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Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

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Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#4

Post by jlgreco »

stfu wrote: post #3

I always wondered on the legality of private license plate scanning. With just a bunch of people cooperating one could pretty much map out all the troop movement throughout the city.

Well the argument usually heard for the government doing it is "they've always been able to watch where you go in public". I suspect that somehow would not fly if it were reversed.

It's an interesting idea. Thanks to smartphones, the people have more cameras than their governments. The governments however have more targets.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#5

Post by lvs »

It is fascinating to observe the proliferation of technological misadventures federally funded in the past decade+ since 9/11. There needs to be a real legal movement to place limits on these activities. The argument is already lost in many other countries (e.g. U.K.), but we have a fundamental legal doctrine, enshrined in the 4th Amendment, that should apply. That requires real congressional and judicial action to restrain these law enforcement and anti-terrorism activities. Unfortunately, since nobody can yet claim tangible harm from having their privacy invaded, the judicial route seems murky.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#6

Post by ics »

A few days ago I posted a document regarding NYC's relatively new booting program for cars which have accumulated too many tickets/fines. In it they point out that the system is backed by a team of vans which scour the city doing license plate recognition to find these cars. Obviously the consequence is that everyone's license plate gets photographed, but it's up to the NYPD what to do with that information. The ACLU doc has some stats, but if you want to see the document I'm talking about I've linked it below.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6049276

Though Bloomberg and the NYPD hardly have any trouble pushing these things through for the last decade, I imagine one impetus behind ramping these programs way up would be incidents such as the would be Times Square van bomber from a couple years ago. In that case however, the perpetrator had actually stolen license plates from another vehicle (which they learned after finding a VIN that wasn't scratched and the registration didn't match).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing...

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#7

Post by devonbarrett »

stfu wrote: post #3

I always wondered on the legality of private license plate scanning. With just a bunch of people cooperating one could pretty much map out all the troop movement throughout the city.

In somewhere like Russia where everyone owns a dashcam it could be very possible.

Re: Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

#9

Post by tonywebster »

The other problem is that state laws aren't keeping up with law enforcement technology. FOIA-similar laws in Minnesota meant that every ALPR-captured license plate was public information, which I requested to prove a point. I got back 2.1 million license plates (+ timestamp and coordinates) on a USB stick.

Without strong policies and laws, this data is ripe for abuse -- domestic abuse victims and stalking where someone eats, visits, and sleeps, or tracking regular routes of hazmat or cash trucks, etc.

https://tonywebster.com/2012/12/minneapolis-police-license-p...

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