MapQuest Reveals ALPR Surveillance Layer

MapQuest has added a toggleable 'Surveillance Layer' to its maps that marks the locations of automated license‑plate readers and other outdoor surveillance cameras from vendors like Flock Safety, Rekor, Vigilant and Verkada. The layer appears to reuse or mirror crowdsourced datasets (DeFlock, OpenStreetMap) and makes the geography of private and public plate‑reader networks visible to any user of the app. — Making surveillance infrastructure discoverable shifts power — it enables public scrutiny, aids researchers and journalists, changes how activists and lawyers challenge surveillance, and raises new security and privacy tradeoffs about who should publish such maps and how.