Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 82 posts

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#21

Post by sixothree »

tantalor wrote: post #11
sjwright wrote: post #2

We want to protect innocent people from snooping and harassment, but we also want law enforcement to have useful resources. These shouldn’t be mutually exclusive requirements. It always baffles me that nobody thinks to set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves. If you’re tr…

The concern is innocent people could get implicated by a search, such as "all licence plates in location X at time T1 and location Y at time T2".

Or "where is my girlfriend right now?".

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#22

Post by vkou »

Rooster61 wrote: post #6
sjwright wrote: post #2

We want to protect innocent people from snooping and harassment, but we also want law enforcement to have useful resources. These shouldn’t be mutually exclusive requirements. It always baffles me that nobody thinks to set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves. If you’re tr…

That sounds an awful lot like the FISA court. No way to make sure they don't just rubber stamp such warrants.

Here's a little secret.

Courts already rubber-stamp warrants. There is no court on Earth where the average request for a search warrant will be declined.

The purpose of asking a court for a warrant that it will 100% approve is to permit targeted investigations, while preventing fishing expeditions. If the police wants to investigate someone, or something, courts will rubber-stamp their request. This is by design.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#23

Post by Benjammer »

sjwright wrote: post #2

We want to protect innocent people from snooping and harassment, but we also want law enforcement to have useful resources. These shouldn’t be mutually exclusive requirements. It always baffles me that nobody thinks to set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves. If you’re tr…

What about stored securely by a private company with third party audit certifications in security, that is contracted to the local government to manage their data?

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#24

Post by pureliquidhw »

umvi wrote: post #18
ams6110 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't see how that's a lot better. As long as the database exists, it has potential for abuse later. No reason to think the courts are more ethical than the police.

Either way, abuses will happen. Would you rather be abused by the government or by random strangers?

Honestly, random strangers.

Their motivations will be far more transparent than those of gov't level entities. Also, you can respond to your house getting robbed by adding locks, bars, camera's etc. If a gov't level entity is abusing you, your options are much more limited. That's why nipping over-reach in the bud is important.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#25

Post by DennisP »

sjwright wrote: post #2

We want to protect innocent people from snooping and harassment, but we also want law enforcement to have useful resources. These shouldn’t be mutually exclusive requirements. It always baffles me that nobody thinks to set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves. If you’re tr…

Somehow, law enforcement once managed to do its job reasonably well even in the absence of pervasive surveillance.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#26

Post by vkou »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15
sixothree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police prefer to work in a world that lacks transparency and accountability (it seems).

As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. There's a perfectly legitimate argument that a…

> As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible.

I hate to break it to you, but in any half-decently-ran company with an IT department, everything you do on your work computer, including reading this post, is monitored and recorded.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#27

Post by Benjammer »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15
sixothree wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police prefer to work in a world that lacks transparency and accountability (it seems).

As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. There's a perfectly legitimate argument that a…

It's also more complicated for cops than just "not wanting to be monitored all the time." There are interactions with innocent people, children, sex crimes victims, witnesses who need identity protection for their physical safety, etc. where they also need to turn off their cameras. There is definitely some funky stuff happening in a lot of places, but acting like it's a cut and dry issue of "watching the cops" or "not watching the cops," is underestimating the legal complexity here.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#28

Post by code_duck »

umvi wrote: post #18
ams6110 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't see how that's a lot better. As long as the database exists, it has potential for abuse later. No reason to think the courts are more ethical than the police.

Either way, abuses will happen. Would you rather be abused by the government or by random strangers?

The choices are not mutually exclusive, and also things can happen like random strangers who work for the government abuse a citizen in their spare time.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#29

Post by ocdtrekkie »

vkou wrote: post #26
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. There's a perfectly legitimate argument that a…

> As with most other employees, police officers are not super fond of having every single action they take while on the job recorded, monitored, and scrutinized. I've heard horror stories about tech industry people who worked at offices where their bosses used remote desktop software to monitor employees work, and I think everyone mostly universally agrees that's horrible. I hate to break it to you, but in any half-d…

As I am the person in the IT department who sets up the logging and auditing, I'm surprisingly well versed on what is monitored and recorded. ;) There's a lot of nuance though to workplace monitoring, it's use should generally be for extreme circumstances, not everyday employee harassment.

(And no, I don't exempt myself from anything everyone else is subject to.)

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#30

Post by ams6110 »

pureliquidhw wrote: post #24
umvi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, abuses will happen. Would you rather be abused by the government or by random strangers?

Honestly, random strangers. Their motivations will be far more transparent than those of gov't level entities. Also, you can respond to your house getting robbed by adding locks, bars, camera's etc. If a gov't level entity is abusing you, your options are much more limited. That's why nipping over-reach in the bud is important.

Random strangers tend to abuse specific individuals. Governments tend to abuse classes of people. So I'll take the former, if those are my two options.
Post reply on HN