camera 13 times.
Because im a nerd and like doing math too.
20,000,000,000 / 30 days in a month Divided by the 110,077 mapped alprs (theres definitely more than that)
Its 6056 scans per device on average per day. Or roughly 4.2 scans per minute per camera.
Keeping in mind theres definitely more cameras than that so the ratio is even more favorable. Definitely seems accurate enough for a news headline.
Its 6056 scans per device on average per day. Or roughly 4.2 scans per minute per camera.
Imagining a device hooked up to the on-ramp/off-ramp of the highway, and I imagine a camera could hit this easily.
Definitely seems accurate enough for a news headline.
It's the back-end bit of "cities pushing back" that triggers my skepticism impulse. These devices are everywhere precisely because municipal leadership is so easily bought off (or outright installed) by the surveillance industry.
Sure, but that's still the number of scans, not the number of vehicles.
"Scanning 20 billion vehicles a month" sounds like they scanned vehicles 20 billion times to meeee. Aint english grand friend.