Have they gone too far? Your Kids’ School Bus About to Become Roaming Surveillance Vehicle

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A company that sells cameras to catch drivers illegally passing stopped school buses wants to turn them into license plate readers.

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companies that maintain automatic license plate readers—and profit from selling the data they collect—are also looking to track electronic signatures from connected devices and even your car’s infotainment hardware with a new product straightforwardly named SignalTrace. And they’re not stopping there.

404media published a report on Tuesday detailing plans to equip schoolhouses with automatic license plate readers and turn the data over to law enforcement. The report is based on leaked documents from BusPatrol, a company that specializes in stop-arm cameras that capture images of drivers illegally passing school buses (“stop-arm” is the proper name of the fold-out stop signs on school buses). The company claims to have over 40,000 of these cameras deployed across 24 states, and at least 30 states permit them. They use AI software to automatically review images and submit them to law enforcement.

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As noted by Reason, stop-arm cameras have been criticized for not delivering promised safety benefits, but they’ve nonetheless generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the companies that deploy them. And according to the report, BusPatrol now wants to turn those cameras into license plate readers. Instead of activating when a specific law is allegedly being violated, they’ll now reportedly be live at all times, capturing data on any vehicle within sight of a school bus that can then be sold to the law-enforcement agencies BusPatrol already counts as customers.

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