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Anniversary of APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING

On July 20, 1969, 109 hours and 42 minutes after launch, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin entered the lunar lander ‘Eagle’, made a final check, and the Eagle undocked from the lunar orbiter ‘Columbia’, where the third member of the crew Michael Collins, stayed in orbit around the moon. Partially manually piloted by Armstrong, the Eagle landed 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north moon latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east moon longitude. Armstrong stepped out, and Aldrin followed 20 minutes later: human beings stepped on the moon for the first time. The two men spent 21 hours and 26 minutes on its surface. One of the astounding aspects of the mission was the seeming simplicity of the technology used to get man to the moon. According to Oliver Gassmann, professor of Technology Management, the mobile phone in your pocket has one million times more memory than the Apollo 11’s computer. Same about the procesor: the latest phones typically have more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” –Neil Armstrong

Example of an annotated license plate reader photo showing captured vehicle details

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car's location, date, and time. They also capture your car's make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.

These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. These systems are marketed as indispensable tools to fight crime, but they ignore the powerful tools police already have to track criminals, such as cell phone location data, creating a loophole that doesn't require a warrant.

The Dangers of ALPRs

Privacy Violations

ALPRs track your movements and store your data for long periods of time, creating a detailed record of your location history.

Risk of Misuse

Data from ALPRs has led to wrongful arrests, profiling, and stalking ex-partners by police officers.

Limited Benefits

There's no substantial evidence that ALPRs effectively prevent crime, despite Flock's unethical attempts to prove otherwise.

ALPRs are a serious risk to your privacy and civil liberties. These systems continuously record your movements without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Your driving history is rarely confined to the town or city where the cameras are installed. It's typically shared with thousands of other agencies nationwide (secretly). Once the data is out of your community, you have no control over how it's used or what rules apply, leading to instances of misuse.

What is Flock?

Flock Safety is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the United States. Their cameras are installed for police departments, businesses, and HOAs. Captured vehicle data is uploaded to Flock's cloud system, where participating agencies can search and share information across jurisdictions.

Flock is not the only ALPR vendor, and other vendors still participate in similar practices. See this list of other common ALPR vendors.

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Giveaw@y: We’re giving away 12 vintage paperback classics! (Included are four editions from the collection of Alan Churchill Jones.) Won’t these look lovely on your shelf? Enter to win by: 1) following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblogging this post. We will choose a random winner on 16 August 2026. Good luck!

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