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Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

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Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#31

Post by wahnfrieden »

hk1337 wrote: post #12

I wouldn't say I am a huge proponent of Flock, especially considering their lack luster security for the individual cameras at least in my area, but the title makes it sound like it's an institutional procedure that the department stalking their romantic interests instead of individual officers that need to be properly reprimanded.

The classic "just some bad apples" argument in defense of corruption.

In Toronto, police are pressured into gang-like conformity to support their bad apples - from last week:

> A Crown attorney is being accused of suggesting a police witness should have provided false evidence while testifying in court.

> According to the Toronto Star, a heated interaction occurred in the hallway of a Toronto courthouse earlier this year, between Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg and Constable Edin Hasanbasic of the Toronto Police Service.

> Hasanbasic had been called as a witness in the case of a man accused of hitting a different officer with his motorcycle, with the intent of causing harm.

> Hasanbasic had just told the court that the officer who was struck by the motorcycle “seemed like he was fine” after the incident.

> Goldenberg, according to Hasanbasic’s notes about the encounter, allegedly got angry about his testimony, because it went against the Crown’s case.

> “What am I supposed to do? Lie?” Hasanbasic recalls saying.

> The attorney allegedly responded by saying, “We protect our own.”

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#32

Post by parineum »

virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #10

Is there a framework—any framework, however hypothetical—that actually makes police accountable and subject to the laws they supposedly enforce?

This is pretty straightforward actually. The third party doctrine [1] has been extrapolated to the digital age to the massive detriment of privacy. All it takes is for Congress to pass a law clarifying to the courts that the third party doctrine isn't correct.

There's also an alteration to the interpretation of "reasonable expectation of privacy" that could be made (again, by Congress) to account for the total sum of information, rather than each individual piece of information in isolation. For example, I have no expectation of privacy that people don't see my license plate when I'm driving but I don't expect that a single person/entity would have all of the locations my license plate has been in the last 3 days.

The other clarification/change Congress could make would be to change the "reasonable expectation" test to something less susceptible to erosion over time. (I didn't used to expect I'd be tracked in certain way because I thought it would have been illegal but now I do expect it even though I still feel it's illegal). The reasonable expectation test encourages normalizing surveillance for as long as possible before it gets to court so that it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.

All of these things, of course, would be still within the grasp of investigators with a simple warrant which would normally take less than an hour to attain.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#33

Post by cucumber3732842 »

loteck wrote: post #8
busterarm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published? I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything subs…

The data set IJ is providing here is situations where stalking was reported/suspected, investigated, discovered, and prosecuted. Other stalking cases could fail any one of those stages and be invisible to the public.

This. They almost certainly use it for parallel construction 99% of the time. Just get lucky and "show up" when your spouse has someone over.

These 14 just were sloppy and left such an egregious fact pattern in their wake that a public record was created (firing, charges filed, etc)

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#34

Post by argomo »

JohnMakin wrote: post #17
busterarm wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published? I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything subs…

> I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I don't believe your concern trolling tone here - I'm not asking anyone to do anything either. I'm pointing out this is likely much more prevalent, based on the absolute fact most abuse/stalking cases go unreported, so this is likely a small subset of a larger problem. The "evidence" is these cases existing at…

The evidence is just "human nature". Honestly, it's just negligence at this point to give people power over others without due oversight and accountability. But it's nice we have concrete examples of abuse to help motivate action.

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#37

Post by malcolmgreaves »

infecto wrote: post #14
virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #10

Is there a framework—any framework, however hypothetical—that actually makes police accountable and subject to the laws they supposedly enforce?

I have always gravitated towards a market model. Force police, like doctors, to have malpractice insurance. Let for-profit insurance companies model what that risk looks like. Now cities have to make a financial decision when hiring cops that is directionally accurate to the risk of said cop. Imperfect but I don’t believe perfect systems exist. But this goes back to government agencies never thinking about budgets. M…

Absolutely! This would also mean when cops break the law taxpayers don't pay out. Their privately held insurance does. Enough bad behavior and a criminal cop becomes uninsurable. This also prevents the abuse where a criminal cop gets fired, then moved over to another jurisdiction to repeat the process all over again. The insurance companies should have to share history with one another.

Perhaps the only tweak would be to regulate these insurance companies to control their profit margins. We don't want to end up in the same situation as medical insurance in the US. Tax payers will have to pay some of the insurance premiums indirectly. So this idea can work well so long as insurance is in that goldilox zone: enough to provide incentive for the companies to exist, but not so much that their greed creates an even worse system.

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#38

Post by anonymars »

infecto wrote: post #30
danaw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah market models are working so great everywhere else...

Instead of being hyperbolic why don’t you share your idea then? Markets are not perfect but on average they do a decent job of finding equilibrium. “Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried.”

I'll join in to proffer that where they lack, it's often exactly the sort of thing you describe: some externality is missing in the price

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#39

Post by calfuris »

busterarm wrote: post #4
JohnMakin wrote: post #2

"at least" is doing a lot of work here. That's just what was analyzed. You have to assume the behavior is much more prevalent.

Why? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published? I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything subs…

A "review of media reports" is not going to capture any incidents that the media didn't report on. That doesn't strike me as likely to capture every incident, or even a majority of incidents.

Re: Police Have Used License Plate Readers at Least 14x to Stalk Romantic Interests

#40

Post by Refreeze5224 »

busterarm wrote: post #4
JohnMakin wrote: post #2

"at least" is doing a lot of work here. That's just what was analyzed. You have to assume the behavior is much more prevalent.

Why? Is there something about their dataset and/or methodology that you can identify as deficient that would indicate that the rate is much higher than what was published? I agree with the sentiment, but if you want anyone to do anything about it we need evidence and not vibes. I'm trying to help you make your case. So far the only comments in this thread are the most low-effort reactions that don't say anything subs…

The decades-long history of police abuse of power isn't enough? There is not a single power they have not abused eventually, and it's quite obvious that introducing new powers will inevitability be exploited.
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