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The shocking police
crackdown on protestors

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in Missouri, in the wake
of the police shooting


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of Michael Brown

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underscored the extent to which

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advanced military weapons
and equipment,

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designed for the battlefield,

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are making their way


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to small town police departments
across the United States.

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Although much tougher to observe,

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this same thing is happening

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with surveillance equipment.

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NSA-style mass surveillance is enabling

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local police departments 
to gather

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vast quantitates of sensitive informaiton

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about each and every one of us

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that was never previously possible.

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Location information can 
be very sensitive.

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If you drive your car around
the United States,

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it can reveal if you go 
to a therapist,

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or an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting,

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if you go to church 
or if you don't go to church,

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and when that information 
about you

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is combined with the same

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information about everyone else,

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the government can gain a detailed
portrait

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of how private citizens act

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this information used to be private

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thanks to modern technology,

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the government knows far too much

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about what happens
behind closed doors.

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and local police departments
make decisions

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about who they 
think you are

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based on this information.

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One of the key technologies 
driving mass location tracking

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is the innocuous sounding
automatic license plate reader.

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if you haven't seen one,

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it's probably because you didn't
know what to look for

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they're everywhere.

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mounted on roads or 
on police cars,

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automatic license plate readers

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capture images of every passing car


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and convert the license plate

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into machine-readable text

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so that they can be checked

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against hot lists

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of cars potentially wanted

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for wrongdoing.