Rhode Island has at least 239 to 295 license-plate reading cameras operating with no state law governing who can search the data, how long it is kept, or who it can be shared with — meaning your vehicle’s movements across a 37-mile-wide state are logged under rules each police department writes for itself.
Twenty-two of them are already watching.
That is the state of Rhode Island’s newest surveillance system as of July 30: 22 automatic license plate readers live on Rhode Island roads, out of 39 the Rhode Island State Police intend to install under a three-year, $597,000 contract with Flock Safety, the Atlanta company whose cameras photograph every vehicle that passes and hold the images in a searchable database. The first state police camera went up on June 25. The rest are coming…