The High Crime of “LMAO”: How Cops Are Treating Mass Surveillance As a Joke
An investigation found that police officers are routinely entering meaningless or joke entries — like 'idk' or 'LMAO' — into the required justification fields when querying automated license plate reader networks that can pull data from tens of thousands of cameras at once. The findings suggest that audit logging requirements, meant to provide accountability for mass surveillance tools, are being ignored in practice.
Why this matters: License plate readers do not just clock one car. A single query can touch data from millions of vehicles across thousands of cameras. The only thing standing between that power and abuse is a paper trail — officers writing down why they searched. That trail is apparently a joke, sometimes literally. Logging requirements only mean something if someone checks them and there are real consequences for ignoring them. Right now it looks like neither is happening. That is not a technical problem. It is an accountability problem, and it belongs to the agencies buying these systems and the city councils approving them.
Who should care: Lawyers · Privacy officers · Compliance · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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