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Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

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Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#21

Post by corresation »

ihsw wrote: post #16
corresation wrote: post #7

But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…

You're misinterpreting the author's point -- nobody anywhere is arguing that we should abandon useful technology due to blind fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The problem is the lack of oversight on how the data is managed.

nobody anywhere is arguing that we should abandon useful technology due to blind fear, uncertainty, and doubt

Except that the entire article was raising fear, uncertainty and doubt about the retention of that data. The "useful" part is retaining the information such that later on when someone is arrested in the commission of a rape, for instance, they could look at other historical appearances of that person's known vehicle and see if there's a correlation with other incidents (which at most would be circumstantial given that a vehicle can have many drivers, but it could instruct further investigations).

This article warns that such logged data betrays "your political and religious beliefs, your social and sexual habits, your visits to the doctor", and then says " If this data is too private to give a week’s worth to the public to help inform us how the technology is being used, then isn’t it too private to let the police amass years’ worth of data without a warrant?"

That does not mesh with your rebuttal at all.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#23

Post by mikeash »

corresation wrote: post #7

But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public.

I wonder what people would make of it if someone released a highly popular smartphone app that did this same sort of thing, just crowdsourced rather than done by dedicated police. You could build a gigantic, publicly-accessible, searchable database that would absolutely destroy privacy in the same way that having the police do it would, except it would be available to all instead of just to the government. Somehow, I imagine that the same people fighting against this would fight for people's rights to run this app.

It's a tough problem, certainly. I'm sympathetic to the privacy argument, but on the other hand, it seems like that ship has sailed. Maintaining privacy in public just because it's too hard to correlate all of the available data is becoming as anachronistic as riding a horse into town.

Edit: it's so wonderful how people are downvoting me apparently because they disagree. Before you downvote, click the reply button to explain why you think I'm wrong, and then don't downvote. Seriously, you can't take a little bit of differing opinion? I didn't insult anyone or say anything unproductive here, I just went slightly against the hivemind. And yes, I realize that complaining about downvotes is against the rules, and I don't care.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#24

Post by sp332 »

corresation wrote: post #18
sp332 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intentionally building a database whose sold purpose is to track tens of millions of mostly-innocent people as they go about their business for years on end is a bad idea.

Monitoring license plates don't track people. They track vehicles. Vehicles that are heavily regulated. Humorously your smartphone probably is tracking you (with a much higher correlation with people, and accuracy, than vehicles), and logging it for years on end. And honestly I don't care whether there is a database of places where my car has been (this usually causes wildfire in most forums as the natural result is…

audited access and look-ups

Driver's license photos have audited lookups, but all that tells us is that the system is routinely abused and no one is stopping it. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/cop-database-abuse/

Putting every car into the database will generate the maximum number of conflicts of interest possible. If a database only has interesting or suspicious plates in it, an average cop might not browse the database for funsies (risking a hit on the next audit). But if everyone the cop knows is in there, they might check up on spouses, exes, cute girls' habits, old bosses, friend's bosses... the list of reasons to risk a peek is endless.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#25

Post by sp332 »

mikeash wrote: post #23
corresation wrote: post #7

But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public. I wonder what people would make of it if someone released a highly popular smartphone app that did this same sort of thing, just crowdsourced rather than done by dedicated police. You could build a gigantic, publicly-accessible, searchable…

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public.

Cops are only recordable on the job, because they are public servants doing a public job.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#26

Post by Lambent_Cactus »

corresation wrote: post #7

But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…

As far as I can tell from the article, EFF is asking for transparency into how ALPR records are used in the LA law enforcement. The only policy response even mentioned - and it's not even explicitly called for - is for the legislature to set retention limits. Both of those strike me as eminently reasonable requests, and neither of which claims a general "freedom not to have your license plate OCR'd."

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#27

Post by knowaveragejoe »

mikeash wrote: post #23
corresation wrote: post #7

But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public. I wonder what people would make of it if someone released a highly popular smartphone app that did this same sort of thing, just crowdsourced rather than done by dedicated police. You could build a gigantic, publicly-accessible, searchable…

I fail to understand how it's hypocritical to advocate recording of the people sanctioned by the state to use lethal force while decrying a system that is by all measures ripe for abuse.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#28

Post by gyardley »

corresation wrote: post #7

But we should not so readily give up the very freedoms that terrorists seek to destroy. The freedom to not have your license plate OCR'd? Is that what it's all about? Putting that in there is jingoistic and appealing to the same emotions that the other side abuses. Pervasive, often incidental monitoring (e.g. the growing proliferation of electronic toll roads) is absolutely inevitable. Cameras are everywhere. Recordi…

Yes, pervasive monitoring might be absolutely inevitable, technology is hard to suppress, and I may not be able to keep you from OCRing my license plate.

However, the people do still have the ability to keep the government from doing this, or from accessing and utilizing the pervasive monitoring done by others. The government does not automatically get the right to do everything a private citizen can.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#29

Post by mikeash »

sp332 wrote: post #25
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public. I wonder what people would make of it if someone released a highly popular smartphone app that did this same sort of thing, just crowdsourced rather than done by dedicated police. You could build a gigantic, publicly-accessible, searchable…

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public. Cops are only recordable on the job, because they are public servants doing a public job.

I thought anyone in public could legally be recorded.

Re: Automated License Plate Readers Threaten Our Privacy

#30

Post by mikeash »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #27
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem terribly hypocritical to complain about the police capturing images from a public street, while simultaneously defending people's right to record the police in public. I wonder what people would make of it if someone released a highly popular smartphone app that did this same sort of thing, just crowdsourced rather than done by dedicated police. You could build a gigantic, publicly-accessible, searchable…

I fail to understand how it's hypocritical to advocate recording of the people sanctioned by the state to use lethal force while decrying a system that is by all measures ripe for abuse.

Because recording police is justified by "we're both in public, and I should be able to record public things", which justification applies equally well to police using cameras in public.
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