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.”
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:
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.”
Fair enough, sorta. Let’s agree was search was not initiated by the abortion, but at least one cop used it that way.