Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking

Yeah, seems like it's more likely to be referring to the US Dept of Transportation Performance and Registration Information Systems Management "PRISM" program.

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety-security/prism/prism.aspx

thanks to those "red light" cameras...

Despite being in public -- and on public streets -- I think anytime the government is tracking where I go, it should require probable cause and a judge's signature. I believe ALPR circumvents the judicial system.

I use my cellphone in public, but it's obvious that the government shouldn't be able to automatically log when and where I placed a call. I use my credit card in public, but the government shouldn't be able to automatically log every penny going into or out of my bank account. I use my car in public too, and I don't think the government should track everywhere I drive.

I don't think there's an acceptable amount of harassment that's tolerable. If the technology enables it to happen, it's worth challenging.

There are three issues for me with ALPR: (1) limiting the scope of persons who have access to the data, (2) ensuring that law enforcement agencies have strong (ab)use and access policies with checks and balances, and (3) ensuring that logs of where innocent individuals drive is never stored.

I think it's easier to progressively win a fight rather than going guns-blazing to a large issue that people don't understand. By first building the notion that 'yeah, this technology is actually somewhat scary' it's much easier to win a fight arguing that the police shouldn't be storing and accessing the data either.

In my situation in Minnesota, the public finding out about the police releasing 2.1 million license plate tracking points to the public was enough pressure to get the state to make the data non-public and to have police departments voluntarily create more restrictive policies. It was also enough to get a fabulous bill passed through the state House that prohibited police from storing any data on non-hit (non-wanted) vehicles. Unfortunately, it didn't get to the Senate floor in time before the session ended, but I was shocked at the number of legislators who spoke out against ALPR data storage. They weren't necessarily anti-ALPR (and honestly I'm not vehemently anti-ALPR either), but the prospect of storage is wildly unpopular among non-police communities.

There's another issue all together, which is privately owned and operated ALPR systems -- typically used by vehicle repossessors but it was also uncovered this week that a defense contractor had also been on the receiving end of Minneapolis Police ALPR data, which is somewhat unnerving.

Can someone explain why your public movements should now be private?

And when someone brings up the "pseudo-anonymity of the crowd", can you accompany that with a legal precedent for such a claim? Who actually came up with the "I'm acting privately in public" thing in the first place?

...which now means you need to spend money to protect yourself against a situation where you've done nothing wrong.