Basically police departments throughout the state as well as the Georgia DPS are installing license plate readers that do noting but read passing car's plates and run them against a data base to alert police as to whether the car, driver or registered owner is wanted for anything.
It's all well and good I guess except that the devil is in the details when it comes to what they do with the stored data and whether it amounts to an invasion of privacy and cross constitutional limits. And it seems these reading machines are being installed throughout the country in many other states. How about if they installed them on all interstates as you enter a state and they just read all cars?
Just last year I received a letter from my county toll road authority whose roads I use with a chip device to pay my tolls saying that they photographed a plate for a car I used to own and had sold over 4 years ago and they said the car was illegally using the toll roads without paying I was responsible even though I legally did not own the car anymore. Turned out upon closer examination that the tag reader that transcribes the photo image of the plate had misread a letter and the error was what brought up my old tag. It took me a while to get it straightened out but the letter I received said my ID was being put into a data base that police use and I could be subject to arrest if I did not take care of the fine associated with the supposed violation. Arrested for the error of technology? That's pretty bad!
And one has to wonder as police departments, state and local governments suffer with financial difficulties could the sale of this information seem like a normal and legal way to raise needed funding.
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I think you can order a spray online that makes the license plate invisible or distorted when photographed by a red light camera, toll system or random camera.
Illegal or not, I'd be spraying my plates if I had a car.
__________________ Rich and 50 is the same as middle-class and 30
I think you can order a spray online that makes the license plate invisible or distorted when photographed by a red light camera, toll system or random camera.
Illegal or not, I'd be spraying my plates if I had a car.
You can order a spray, but you'd be wasting your money according to the folks from the TV show Mythbusters. They tested a number of technologies and techniques which supposedly prevented cameras from picking up a license plate and found them ineffective.
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Last edited by greggwiggins; Dec 1, 12 at 5:38 pm..
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Quote:
Originally Posted by greggwiggins
You can order a spray, but you'd be wasting your money according to the folks from the TV show Mythbusters. They tested a number of technologies and techniques which supposedly prevented cameras from picking up a license plate and found them ineffective.
The comments in that thread lead me to believe there are a number of methods to hide your plate from the camera effectively.
__________________ Rich and 50 is the same as middle-class and 30
As long as the device or person viewing the license plate is in a place that they have a right to be, there is no invasion of privacy. There is no probable cause or even reasonable suspicion necessary to run a license plate check.
As for others suggesting sprays or the polarized license plate frames that make viewing from certain angles difficult, check local laws because many states have outlawed products/equipment like that and driving around with those on your vehicle is nothing but a traffic stop looking for a place to happen.
There use has been upheld in many criminal cases, and as was ruled in one appeal
The appellate court agreed "that a motorist has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the information contained on his license plate under the Fourth Amendment."
There use has been upheld in many criminal cases, and as was ruled in one appeal
The appellate court agreed "that a motorist has no reasonable expectation of privacy in the information contained on his license plate under the Fourth Amendment."
From what I've read, the concern seems more about what's done with the accumulated data than with the plate check of and unto itself.
~~ Irish
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Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
It involves an invasion of privacy and invites further invitation of privacy, no matter what some apologists for government power may claim. It is part of the infrastructure that enables open-ended dragnets.
[Big Brother is coming alive in more recent years in a way that couldn't happen even in 1984. This is part of that.]
Some local/county/state government organizations are even receiving offers from private sector parties to fund license plate reading systems as long as the data is fed to them too.
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Like TSA, DL SkyMiles management treats airline customers as if they are the enemy or sheep to be fleeced and it shows.
It involves an invasion of privacy and invites further invitation of privacy, no matter what some apologists for government power may claim. It is part of the infrastructure that enables open-ended dragnets.
[Big Brother is coming alive in more recent years in a way that couldn't happen even in 1984. This is part of that.]
Some local/county/state government organizations are even receiving offers from private sector parties to fund license plate reading systems as long as the data is fed to them too.
It is not part of an infrastructure that enables open-ended dragnets.
It is not part of an infrastructure that enables open-ended dragnets.
Why do you believe that with regard to the US? The limits, if any, to the infrastructure that enable open-ended dragnet are but just technical.
The fact of the matter is that a few localities have had the data from plate-reading systems already used as part of open-ended dragnets in an era in which: administrative subpoenas and court orders issued absent probable cause are used to get data for law enforcement and/or intelligence ops; and the government runs around domestic legal restrictions by outsourcing/offshoring and/or having some rather creative public-private partnerships that would be a violation of US federal and/or state law if done by (some) US persons in the US to US persons with no foreign nexus.
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Like TSA, DL SkyMiles management treats airline customers as if they are the enemy or sheep to be fleeced and it shows.
The ALPRs are just another tool that helps cops catch bad guys. They are not a tool for spying on average citizens. They have recovered a large number of stolen cars and have helped track down suspect vehicles from all sorts of crimes.
The ALPRs are just another tool that helps cops catch bad guys. They are not a tool for spying on average citizens. They have recovered a large number of stolen cars and have helped track down suspect vehicles from all sorts of crimes.
Open-ended dragnets are just another tool that helps the government catch "bad guys" too.
The ALPR systems are a tool for spying on average citizens.
The ALPR systems are also used as a tool for governmental and even non-governmental parties to track down non-criminals -- that includes tracking down debtors or for service of process even in civil litigation matters where there is a legal dispute between two non-governmental actors.
This topic, as of late, seems to have grabbed a little more interest than usual:
"I'm terrified that someone could get hurt because of this data," says Mike Griffin, a Baltimore auto repossession agent who uses his own fleet of camera-equipped cars to collect about a million plates a month.
Mr. Griffin says he takes extensive security measures with the data, which he contributes to a private national database.
These private databases, each containing hundreds of millions of plates, could become the largest collection of people's movements within the U.S., says Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security. "You could have a nationwide vision of where I was at a given time," says Ms. Callahan, who now runs the privacy practice at law firm Jenner & Block.
Law-enforcement officers say they use the technology to track down stolen cars, collect unpaid tickets and identify the vehicles of suspected criminals.
Most unpaid tickets don't involve criminals. DHS/TSA is often relying upon private sector databases (which are tracking people) so as to determine how it will deal with US persons for some purpose or another.
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Like TSA, DL SkyMiles management treats airline customers as if they are the enemy or sheep to be fleeced and it shows.
But what you're not understanding is that before the advent of ALPRs, creating a database of license plate was already possible, it was just time consuming and manpower intensive.
Think about a common choke point for vehicles like a toll booth plaza or bridge crossing. Before ALPRs, law enforcement could have had an officer or two or three or however many were necessary sit and write down every license plate that came through. With the advent of MDTs and computerized criminal/vehicle history files, law enforcement could have that same officer run the license plate of every vehicle that came through that area.
The ALPRs and the associated databases are just new technology that makes it easier for law enforcement to catch criminals running the gamut from serious felons to parking ticket scofflaws.
Before there was facial recognition technology and mugshot databases there were officers who had photographic memories that stared at a wall of photos of known criminals. Before there was AFIS and computerized fingerprint records there was the Henry class and file cabinets upon file cabinets of fingerprint cards. Before there were computerized criminal/vehicle history files, there was the telephone and officers or dispatchers called surrounding agencies or Sacramento in the case of CA to hand check their files for warrants or vehicle registration information.
It's a tool, nothing more, nothing less. If you're not out being a knucklehead or have plans on being a knucklehead, what do you care if your car's license plate gets read? The government can already track you more effectively if they really want to. Use a credit card? Carry a cell phone? Uh huh, thought so.
The Constitution was written about 220 years ago.
They need add more to the Bill of Rights, because cops, lawyers and the whole CSI industry nowadays spend about half their time using technology to chip away at the old ones.
The Constitution was written about 220 years ago.
They need add more to the Bill of Rights, because cops, lawyers and the whole CSI industry nowadays spend about half their time using technology to chip away at the old ones.
So please tell me how you would like law enforcement to first identify and then apprehend criminals and then prosecutors to successfully prosecute criminals without all of that CSI industry and technology?
Would you like us to just ignore the cigarette butt tossed behind, the beer bottle that the bad guy drank from, the sperm left behind in the rape victim, or the blood drop that they left behind because they cut themselves? Would you like us to go back to searching filing cabinets for the needle in a haystack print card of the burglar that left his prints all over your broken window?
If somebody you love has been kidnapped and a suspect has been developed, would you like us to just ignore all of those cell phone towers that can triangulate where they might be? Would you like us to just ignore the potential for an ALPR to have recorded a suspect vehicle's travel?
