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A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

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Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#71

Post by tjfl »

chrissnell wrote: post #65
User23 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me google that for you: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/gun-sh...

"Happens at every gun show" is not the same as "happened at California gun shows". I don't like the scanning at all but this is a far cry from a national gun show surveillance program.

It's at least a far cry from an _advertised_ national gun show surveillance program. The only time I've been able to confidently identify license plate recognition is on the tollway. I don't think all of the setups are as obvious.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#73

Post by [deleted] »

Latteland wrote: post #55
PretzelFisch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be time for a group of tech people to write some initiatives to limit these kind of business models. This kind of behavior should be pretty simple to get Californians to vote for.

The hard thing would be getting enough signatures on the ballot, that costs a million bucks usually. Of course that can be powerful, consider the recent surprising rush for privacy policy legislation.

[deleted]

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#74

Post by justinjlynn »

zzleeper wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

“California malls” is too forgiving a headline. It’s one company, Irvine Company, a group with locations in the Bay Area [1]. They have phone numbers on their websites [2]. Reaching out to their retailers, particularly those with locations in Mexico, couldn’t hurt either. It might not be a bad idea to also compile a list of their retailers’ investor relations and Twitter accounts and tweet this article to them (here'…

Irvine Company is not just "one company", it's HUGE... it owns half of Orange County, Newport Beach, etc. From Wikipedia: > The Irvine Company develops suburban master-planned communities throughout central and southern Orange County, in addition to residential buildings in Santa Monica, Silicon Valley, and San Diego.[6] The company also owns and manages office buildings in Milpitas, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Downtown San…

It's the closest thing I know to the burbclave running megacorporations from Snow Crash.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#75

Post by ryanmercer »

bcassedy wrote: post #69
ryanmercer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't go on to their private property to conduct business?

So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house? It's perfectly reasonable to require companies to tell us what data they're collecting and how it will be used.

>So hole up in a cave because someone might be tracking you every time you leave the house?

Welcome to the late 20th century. Cat's out of the bag.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#76

Post by jstarfish »

danhorner wrote: post #66

I'm a little confused about the mall operator's incentive to do this. Are they using ALPR for their own security and voluntarily sharing the reads? Is the provider giving them a discount to do so or paying to place cameras or something?

A former employer of mine opted to install ALPR cameras at the entrances to/from the office park. It would establish a direct feed to the local police as to who was entering the property at any given time.

I questioned why this was necessary and received a vague hypothetical about domestic abusers/deranged exes harassing employees/kidnapping suspects entering the property, with no clear indication as to how we'd flag such individuals without them having active warrants out.

The only practical use case was perhaps catching vehicles with active Amber Alerts out that might try to hide out on the property.

So the police basically got free intel from us, and we received no incentives to install or maintain such equipment from them.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#77

Post by maxerickson »

mikeash wrote: post #49
OceanKing wrote: post #16

This article takes a distinctly negative tone towards this practice. What’s the problem here? License plate data is public information, it’s the same as if a person standing on the street saw your plate and told someone else. There should not be any expectation of privacy in regard to one’s license plate or the location of its sighting.

Let’s say we’re neighbors. I keep a close watch on your house, and every time you come and go I phone the local police and tell them, “OceanKing just got home” or whatever. Would you be ok with that?

I want legal reforms that enhance privacy, but your scenario happens all the time, private surveillance is willingly handed over to police after some incident.

It doesn't have the goofball repeatedly calling the police aspect, but that's the less interesting part to me.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#79

Post by GVIrish »

User23 wrote: post #44
GVIrish wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time illegal border crossing is a misdemeanor. Should people have their children forcibly separated from them and shipped to detention centers for a speeding ticket? Jaywalking? Drunk in public? Inflicting cruelty on innocent children is not a reasonable deterrent in a civilized society that has any intention of being moral or just.

Pretty sure if you’re drunk in public with your kids and get arrested you will in fact be forcibly separated. Also this is a great example of static thinking, because it completely ignores dynamic effects. Ban family separation, how humane! Second order effect: incentivize bringing children when committing crimes. A sane and compassionate, as well as moral and just, society doesn’t want to encourage bring your kids t…

> Pretty sure if you’re drunk in public with your kids and get arrested you will in fact be forcibly separated.

For a misdemeanor the police are absolutely not going to take someone's children and ship them to detention centers in other states with no clear way of getting them back or even getting in touch with them. Most of the time a misdemeanor means showing up to court and paying a fine.

> Also this is a great example of static thinking, because it completely ignores dynamic effects. Ban family separation, how humane! Second order effect: incentivize bringing children when committing crimes.

That doesn't make any sense. Currently, even someone who is charged with one or more felonies does not have their children taken away from them and shipped elsewhere. The only time that would happen is in cases of neglect or abuse.

Does that mean our justice system is incentivizing felonies? No. Bottom line is that the law can be enforced just fine without a barbaric policy that harms children for the sins of their parents.

Re: A California mall operator is sharing license plate tracking data with ICE

#80

Post by pdkl95 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30
s73v3r_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better yet, ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place.

> ask them to confirm that they don't track this stuff in the first place I could see a reasonable case being made for collecting these data, storing them for a few weeks, and then deleting them, to protect against thieves. The problem here is that for the government to collect these data, they would need to follow certain processes. A private actor who isn't following those processes is placing those data with the g…

The Dutch civil servants collecting census data probably thought it was reasonable to create per-person records that included the tuple {address, religion}, which the Nazis used to create this[1] map of Jews living in Amsterdam (3/4 of the black dots on that map were murdered in the camps).

The problem with storing data that requires "certain processes" to ensure safety is that it might not be your decision. Governments collecting data is one example; others include desperate behavior by companies in bad financial situations or Equifax-style theft.

Someone trying to lose weight is probably able to resist the box of cookies in their pantry most of the time. Unfortunately being human means having occasional bad days where the will isn't necessarily up to the challenge. The responsible person recognizes that weaknesses exist and doesn't keep the box of cookies in the house.

I'm sure data will be handled safely most of the time, when it's easy. The real question is what will happen in difficult, morally problematic situations when the cost of acting ethically might include losing your job (or worse. One of the responsible way to handle that kind of problem is to avoid it entirely by not collecting the data.

[1] https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/uploads/archive/museum/topstuk...

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