The Rapid Rise of License Plate Readers 302
An anonymous reader writes "Today, tens of thousands of license plate readers (LPRs) are being used by law enforcement agencies all over the country—practically every week, local media around the country report on some LPR expansion. But the system's unchecked and largely unmonitored use raises significant privacy concerns. License plates, dates, times, and locations of all cars seen are kept in law enforcement databases for months or even years at a time. In the worst case, the New York State Police keeps all of its LPR data indefinitely. No universal standard governs how long data can or should be retained."
privacy? (Score:2)
I thought we past thinking we had any privacy left.
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Your license plate is always showing. I don't understand how anyone can claim it's private.
Re:privacy? (Score:4, Funny)
I think we need to attach infrared camera "discouragement" to the back of our cars.
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Re:privacy? (Score:4, Interesting)
license plates have light for illumination so they can be read. those light just might some how start imitating more energy in the IR part of the spectrum than before.
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license plates have light for illumination so they can be read. those light just might some how start imitating more energy in the IR part of the spectrum than before.
As far as I know there are rules requiring certain lights on a car, and often also ban certain lights that can cause misunderstandings or similar, but lights that emit invisible light cannot cause any problems as they are - invisible. I cannot see how a ring of strong infrared lights around a license plate can be a problem as this light is completely invisible to humans. That most cameras doesn't filter it out isn't a problem traffic-wise; but recordings and pictures may be useless due to light flooding.
I'v
Re:privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your license plate is always showing. I don't understand how anyone can claim it's private.
I don't know why we need to go through this every damn time; but here goes:
Tracking and correlation. Yes, obviously, a license plate is visible, and passers-by have always been able to see them. However, without a network of passers-by observing license plates on every corner, and chattering amongst themselves about which ones are seen where, when, that means almost nothing. Only the most overtly memorable and/or suspicious license plate would merit accurate memory of time/place, much less multiple time/place recordings allowing for inferences about travel.
With automation and machine vision, highly accurate recording and correlation across fairly broad areas, in space and time, becomes relatively easy and cheap.
Surely this difference is obvious?
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I don't know why we need to go through this every damn time; but here goes:
We have to go over it "every damn time" because people keep saying that publicly visible things are somehow privacy invasions. Once people stop claiming that then people will stop correcting them.
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is not a public invasion
is not a privacy invasion.
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I see trying to stop the lawful gathering of public data as a bigger affront to our rights than actually collecting it.
Our rights? No. This is about the government attempting to record everyone, everywhere. It will not take away our rights if we decide that we don't want our tax dollars used for this purpose.
I think it's the actions that are taken based on the data that become a concern, and that's where the controls need to be placed.
No. Then the system will already be set up, and it's too late. Given the actions of our government and governments throughout history, I don't believe that allowing them to set this up is an intelligent decision. Even if it's "for the children" or "to stop the terrorists."
Re:privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of our laws are written around the fact that we are humans. For example, there are pretty severe laws about pouring certain chemicals into the ground, but very different laws about pouring clean water into the ground, because as humans certain chemicals could greatly poison the ground and groundwater, while pouring water into the ground is only unlawful when it's a waste of clean water in a drought. If human physiology were different, these laws would be different.
The laws and customs related to public privacy are all based around the concept that humans have poor memories, which are often forgotten in moments, and are most certainly forgotten in days, months, and years, and are absolutely forgotten upon in about a century. Moreover, any "memories" which are more durable require extensive human time and effort to produce and catalog - something which is very expensive and thus limited.
Our laws and customs were designed taking this into account. Now, after however many centuries of development of our laws and customs, in the last five years we have means to augment fundamental human nature. Those that only understand the letter of the laws and customs written long ago see this as changing nothing, for they view the letters in a vacuum and ignore human nature. Those that understand the spirit of the laws and customs understand that they were established for a given time and place, and if the circumstances change the laws and customs should as well.
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Those resources may be limited, but from an individual's point of view they might not be. A famous celebrity may find that there are paparazzis following her all the time, the police can be following a suspected mafia boss almost constantly. People can hire private investigators to follow their SO around because they suspect they're sleeping with somebody else, no celebrity status or criminal activity required. Hell, if you avoid harassing them and turning into a stalker you can probably do it yourself. If
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Celebrities are defined as public figures. I think the concept of public figures exists to separate those "more memorable" people from the private citizenry. Even then, though, as with your private investigator and police/mafia suggestions, creation and cataloging of those memories are time-consuming and thus expensive, and they are rarely retroactive.
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The celebs want the attention and there picture in the news so people remember them other wise they would not make money off of their name appearing in a movie.
normal people don't want stalked. we have law against people doing so.
the gov seems to think that its okay if they do, because they would never do anything to you unless you were doing something wrong, why are you afraid unless your feeling guilty? what did you do? i think you need to come in for interigation.
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It means they can ( and will ) track people that visit other people or places or meetings that they classify as "subversive" - like political parties they dissagree with. Like people organizing labor. Like people who are members of pro-pot groups. Socialists. Anti-totalitarianists... SUBVERSIVE TYPES LIKE YOU......
Re:privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Your license plate is always showing. I don't understand how anyone can claim it's private.
With automation and machine vision, highly accurate recording and correlation across fairly broad areas, in space and time, becomes relatively easy and cheap.
Surely this difference is obvious?
On the other hand unmarked police cars have been able to follow your car wherever it goes without a warrant, and that was not considered a privacy violation. While it would be unusual to think you're being followed by the police, it wouldn't be considered to be contravening your rights or your expectations of privacy. Traditionally the expectation of privacy has been about what, when, and where the state can observe as opposed to the level of convenience a method affords. What precedents would you consider
Re:privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that there are two issues that don't get consciously acknowledged enough; but that are assumed when a 'what, when, and where' style privacy expectation is formed...
The first is ubiquity(which is almost identical to cost, over a modest time horizon). Being shadowed by a cop, say, costs nontrivial money. I don't have an absolute protection against being shadowed; but I do have a reasonable expectation that I would only be followed if there were some reason to go to the trouble(an analogous case might be the assorted awkwardness that facebook photo-tagging has spawned: Obviously, I can't claim to have any privacy right to the visible fact that I showed up at a party; but, historically, my presence there would likely only be remembered by my friends, or if I were a celebrity, or if I did a naked kegstand. Now, even the most tedious attendees are recorded in trivially searchable form).
The second is inference: With more advanced technology, you can gain new insights from old data. The hunting-grow-ops-with-FLIRcams cases are a good example: Do you have a privacy right to the outside of your house? Umm, it's outside and visible from the street... How about the inside? Now, with new imaging technology, I can draw strong inferences about the inside of your house just by looking at the outside. Once the fancy terahertz stuff gets cheaper and more compact, this should get even more dramatic. In these cases, new technology means that information in which I don't have a privacy interest can now be, with some clever math, turned into information that I do have a privacy interest in. This presents a bit of a problem.
Re:privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand unmarked police cars have been able to follow your car wherever it goes without a warrant, and that was not considered a privacy violation.
Without a warrant, but not without a police-related reason.
In the UK, there was a court case that explained that very well: A police officer claimed to be injured and collected pay without working, but his employer (the police) didn't quite believe him, so they watched his home to see if he was as badly injured as he claimed. He wasn't, it ended up in court, and there was the question whether the police was allowed to do what they did.
Result: While your employer is allowed to check whether you leave your home when you claim you are too sick to work, the police isn't. They have powers/rights that normal people and companies don't have, and with those rights come obligations, so they can't just watch you. However, in this case the police was actually the employer, and as an employer, they can do what other employers can do.
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Or move to a country that doesnt track its citizens using license plates. Or you know make your vote and voice count in your own country and limit these.
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What foreign languages do you speak? Because last I checked, the UK was the US's lap dog, with most of the other English-speaking Commonwealth nations falling quickly into line.
No, you pretty much have two options: put up with it or find a way to fight it (preferrably legally, either in the court system or in the court of public opinion). If you don't fight tyranny wherever it begins, it will eventually spread to wherever you went to avoid it. And then it's too late.
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Nope. Public is public. Don't like having a license plate? Don't own a car.
Says an Anonymous Coward...
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Don't worry, citizen. We are more than capable of tracking you with facial recognition.
—B.B.
Don't like being tracked? Don't have a face. No, wait....
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so should i ware as mask and look like a serial killer/anonymous-occupy member?
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Don't like being tracked? Don't have a face. No, wait....
Just put on glasses... it worked for Superman/Clark Kent!
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Similarly, no one is claiming the heat escaping your house is private, but you still need a warrant to use an infrared camera to "see" inside someone's house. Even though the camera works by seeing what *leaves* the house.
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Yes but it used to be that you had to physically see it for it to be of any use.
E.g. Police are looking for a stolen car with the plate ABC - 1234
Or you are pulled over and they run your plate to double check.
It was never there so police could track where you have gone for the last 5 years.
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Being able to identify someone with a license plate is not the problem, but when does recognition become monitoring a tracking the movements of individuals? Would you want the police to be monitoring your every move all the time, even if you are not doing anything illegal? This is the issue, the "keeping records" part needs to go away. Make it so any license plates scanned are removed from the system after 30 minutes, unless a ticket is given, and it should again be deleted if there is no reason to
Re:privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you would be OK with the entire contents of this database being made public? So not just the police, but your boss or your ex-girlfriend being able to look up your location whenever they want?
No? That's not OK? Well now that we've established that it's reasonable to feel uncomfortable with some public data being known by some members of the public, can you understand why I'd feel uncomfortable with the police having that information?
If it's truly public, it should be available to anyone and everyone. If it's not truly public, the police should have to get a warrant before they access it.
What they don't know, Google does (Score:5, Informative)
Every Android device is constantly tracked by Google. You can see this on Google Maps...check out the accuracy and detail of the traffic overlay. Apple does the same thing with iPhones. Both companies comply willingly with law enforcement requests for tracking data. So not only can they read your plate, but they can tell who is in the car with you, where you go, and where you stay.
Is all this information good, or bad? YES! This information can be used to bring about justice, or it can be grossly abused.
Re:What they don't know, Google does (Score:4, Funny)
That way, if you ever break any laws, no matter how unjust they may be, we can make sure you are justly punished.
Of course why would you have anything to fear if you're innocent? Are you hiding something? Think of the CHILDREN. We have to DO SOMETHING about all this crime.
Poisoning the database (Score:4, Insightful)
How about we make a bunch of signs that are pictures of different license plates, and place them randomly about town? Swap them out every few days, and change the plates, and soon the cops DB will be full of bad data.
Or pull a Little Bobby Tables, and have an image of a plate that ends in an SQL injection
Rise of the License Plate Reader. (Score:5, Funny)
Today's reading club will be focusing on a little gem in the same vein as the ever popular 50 Shades of Grease:
IB6 UB9
Mmmm, that it's made by a convict is all the more racy!
Re:Rise of the License Plate Reader. (Score:4, Funny)
Redmond police seem to always be tracking my license plate number - B16B00B5
Er, didn't we just cover this on /. ? (Score:2)
Er, didn't we just cover this on /. ?
Minneapolis Police Catalog License Plates and Location Data
http://yro.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=12/08/11/0024218 [slashdot.org]
Waste of money (Score:3)
As a resident of NYS, the highest taxed state in the country, the expense of this is far more upsetting to me than the privacy implications.
I see a lot of negative posts on this (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't there any love for police here being able to do their job more effectively? Every civilized nation needs a police force. So even if you don't like the current government, a new government still would need police. We should therefore help our police to be empowered to solve the crimes they're commonly tackling.
Re:I see a lot of negative posts on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't there any love for police here being able to do their job more effectively?
The police should have just enough resources to do their job.
So to find stolen cars or cars used in recent crimes, do you need a license plate database stretching back 1 week? 6 months? 2 years? 10 years?
The problem isn't the police doing their job more effectively, it's the lack of limits on the information they are gathering to do their job.
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I don't see a problem with that, either. Real-time scanning and correlation automates the lookups they are already doing. The problem is when the cops build up a database of all license plates instead of just "hot" vehicles. Persistent storage enables chilling new "resea
Yes, but... (Score:3)
Sure, one wants the police to have good tools. The thing is, these tools should only be used in genuine criminal cases.
How about this:
- The license plate scanners are great, they run all the time, scanning every plate they see.
- The data on the plate (this car was here at this time) only if the plate is in a list of accepted cases. Otherwise the data is immediately discarded
- A plate can only be placed in the list if the car has been reported as stolen, or if a judge has issued a warrant.
- Plates may only r
Re:I see a lot of negative posts on this (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't there any love for police here being able to do their job more effectively?
No there isn't and there is a very simple reason for this.
People who regularly break traffic laws will have to stop complaining about the police and start taking responsibility for breaking the traffic laws. This is unconscionable to the speeder, tailgater, weaver and lane hog. Their inability to drive within the rules is so clearly not their fault, it must be "revenue raising" or some such and they should for no reason drive within the speed limit, at a safe distance nor exercise proper lane discipline. Worse yet, it would mean they would have to admit their ability to drive is somewhat less than perfect, again this is so wrong it cannot even be considered.
ICE? (Score:3)
As a result of this rapid expansion of private monitoring, the company recently won a $25,000 contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide a database that would help locate "fugitive aliens."
I don't get it. What does an agency whose primary mandate is to shut down Web sites and seize domain names need LPR data for? Are people driving server farms around in trucks?
Maybe it is time to create the Slashdot Party?? (Score:5, Funny)
That may not be as crazy at it sounds.
Is there a path to the best of both worlds? (Score:4, Interesting)
I see two common responses to this:
1) This technology will lead to a loss of privacy and abuses by police, therefore it should be stopped
or
2) This technology will enable police to find and catch criminals more quickly and effectively, therefore it should be allowed.
The truth is, both reactions are correct -- but the issue is typically presented as a tradeoff: we can have our privacy OR better law enforcement, but not both.
But what fun is that? I want both. And since we are all clever Bagginses here on Slashdot, perhaps someone can think of an LPR system that would allow police to track down criminals quickly, and yet still by highly resistant to privacy loss or abuse. I recognize that such a design is non-trivial, but in a world where people come up with clever systems such as BitCoin, I don't think it's necessarily impossible either. It just takes some serious thought, and getting past the "ooh, new technology is scary" stage.
Driving is a privilege not a right (Score:2, Insightful)
They can require a great many things of you for being allowed to drive on the public road system. Car insurance for example; you don't have to buy it but then you do not have to drive.
You could be required to have unique IDs on your car for easy identification (aka license plates) and you have no recourse unless you get a huge number of voters together to change that requirement.
If you do not want to be tracked, you will have to use another means of transportation - you have the right to primitive mobility
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The government is not your mom. The government is simply a collection of falliable people just like me. Who gave them the right to say what is a right and what isn't?
Trotting out this nonsense that driving is a "privilege" when it's one that nearly everyone has and is just about required to be a functional adult in many places is simply stupid.
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perhaps someone can think of an LPR system that would allow police to track down criminals quickly, and yet still by highly resistant to privacy loss or abuse.
And who would control this system? Who would fund all this? The government is what comes to mind. I hardly trust them with anything as it is...
It just takes some serious thought, and getting past the "ooh, new technology is scary" stage.
The problem isn't that the new technology is scary; the problem is how it's being used.
They use the same justifications for organizations like the TSA. "Some people are criminals, so everyone must accept a loss of freedom in exchange for what is quite possibly just security theater." They seem to be quite adept at punishing everyone for the actions of a few.
Gee (Score:3)
Your navigating thousands of pounds of metal at high speed with a UUID at least on one end of it, if not two
who would want to keep an eye on that? Fuck I get annoyed by the same GFD hillbilly who is doing 100+ in a 1992 chevy truck with 6 inch pipes sticking out of the back of the cab 2 foot above the roofline every single day. I know their vehicle, shit I even know their license plate, whats the difference if I report it or a camera does?
Yea I am being tracked as well, but theres this thing called an if statement ... if (driver == asshole) flag; else break
overblown (Score:3, Interesting)
FUHHHHRRRRRREEEEDDOOOOOMM!!! (Score:3)
Because every American citizen has a Gawd-given right to run over pedestrians anonymously. Unless those pedestrians are a group of iPhone-carrying hipsters.
We've had it in britain for years (Score:3)
Almost everywhere you go in britain now (certainly in big cities) you see ANPR cameras slung up above the road. Sure, it has helped catch a few criminals but at what cost to personal privacy? You could argue that no one should be allowed curtains in their house because that way the police could see any crimes being committed such as burglary or rape. But I can't see many people going along with that. The current generation of politicians and police commanders just can't see the road to hell they're leading us down.
cop's wife (Score:3)
A famous person committed suicide some years ago here. Police stats showed that her 'police record' was accessed a couple of thousand times by cops that had nothing to do with the case.
They abuse the system to check upon there new neighbor, the daughters bf and the likes.
A centralized system detecting licence plates will now be used to check upon the wife and kids more often than the original intent.
It's just one big google for them.
It seems easy to fool (Score:3)
I always imagine that these tools, and it seems there are more of them each day, will lead to complacency, the evidence seems so very compelling when it comes from such a fancy system. However, one day someone will game the system; maybe the villain just bolted his license plates onto the back of some unsuspecting stooge's car, or had a second set of plates, or even put out a dozen sets of duplicate plates, or put different plates on the front and the back of the car or do any number of things that simply makes the system unreliable.
Then the system will wind up providing an alibi for someone we would all have rather seen in gaol and its veracity will go unchallenged because it is so whiz-bang.
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Since that could be done without warrant, this is obviously perfectly fine, and not even worth thinking about.
Re:wait, I thought stuff like this & tripwire (Score:5, Insightful)
All that tells us is that legally, it isn't an technically an invasion of privacy, per se. However, the potential for abuse is almost unlimited, and as such, it is not something the government (or any private party, either) should ever be allowed to do—not for privacy reasons, but because it gives the government nearly unlimited power over the people. As Jefferson once put it, "A government afraid of its citizens is a democracy; citizens afraid of government is tyranny."
The big thing you're missing is that the public would never authorize the expenditure for such a colossal waste of resources if this were done with humans, which means that although that could theoretically be done, it can't happen in practice. One reason the public would never authorize it is that it would be one very large step towards the panopticon, towards the world of Big Brother, etc. It would massively creep out the public to see twenty police officers on every street corner, to the point that everyone would feel constantly afraid for their freedom—afraid to say or do anything, for fear that they might accidentally cross some line and get arrested. That is the essence of totalitarianism.
Cameras on every corner are really no different from officers on every corner. What makes them far more dangerous is that they are less daunting psychologically—less likely to cause the public to realize the risk they pose—yet the totalitarian threat they represent is exactly the same. This means that they represent a way for government to take enormous strides towards increasing its power over the people without the public ever noticing. Nothing could be more dangerous to democracy and freedom. Not all the tin-pot dictators in the world, not the corrupt politicians in the pockets of big business, not terrorists, not whatever country we're ostensibly at military war or cold war with. Nothing.
The nature of government is to march determinedly towards totalitarianism. In a free society, it is the public's greatest responsibility to periodically push them back with such vigor that they are forced to retreat to a more balanced position. This is potentially a very large step towards totalitarianism. It is, therefore, the public's supreme duty, in the face of such an overstep, to slap the government's hand and say, "No. Bad government. No cookie." As it is oft said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
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What abuse could be gathered from someone knowing where a car was at some time? Perhaps that it was there... and nothing else?
Just because a car is somewhere doesnt mean you were there.
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Tell that to the people on a grand jury, oh wait you have no defense on a grand jury, and you have no knowledge that one is being conducted. And then when it gets to the trial that is there to put you away for what ever they can think of (remember there are oh so many laws on the books that are simply unenforced but still in effect including bans on sodomy, not going to church on Sunday, having an affair, and many more ) you look oh so guilt, and even though it is circumstantial you sure look guilty.
Re:wait, I thought stuff like this & tripwire (Score:5, Insightful)
I just had Jury Duty this week. Simple criminal case, I wasn't picked for the jury.
But the chatter in the halls by the other potential jurors was scary:
"Well, he wouldn't be up there if he wasn't guilty."
"Someone that age should know better than to steal!"
"He looks guilty as hell."
etc.
So do YOU want to be put in front of these "peers" of yours?
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You misunderstand the concern here. Do you feel that you should be tracked and monitored by the government when you are not involved in any crimes? If there is an investigation of criminal activity, then license plate readers would be very useful, but what about rogue police officers who just decide to track the movements of individuals? Monitoring everyone in the hopes of discovering a crime goes against the idea of being innocent until proven guilty, and most people feel that it is abusive for poli
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So based on your Orwellian tautology, a totalitarian regime in the vein of 1984 would actually be demonstrative of a perfect society? It's the perfect mix of governance and enforcement.
Here's a handful of abuses a cop in his car would be able to perform:
* know where you were, every day for the past whenever
* without knowing who the driver is, observe regular driving patterns
* know where you live (or at least where the vehicle is registered - maybe you remember the concern when this became possible from a po
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The nature of government is to march determinedly towards totalitarianism. In a free society, it is the public's greatest responsibility to periodically push them back with such vigor that they are forced to retreat to a more balanced position. This is potentially a very large step towards totalitarianism. It is, therefore, the public's supreme duty, in the face of such an overstep, to slap the government's hand and say, "No. Bad government. No cookie." As it is oft said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
The worst examples of totalitarianism from the 20th Century occurred when governments lost the ability to govern either through economic calamity (e.g., the rise of the USSR and the Nazi regime) or intervention by foreign powers (e.g., American intervention in South America and the Middle East). Charismatic megalomaniacs, usually backed by a loyal military, then rise to power through the promise of a new Utopia that quickly collapses into brutal totalitarianism. The slow march of a well-intentioned, functio
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Let's see how the cops, their bosses (and mistresses?) like it when we start watching them too.
Re:wait, I thought stuff like this & tripwire (Score:4, Interesting)
This doesn't follow. Lots of common, everyday objects and activities have "potential for abuse" one could describe as "almost unlimited". Automatic weapons. Automobiles. Kitchen knives. Ball-point pens.
Is it really fair to compare these potential existential threats to the non-existential threat of the creeping invasion of privacy in the name of security? If someone abuses automatic weapons, it results in murder, but abusing LPRs is about abusing laws that were written before this technology existed to extract more fines from people. The former is obvious and elicits a sharp reaction from the media, while the latter just blends into all the other annoyances that we have come to accept in the Post 9/11 World. I would say LPRs are more like body scanners, which were installed at airports without any public comment and which are demonstrably useless at thwarting terrorists, but which justify the ever-increasing DHS/TSA budget.
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The government has proven completely unable to keep data safe (cf Wikileaks), and this is not about to change now, even if there is an election in the US.
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Re:Welcome to the Future (Score:5, Interesting)
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when everyone is suspicious, nobody is.
once the no-fly list includes everyone mexicos airports will be booming with business.
and once majority of the people end up being unable to vote they'll rally for a change the old fashioned way.
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And it will likely be replaced with a worse order.
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Get license plate spray. It works.
Only in the case of the now out-dated cameras that use a flash.
The kind of ANPR systems that have become ubiquitous in recent years don't use a flash.
However, I've been thinking that a clear license plate cover that embedded infra-red LEDs in strategic locations would be useful in obscuring the number to cameras - many (most?) of which are sensitive to IR in order to improve capture quality in low-light conditions - without being obvious to the naked eye.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really have an expectation of privacy over the license plate hanging on your car bumper?
Aren't license plates like the opposite of private?
How about very specific knowledge of where you're going and when? Because, that's what we're really talking about here.
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Do you really have an expectation of privacy over the license plate hanging on your car bumper?
Aren't license plates like the opposite of private?
How about very specific knowledge of where you're going and when? Because, that's what we're really talking about here.
No, it's general knowledge about what public street you were on at the time of the photo. It doesn't tell them anything about a specific place you are going. At best (worst?) they might see a still photo of you turning in to a parking spot or parked along a road.
Really? - You really don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's general knowledge about what public street you were on at the time of the photo. It doesn't tell them anything about a specific place you are going. At best (worst?) they might see a still photo of you turning in to a parking spot or parked along a road.
Sorry. But you don't see the whole picture. License plate readers are not just single photos. It is about movement of individuals And not just one suspect, but everyone. It is automated and turns the where-abouts of individuals into a searchable database. Combined with security cameras, face recognition, and cell phone records they can give you a very accurate description of someone's movements.
So what? NY (eh, Bloomberg) is proud, that with their new technology (provided by Microsoft) they can automatica
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thank you for stating it so that even idiots can understand.
the license plate is NOT just a bunch of numbers. it represents the state's NEW ability to store your whereabouts for years and years.
this power would never have been given to the state by our founding fathers. do you think they would have encouraged this?
that's my litmus test. would they have accepted the set of powers that the state has recently been grabbing, left and right?
your plate is not just a bunch of numbers and the fact that some rand
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Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite different when the government is using technology to automatically record everything. Just like someone seeing you walking down the sidewalk is different than you being recorded by cameras everywhere you go.
Private, public, it really doesn't matter. The citizens (in theory, at least) control the government, and they should be able to stop them from trying this nonsense.
Re:really? (Score:5, Informative)
Where I live we had a referendum against red light cameras. It passed, and now the cameras are gone. Surely the same could be done with plate tracking.
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The citizens (in theory, at least) control the government, and they should be able to stop them from trying this nonsense.
Key word here; 'theory'.
In theory that's how a democratic government works....In practice....lol, as if. Wouldn't we be so lucky!
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Private, public, it really doesn't matter. The citizens (in theory, at least) control the government, and they should be able to stop them from trying this nonsense.
I think we're way beyond that at this point. We don't control the government anymore...if we ever did.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a post just a couple above yours from a guy who's municipality had a referendum to get rid of some of this surveillance stuff and it passed and the cameras are gone.
Yes, you control your government if you're willing to exercise that control. You can even have a significant impact on the political system, simply by showing up at a local party committee meeting and speaking up. It takes time and will, which most people don't have.
And it means ignoring advertising and all political media for a while, and being very mindful of what corporations you give your money to, which is harder work than most people are willing to do.
Re:really? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, limited law enforcement resources prevented the cops from taking pictures of everyone and everything at every moment of the day.
Society's basic expectations of privacy and the laws that followed, are based upon this assumption that you could not be tracked at every second.
Not "would not be track," but "could not be tracked."
As a result, the police are operating in a grey zone.
What they're doing may be legal, but only because the law did not anticipate this.
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Do you really have an expectation of privacy over the license plate hanging on your car bumper?
Aren't license plates like the opposite of private?
License plate, sure. Records associated with your license plate, not so much. Everywhere you've been that a scanner, a camera, your toll road pass, all connected together with your address, your IRS records, your medical information, the geolocation information from your cell phone, your ISP's address assignment information along with your search history and your emails ...
Total Information Awareness in progress. Pre-Crime Division authorization soon to follow.
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You may be surprised to find out that your government already has the "records associated with your license plate".
And so do you. It's public record.
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You may be surprised to find out that your government already has the "records associated with your license plate".
And so do you. It's public record.
I'm not sure what state or country you live in, so maybe this is a local phenomena. In the state I live in the registration information associated with a license plate is not a matter of public record. You need a valid court order relating to a civil or criminal case before the department of motor vehicles will officially provide you with that information.
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What's the difference between hiring enough people to write down the license plates as people drive by?
One is not viable, and the other is. Of course, if you were somehow able to hire enough people to do the job, I'd say that would be an invasion of privacy, too.
But again, hiring the required amount of people to perform such a task is nearly impossible. People don't catch everything or have perfect memories, either.
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What's the difference between hiring enough people to write down the license plates as people drive by?
This should be the same question in almost all technology privacy questions. With enough people, could you perform the same level of tracking/facial recognition/technology boogeyman?
There is no difference in the end, the same privacy issues would arise, I dont see your point. Human or computer, it is still just as creepy and concerning.
But computers/cameras can do it way better, faster, more accurately, cheaper, require less maintenance, are smaller, less obvious, require less effort to create the system, can provide tracking data in real-time, analyse and store tracking data forever.....dude, you got all day? I could go on and on and on...
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Lol, you should check out this TV series called Mythbusters. They would laugh at your foolish lies. And then prove you utterly wrong.
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I feel like if the anarcho-libertarians around here go their way, civilians would all have modern technology while cops are forced to run around in loincloths with sharpened sticks.
No, they just wouldn't be allowed to monitor absolutely everything and everyone just because they want to catch a few people they deem criminals. How awful that is.
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It's not a matter of what technology the cops are allowed to use, it's a matter of how they use it.
Cops, with a warrant, are allowed to do all sorts of stuff. They can listen to your phone calls or search your house. As long as there's some level of checks and balances on it, I can accept that. I have this crazy idea here -- hear me out -- that before the police put together a database of everywhere my car has been pretty much forever, they should need a warrant for that too. And it'd be kind of nice if
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how's that boot taste? lick it more. mmm, that's good!
you disgust me. I do believe you are a troll since its really hard to believe that you take your own shit seriously.
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So recording personal information in a database by a private corporation (run by civilians), would be allowed to happen in your country? On public land?
So then the premise that civilians are held to a less account is clearly false then, yes?
Re:Can't have it both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
A few people taking pictures here and there is an order of magnitude different than a single organization recording everything nearly everywhere. And since citizens can (theoretically) control the government, we definitely can stop nonsense like this, and still be allowed to take pictures in public ourselves.