# Privacy Not Included

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/privacy-not-included
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/privacy-not-included.md
Podcast: [Disturbing History](https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005)
Published: 2026-08-16T04:00:03+00:00
Episode link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/privacy-not-included--74081667
Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74081667/dh_cars_final.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/disturbing-history-7341005/episodes/privacy-not-included
Duration seconds: 4983

## Resource

You clicked “I Agree.” You never clicked anything for the camera on the pole outside your kid’s school. On May 9, 2025, a deputy with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas typed “had an abortion, search for female” into a license plate reader network. That single search swept across 83,000 cameras connected to 6,809 law enforcement networks, including cameras in states where the conduct being investigated was legal. No warrant. No judge. Just a login and a sentence in a search box. In this episode, I dig into two surveillance systems most Americans barely realize they’re part of: the computer you’re driving and the network watching it move.We start inside the car, tracing vehicle data collection from the earliest event data recorders to the 2006 federal rule that standardized them. We revisit the Massachusetts lieutenant governor whose dashboard data contradicted his account of a 108-mph crash, then move into modern infotainment systems capable of copying contacts, text messages, call logs, and location history—and sometimes keeping that information long after the car changes hands. We also examine the Berla iVe forensic systems purchased by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for $456,073, Mozilla’s 2023 privacy review that failed all 25 car brands it examined, and the March 2024 revelation that General Motors had been sharing driving data with LexisNexis and Verisk, in some cases recording behavior at intervals of just a few seconds. Then we move outside the vehicle.Automatic license plate recognition began in 1976 with the British Home Office, became part of London’s Ring of Steel in 1993, and decades later evolved into a solar-powered camera network marketed to police departments, neighborhoods, businesses, and homeowners associations. That company is now val…

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## Transcript

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