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License plate reader searches should require a warrant

andrewpwheeler.com

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Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#111

Post by bko »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #39
bko wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. What? There is a lot of information privy to police that should not be accessible to anyone. This is such a ridiculous standard. I would want police to know where I live and contact information of my emergency contact for instance, but I wouldn't want that accessible to others. > There’s b…

This is fair, but in my mind, there's still data that's way too accessible for police without proper oversight. What I'd prefer is a system where if the police access it without court approval, they generate a post-access review to confirm that the police did it for a valid reason, such as an emergency. Otherwise, I think any traditional access to that kind of data should have to be via court order.

These companies provide an audit log. This is the obvious answer to prevent abuse rather than relying on courts. Imagine the senior officer or overseer or governing body gets a ping every time a license plate is requested. This isn't a novel problem. Millions of people have access to information like PII in the financial world and they manage it without all the hoops.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#112

Post by nearlyepic »

Xirdus wrote: post #95
nearlyepic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the law can just make shit up, right? It’s very easy to make a law that says “ALPR data needs a warrant” without impacting the ability of people to record in public. You just need to clearly define ALPR, which isn’t hard.

You don't even need to define it - you can half-ass it and rely on courts to clarify the edge cases. That's how the vast majority of laws work.

This is also true, but we’ve seen the problems with that idea put on display pretty prominently, lately.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#113

Post by [deleted] »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6
cmiles8 wrote: post #3

Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…

I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…

[deleted]

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#114

Post by jefftk »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #87
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…

If your police force installed officers in parked cruisers at every intersection to record license plate numbers and then digitized that information so you can build up a dossier of times and locations for a given individual without probable cause that would be both illegal and a huge waste of resources. ALPR just do it at scale so it's cheaper; still illegal without cause.

The legality stationing officers to record plates and building a DB is not settled law, and my interpretation is that it's more likely legal than not. Observing things in public is normally legal, and the extent to which scale changes this is very much to be seen.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#115

Post by veec_cas_tant »

smt88 wrote: post #64
veec_cas_tant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police already don’t need warrants to gather video footage from homes and businesses. It certainly isn’t ineffective or else they wouldn’t do it, but everybody knows how effective video footage is. The difference for most does seem to be that it doesn’t cost man hours. We have had cities in the USA with 10k+ cameras in public spaces for years now without much fanfare.

> everybody knows how effective video footage is There's no evidence that mass video surveillance, Ring cameras, etc. are leading to higher clearance rates of serious crimes. > We have had cities in the USA with 10k+ cameras in public spaces for years now without much fanfare. And if the data from those cameras were processed to allow me to type someone's name into the search and then track their every movement, ther…

I have never heard anyone try and argue that video evidence is not effective. That’s a pretty big stretch.

There is nothing reversed with Flock. There is a crime scene, they see who was entering or leaving and work from there. Without plate readers it takes a team of people many hours, that’s the difference. You can’t know who had anything to do with the crime without investigating, that’s the definition of the word!

> … we're invading their privacy

Who expects privacy driving on public roads? In any sort of developed area you are driving past cameras on every single street. Every Uber has a dash cam, the Teslas are recording (sometimes?), every police car has a camera, etc.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#116

Post by wiseleo »

malwrar wrote: post #2

It frustrates me when people call them license plate readers. I guess you need to call them something, but they are general-purpose internet connected cameras. They will do whatever their firmware tells them to do, and could be reprogrammed at any time by anyone with access. No one expected doorbell cameras to join a mass surveillance network, but later the manufacturers added that feature. Why do we treat these came…

I always define them as "Remotely managed, field-upgradeable, multi-interconnected computing devices with full spectrum cameras and other sensory capabilities. Information is monitored in real-time by increasingly capable AI technology. They have edge AI capability for intelligent classification. They can be upgraded without announcement at any time. They can be replaced in the field with higher capabilities at any time. The data they captured can be accessed at any time by anyone with sufficient permissions granted by an entity capable of granting such permissions. Not all users have the same permissions. Multiple user interfaces with differing capabilities exist. There exists a capability to aggregate data streams from multiple sources provided the user has sufficient permissions. Deleted data remains accessible to users with higher clearance."

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#117

Post by cucumber3732842 »

mc32 wrote: post #104
cmiles8 wrote: post #3

Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…

No, not a warrant --but what they should have is an tamper-evident logs with HIPAA-like consequences for abuse. In other words, if you have a case where doing registration plate searches can help, you have a policing reason to search. Willy-nilly search for relatives, lovers, love-interests, rivals, etc. would potentially be a fireable offence --like HIPAA violations. There is no technical reason there could not be t…

>Willy-nilly search for relatives, lovers, love-interests, rivals, etc. would potentially be a fireable offence --like HIPAA violations. There is no technical reason there could not be technical controls preventing abuses.

So you're fine with 1984-ish type stuff as long as it's only used to enforce the will of the state and never used by the agents of the state for their own purposes?

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#118

Post by shmoe »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #6
cmiles8 wrote: post #3

Either it needs a warrant or it’s fully open and people can start creating websites showing the movements of local politicians. This middle ground that municipalities try to carve out where it’s fully open to police without a warrant but not subject to FOIL laws doesn’t appear tenable for much longer. There’s been too many cases of police officers stalking exes, poking around the data for fun and such so it’s clear p…

I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Going back through police officers' notes or cruiser dash cam videos and tracking a car's movements by it…

Aggregation. Correlation.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#119

Post by chaps »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #92
kentm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why a police cruiser can sit in a public space (or even a private one) and write down licence plates and descriptions of passers-by with pen and paper, or record everything around them with dashcams and bodycams for later use, but when it comes to cameras on a pole this would require a warrant. Scale actually matters. Things that are generally OK at a small scale become problematic at larger scal…

>Scale actually matters Is this actually born out in Court Cases? Warrantless Surveillance by NSA seems to be blanket legal for example.

More and more, yes. This was in June: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-112_0am4.pdf

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#120

Post by mc32 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #117
mc32 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not a warrant --but what they should have is an tamper-evident logs with HIPAA-like consequences for abuse. In other words, if you have a case where doing registration plate searches can help, you have a policing reason to search. Willy-nilly search for relatives, lovers, love-interests, rivals, etc. would potentially be a fireable offence --like HIPAA violations. There is no technical reason there could not be t…

>Willy-nilly search for relatives, lovers, love-interests, rivals, etc. would potentially be a fireable offence --like HIPAA violations. There is no technical reason there could not be technical controls preventing abuses. So you're fine with 1984-ish type stuff as long as it's only used to enforce the will of the state and never used by the agents of the state for their own purposes?

So long as the state represents the will of the people where will of the people is a democratic process that respects the constitution.

Each use of the ALPR should have behind it an actual defensible case.

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