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

License plate reader searches should require a warrant

andrewpwheeler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 423 posts

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#161

Post by Scion9066 »

gruez wrote: post #59
neodymiumphish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former law enforcement officer here. I can say that when we conducted surveillance, we weren't allowed to use equipment that wasn't common for normal people to use. So for example, I couldn't use some sort of long-distance microphone to overhear a conversation between two people in public because a normal person wouldn't have that same type of technology. I think this applies in this context to say that a cop just sc…

That's not a good argument against ALPRs because citizens can theoretically set up an ALPRs too.

It's already prohibited in a number of states and I'd bet that if citizens tried to do that at any scale, then laws would be quickly passed to make the state and its corporate partners the only ones allowed to do so everywhere else.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#162

Post by john-h-k »

lokar wrote: post #151
speak_plainly wrote: post #68

A license plate is already publicly displayed information (and is in most jurisdictions not private property), and you're operating in a public space. I know it's unpopular but I went from not supporting these sorts of systems to embracing them after seeing the positive effects in China. For crimes that depend on anonymity, theft, assault, hit-and-runs, vandalism, illegal parking, etc., surveillance changes the calcu…

The idea that these are needed, and deployed to address a crime problem is false. For example, Irvine, CA has been one of the safest large cites in the US for decades. Why did they need flock?

> For example, Irvine, CA has been one of the safest large cites in the US for decades. Why did they need flock?

Uhh, because getting safer is still better? Why the hell does the relative ranking matter?

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#163

Post by nkrisc »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #145
Xirdus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about many people vs. few people. It's about a single person doing little with a lot of effort vs. a single person doing an enormous amount with minimal effort.

Why didn't you have a problem with a single person doing little with a lot of effort? All I'm saying is it should have been a problem at that point.. not just because it's easy now to do it at a high scale.

Because the outcome is meaningfully different when every citizen can be passively tracked at all times versus a few cops sitting around writing down license plates.

The former is massively damaging to our rights, the latter is almost useless and thus barely a problem worth talking about.

The difference in scale matters.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#164

Post by thaumaturgy »

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…

You've already gotten a lot of replies about difference in degree, but there's also two differences in kind: one with visibility, and one with capability.

A police cruiser sitting at an intersection is visible. People notice it and its presence changes their behavior. They may choose to avoid certain routes through a city where surveillance cruisers hang out. Flock, and similar surveillance systems, are far less noticeable. Many, many people had no idea they existed a year ago when there were already 80,000 devices installed. Flock has been hot in the news cycle lately in part because tons of people are still just beginning to learn they exist. Whereas a police cruiser on a corner is overt surveillance, Flock is a "creepier" incarnation.

There's also capability. In principle, an officer parked on a corner is capable of responding to a variety emergencies. Some people might feel that the presence of the officer there was a net good for public safety. Heart attack in the neighborhood? Your local surveillance officer can start CPR. Older person with late-stage dementia has just walked away from home? Your local surveillance officer could clear that neighborhood.

But these surveillance systems have only one capability: surveillance. They can't render aid. They can't even prevent a crime; they can, at best, discourage it, or maybe aid in the apprehension of someone who committed a crime -- and didn't take adequate measures to avoid detection.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#165

Post by fluidcruft »

abirch wrote: post #137
fluidcruft wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale is more about efficiency and cost, though. Plenty of people want more policemen patrolling the streets.

If we simply mandated that everyone install an app on their phone so that the government can track them scales very well. The people without the app would probably be criminals,

I don't follow that... posting a police officer in everyone's house is pretty much a Third and Fourth Amendment violation and not primarily constrained by finances.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#166

Post by wiseleo »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #152
wiseleo wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That's cute and technically accurate but doesn't help when having conversations with the public. "Warrantless mass surveillance technology" creates a category into which these and similar devices can be aggregated together where people's concerns tend to be about the same. That phrase was suggested by a local chief of police while we were having discussions on policy.

When speaking, I use a short definition. When writing, I use the expanded definition so it's clear what it means.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#167

Post by autoexec »

WarmWash wrote: post #127
devin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to rigidly define scale to demonstrate at a common sense level that there is a major difference between a couple cops writing down your license plate and a nationwide network of them entering your plate into a searchable ledger.

...so we only have 5 cameras, one at each entrance to our town. Five cameras is less than what the number of police on duty are using.

The number of cameras matters much less than what those cameras are being used for. If police body cam footage was being indiscriminately scanned for any and all license plate data and all of that data was being fed into a national database which was being routinely accessed and abused that would also be problem. As far as I know, that isn't the case.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#168

Post by Xirdus »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #145
Xirdus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about many people vs. few people. It's about a single person doing little with a lot of effort vs. a single person doing an enormous amount with minimal effort.

Why didn't you have a problem with a single person doing little with a lot of effort? All I'm saying is it should have been a problem at that point.. not just because it's easy now to do it at a high scale.

I didn't have a problem because the damage that can be caused by doing a little is very limited, and if someone puts too much effort it becomes very visible and they're put under extra scrutiny, preventing them from doing more harm. Also because outlawing standing on a street and taking notes is a very slippery slope.

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#169

Post by [deleted] »

asveikau wrote: post #26
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…

Have you met cops? They are not able to sit still or write things down. You expect too much of them.

[deleted]

Re: License plate reader searches should require a warrant

#170

Post by gruez »

etdznots wrote: post #140
gruez wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So by that logic, nation-wide ABPs are also illegal, because a single person can't rally the entire country's law enforcement to find someone?

It’s not that police can’t use tools that arent available to the general public. It’s that in the US we have the plain view doctrine which defines the boundary between the things that can be plainly observed in public, which don’t constitute a search and thus don’t trigger the 4a protections, and observations that are not plain view observations and which are a search and trigger 4a protections

OP's contention is that private citizens don't have access to a network of cameras to look for license plates and therefore it isn't "plain view", but I don't see how that's different than law enforcement being able to muster the entire nation's cops to look for a suspect.
Post reply on HN