License plate reader searches should require a warrant

Okay so is the argument that if a city wants to install red light cameras they must install analog film based systems because if they install a CCD camera with a raspberry pi and a network connection they could use it for other purposes?

Obviously the electronic networked solution is going to be cheaper and easier to operate. It would be insanely wasteful to force government organizations to use expensive cumbersome processes just to ensure they can’t be misused.

The solution is legislation and enforcement of rules that constrain what local governments are allowed to actually do with equipment they install and the data it collects, not regulation of what the equipment they install could theoretically be converted to accomplish.

> Scale actually matters.

I don't believe so. The whole purpose of a license plate is to deanonymize vehicles and their drivers. Vehicles must display license plates while driving or parked on public roadways.

This is not the same as faces. Faces are not like license plates. People are not given faces by a state licensing authority and then required to display them.

The scale of facial surveillance is a problem only because the surveillance of a single face is already a problem.

People who don't like license plate tracking should take a bicycle or public transit.

When you are given the privilege of riding a two ton murder weapon on a public road, you trade privacy for that.

I would love an amendment that adds communications and movements to that list

A warrant is better than no warrant, but:

A warrant requirement is not a reasonable bandaid to consider allowing mass spying. There should be no mass spying by default.

A warrant requirement makes sense for something like the locations of customers on cellular networks, because, although it should be improved, it's been built into the tech.

When you make the optional choice to create mass spying, safeguards do not make it acceptable.

There is another middle option that I would have liked to see the author discuss: requiring either a case number or a CAD ID, instead of a "search reason".

In my conversations with law enforcement (mostly at management level, chiefs of police), all of them have had reasonable-sounding objections to a warrant requirement for a search, but zero of them have been able to come up with a reason why a case-or-CAD ID requirement isn't workable. Generally, they argue that in practice obtaining a warrant can be too onerous in time sensitive situations, and can be harder to obtain than the public realizes. Two popular examples are in kidnappings (time sensitive) and missing persons (difficult to obtain).

A case number or CAD ID however simply requires that the details of either a public call for service or an active investigation are associated with the historical search. It closes the door on officers' hobby searching.

Andrew's blog post does note the problems with oversight, which also match my experience, so this isn't a perfect fix. But it will go further in conversations with law enforcement for people that are trying to thread the needle on making "safe" mass surveillance.

(I am personally opposed to mass surveillance in all its forms, but arguing only from that position pretty much immediately excludes me from policy discussions.)