Public Records Request Returns 4.6M License Plate Scans From Oakland PD 113
schwit1 points out a report from Ars Technica on how they used a public records request to acquire an entire License Plate Reader dataset from the Oakland Police Department. The dataset includes 4.6 million total reads from 1.1 million unique plates. They built a custom visualization tool to demonstrate how this data could be abused. "For instance, during a meeting with an Oakland city council member, Ars was able to accurately guess the block where the council member lives after less than a minute of research using his license plate data. Similarly, while "working" at an Oakland bar mere blocks from Oakland police headquarters, we ran a plate from a car parked in the bar's driveway through our tool. The plate had been read 48 times over two years in two small clusters: one near the bar and a much larger cluster 24 blocks north in a residential area—likely the driver's home." Though the Oakland PD has periodically deleted data to free up space — the 4.6 million records were strewn across 18 different Excel spreadsheets with hundreds of thousands of lines each — there is no formal retention limit.
Re:Excel spreadsheets? (Score:5, Insightful)
They probably meant CSVs.
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Where are mod points when I need them? Thanks for the laugh.
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Sounds like something an inexperienced kid would say. CSV can be imported into any other data tool on the planet. There is nothing more robust or future-proof than CSV.
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Excel spreadsheets are what "The Business" uses when "you IT folks" can't make a "reasonable" system that retains all data forever fast enough.
Is it too late to eradicate The Business from workspeak? It's gone too far where I spend most of my days, and now we have a guy who will refer to a single person as The Business and invoke The Business when asking for anything he doesn't want us to question. In one email exchange with him going back and forth talking about The Business, I deduced that The Business really did not know what it wanted and was making nonsensical requests. In trying to get a representative for The Business that I could talk to d
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The Business is a generic alias for "whoever" is doing the asking. It's a polite way to not point fingers at crazy requests.
It is usually those that have just mastered Excel for The Business that are causing the problems. I've seen Excel workbooks which referenced other workbooks and did queries against Access and SQL databases. I was amazed that it worked.
Retention (Score:2)
Big deal ... not! (Score:2)
If you have a drivers license, the cops already have your address - they don't need to guess. There are still too many people driving around with expired plates and no insurance.
They need to sell this ... (Score:2)
... to advertisers, insurance companies, NSA ...
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I would ask you the same - did YOU read the text above - it says that they were able to figure out the home address of a city councilor - not exactly private information, and someone who was parked at a bar near a police station and in a residential area - probably a bar employee. No mention whatsoever of tracking a cops plates
If you own a home, pay municipal taxes, are on a voting list, sued or gotten sued, have gotten married or divorced recently, your name and address are publicly available. Please loos
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I pointed out that the councilors exact home address was already public record, so there was no need to get an approximate address by going through millions of records, and that your claim that they got the officers plate was not backed up by the text (summary) that you referred to - you made an unwarranted assumption.
So now you change the goalposts. Okay - why would you even want information about someone who you don't even know who they are, where they are, where they live or work, or what? How would you
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One reason I can think of for wanting to know all those details about a complete stranger could be so that I can break into their house and steal stuff.
You can already get that from their twitter feed or facebook page, and it's much more dependable.
It's also defeated if they own a big dog - the burglar will go elsewhere.
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> It also won't tell you where someone's been who takes public transit, rides a bicycle, rollerblades, or walks. That's a good chunk of the population that is totally off the radar to this.
You're correct. "They" will just track your phone's WiFi MAC address around town, and your face with cameras.
You seem to be ignoring the incremental nature of us frogs and the increasingly hot water we're sitting in.
The more data sets available for correlation, the more accurate and complete a picture "they" can get.
Y
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There is no Spy vs Spy character hiding behind trash cans at your subway station watching your every move. This stuff is automated Big Data with a dash of expert system and AI wizardry sprinkled on top
We can agree to disagree about whether this stuff is a valid concern for the average individual. But when things like laws, public policy, and commercial interests (insurance rates, hiring practices, etc.) are heavily influenced by what the Eye of Sauron sees, everyone should be concerned about what is colle
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And that's why we have laws to prevent misuse. And why we'll pass more laws as more problems arise. Other countries manage to do it.
Besides, if someone doesn't want to hire me because of who I am, I don't want to work there.
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Dude, just chill. Everyone knows WTF the reference is to, regardless of the scientific accuracy. It's referenced in literature, movies, TV. Just get over yourself.
If I had used "proverbial frogs" in my post, would that have not knotted your undies so badly?
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Re:Big deal ... not! (Score:5, Insightful)
They can also figure out the address of anywhere you go regularly. That means your workplace, your friends' homes, the bar you hang out at, your mistresses' house, your drug dealer, etc.... any of which could open you up to blackmail or worse.
That last one might -- might -- be a valid thing for the cops to care about, but the rest aren't. Yet they still have the information, and that's a problem. Remember, even if you aren't a criminal, the cop looking through the records might be.
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No they can't. I take public transit, bicycle, and walk (you know - BMW - bus, metro, walk). Anyone who doesn't want to be tracked can do the same, and it will be good for the environment, their waistline, and their budget as well.
They're more likely to catch you going to a drug dealer or prostitute by keeping a watch on them than on you. The Obama and Bush Jr had drug problems - nobody cares. And Clinton - well, in the end nobody cared about Lewinsky and everyone else either.
You won't get far blackmailin
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So what? What is everyone so paranoid about? Just who is going to use that data against you? The only people who can be blackmailed are those who can be shamed. We have universal health care and drug care up here, so the government knows I've got PTSD and major depressive disorder, that I've had my antidepressant meds changed 4 time in the last year, and that I see a psychiatrist on a regular basis. Nobody can blackmail me with that because I don't care - it's not something to be ashamed of.
They also know
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I've never used that argument. Peoples privacy wishes SHOULD be respected. At the same time, I think that the more open you are about yourself, the more other people will get to know the real you and trust you.
In a way it's a trade-off. But really, people are talking about blackmail and other paranoid examples of how your private info can be used against you by the police, the government, big business, etc. You know, the "usual suspects." That's more than a bit paranoid.
One of the examples is how you can
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Big deal, yes (Score:1)
Yes, that works great in places where
a) Public transit service is good (and actually operates during your working hours or when you're planning to travel)
b) The destination is located near enough to home to allow for walking
c) Ditto [b] for biking, and isn't too steep
d) You live somewhere without winter, otherwise scratch (b) and (c) once it snows.
Around here, if you don't have a vehicle, you've got a 3rd-class lifestyle. Grocery trips take multiple transfers and over an hour travel instead of 10 minutes (a
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You're free to move to where there's decent public transit and where everything is within 10-15 km of home. If you can't walk that in a couple of hours you really need to get out more.
One of the grocery stores I use is about 3-4 km away. In the summer, I hitch a folding grocery buggy to my bike. In the winter, in the snow, I walk it. An hour each way is no big deal. It's good exercise, and at 20 below, you'll walk briskly enough to get there fast.
As for biking in winter, plenty of cities now clear bicycle [mtlblog.com]
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Yes, because the PERFECT solution to the world's problems is to cram more humans into a small area, right!? Never mind issues of space, crowding, affordability, etc...
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Yes, but that still doesn't cover a lot of places.
Here: City of 100k, 400km (248mi) from the nearest 1,000,000+ city,
My house: 8km (~5mi) from city center
Bus service: 7:00am->9:00pm hourly. Weekend service ends sooner. Some holidays with no service. Uptown (where much of the shopping is) requires a transfer in town.
Hardly a McMansion, and not far from city center, but also no way to get by without a car when you work late/early hours, are on-call, and/or don't otherwise want to walk through thick snow in
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Remember, even if you aren't a criminal, the RANDOM PERSON looking through the records might be.
This information is available through FOIA request. So, FTFY.
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Maybe we should re-examine our assumption of "potential damage from privacy concerns." What damage, really? Most people get so worried that their darkest secrets will be revealed. In an age when alcoholic crack-smoking politicians get re-elected (Rob Ford comes to mind), nobody really cares what you do, as long as you're not hurting yourself.
Case in point - a decade ago one of our federal politicians was asked if she smoked weed. Her answer? "Hell, yes. And I inhaled." Nobody cares. It's getting VERY hard
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Celebrities deal with what the majority thinks. Everyone else has to deal with the people around them, whose beliefs and actions can significantly deviate from the public at large. For a regular person, your sexual preference or religion (just to name two examples) can still invite prejudice and violence in some areas of the country.
Given how quickly and severely those prejudices can change, I would just assume keep my privacy. Just look at the reaction to those following Islam pre- and post-9/11. While
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Celebrities deal with what the majority thinks. Everyone else has to deal with the people around them, whose beliefs and actions can significantly deviate from the public at large. For a regular person, your sexual preference or religion (just to name two examples) can still invite prejudice and violence in some areas of the country.
Of course, but it's better to stand up and be counted than to be on your knees in shame. Otherwise, you've given your tacit approval to being mistreated. Act like you're ashamed of who or what you are, and people will use that against you, same as in a schoolyard where the kids always know who's the easiest one to pick on.
Just look at the reaction to those following Islam pre- and post-9/11
Here it's been pretty muted, except for some idiots who think that anyone who isn't white and doesn't follow their views is a non-person.
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You don't need a license plate reader to discover vehicles with expired registration or that are uninsured. The insurance companies already report to the DMV, as required by state law. And the DMV really does know who has been renewing registration or at least filing the proper PNO forms (planned non-operation), because they've fined me on being late in the past and threatened to suspend my driver's license if I didn't sort it out by their deadline.
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I dealt with this. Plead no contest to driving without insurance because I didn't have it on me at the time and couldn't make the court date (had a mfg job, it was 2009 and 1/3rd of the company was laid off that month). I asked if I could swing by the police station later and show my insurance, he said said no- bring it to court. So plead no contest ($149 fine, cheaper than losing my job I thought). Was put on SR22 insurance and 4 years later during a 2 week thanksgiving vacation I let my insurance lapse fo
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You still need the license plate reader to catch the people without valid license plates. Sending a notice to their (probably former) address won't do anything.
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What did the authorities say when you reported this violation?
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Due to a project I've worked on I know that depending on the state, that most likely 20-30% of of vehicles do not have valid insurance. I've heard this both from high level BMV and law enforcement. Just because you pass a law does not mean that it will be obeyed.
Sort of redundant (Score:2)
Re:Sort of redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is a common, but flawed, response to many types of privacy invasion. The thing is, scale matters. The aggregation of lots of data that could otherwise only be had by exerting effort (following someone, staking out a home, etc.) reduces the level of effort required to infringe someone's privacy, and greatly increases the chances that someone's privacy will be infringed. This is why forcing cops to get warrants is considered a good part of the justice system, while the mass "perusal" of aggregated information is considered bad (for privacy).
Aggregation of data is an invasion of privacy because it lowers the level of effort and increases the chances of an invasion of privacy? Nobody is going to test that tortured logic? You're fighting a losing battle against time and technology with this thinking.
Nobody needs a warrant or special permission to tail someone in public. Intuition is not a violation of privacy. Anyone can aggregate this information, and anyone can collect it. A single smartphone could sweep up thousands of plates a day, and a
Re:Sort of redundant (Score:4, Interesting)
The risk of large scale surveillance is that it can generate data sets that can be mined for information. Tracking can show networks of friends, attendance at political rallies, books read, movies watched, foods and alcohol consumed. Does this pattern match for a potential terrorist - can't prove anything, but maybe you shouldn't keep your job at Lockheed, or should get extra screening at the airport? Did you watch "little miss sunshine" too many times for your demographic - could mean you are a pedophile - maybe you shouldn't have a job as a school teacher - think of the children.
Which political information should you see? Candidates can target their adds to YOU specifically. Same for news, and advertising.
Maybe you don't get enough sleep, or are found to meet women ( or other men) at bars and take them home. Sounds like "statistically" you might be a health risk and your insurance rates will go up.
Large scale tracking, data collection and analysis allow for statistical pattern matches. The public might be happy that a new system has a only 1% failure rate, and only a 10% false positive rate for recognizing people who are a danger to children - unless you are in that 10%
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1.1 MILLION people?? (Score:3, Informative)
This is bulk surveillance data, you could not follow 1.1 million people around individually, but the police clearly are logging the location and time where they go via automatic number plate readers.
Imagine the sort of data Uber God mode offers. That one 'an employee' said was used to track a journalist critical of them, and he was promptly sacked.
Who is with whom, who is having an affair with who, where their kids go to school, if they see a source of a story, or investigate something, all that location da
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All this information could also be legally found out by following a person around.
Nope.
Guess you've never heard of computers, searches, and automated agents.
I'm confused. How does a computer help someone follow me around? The cost to follow a person loosely would be $50k minimum, more likely $150k. To follow a person more tightly (follow them if they know and are trying to lose you) is going to cost more than $1M per person followed per year. That's why the police loves it. They can track everyone in the area for one low cost.
Past data vs future data (Score:3, Insightful)
Past data - With access to this data, I can see where you've been. Last week, last month, last year
Anti-abortion protestors in Texas (Score:5, Insightful)
The anti-abortion protestors already do this, they record license plates at abortion clinics and try to follow people. This would give them a big chunk of surveillance data to locate where they live, their job, the kids schools, their friends, their hangouts, their shopping mall,....
They've committed no crime, so why do the police keep innocent peoples data?
Why would you put the private data of innocent people in the hands of every random nutter, some of which have a uniform and a gun?
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obscure (Score:1)
Slide on TFA says that the reads are taken from the IR camera. I have wondered in the past if illuminating the license with IR, or covering the license with a film which has different IR and optical properties might be enough to screw up the OCR. Intersting.
Wrong place at the wrong time.... (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest fear of this technology is that people may be investigated for no reason other than that their car was seen in close proximity to where a crime was committed. Police and district attorneys have been found to fit the evidence to match an individual. This has lead to, at a minimum an extended "interview" at the police station, and at a maximum being put to death. Was your car parked at the entrance to an alley while you picked up a pizza at the same time somebody was raped in the alley? How much money do you have for an attorney?
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Not only this, be ready for much more when every cop car in the country has license plate scanners installed. Driving in residential neighborhood past sunset other than where your plates are registered at? Get ready to be pulled over and have to explain to some cop why you are there.
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I got pulled by one and thought it was bs at first. "No, something is screwed up." Turns out my insurance had lapsed because I screwed up auto pay, and therefore my license had been suspended. He was facing traffic and I even looked at him when I passed, but his plate reader was mounted on his trunk. All in all, as much as I felt screwed, I'm kinda glad he pulled me and I didn't find out by getting into an accident without insurance.
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Probably would not be useful to exonerate as it would only say where your car was, not where you were. For some reason, circumstantial incriminating evidence is is often more likely to be accepted than exculpatory evidence. Of course, it should be the other way around. A good defense lawyer flips this back in your favor.
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My biggest fear of this technology is that people may be investigated for no reason other than that their car was seen in close proximity to where a crime was committed.
Your second biggest fear should be that the police will CLAIM your car was near a crime, so why don't you come in and chat, meanwhile they're seeking to prosecute you for ANOTHER crime.
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My biggest fear of this technology is that people may be investigated for no reason other than that their car was seen in close proximity to where a crime was committed.
So... you'd completely ignore that information, or what?
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My biggest fear of this technology is that people may be investigated for no reason other than that their car was seen in close proximity to where a crime was committed.
My biggest fear is that this technology will be used to investigate anyone who challenges the powerful. Like the way the FBI tried to blackmail MLK Jr. [eff.org] The ability to retroactively look back at anyone's movements means that even if today you are utterly boring and of no interest to anyone beyond your friends and family, the minute you do become interesting to someone with enough power, they can "press rewind" on your life and start looking for ways to get leverage on you.
This is why these can't be public records (Score:2)
Just like cameras on police. There needs to be a retention policy and those policies need to be met unless there's a reason to retain them longer (like a court order).
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Just like cameras on police.
Actually, just like cameras on police, this data should not be automatically released to the public. If a journalist makes a FOI request, the police should be required to tell them how many license plates were scanned, how the data was used, how many prosecutions/convictions resulted, etc. But the bulk data should NOT have been released. Likewise with cop cams. If the cop interviews a rape victim, there is no reason that the video should be released to the public so it can be posted on Youtube.
Re: This is why these can't be public records (Score:1)
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You my friend have never worked in government...
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wow.. resounding success though.. (Score:1)
"four LPR units for 16 months, it had read 793,273 plates and had 2,012 hits—a “hit rate” of 0.2 percent"
Depending on what counts as a hit... (too many traffic tickets count or only get away cars/stolen cars?) this is a really big success.
That comes out to about 377 instances where a car was wanted by the cops found per camera per year. A cop doing that manually would get what? 1 a year?
At that rate I might actually get my stolen car back. Fix the privacy issues so we can roll this out
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Did those hits actually result in a vehicle being stopped and possibly recovered? I seem to remember seeing several cases where police departments were collecting all this data but only ever using it for pet cases and ignoring plenty of low hanging fruit. The one that sticks out in my memory at the moment was were a wanted person's vehicle, drove past the same camera's everyday on the same schedule but they never checked to see if the wanted person was driving it.
Ubiquity is unavoidable (Score:4, Interesting)
This technology is already available in the flying world-- where FlightAware [flightaware.com] makes a plane tracker that publishes flight data from the skies to the public.
Take away lesson is your data will be mined. If you think license plate data is a breach, just wait for ubiquitous facial recognition data going to the public domain.
Brave new world!
Re:Ubiquity is unavoidable (Score:4, Informative)
Even if the police make this data private, the general population will jump in to make this (and most) data such as this freely available.
Actually, there are private companies [consumerist.com] that already do this. They drive around streets and parking lots scanning people's license plates. Then they aggregate that information on a national level to resell to other companies. This data is really handy for car/truck repos, private detectives, and stalker exes.
And the information they have dwarves any information the police department has themselves. It's such a new area, it's not regulated yet.
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This weekend I saw a guy apparently picnicking across the road from my house. After a while I went over to see WTF, and turns out he was working for a mapping company (and the company drone was flying overhead, snapping photos). He told me that their maps are accurate to within 1/8th inch.
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Seattle does the same thing (Score:2)
Far fetched (Score:2)
"For instance, during a meeting with an Oakland city council member, Ars was able to accurately guess the block where the council member lives after less than a minute of research using his license plate data"
Couldn't they just get the address from the same place they got his license plate data?