Total Surveillance: Irvine Company Spying on Shoppers and the Demise of Privacy

Most tech-related news these days involve something that would fit a great sci-fi novel from the sixties, like self-driving cars or an artificial womb. However, some of those news look more like something else from the sixties: Cold War spy fiction.

As EFF has recently unveiled, one of California’s biggest real estate owners has been using automated license plate readers to scan and send data on mall visitors to a private company that then sold the location data to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Several local malls have been involved in the process since at least 2016.

In this feature, we take a look at everything known about the situation so far: opinions and statements from different sides of the story, the community reaction, and some obvious and not so pleasant conclusions.