“Ross and Livingston trace the rise of roadway “surveillance capitalism” — a term they borrow from scholar Shoshana Zuboff — as far back as the invention of the modern driver’s license, which they say has gradually evolved into “a master key” to a vast trove of personal information well beyond what’s printed on our IDs themselves. And they say law enforcement officers don’t just draw on that trove when they pull over a driver suspected of a crime; federal agencies like the FBI and ICE also make “extensive use of their unmonitored access to DMV data,” using facial recognition software to cross-match driver’s license images with surveillance footage as they investigate crimes.

That software, though, is often prone to errors, particularly when trained on people with darker skin — as is the automated license plate reader software that many cities rely on to catch speeders and red light runners, which some studies show are wrong around 10 percent of the time. Because both kinds of technology, by their nature, are used to help search for perpetrators among of sea of innocent people, they end up cataloging vast reams of data on the movements of roadway users not suspected of any crime at all.”

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”In some ways, Livingston and Ross argue, extractive fines and extreme police harassment for even the most minor vehicle violations have been an integral part of motordom since its beginning, particularly for the people of color who shoulder an overwhelming majority of both burdens. The authors say that “revenue policing” really ballooned, though, following the tax revolts of the 1970s and ’80s, when many progressive taxes were rescinded and governments were forced to take on massive bonds to provide basic public amenities.

To service — and, eventually, collateralize — those debts, municipalities turned to criminalizing and fining the people on their roads instead, all while directing bond revenues towards autocentric infrastructure and away from public transit projects that give residents an alternative to driving and all the carceral costs that come with it.”

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”For their groundbreaking and essential new book Cars and Jails, New York University professors Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross worked with a team of formerly incarcerated peer researchers to examine what they call “the continuum between auto ownership and incarceration” in the United States. The book, though, could just as easily be called “Cars, Jails, and Money” for how inextricable our criminal justice systems are with our systems of consumer debt, corporate profit, and mass surveillance — and how impossible it will be to unravel one without confronting the others.”

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“A lot of people we were interviewing were driving pretty fancy cars. We were stroking our chins, going: How did you afford that? It turned out that some of them were walking into dealerships and being told they couldn’t get financing for the Hondas they wanted, but could for a top-of-the-line Mercedes,” Ross says. “Why would a lender and dealer do that? Because they know they’re going to be able to repossess the car quickly.”

It wasn’t the only way formerly incarcerated people were targeted. For those who were Black, the heightened risk of being pulled over meant they were vulnerable to being reincarcerated for a minor traffic violation if an officer found out they had a prior felony conviction and were on parole. “Coming out of prison, when you get behind the wheel of a car, it puts you in the spotlight,” Ross says. While working with their formerly incarcerated peer researchers on the project, Ross noted, three of them were pulled over for minor traffic violations and ended up being incarcerated again.

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