Surveillance of Americans is expanding and New Mexico lawmakers are leaning toward increased protections.
The Driver Privacy and Safety Act passed the state Senate on Thursday and now heads to the House. It would ban state law enforcement from using automated license plate readers for general surveillance or civil traffic enforcement. It also identifies personal information which cannot be given to out-of-state third parties.
The American Civil Liberties Union said cameras installed on streetlights and poles by a company called Flock collect data on people who are not suspected of any crime.
Danny Cendejas, campaign specialist for the racial justice organization MediaJustice, said Flock's reach is massive.
"There are currently over 80,000 Flock cameras installed across the country, with Flock self-reporting that they are in 49 states," Cendejas explained.
During a discussion of the bill's language, lawmakers were told public records requests have been used to access license plate data related to immigration enforcement and abortion. The legislation aims to put some guardrails around the artificial intelligence tool. As written, it would only allow law enforcement to use the cameras for identifying stolen vehicles, locating missing persons, responding to felony warrants, investigating crimes and sharing the data with other agencies.
A new partnership between Flock and Amazon's Ring camera has raised new concerns. Critics said it could increase mass data collection, erode privacy and open the door to potential misuse by agencies like ICE. At the same time, nearly 3,000 new AI data centers are under construction or planned across the U.S.
Jacinta Gonzalez, head of justice for the racial justice organization MediaJustice, said technology developed there could include more surveillance technologies.
"We know that this is part of what they call this AI race, that demands a massive build-out of data centers that suck up our water, our energy," Gonzalez pointed out. "All of this without our consent."
During last Sunday's Super Bowl, a Ring television ad promoted its security camera as a way to find lost dogs but some saw it as normalizing persistent surveillance of Americans including facial recognition systems used by immigration enforcers. After the ad ran, viral videos online showed some people removing or destroying their cameras over privacy concerns.