The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill—a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs—at 10 am ET on Thursday.
Neither Perry nor García's offices immediately responded to WIRED's request for comment.
The amendment runs a single sentence: “A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling.”.
The amendment is brief, but its reach would be vast.
ALPR cameras—mounted on poles, overpasses, traffic signals, and police cruisers—photograph every passing license plate, log times and locations, and feed data into searchable databases shared across agencies and jurisdictions.
Privacy advocates have long warned that the aggregation of license plate data amounts to a de facto warrantless tracking system.
New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice has documented the integration of ALPR feeds into police data-fusion systems that combine plate data with surveillance and social media monitoring. »