Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by SkyBelow » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #53

forgottenpass wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If any state is going to proactively curb law enforcement's capability to build a dragnet it's gonna be NH. License plate collection used to be outright prohibited there (with toll both exception) before they caved on Real ID.

>before they caved on Real ID. I blame that on two things (in no particular order). 1) There's been tons of money dangled in front of state legislators incentivizing them to break from what their constituents actually want because both the national parties want to make the state theirs. If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against yo…

> If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against you don't actually have to listen to your constituents that much.

Perhaps we need to reconsider the idea of running government on the basis of a popularity content. Perhaps we should give strange women lying in ponds dispensing swords a reconsideration.

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

#62

Post by diditwork » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

thatguy0900 wrote: post #33

DennisP wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder if they actually did. It would be interesting to see a comparison of what percentage of petty crimes were caught in history compared to now.

Would it though? Didn't I just read an article pointed to by Hacker News about a woman in England, where they have millions of surveillance cameras, who's purse and laptop was stolen and it was pretty obvious who did it and where he went with it, and the police basically threw up their hands and said, "Well, nothing we can do about it!"? It seems as though they aren't targeting petty crimes with all this surveillance, so I'm not sure that what the comparison would show us would be meaningful.

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

#63

Post by i_am_proteus » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #57

i_am_proteus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're not going to have easy wins here, and people will need to think about their values and make their own ethical decisions. Prohibiting these databases will absolutely take a useful tool away from law enforcement, and it will also absolutely reduce the potential for abuse. There might be some middle ground out there, but nonetheless at some point we, as a society, will have to decide if, when, and how we p…

The key point you bring up here makes me wonder what will happen in the future of society. Take this issue of liberty vs authoritarianism for the sake of security. We, as a society, are not going to come to any mutually agreeable decision on this topic. To see why simply try to go reductio ad absurdum on the topic. Imagine a device was built that could automatically track each and every person with complete and absol…

Two possibilities:

1) Break the false dichotomy. Large swaths of the West don't have serious crime problems, although availability bias given sensationalist news outlets and the prevalence of crime dramas might cause public opinion to differ from reality. Extant automated enforcement mechanisms are often just automated revenue mechanisms. The benefits to individual citizens from crime reduction compared to the risks to individual citizens from the rise of a totalitarian/genocidal/'evil' state seem obviously lopsided. Why take on something an tremendous tail risk when it only has marginal potential benefits?

2) Federalism vs. Balkanization. Allow local governments to do what they think is best; allow people to move freely. This would work in the US and EU, at very least.

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

#64

Post by noir_lord » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

sixothree wrote: post #21

tantalor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?".

Or where is that someone just gave me $5000 to look up.

By definition police deal with criminals and not all those criminals are stealing $200 from a cash register.

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

#65

Post by jtbayly » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

faceplanted wrote: post #31

pureliquidhw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think when the guys says random strangers, he's still talking about the police, just that if you leave it to individual police stations then anyone working there can basically wander in, not at every police station obviously, but if they're each doing their own info security, then many of them. One large database that requires a warrant to access can at least be more easily held to higher standards.

On the flip side, 1. the local Sheriff is much easier to get rid of through elections for not keeping himself or his officers from such behavior 2. the local Sheriff can be impeached, meaning there is a higher authority to appeal to when abuse happens. If the highest authority is committing the abuse, what recourse do you have?

In general, it is always better to let the lowest possible authority level handle something. If parents can handle it, the city shouldn't take it over. If the city can, the state shouldn't. If the state can, the Fed shouldn't.

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

#66

Post by Rooster61 » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #58

erikpukinskis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, it sounds like you are contradicting yourself. First you say courts rubber stamp warrants, then you say they they distinguish between fishing expeditions and targeted investigations. Which is it?

Any judge worth their salt will rubber-stamp a search warrant for Bob Joe, with a justification of: "Officer Harry had a 'hunch' that Bob Joe may be a criminal of some kind." Most judges will not approve a search warrant for an entire city block, with a justification of: "Officer Harry had a 'hunch' that a criminal may live somewhere there, or that criminal activity of some kind may be taking place in this area." As…

> Any judge worth their salt will rubber-stamp a search warrant for Bob Joe, with a justification of: "Officer Harry had a 'hunch' that Bob Joe may be a criminal of some kind."

Is this based off of personal experience? I do have some experience with dealing with judges, and that has not been my observation, at least not as a hard and fast rule.

> The purpose of the warrant process is to make sure that law enforcement is targeted.

Partially, but the other side of it is that it's to make sure that the search activity is, well, warranted.

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

#67

Post by forgottenpass » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #53

forgottenpass wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If any state is going to proactively curb law enforcement's capability to build a dragnet it's gonna be NH. License plate collection used to be outright prohibited there (with toll both exception) before they caved on Real ID.

>before they caved on Real ID. I blame that on two things (in no particular order). 1) There's been tons of money dangled in front of state legislators incentivizing them to break from what their constituents actually want because both the national parties want to make the state theirs. If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against yo…

>2)The MA 5th column.

Build the wall.

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

#68

Post by ScottFree » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 8:05 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #61

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>before they caved on Real ID. I blame that on two things (in no particular order). 1) There's been tons of money dangled in front of state legislators incentivizing them to break from what their constituents actually want because both the national parties want to make the state theirs. If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against yo…

> If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against you don't actually have to listen to your constituents that much. Perhaps we need to reconsider the idea of running government on the basis of a popularity content. Perhaps we should give strange women lying in ponds dispensing swords a reconsideration.

> Perhaps we should give strange women lying in ponds dispensing swords a reconsideration.

Bring back Monarchy and Manifest Destiny? How would that be any different than what we have now? Money can be used to influence Kings and Kingdoms just as easily as politicians.

If we could ever secure mobile devices and servers well enough, I think a direct democracy could be interesting. Mob rule, for all it's faults, still works better than having a ruling class.

> Perhaps we need to reconsider the idea of running government on the basis of a popularity conte_s_t.

Have I spotted a Dvorak user in the wild? :)

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

#69

Post by bobydonahue » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

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…

It baffles me how one cannot understand humans are unpredictable with varying motivations. Never-mind the long standing relationships between police, judges, and district attorneys in the US.

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

#70

Post by vokep » Wed, Apr 03, 2019, 10:28 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #43

drb91 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a cop and my job is not to be violent on behalf of the state. Additionally, monitoring can also be exonerating if you are confident in the justice system, so I don't buy this idea that cops are uniformly against monitoring.

I already acknowledged that public interest in accountability above. To which you suggested anyone who didn't want to be monitored "aren't super fond of doing their job right". My point is that police officers, like you, find having someone staring over their shoulder while they work uncomfortable. So the fact that they don't like it and tend to oppose it doesn't mean they're inherently desiring to be corrupt or viol…

>So the fact that they don't like it and tend to oppose it doesn't mean they're inherently desiring to be corrupt or violent or bad cops.

But that fact is the seed that causes such corruption.