ALPR Tech Now Preventing Parents From Enrolling Their Kids In School
from the making-being-awful-more-efficient dept
All the people who have always brushed off concerns about surveillance tech, please come get your kids. And then let someone else raise them.
Lots of people are fine with mass surveillance because they believe the horseshit spewed by the immediate beneficiaries of this tech: law enforcement agencies that claim every encroachment on your rights might (MIGHT!) lead to the arrest of a dangerous criminal.
Running neck and neck with government surveillance state enthusiasts are extremely wealthy Americans. When they’re not adding new levels of surveillance to the businesses they own, they’re scattering cameras all around their gated communities and giving cops unfettered access to any images these cameras record.
Here’s how it plays out at the ground level: parents can’t get their kids enrolled in the nearest school because of surveillance tech. In one recent case, license plate reader data was used to deny enrollment because the data collected claimed the parent didn’t actually reside in the school district.
Just over a year ago, Thalía Sánchez became the proud owner of a home in Alsip. She decided to leave the bustle of the city for a quiet neighborhood setting and the best possible education for her daughter.
However, to this day, despite providing all required paperwork including her driver’s license, utility bills, vehicle registration, and mortgage statement, the Alsip Hazelgreen Oak Lawn School District 126 has repeatedly denied her daughter’s enrollment.
Why would the district do this? Well, it’s apparently because it has decided to trust the determinations made by its surveillance tech partner, rather than documents actually seen in person by the people making these determinations.
According to the school district, 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.”
But that’s obviously not true. Sanchez says the only reason plate reader data would have shown her car as “staying” in Chicago was because she lent it to a relative during that time period. The school insists this data is enough to overturn the documents she’s provided because… well, it doesn’t really say. It just claims it “relies” on this information gathering to determine residency for students.
All of this can be traced back to Thompson Reuters, which apparently has branched out into the AI-assisted, ALPR-enabled business of denying enrollment to students based on assumptions made by its software.
Here’s what little there is of additional information, as obtained by The Register while reporting on this case:
Thomson Reuters Clear, which more broadly is an AI-assisted records investigation tool, has a page dedicated to its application for school districts. It sells Clear as a tool for residency verification, claiming that it can “automate” such tasks with “enhanced reliability,” and can take care of them “in minutes, not months.”
One of the particular things the Clear page notes is its ability to access license plate data “and develop pattern of life information” that helps identify whether those who are claiming they’re residents for the sake of getting a kid enrolled in school are lying or not.
Thomson Reuters does not specify where it gets its license plate reader data and did not respond to questions.
We’ll get to the highlighted sentence in a moment, but let’s just take a beat and consider how creepy and weird this Thomson Reuters promotional pitch is:
The text reads:
Gain deeper insights into mismatched data to support meaningful conversations with families and ensure students are where they need to be. Identify where cars have been seen to establish pattern of life information.
No one expects a law enforcement agency to do this (at least without a warrant or reasonable suspicion), much less a school district. Government agencies shouldn’t have unfettered access to “pattern of life” information just because. It’s not like the people being surveilled here are engaged in criminal activity. They’re just trying to make sure their kids receive an education. And while there will always be people who game the system to get their kids into better schools, that’s hardly justification for subjecting every enrolling student’s family to expansive surveillance-enabled background checks.
And while Thomson Reuters (and the district itself) has refused to comment on the source of its plate reader data, it can safely be assumed that it’s Flock Safety. Flock Safety has never shown any concern about who accesses the data it compiles, much less why they choose to do it. Flock is swiftly becoming the leading provider of ALPR cameras and given its complete lack of internal or external oversight, it’s more than likely the case that its feeding this data to third parties like Thomson Reuters that are willing to pay a premium for data that simply can’t be had elsewhere.
We’re not catching criminals with this tech. Sure, it may happen now and then. But the real value is repeated resale of “pattern of life” data to whoever is willing to purchase it. That’s a massive problem that’s only going to get worse… full stop.
Filed Under: alpr, chicago, license plate readers, surveillance, wtaf
Companies: flock, flock safety, thomson reuters
Comments on “ALPR Tech Now Preventing Parents From Enrolling Their Kids In School”
I hope everyone involved at that school district is hung so hard they never work in government again.
I would love to hear how much money these pieces of shit are burning on this.
And for those of us who don't own cars?
I guess we don’t get to send our kids to school.
It almost seems that Convicted Felon Donald Trump relies on ignorance and stupidity and is doing everything we can. It’s like he’ll do away with compulsory education.
The fact they would take the computer output over what was verified by actual people is a huge problem. How can someone be so brain dead?
Apparently you’re not allowed to leave your home for an overnight trip lest you lose your children’s right to an education. Never mind that a lot of places have laws against children not being in school. If you’re paying property taxes that contribute to school funding, then you shouldn’t even have to sue for relief. Having to file a lawsuit to be made whole is punishment itself.
This software as policy bullshit should be grounds for a human rights violation lawsuit. The choice to use the software is an endorsement of its flaws and liability for its failures.
At this point, I think it’s worth keeping in mind that if your car is not on a public street, there’s probably no legal requirement to have a license plate visible. And since leaving it visible volutarily can be used against you in ways we can barely imagine, maybe it’s not such a good idea.
I’m trying to figure out how this works.
Let’s say I live in Chicago, but my job requires me to move — say, to the Alsip area.
So, I buy a house after the previous school year ends, set up utilities, adjust the insurance on my vehicle and the address on my driver’s license…
…and then attempt to enroll my child in school.
It’s summer. The school doesn’t need to know when I currently am, only where my child will be in August/September (depending on when school starts in the district).
Does the school REALLY think I’m going to be living in Chicago and commuting 35 minutes each way to drop my kid at school, DESPITE HAVING JUST BOUGHT A HOUSE IN THE AREA?
A number of years back, I did a similar move. The school district I ended up in had elementary schools a 15 minute walk in 3 directions from the place I purchased. However, they were all full, so they put my kids in a school a 9 minute drive away instead — just close enough that there was no bus service, but far enough that there was no way I was sending my kids walking down the uncurbed highway required to access that school. Car pooling worked.
But I can just imagine: if they had instead said “Yes, we see you have a home in the area, but you’ve spent the last 8 years driving around an area a 50 minute drive away, and are still doing that while applying here” I’d say “well, duh. We’re MOVING. The place is purchased. If you drive by, you’ll see a bunch of our stuff inside, plus a bunch of unpacked boxes.”
I have no idea what I’d do if they refused access — probably raise a big stink with the schoolboard trustees and bypass the school altogether.
Re:
You know there are people who have daily commutes like that, right? Or worse. A co-worker at my last job drove 90 minutes to work every day for decades, then 90 minutes back, which was considered rare for the area. But lots of people commute 60+ minutes to Toronto every day, for example; either by highway, and traffic jams reflect that, or by train, and those crowds are significant too.
So, just because it’s crazy to do that to take a kid to school doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The fact is, there’s no good automated way to figure out where someone lives. The stupidity here is in believing in a magic technology, then trusting it blindly regardless of evidence to the contrary.
I think I found the problem.
Now, when I say, "hello, Mr. Thompson" and press down on your foot...
“Hello, Mr. Thompson.”
“I think he’s talking to you”
couple things
First, our own district makes us jump through so many hoops to prove residency and it’s not as if the news is full of stories about kids going to the wrong district and polluting our pure-pure district. Just being cruel because they can. Same thing in this case. Probably paid Thomson Reuters thousands of dollars to catch one (false positive) case.
Second, back when I was fighting the ALPR installation in our town I’d looked into this. Companies like Thompson Reuters, Experian etc don’t just get the data from companies like Flock, they also aggregate it from the companies that outfit tow trucks and so on with ALPR cameras.
The math ain’t mathin’. This child’s enrollment was initially denied in August 2025 due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. The district has since “repeatedly denied her daughter’s enrollment”, which indicates that at least several attempts have been made to provide documentation that overrides the ALPR data. Almost 7 months have passed since August 2025. What, exactly, is the problem? I mean, aside from the off the chain insanity that a school district is establishing “pattern of life” habits of its district residents. I’ve never heard of a school district that required someone to establish residency more than 30 days prior to enrollment, and even 30 days is extreme. Why the continued denials based on one snapshot in time? Presumably, the ALPR tech is continuing to do its 1984 thing, so what gives?
Re:
My guess is racism. Thalía Sánchez does not sound like an American name.
What will be telling is if they deny a rich person’s enrollment into their school.
“enhanced reliability,” and can take care of them “in minutes, not months.”
Enhanced reliability? It is to laugh.
Minutes, not months? How the fuck big is your school district that you need months to drive somewhere in it?
i guess no district taxes for you, then.
It sounds like they’re using the over night photo as an excuse for their racism.
We need anti-license plate stalking laws.
Um..
You posted this on the 24th,
The story broke on the 11th,
By the 13 the NBC Sotry you cite first had been updated with a statement from Flock that they were not involved in Thompson Reuter’s CLEAR system..
But you saw fit, to state “it can be safely assumed” that it involved Flock..
Do better..
Your credibilty is on the line.
Re:
To be fair, I wouldn’t trust a statement from Flock. It’s not like big surveillance tech bros have any reason to lie or omit pertinent details, right?
Sometimes statements like “we’re not involved” actually means “we sold data to a third party who sold the data to someone else so it wasn’t really us” or “a subsidiary with access to our data was involved.”
Make the people who introduced such system liable for such failures. Make them pay the fines owed to the State and the children/parents involved. Make public servants, hired or elected, pay for their bad choices. One thing is to err, another is to keep erring or to actively ignore warns that something will go wrong. There are plenty already concerning tech, ai and data profiling.
We’d be better off under a German flag these days
This data isn’t from flock, it’s from repo companies.
DRN & other private lpr networks have no oversight and way more abuse than flock.