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Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#71

Post by drb91 »

DennisP wrote: post #49
P_I_Staker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's debatable. Try going to law enforcement with anything non-trivial, and see how that goes. People routinely get murdered by someone that's a known and reported threat to them personally. You might be shocked what the police are unable or unwilling to go after someone for. Things like aggravated assault, stalking, and breaking / entering. If you have a known address and whereabouts for someone, and you've checke…

By "reasonably well" I don't mean "solves every crime." I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death.

> I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death.

Well, that's a fairly heinous definition of law enforcement working well as it also covers, say, fascist secret police. Society running smoothly should not be prioritized over society running ethically. This is the core of why you could consider police primarily protecting the property rights of rich people: a disrupted rich person is enormously inefficient in terms of capital use, but a disrupted poor person is just another burden on society without much effect on the economic health signals to which people refer.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#72

Post by DennisP »

drb91 wrote: post #71
DennisP wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "reasonably well" I don't mean "solves every crime." I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death.

> I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death. Well, that's a fairly heinous definition of law enforcement working well as it also covers, say, fascist secret police. Society running smoothly should not be prioritized over society running ethically. This is the core of why you could consider police primarily…

Mass surveillance is a favorite tool of secret police, most famously the Stasi of East Germany. If we want to avoid secret police, we should avoid mass surveillance, even if that means some criminals get away.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#73

Post by elliekelly »

sjwright wrote: post #2

We want to protect innocent people from snooping and harassment, but we also want law enforcement to have useful resources. These shouldn’t be mutually exclusive requirements. It always baffles me that nobody thinks to set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves. If you’re tr…

> set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves

I love the sentiment behind this idea but thinking about this in practice makes me feel ill. The Federal Courts currently only have one system they're responsible for and it's the most archaic, inaccessible, and prohibitively expensive unless you're a business entity. The very last thing Federal Courts should be responsible for is PACER 2.0

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#74

Post by 5874-4b22-a4e0 »

chris_mc wrote: post #48
jermaustin1 wrote: post #35

I work in this space, building the tools to help LEAs seach their databases. I also have conflicting feelings about how this could be used. We built in access control down to the specific camera, auditing of every user action, requiring the reason you are performing an action, and mandating the user associate an open case in the same access group as the camera you are querying in order to view the data. Its pretty lo…

Yes, until the government passes new laws which reduce those protections and allow the use of this data for other things. It's really great you built in decent protections, but that doesn't mean they'll always be in place. Us techies seem to think technology exists in a static environment, but it doesn't. Always ask yourself before working on stuff, if the USA were to turn to fascism tomorrow, would your work be help…

yeah no thanks, i'll just take the paycheck

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#75

Post by dnautics »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #32

What a pleasant surprise this ruling is. The DC area (of which Fairfax county is part) is probably one of the most government tracking heavy regions of the US. This is a curve-ball on par with the CA judge that overturned the mag ban recently. I would never have predicted this ruling. >Nine states have passed laws limiting how long the police can maintain the data, ranging from three minutes (New Hampshire) Now that…

It would be an even more pleasant surprise if the judge put some teeth in the ruling and awarded every person whose license plate was in a surveillance database a penalty, to be charged to the Fairfax police.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#76

Post by masonic »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #32

What a pleasant surprise this ruling is. The DC area (of which Fairfax county is part) is probably one of the most government tracking heavy regions of the US. This is a curve-ball on par with the CA judge that overturned the mag ban recently. I would never have predicted this ruling. >Nine states have passed laws limiting how long the police can maintain the data, ranging from three minutes (New Hampshire) Now that…

  the CA judge that overturned the mag ban recently
Actually a Federal district judge, deciding a case against the CA Attorney General.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#77

Post by iofiiiiiiiii »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #32

What a pleasant surprise this ruling is. The DC area (of which Fairfax county is part) is probably one of the most government tracking heavy regions of the US. This is a curve-ball on par with the CA judge that overturned the mag ban recently. I would never have predicted this ruling. >Nine states have passed laws limiting how long the police can maintain the data, ranging from three minutes (New Hampshire) Now that…

What makes NH so special?

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#78

Post by acct1771 »

5874-4b22-a4e0 wrote: post #74
chris_mc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, until the government passes new laws which reduce those protections and allow the use of this data for other things. It's really great you built in decent protections, but that doesn't mean they'll always be in place. Us techies seem to think technology exists in a static environment, but it doesn't. Always ask yourself before working on stuff, if the USA were to turn to fascism tomorrow, would your work be help…

yeah no thanks, i'll just take the paycheck

"Fuck you", then, since that's what you're saying to all of us.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#79

Post by P_I_Staker »

DennisP wrote: post #49
P_I_Staker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's debatable. Try going to law enforcement with anything non-trivial, and see how that goes. People routinely get murdered by someone that's a known and reported threat to them personally. You might be shocked what the police are unable or unwilling to go after someone for. Things like aggravated assault, stalking, and breaking / entering. If you have a known address and whereabouts for someone, and you've checke…

By "reasonably well" I don't mean "solves every crime." I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death.

There's a big difference between "solves every crime" and "is effective at solving crime". I think you're grossly overestimated what the police will do for you, if there isn't low hanging fruit, or some driving factor (someone "important" involved, multiple complaints, politics, ect.).

If there's single victim that hasn't died and the perpetrator isn't easy to find, they might just wait until they run into them or they murder someone. That's not an exaggeration, I've personally seen them unwilling to step in when a violent criminal is out to get someone, or someones being blatantly defrauded.

Re: Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers

#80

Post by P_I_Staker »

DennisP wrote: post #72
drb91 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death. Well, that's a fairly heinous definition of law enforcement working well as it also covers, say, fascist secret police. Society running smoothly should not be prioritized over society running ethically. This is the core of why you could consider police primarily…

Mass surveillance is a favorite tool of secret police, most famously the Stasi of East Germany. If we want to avoid secret police, we should avoid mass surveillance, even if that means some criminals get away.

I agree, I just don't think you should be exaggerating the capabilities of the police.
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