As the executive director of Fund Texas Choice, a vital practical support organization, I confront daily the struggle for safe reproductive health care access. In a state that has outlawed abortion, countless Texans are forced to flee across state lines, relying on organizations like Fund Texas Choice to fund their desperate journeys. But what if that trip is made impossible without exposing yourself to an abusive partner or employer? Your right to care is crushed twice over – first by Texas’ criminalizing laws, and again by the very structures designed to strip your privacy. If you think I am being paranoid about this, look at what 404 Media reported just last week: a Texas cop searched ALPR cameras nationwide for a woman who got an out-of-state abortion when her husband said he was “concerned” for her safety.
Austin’s Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) pilot program, approved a year ago by Austin City Council, is one such structure risking the privacy and safety of abortion seekers. ALPRs are devices affixed to police vehicles and buildings scattered around the city that rapidly scan vehicle license plates and index them against a database of warrants. Austin Police Dept. claims ALPRs are a useful tool in solving crimes, and City Council is set to decide on whether to make this pilot permanent based largely on this claim.
Austin City Council should be more skeptical. In cities already saturated with ALPRs, the ratio of license plate “hits” to actual investigative leads languishes between a dismal fifth and a half of one percent. This rate is made even worse by mere inclement weather, which frequently causes ALPR cameras to misread plates. ALPRs have demonstrably failed to deliver any meaningful impact on crime reduction.
ALPRs are a mass surveillance tool collecting enormous swaths of data that will inevitably be weaponized against our most vulnerable community members – including those seeking abortion care.
Rather than addressing crime, ALPRs are a mass surveillance tool collecting enormous swaths of data that will inevitably be weaponized against our most vulnerable community members. In a state that is currently exploring new laws to penalize out-of-state travel to access reproductive care, abortion seekers are made decidedly less safe by the collection of their locations by any agency, especially police. This program would be devastating for immigrants (documented or otherwise) who are being targeted by mass deportations, given ICE has unfettered access to ALPR data upon request. Protesters who are engaged in activism are easier to target when their locations are easily known. Seeking health care or engaging in your constitutional rights becomes a gamble with your freedom.
Granting the police expanded surveillance capabilities amidst a chilling surge of authoritarianism is unstrategic for reasons that should be obvious. But police aren’t the only ones able to access ALPR data. Throughout the yearlong pilot, three distinct agencies requested and received data from the program – apparently without APD’s knowledge for months. The critical questions remain unanswered: Why was APD oblivious to this data sharing? How did they finally discover it? And what, if any, corrective measures were taken?
Austin’s ALPR contractor Flock, deeply tied to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, was supposed to protect our data. Assurances were given that Austin alone owned and controlled the data. Yet, auditors recently exposed the truth: Flock’s contract grants them alarming freedom to exploit this data. This could mean not just sharing it externally, but even feeding it into products like their “Vehicle Fingerprint” system which can identify vehicles by minor details like bumper stickers or even a bike rack. Even more chillingly, Flock is developing a new product to directly link ALPR data to individuals, enabling the kind of pervasive, real-time location tracking that empowers ill actors like abusers or authoritarian governments. What’s of more concern is that these tools can be then linked to abortion seekers who may have to drive across state lines to access health care, but now are afraid to do so because of such surveillance.
We should all be able to move freely through the world without surveillance. When we are seeing swift actions to curtail civil liberties, targeting marginalized people and dissenters, our leaders must have the foresight to recognize when resources like the $244K a year required by the ALPR program would be more responsibly spent on services like reproductive care funding and immigrant legal defense, especially now, when we know these rights are being attacked daily.
Anna Rupani is the executive director of Fund Texas Choice, a reproductive justice organization based in Austin that funds Texans’ travel, lodging, and other logistical needs to access abortion care where it is legal.
This article appears in June 6 • 2025.