[try_the_bass]

But this is not what Flock or other ALPRs do. They do not monitor nor aggregate your movements, unless specifically asked to. Or, at least, that's how they say they're being used, and until we find evidence to the contrary (we haven't), we should take them at their word and think about the model a little differently. If no one is looking for your movements in particular, after some period of time, the data that contains evidence of your movements if deleted. The vet result for most users is a temporary record of a short history of their movements that no one ever sees, and which is permanently forgotten after some period of time.

This is like when people complain that Facebook and Google are "selling their data". They aren't, but they are doing a closely-related thing: selling access to you, based on your data. These are not the same thing, and the difference is important when it comes to finding solutions to the problems it causes!

If we all voted to ban companies like Facebook and Google from selling your data, they'd shrug and say "sure I guess, we weren't selling it anyway", and nothing would change.

If we all voted to ban Flock from "tracking all of us", they'd shrug and say "that's already true" and it would not have any impact on their operations.

What we should instead vote for is strict controls over how long they can store the data, and how it is allowed to be used, and apply steep penalties for its misuse or unauthorized disclosure.