alt Hacker NewsThe scariest part of this story isn’t that they’re doing LPR at drop-off, it’s that they’re claiming to have knowledge of where the car is parked overnight.
> her daughter’s new student enrollment form was denied due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. In an email sent to Sánchez in August, the school district told her, “Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside.”
The person in the story claims to have lent the car to some family members at that time. That appears to confirm that the car was really parked somewhere else at night. But how does this LPR company have that information?
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The craziest part of this is that a school district thinks that the overnight location of the vehicle used to transport a student has anything to do with the location of the residence. Especially when that data is from a time period when the school isn't in session.
I can think of a half dozen valid scenarios why the vehicle used for school drop off is parked away from the student's residence at night.
e.g. Vehicle belongs to a non-custodial parent from out of district who handles drop off. Vehicle is used by a household member to do overnight shift work. Family just moved, of course their vehicle wasn't being parked in the district in July. ALPR character recognition error. Parent and student live elsewhere in the summer, and still qualify as residents within the district.
It sometimes boggles the mind the amount of inflexibility that people doing these jobs have/are willing to use, especially in something so consequential.
There are companies that scan every parked car visible in any public accessible spot.
The scary part isn't a single camera, it's the aggregation
more concerning than overnight, in my opinion, is monitoring it in summer months when school is presumably out and keeping a record of it for who knows how long.
It's covered in the article. The school district has a contract with Thompson Reuters Clear. And here's more general information on that service:
https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/leveraging-license-pla...
Key bit:
"With LPR intelligence tools such as Thomson Reuters license plate recognition, corporate crime professionals have the ability to share and request the sharing of commercial LPR data with other corporations."
Eg. Flock and Vigilant Solutions.
https://losgatan.com/class-action-suit-against-flock-license...
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260227692233/en/Flo...