Urbana, IL – Gowri Balasubramaniam and Clara Belitz, doctoral students at Community Data Clinic and the School of Information Sciences, and Dr. Anita Chan, Associate Professor, School of Information Sciences and College of Media, and Director of the Community Data Clinic will present “Bridging Informational Divides: A Community-Centered Analysis of ‘Public Safety’ Surveillance Technology” at the ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction in May 2024 as part of alt.chi. alt.chi is described by the conference as “a forum for controversial, risk-taking, and boundary pushing research at CHI.” This paper includes a profile of Flock Safety, Inc., one of the main distributing companies of Automated License Plate Readers – ALPRs in the United States and an analysis of 54 police instances of ALPR use in solving crime in the first nine months following their installation in Champaign, IL. The paper takes a novel form in the inclusion of a accessible educational-guide, with the aim of distilling complex information into digestible formats for diverse readerships both within and outside of conventionally-recognize research networks. The work will be presented in part as a community workshop at CHI.

For additional details about the project, please visit

• The Conference Paper
• The Community Data Seminar Page
• A Research Summary Booklet