1. Alice installs app on smartphone. Alice puts smartphone in cradle on dashboard. Smartphone captures license plates Alice drives by on way to work. Alice drives by Bob.<p>2. Carol goes to website. Carol enters Bob's license plate number. Website says, "25 hits found. Enter credit card number to see times and locations". Carol enters credit card. Carol finds Bob.<p>3. Alice gets some of Carol's money, since she took the photos.<p>Why is that not a thing yet? License plate reading, unlike, say, tapping undersea fiber, is not something you need either a government's resources or a government's ability to skirt the law to do. This is easy stuff.
Been flying a drone over landfills for a year now. I'm taking high resolution photographs of all the address labels I can find. Wrote a script to do OCR on the photographs and then export that into an Access Database. Been mailing out flyers to positives asking folks to do better recycling.
It seems to me that we need the legal system to recognize computer-processed 'big data' as what it is, which is a totally new kind of information that doesn't fit neatly into our existing privacy framework. I think it's good that this technology exists (especially if my car were to be stolen), but I don't see how it would be harmful to the public interest to require police to get a warrant before looking me up.<p>Of course there are edge cases, where it's hard to draw the line between automated and semi-automated data collection, but that's why we have judges. However, it is troubling that this new technology is hitting its stride during a time which is not great for privacy rights in general.
The only good thing to come out of this story is that Ars was able to do a public records request and get access to the data.
Having the data available to anyone who wants it opens up enough privacy concerns and potential abuse outside of the 'good guys' that hopefully someone in the city realises it should stop spying on it's citizens.<p>Unfortunately the fix will likely be to continue the surveillance and to bar public access to the data.
This is great that the Oakland PD acquiesced to the request...it appears old Excel spreadsheets is a common way for the camera-tech contractors to store and disseminate the information. A couple years ago, MuckRock made a request for Boston PD's records, and received one spreadsheet (in error) that had 65,536 records: <a href="https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/dec/15/boston-police-close-alpr-program/" rel="nofollow">https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/dec/15/boston-po...</a>
<i>“If anyone can get this information, that’s getting into Big Brother,” he told Ars. “If I was trying to look at what my spouse is doing, [I could]. To me, that is something that is kind of scary. Why do they allow people to release this without a law enforcement reason? Searching it or accessing the information should require a warrant.”</i><p>The state collecting this info in the first place is a parallel with Big Brother. The state handing out the data to anyone that asks is not.
I am all for privacy, but...it is not a reasonable expectation of privacy that your car and/or license plate will not be photographed while on the road (at least according to US law).<p>There is an entire body of law regarding <i>reasonable expectation of privacy</i> vis-a-vis 4th Amendment search and seizure. If nothing else, even if one does not personally agree with the jurisprudence, then they might find it informative to know what the police may or may not search/seize without a warrant, probable cause and/or reasonable suspicion.
And this, my friends, is where our liberty died:<p>“Doesn’t bother me personally,” said Jon Kaufman, an Oakland resident. <i>“I have nothing to hide.”</i>
An ideal tool for stalkers.<p>I am sympathetic that this data could be useful for law enforcement - however this data must not be released wholesale to the public and there should be limits to how long it is stored.
If you're curious, like I was- this is what the License Plate Readers look like: <a href="http://police-praetorian.netdna-ssl.com/VigilantVid-PR-Feb.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://police-praetorian.netdna-ssl.com/VigilantVid-PR-Feb.j...</a><p>I have seem them before but I originally thought these devices were some sort of radar speedometer or something.
Collecting this data on the general public should not be legal. If you are a suspect in an active investigation it is completely different, but you must be actively identified, you shouldn't be able to do what LA did and simply say "everyone is a suspect".<p>I think you have to take these technologies to their logical conclusion, because Moore's law will ultimately take it there. A camera recording every plate, everywhere it goes, stored for all time. That's not a database any people should allow their government to keep, warrant or not.<p>I'm glad they quoted the 2012 USA v Jones GPS tracking case, because this is exactly the same thing with an even lower cost per vehicle tracked. Ultimately I want Congress to pass a law putting limits on the data retention, but obviously that's not going to happen any time soon.
Simply stated:<p>Plate != Person<p>To get to "Person" you need to have a permissible purpose that is already protected under the DPPA (a federal law)<p>[<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_Act" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...</a>]
It's bad enough the state collects and retains this data.<p>It's even worse that this kind of data can legally be obtained by FOIA. I'm all for transparency, but not where it touches the privacy of individuals.<p>btw, I have no particular problem with plate scanners as long as no-hits are not stored for longer than 7 days and any searches on the data heap are authorized by a judge (e.g. to gather data in a murder case).
> "you should support restrictions on how long law enforcement agents can store this data, and who can access it, and under what circumstances."<p>Or better yet, start opposing its collection... if you're under the speed limit no authority has a good reason to keep track of where you're going and when.
- people vote for cops to track license plates "for security", "for the children", "don't complain if you have nothing to hide"<p>- libertarians complain "you don't know who will be in power tomorrow and (mis)use this data or allow for its misuse"<p>- some company comes along and buys the data off the cops because those in power let them. Maybe those in power when the law for collecting this data passed promised that this data wouldn't ever be shared, but now it's someone else or they changed their mind because fuck the people.