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ACLU Protests Police Scanning License Plates
dustman81 writes "The ACLU is objecting to the practice of police in Springdale, Ohio using an automated license-plate scanner on patrol cars to locate stolen vehicles or those whose owners are wanted on felony warrants. The scanner can read 900 license plates an hour traveling at highway speeds. So far, the scanner has located 95 stolen cars and helped locate 111 wanted felons. The locations of the license plates scanned are tagged with GPS data. All matches are stored (with no expiration date given) and can be brought up later and cross-referenced on a map. If the plate is wanted, the times and locations of where it was scanned can be referenced. The Springdale police department hopes to begin using the system soon to locate misdemeanor suspects. This system is also in use in British Columbia."
It's a state-issued plate, and it's designed to be publicly viewable and even photographable in many areas (where photo blocking equipment is illegal). This is really not much different than officers looking at plats normally, just more efficient. Next up? GPS tagging plates.
Technology seemed similar to a local story I had read recently. It is already in use in Long Island, NY suburbs
h tml
http://wcbstv.com/politics/local_story_173070807.
I wonder if there are any sequences of letters/numbers that would screw with the image recognition software.
"has located 95 stolen cars and helped locate 111 wanted felons"
I'm all for the privacy thing but this sounds like it's working.
G++
I'm sorry, but this is one of the instances where I disagree with the ACLU.
You're out on the open road. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. No civil right is being violated, IMO.
Is this another example of us basically having less and less privacy when we leave our homes? Yes? Are our movements being recorded more and more and is it getting annoying? Yes? But claim that the police recording license plates on the open highway is unconstitutional? Can't side with you.
Start a happiness pandemic
I hope to see the ACLU defending the Koran-toileter against the hate crime charges laid against him.
Constitutes UNREASONABLE search (duh! dumbass!!) Maybe in your NAZI state of Hitlerland this is permitted but this is the UNITED STATES of AMERICA, land of the FREE, not the TERRORISTS STATE you claim.
So they can't track me if I don't have a tag displayed? (still waiting on plate and only have papers) Awesome! I guess I should go commit felonies and have lots of fun now...
But in Toronto's case, it's to look for illegally parked vehicles. It's illegal to park overnight without the right permit, so they look for any license plate that isn't in the database for that area.
In many areas of Toronto, it is impossible to park legally on the street after midnight, unless you live in the neighbourhood and have the right permit. So, if you want to have a party and invite your friends, make sure they leave before midnight.
Of course, being Toronto (the inefficient), they are unable to prosecute a parking ticket for any car from outside Ontario. Don't bother paying, there isn't anything that will happen.
I guess this proves that the ACLU is really run by felons.
Because the police have no right to track me when I have committed no crime and am not wanted in connection with a criminal investigation.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
The ACLU is wrong in this case. They're complaining about a technology that is an inevitable result of requiring vehicle licenses and driver's licenses.
If they can make you have a license plate, then they can read it. You people lost this battle a long time ago.
Plates are openly displayed in a public place (roadways) and cops can (and have been for some time) easily run plates one at a time. The system just automates the process and unsettlingly keeps indefinite logs that can be mined for nefarious purposes and track our every move, but lately the courts haven't seemed to mind as long as they sell it as protecting families from perverts and drunks. My paranoia doesn't like this at all--they might start doing obnoxious things like pulling me over for no reason other than the fact that I'm not usually in that part of town at that particular time and give me a ticket for a broken tail light, which I tell them is working just fine, then he smashes it and says "no it's not" and starts asking the hooker seated next to me uncomfortable questions.
It does not say if _all_ or just the ones that one on the "hit" list plates are "tagged" and recorded. I would object to this system IF it recored _all_ plates and locations. Recording just the ones that came back with warrants or stolen I have no problem with. And would disagree with the ACLU on this one.
I figure from the article that it looks for certain plates (stolen cars etc) and only the matches are being stored, not every plate scanned. At least, that would make sense, article doesn't really make it clear. If so, how is this different than a cop seeing a "wanted" licence plate on a car and recording the time and place where it was seen? He has to look at a lot of plates but he disregards those that don't match. If every single plate scanned is stored with GPS data then obviously its a different story
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
If the article isn't just poorly worded, the issue is not that they're storing the hits (vehicles that have been flagged as stolen), but that they're also storing the *misses* - ie. even if you've broken no laws and your use of your vehicle is perfectly legitimate, your movements are still being stored indefinitely.
You are correct, this is merely automating a process that the police do anyhow, and making it more efficient. And I encourage anything that gets police to do their real job rather than hand out speeding tickets all day.
What troubles me is the line about misdemeanors. I'll have to read the article more what that entails, if someone can be bought in for missing a parking ticket or what not.
But more importantly, will it become a camera society like England. Because now, by reading 900 plates, they possibly have a snapshot of where those 900 cars (and presumably their owners) were at any one time. Will they keep that info?
You see, if this technology really catches on, what will happen is that the criminal will switch someone's license plate (most people won't notice if their license plate is different as long as it's the same state and not a vanity one) and then put that onto the target car shortly after stealing it. That means mostly-law-abiding people with a few misdemeanors will have to watch out.
So if a cop is behind you they can't "run your plate?" This happens every day and in every municipality in the country, and if your plate comes back stolen, they have probable cause to pull you over.
Last year my car was stolen. It happened a few days after some scumbag killed a cop and went on the lam, so the police had zero time for me (and I can't really blame them). If we'd had these gizmos then, they might have caught the piece of shit cunt that boosted my wheels.
If I was a cop on the hot auto squad, I'd cross-correlate owners reporting stolen vehicles with ACLU members - and I'd shitcan their cases.
If you are of no interest to the police, then your records will just be sitting on a disk somewhere. On the other hand if something happens to you later, this could be useful if police need to see where you where last to try to find you.
I could see where this could be a real pain if someone was falsely accused of a crime and they had to prove that some citing somewhere was an incorrect reading. So I think a reasonable compromise would be to have a law that any data past some age was no longer usable by authorities and had to be deleted. I think there is something similar for video recordings.
Define your right to privacy.
In this instance the police have a database of where they saw your license plate, forever.
Would it be okay if they chipped your car, and require that it transmit your location. After all you have no expectation to privacy on public roads.
Sure they can. But they can't store the GPS coordinates and store it in a database. As long as knowledge of my whereabouts exists until the police officer forgets about me because he has something better to do, I see no issue. The database has a much, MUCH better memory.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Usual civil rights bullshit. Fact is, criminals use the anonymity of cities and ease of car transport to hide and go about their business. So what if every plate is logged? If it's used to prevent, detect, and enforce law that protects the civil rights of people who've been victims of crime there isn't a problem. Sure, criminals have rights to but not when they prop up their criminal empires. I hope this sends a signal on that.
If you are of no interest to the police, then your records will just be sitting on a disk somewhere.
Oh, of course! If I have nothing to hide, then I have nothing to worry about, right?
What if I become a person of interest to my spouse during divorce proceedings? Then the database potentially becomes a tool to punish me, not for something illegal I may have done, but for something immoral. Great, so giving right of review of our morality to the police is good why?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Given that America today tends to criminalize anything and everything, and there are those of us who feel that many arrests are clear violations of privacy, I'm for letting a large percentage of the "criminals" go about their lives without interference from the draconian law-enforcement arm of our near-socialist government. Even many "real" criminals are simply victims of our overbearing, unfair society.
Granted, not every single criminal should go free; there are some true criminals out there that are a danger to others out of true malice, and obviously I have no pity for them.
This being a very unpopular opinion and likely modded down to oblivion, and one I don't want directly associated with any identity I use online, this post will have to be Anonymous.
And since this has always been publicly available... it is just information demanding to be released from it's bonds.
Bullshit. They can follow your vehicle while running your plates, simply because they need to do this as a part of their job. Is that 'tracking' you?
You will not be able to fight this system as a whole, legally. Fight for data retention laws that will limit the police's ability to retain all car/location logs (not just the 'hits' they are actively seeking) indefinitely.
It's not the use of this system, it's the potential for misuse that is the problem here.
And you know it's gonna happen!
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
At least in my state, driving an automobile is not a RIGHT, but a privilege granted by the department of revenue
You actually believe that? That getting from point A to point B in the way society has designed it (i.e. by driving) is a PRIVILEGE? Welcome to the police state, I guess, where doing anything except breathing requires governmental permission.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Mod parent up: "+1 unintentionally insightful" for accidentally proving the ACLU's point...
Like the wiretapping, the real issue is the lose of privacy and damage to our rights. In particular, the storage of plates numbers with locations is bothersome. I do not like the idea that the police can recall where any car was at. But if the system tries to locate a positive and then discards all else, well, it sounds useful to me.
As to the fast scan of all cars that the vehicle passes, personally, I am trying to figure out why the ACLU is fighting that. For the life of me, I would think that it makes things safer since it allows police to drive and observe other issues rather than pay heavy attention to cars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You absolutely have every right to not have the government tracking your moves. It's one thing to read the plate and compare it against a list of plates and record and report those. But they have no right to record the movements of the average person. Privacy is not just about when no one can see you. Part of privacy is about the reasonable expectation that it is none of the governments business where and when you go.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/conductunbecoming/
Yes, a cop on the street can follow you around and record where you go and when. But you would be able to see him doing that. You would know.
More importantly, the cop would have to skip other crimes to pursue you.
And the Gatling gun wasn't anything new compared to the musket. Yet it certainly changed land warfare.
Sometimes increasing the speed of an action does change the situation. And automating data collection on people NOT accused of a crime does change the situation.
The ACLU is pathetic. Aside from their outright hypocrisy on the Second Amendment, I'm in more danger from them and the constitutional rights they profess to protect, than anybody else. All things considered, I prefer less criminals on the streets, and crime being more dangerous to the criminal, than the victim. And how they deserve tax exempt status is beyond me completely.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I wonder if they considered the size of the database. If anything they will trim old records once they run low on disk space.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
the storage of a regular citizen's info. IMHO, The scanning should not be the issue. I have no problem with it. What is needed is that the plates are scaned, checked against the list, and if positive, it is saved. The real problem would be if the police are saving the data for more times than is necessary to check against a list. That should be made illegal. The police should NOT have the ability to track ALL cars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Take the bus or a train. Look at the bright side. If you get into a wreck, nobody can ever sue you for it. In fact just the opposite, it's like no fault insurance, you get to sue them no matter who caused it, and the medical coverage is somewhat automatic. How can you lose? Think of the money and hassles with the DMV you'll save besides.
What?
If you don't have anything to hide then why are you complaining?
And the oft missed counter:
If I'm not suspected of a crime then under what authority are you surveilling me?
And this IS surveillance of citizens WITHOUT a warrant.
It is a mistake to call driving a priviledge. Taxpayers bought the roads and should have full, anonymous access on any vehicle worthy of the road under its tires. By removing the "right" to drive, you have gained very little: it is a tad easier to prosecute drunk drivers. BFD. It also means there is generally no burden of proof for any ticket or citation (of which, I have received zero in over 10 years - so this is not bitterness per se). Do you find it odd that they put cameras everywhere - INCLUDING IN THE COP CARS - and then take the cop's "word" for it that you were speeding, failed to stop, swerved, etc.? You can't tint windows to travel anonymously. You must have a plate that can and will be tracked whenever practical. If stolen cars are a concern, there are better ways to pretect your "precious" investment - state sanctioned tracking device. The laws enforced are likely to be the typical morality BS: drug "dealers", smoking in vehicles (soon to be outlawed - btw, I am not a smoker), kids belted in the least accessible/most inconvenient seat.
I believe it. They make it very clear when you get your license that it's a privilege as opposed to a right, and it it's fairly obvious why. Cars are dangerous even in the hands of the most skilled, and much more so in the hands of the not-so-skilled. Every time you take your car down the highway at more than 30MPH you're endangering other people if you're not capable of controlling your vehicle. Darn right it's a privilege, and one that should be much more restricted than it is in the US.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
So you're okay with the technology being mounted on a patrol car.
But not on, say, light posts around your house.
Why is that? It's the same technology in both cases. Just one of them is pointed at your house 24/7/25 while the other one just has a probability of catching your plate on the road.
What if it was only 50% likely that they'd know where your car was at any point in time? Would you be okay with that?
75%?
80%?
90%?
95%?
At what point does this become upsetting to you and why that point?
This issue seems similar to many of the problems with cameras in cities; the problem comes down to how the system is implemented and less about what is actually being observed. I don't know exactly what the Ohio ACLU's objection is, as I could not find it on their website quickly and very little was said in the article about what the ACLU was taking issue with, but it seems like a similar situation to the problem with the cameras in Chicago. Daily and the police department set up a bunch of cameras around town without setting up any system of oversight or review. The argument is that it can stop/prevent crime, so, to them, other issues are moot (as far as I know, it hasn't stopped any crimes, just cost money). I am guessing that this police department just set up this system without consulting much of anyone else, as it can stop crime, which in this case, it does. It seems the question of a right to privacy in public areas with public information is a harder question to answer, but such programs should not be implemented blindly, as the power abuse can be great. I am guessing this was more of the objection was about.
Just recently in my area a 12 year old girl as abducted and murdered by a child rapist. Anything that helps catch such criminals, and more importantly acts as a deterent to prevent the crime in the first place is a go. You'll have to come up with something better than not wanting to be spotted outside a strip club.
"this could be useful if police need to see where you where last to try to find you"
While this can save a life every once and then, the potential to ruin whole coutries is there. Unless this info is safeguarded (like being accessible only when the police can convince a judge they need to get that data _on_that_very_specific_subset_of_the_data_) I would not sleep well...
For that life-saving abilities, a GPS and satellite-relayed location is just fine.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Sorry, but driving IS a privilege. Hence driving licenses, hence road tax, hence every regulation of the public roads. Driving on your own property is a right, as it should be. Driving on public property is a very permissive privilege, as it should be.
That said, I agree with the ACLU on this one. You Americans are incredibly lucky that you have organisations like this fighting for your rights - we've had this system in the UK for several years and there's been no opposition to it at all. Most people don't even know it exists.
So you would say that it should be illegal to hire a policeman with a photographic, or even just a very good, memory who might remember whenever he saw your car?
My example is no less overreaching than your own. And yours is discriminatory.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's funny that the people most in favor of civil liberties and freedom from tracking are the people who are probably least likely to commit a crime, like stealing a car.
Except, perhaps, for some of the seemingly less offensive crimes such as partaking in the consumption of certain herbaceous materials.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
This is one of those "boiling frog" issues that isn't very sexy or photogenic, one of the issues that many people will ignore but that sets a very very dangerous precedent. Yes the plates are state issued and yes they are intended to be viewable but the practice of indefinitely logging the plates of innocent people, just because, is wrong and must be stopped now. If allowed to run the precedent will be set for tracking credit card purchase federally, tagging and logging your presence in all public places and more.
Yes they caught 111 felons but that could be done without logging the innocent people.
I see this as another instance of IT vendors riding over the rights of citizens in their endless goal to make a buck.
We have the right to travel freely within the country and this system could be easily be used to hinder that.
We have the right to freely travel. While PERHAPS this could be used to hinder said right, the REALITY is it does not. Until it does, you have no real reason to complain other than being overly paranoid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So you'd be okay with the government installing face recognition cameras and keeping a giant database of the movement of every single citizen when they go outside? Because that's the next step, dude. They're working on it now.
Sounds great. I see no problem with this.
As long as access into the database is tracked to prevent abuse - you should have a real reason to pull out records for the face of interest. But I see no reason at all, and in fact I see a lot of good coming from, installing said scanners.
Ubiquitous surveilance IS coming. Are you ready to think about the deeper issues at stake in dealing with this, or are you just going to whine about the inevitable and do nothing realistic to ensure abuse is guarded against?
Slashdot, of all places, is no place for a luddite wrapped in the guise of privacy advocate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Constitutes UNREASONABLE search
How is it a search, unless simply by driving I am "searching" all the cars around me because I am paying attention to them? If a guy was waving a gun put the window of a car, should it be illegal for police to pull that person over without a warrant?
Your world makes no sense to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A system like this sounds really useful for locating stolen cars and finding wanted criminals. It's a great idea in theory, and apparently it's effective. And if stealing a car becomes synonymous with getting caught, so much the better. But the lawsuit is also a good idea. There's no reason to build a database of "innocent" license plates. The government shouldn't be snooping on its citizens, and it's easy to imagine this information being abused. Maybe you trust this administration, but can you trust the next one, and the one after that?
Well what's the big deal? So what if a government goon knows who my friends are, how often we hang out, which political meetings I attend, whether I attend narcotics anonymous meetings or see a psichiatrist, how often I buy liquor or go to sex shops, etc. I'm nobody important, just a working stiff like everyone else. And this is all small-potatoes stuff anyhow.
But it's precisely because I'm nobody important that it isn't a big deal to me. I don't have to worry about retribution after I leak an important story about wrongdoing at my company or government agency to the media. I'm not a journalist trying to protect the confidentiality of my sources. I'm not a candidate running for office and having all my movements for the past thirty years scrutinized by the establishment party. I'm not an undercover officer or overzealous district attorney worried about being outed or targetted by the mob. These people do important work, and it's important to protect them.
The best way to prevent the database from being abused is not to build it. You can still find criminals and stolen cars, and use the system to fight crime. But citizens who haven't done anything wrong shouldn't be tracked everywhere they go, since it might be used against them for political reasons.
After considering this for a bit, I believe it is a good idea. I'm all for anything that enables the hacking class to more easily assume control of the non-hacking class.
Think about it. Do you really, really want to trust your life to incompetent IT administrators?
Did you see "The Net?" Seemed implausible at the time. Less so today.
Bill
What if you were the one that unfortunately was a false positive. They pull you over, remove you from your car, handcuff you, then place you in the back of their car while they verify. Hopefully it stops there and they release you and profusely apologize, but some people seem to believe computers over people, so you get dragged down to the station to sort it out there. What if this is a small town, or suburb like it sounds in the article, and people you know pass you by as you are getting arrested. That kind of tarnished image is hard to repair I think, and most people upon seeing someone you know getting handcuffed, it is hard for them to put it behind them. I wouldn't want to be a false positive, and I'd be willing to let a few car thieves get away than risk that myself. That is why I buy insurance (and this could turn into a flame war about letting people get away with crime, but please feel free to stick to the topic)
Driving is NOT A RIGHT! It is a PRIVILEGE that is exerced on PUBLIC ROADS, in *FULL VIEW* of the public, including law enforcement drones. As such, there shall be no expectation of privacy whatsoever for anyone who operates a motor car on a public road. And the idea behind license plates is that they shall be visible to law-enforcement officials.
How is considering driving to be a privilege instead of a right, making it a police state? If I chose to have friends that live miles from me, and I chose not to live somewhere with convenient mass transit then there is no reason why I have to be allowed to drive. If driving where a right there would not be drivers licenses, and cars would not need to be inspected.
Society has not mandated cars. There are many people without cars that do quite nicely, especially in major metropolitan areas. There are some people who live lives that are highly dependent on cars, but the majority of those people made the choices to end up that way.
Finally if driving were a right, it would not be denied to so many handicapped people. I don't think a single blind person has had a driver's license. Rights are things that can not be denied. Driving is something that can and will be.
As for the scanning and storing, It's really not that bad. The police to citizen ratio has gone way down so now must of us don't know are police, but it wasn't always that way, and in those days the police could largely do the same thing, except with their human knowledge of you and their memory. Since that time we have given them less, and they are finally just learning how to do more with it.
"They" aren't tracking you any more than people shooting video in your city are making you a movie star.
If they just put an expiration date on data collected from non-stolen vehicles belonging to non-felons, I have absolutely no opposition to this measure. As has been mentioned before, this is just very efficient data collection of already public data done by a tool that is being directly operated by a human (the patrol car has a cop behind its wheel). This means it's not a weird passive voyeurism like we get with cameras, and is certainly much more limited as far as its observational scope goes. And if it makes finding a stolen car that much more efficient, I'm all for it.
How about another 12 year old girl who has had to move because she's being hidden from an abusive man who will kidnap/murder her.
This guy gets hold of the records, tracks her down, and kills her.
How about the fact that I was at an accountant being used in a divorce case being used as proof that I was hiding funds? Sure, it's only money, until I can no longer afford to pay for rent and such, and can't afford the defense at that point to be able to see my children again.
How about when it turns out I've been by that 12 year old girl's house 20 times in the last month because I like to read at the park nearby, and I get arrested and murdered in jail (they love child molester/killer's in there), before I have a chance to even explain why I was in the area? Maybe you'll say my life is worth that trade... but what about my children's lives after that point?
What about when my car is stolen from work, used to kidnap/murder the girl, and is returned to work before I notice it missing (not hard inside 8 hours)... now I'm really screwed for an explanation... especially if they use GPS records that many cars are keeping on their own now adays.
And this even before we start getting into the inevitable political scenarios... if you don't quiet down about that "incident" with your daughter at the mayor's party you might find your license place at the scene of a murder, with your picture in some security tapes...
I could sit here and come up with a few dozen more off the top of my head, but it's really not worth the effort.
This stuff already happens often enough (much like the murder you mention), but with "perfect" records it will happen far more often.
Sorry... that one 12 year old girl's life isn't worth endangering my children's lives, nor destroying the basic principles upon which this country was founded (which is protecting a bunch of other 12 year old girls). There are other ways to help prevent and solve these issues that don't involve giving "absolute power" to people who have proven over and over again that they will abuse it in the worst ways imaginable.
I hate to say it that callously, but it's true.
Reasonable expectation of privacy aside, not many people want to live in a society where every movement is tracked and logged. And that is where this will end up. If we're okay with the police doing it via automobiles, it will progress to traffic lights and other places, and eventually the whereabouts of every auto (or every license plate) will be tracked. No big deal, you say? What happens when it gets hacked, or someone sells the data to insurance companies, and so on?
But I'm guessing this falls on deaf ears. Some people just don't see the value of freedom, and nothing I can say is going to change that. Totalitarianism doesn't develop because of bad people trying to take away freedom; it exists because people in that society don't care about freedom enough to preserve it.
Using it to find stolen vehicles and convicted felons is a great thing. But they already said they are heading down that slippery slope to total abuse. They already plan to use it for finding misdemeanors. Next it will moving violations, then traffic tickets. Finally, it will be used to locate "dead-beat dads" (some poor schuck who lost his job so is late on his child support payments).
There is absolutely no question in my mind that this is going to happen. This kind of shit ALWAYS happens.
-- Will program for bandwidth
>It's funny that the people most in favor of civil liberties and freedom from tracking are the people who are probably least likely to commit a crime, like stealing a car. ...or secede from England... =-D
In Hungary this system is also used to detect cars not paying the highway usage fee (every license plate gets read at several checkpoints), but so far no one has ever (publicly) questioned whether the location gets stored. Might be interesting to know if there is such database.
...the most they can say is "At least the thief still has his/her rights..."
If my car is stolen, I *want* them to find it.
Seriously, I wish the ACLU did support the 2nd Amendment as well, but they work they do is no less valuable for their blindness to that one Amendment. The NRA generally does good work too, though there are only 1/9 as committed to the Bill of Rights as the ACLU.
I've seen arguments for both sides, but I have to say that this is crazy. After reading the article, I find it a bit odd that people don't read the implications of this beyond their nose in front of them. I would say the only allowance to tap this database would be search warrants, there needs to be a lot of restriction on this or completely trash the idea...otherwise I'd say we have an equal right to cover our license plates with reflective things to make it impossible to read.
Like someone had mentioned, the last thing we need is another place where people can appropriate where you drive with "representing yourself", aka abuse of this data can run very rampant.
I for one do NOT welcome our new plate scanning overlords.
Um, yes, driving is a privilege. That's why the state is allowed to revoke your license if you get caught drinking and driving, or you drive recklessly and hit a construction worker on the side of the road. You'll understand when you turn 16 and you get your license, junior.
PATRIOT act comes to mind. The NSA has always had a number of interesting equipment. Historically, it was run by those who did not have a political agenda. With the PATRIOT act, it allowed (in fact demanded ), that the NSA share the information with the fbi AND the DOJ. IOW, it is now being used heavily for political gains. Once you start making allowance for "good things", then it will be used for bad. There are very few cases where this can be used for good byt storing. OTH, I can think of a million times more of the bad. For the few goods that it might do, it is not worth the almost certain bad that will occur.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm surprised by the way this system works.
I implemented a system that does basically this, as custom development for a police department in a small American city. It's worked fantastically well, but they had a lot of specific restrictions.
Examples:
They didn't want fully automated scanning, because apparently it causes all sorts of legal troubles if you run some plates (undercovers, celebrities, people who are later stalked/attacked).
Also, they didn't want to geotag the searches (even though all of the data was available) because they specifically didn't want to build a database of people's locations outside their duties.
And lastly, they didn't want permanent data storage of *anything*. They wanted two years, to comply with various regulations and to allow time for investigation into abuses, but no more. After that, they wanted it gone forever.
As such, I find it very surprising that a police department would even have interest in building a tool that is so incredibly ripe for abuse, when it is likely to open them to all sorts of litigation, as evidenced by the ACLU lawsuit.
And as to the tools who claim the ACLU is just interested in freeing criminals, I'd remind you that the ACLU simply cares about rights, even though sometimes that's unpopular. They're willing to fight to let you quote the Bible in your yearbook, to prevent 13 year olds from being arrested for writing on their desks and as this article notes, they are also against recorded surveillance of innocent drivers.
It's telling that nearly all of the right-wingers in this thread have distorted the ACLU's actual complaint (that surveillance databases are being built against innocent drivers) and have replaced it with a claim that somehow the ACLU is against running plates altogether or direct claims that the ACLU is pro-criminal.
Being a resident of the area, and actually having them catch a car IN MY PARKING LOT ( http://www.space4lease.com/main/suite.asp?uid=unde fined&ProvOfficeMarket=1&ID=732&tvacid=55935 the buildign with the white lumina)
I am pretty scared and outraged! They probably have my wearabouts down to a T. Thats a no no for the AC in all of us.
They indicate that their refusal to support individual firearms-ownership rights is based on an utterly-insane premise ("We believe that the constitutional right to bear arms is primarily a collective one.")
I wish I could justify joining the ACLU, but that paper makes them look like just another herd of statist sheep. When they drop that bit of barking idiocy from their platform, I'll be first in line to sign up for a membership.
+1 insightful and funny
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
How did the 12 year old girl get a hold of her own car with her own license plates to have a record for the guy to find? - If you've been reading in the park 20 times in one month, surely there'd be somebody in the area who would be able to verity your story (ignoring the fact that you should never have been arrested for only that information, and unless you have an idiot judge, you wouldn't make it to jail). - Dude, though. If your car was stolen from work, surely there'd be some video evidence somewhere (security cameras from some local business, if not a parking garage where your car was stored) that would say your car left the area at 9:05am. But everybody in the office can attest to you being in a meeting from 9:00 until 10:30, or drinking coffee in the break room. If you managed to disappear for 8 full hours at work with not one person being able to verify that you were there, there's a good chance you were doing something questionable in the first place. - And I'm pretty sure if it was going to happen, the blackmail situation would happen with or without the tracking situation.
Just like the way the right to property is a privilege, right? Except for the fact that if you don't pay your taxes, the state can take your hard earned property right out of your hands.
Damn the police... I am going to use captcha on my number plate to avoid scanners being able to read my plate number.
The formatting there got screwed a bit, but the hyphens break up the points.
The fact that they're recording license plates with location data and saving it isn't necessarily the bad part. That is legal, even if you or I did it. Public domain.
What is scary is that the police have access to the names and other information of the people who are attached to those license plates. That join of info is what scares the ACLU and us.
If the police want to build their database, and then get a warrant to query it for specific plates or locations, that is fine. But the gross attachment of people to places, in such high volume is an invasion of privacy.
And the mere fact that such a database would exist, even if plates were de-coupled from people, is ripe for exploitation.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
According to this announcement, license plate data in BC is purged every three months. Yes, in Canada we do have privacy laws. It may not be perfect privacy, but at least it's a consideration when they roll out these programs. The Springdale cops should at the very least do the same.
I recently read a paper that explained why the "Nothing to hide" response is inadequate: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =998565
The paper explains that we mean lots of different things when we talk about privacy. Also, there needs to be a balance between privacy and other community concerns. Getting this balance right is difficult.
Unlawful search and seizures, anyone?
Time to dust off that copy of 1984 and while you are at it, move it from the fiction section over to non-fiction.
Now, where did I put my copy of Newspeak for dummies?
The scanning by the police is OK, the retention of the data shouldn't be; the police have no justification in keeping any information about the movements of people who are not subjects to an investigation.
but lately the courts haven't seemed to mind as long as they sell it as protecting families from perverts and drunks
The Nazis were elected, you know. Why do you think people voted for them? Do you think the Germans woke up and said "let's elect a genocidal maniac and start WWII, that would be fun?" No, they elected a government that promised law and order by doing away with all those silly legal restrictions that protected "only the criminals", to protect people from "perverts and drunks", and to run a government based on Christian values and family values (their campaign promises; sound familiar?).
To protect us from a government spiraling out of control in that way, we have strict rules for the protection of innocent citizens, and we have the principle "innocent until proven guilty". The way governments like to try to get around those protections recently is to tinker with the latter principle, but someone should not be deprive of his rights without due process of the law.
I'm just going to go out and say this, screw the ACLU. I grow tired of any time a device that actually can HELP deter crime or even assist the police, I notice some group protesting it. Often times when it's a device that is extremely helpful it's the ACLU or some other "civil rights" group who seems to go crazy.
Let's roll back though. These are license plates. Plates that are government issue, on highways that are government funded (yes by the taxes of the people, but government funded) and a device that is government controlled. So where's the problem? Oh yes, we're going to claim privacy issues, even though we should realize that by joining civilization, by owning a car, by driving on government owned roads we need to give up some of our privacy (hell stepping out of our house means other people can see us.) I'm sure if they win this one next we'll have protests of police officers sitting at the side of the road?
Some groups seem to think they have a right to privacy until the point that the police are blindfolded and are only allowed to point at people with fingers, before the last 20 years these people were called "criminals", but now they are being touted as "privacy advocates". They claim "slippery slope" with any invention and claim it'll lead to police state, because that's the easiest way to win. They'll claim that the police have no right to even investigate a crime because it invades their privacy.
Is it any wonder why crimes go unsolved? With out concrete evidence (where apparently DNA or fingerprints or even photographic evidence isn't enough) the police are hard pressed to even talk to a suspect. I find it amazing that we even can believe in the police force when for every crime prevention device we have someone claiming that it's unlawful. I just hope no one steals the ACLU's lawyers' cars if they win.
Thanks for the forumlaic argument. I hope you don't mind, but I've modified it somewhat. Tell me what you think, as I think it's analgous. The bold text represents the new words I've used:
I'm sorry, but this is one of the instances where I disagree with Slashdot.
You're out on the Internet. You have no reasonable expectation of privacy. No civil right is being violated, IMO.
Is this another example of us basically having less and less privacy when we send packets outside of our homes? Yes? Are our searches and requests being recorded more and more and is it getting annoying? Yes? But claim that the police recording the contents of every packet, as well as the sender and reciever on the open Internet is unconstitutional? Can't side with you.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Using public roads is something granted to you by society under certain conditions, hence it's a PRIVILEGE you, like many morons today, have been so babied and protected that you don't know the difference between a right and a privilege.
LIFE is a right, SPEECH is a right - are you really comparing these fundamental freedoms to your car? use your fucking legs you lazy asshole.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm reminded of the scene in Minority Report just after he flees the Pre-Crime building after the precogs see him commit murder. He's in his car, speeding away, until...law enforcement locates his vehicle, takes remote control of it, and starts driving it to where he can be arrested. Science Fiction is Science Future.
SEI8008
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Its nothing to do with creeps. Its privacy. Say if I was a paedophile and somehow had access to these logs. I could stalk the local school. Find a girl/boy that I wanted, and check the plates of the car they go into. Instantly I know what time they usually pick up their kids, how fast they travel, where they go after school and then pick my time and place to abduct them...
Yeah yeah yeah, you think it won't happen. Can't happen.
But data is data. And once you start storing it, and successfully catching crims, the people in power will want them everywhere. Then the above scenario becomes possible.
Or say you like to go and visit ex girlfriends at all hours of the night, your boss / new girls could check up on you without your permission. The possibilities for abuse are endless.
If the idea is "innocent until guilty", then the innocent ought to be given the *rights* of an innocent man, not just have lip-service paid to it. One of those rights is not to be constantly under surveillance by police ...
... in that respect it's very similar to having to produce "papers" at checkpoints ...
... and having the checkpoint-cop record your movement for later use. The 4th amendment may be what they're thinking is being infringed ...
..."
... is it reasonable for the cops to be constantly checking your details, or should there be some level of expected result before they are allowed to do so ?
No one is under surveilance since the are not being followed nor is their private space being violated. Random encounters in public is not surveillance.
No, it is very different. You are not stopped or otherwise interfered with.
The 4th is about search and seizure, neither of which is occuring here , the 4th says nothing about the right not to be noticed in public:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures
I understand your sentiment and it is a creepy thing for the police to do, but your misrepresentations and exaggeration are hurting your otherwise legitimate question.
Aside from their outright hypocrisy on the Second Amendment,
Why? Because they don't bother about it? Why should they? There are lots of other people who do already.
I'm in more danger from them and the constitutional rights they profess to protect
You may well be, but so what? If you want perfect safety, go live in a fascist state. Living in a free society carries a certain amount of risk.
All things considered, I prefer less criminals on the streets,
So does everybody.
and crime being more dangerous to the criminal, than the victim.
The purpose of the Second Amendment is a well-regulated militia. So, yes, by all means, you should have a gun at home together with ammunition, both of which should be locked and sealed except for militia training exercises or in case of an emergency. If you take out that gun in the street during peace time, you should be thrown in jail. And, yes, mandatory, state-level militia service, as well as state-level decisions as to whether to send their militias into federal wars, would do this country a whole lot of good.
ah, so I have the right to obfuscate my license plate if no human police officer is looking at it at the moment? or my appearance to any surveillance camera so long as I'm not committing a crime? thanks, I think I see the solution to this problem, just a little technical challenge
Actually I have no problems with the Gov watching me everywhere at anytime - especially in public places. As long as I and everyone else get to do the same to _everyone_, and everyone can know what's happening.
Basically if you want to have "cameras everywhere" paid for with public money, at least the public paying for it should be able to use them or even check that they are working properly. Too often you hear of crimes being committed and the cameras at the scene allegedly not working during the time.
For some sort of accountability they should give each citizen their own account for logging in to the view stuff. So you get to see what you want, and people can find out who was looking and at what.
I think the last detail should make it acceptable. Even if an account is stolen and misused, the cops have a starting point.
the hypocritical angry replies to the abuses that would surely follow if this was deployed widely, creating huge databases of the locations and habits of law abiding citizens and their non-stolen cars. The right-wingers and the anti-civil-liberties nuts are spinning this as "ACLU wants to halt database of criminals" but reality is that this is not a database of criminals that is being built. It's a database of regular, innocent people, and an occasional criminal thrown in for flavor. And there's no need for it. After all, why do you need to geotag my license plate when I have done no wrong? You want to arrest the criminals, sure, go for it. But I'm against the sort of intrusive government that wants to keep track of me as well, simply because the technology exists.
Hook up a video camera to your car and start videotaping the police. It is your right and is 100% legal. Federal Judge: Videotaping Police Legal
[End Of Line]
So the police should close their eyes when in public and have their memories wiped daily, unless it's reported that a crime is taking place in front of them?
Slippery slopes run BOTH ways.
Using public roads is something granted to you by society under certain conditions, hence it's a PRIVILEGE you, like many morons today, have been so babied and protected that you don't know the difference between a right and a privilege.
So the cops can have a detailed database of your whereabouts every hour of every day? Why not keep the cops up to date every time there's nobody home at your house? After all you can always just walk around or use our wonderful public transportation system, right?
I don't even drive and I think that's whacked.
Probably not true, but first of all - how do you know if you have anything to hide? To state this you should:
1. Know all the facts of your own life. Are you sure this girl was 21?
2. Know the law in the books. How many infractions are codified in your state's Vehicle Code? Check please. See what I mean?
3. Know clarifications given by precedents to the law in the book. These change daily.
4. Know how 1, 2 and 3 will be decided by a court in your case.
1, 2 and 3 are impossible in practice. 4 is impossible even in theory. Court decisions are not deterministic. There is always a probability that you will be found guilty, even if you feel "you have nothing to hide". More data is collected about you - the higher is this probability... And it grows exponentially as a function of amount of data. Simple mathematics.
Can you come up with an analogy a little less stupid? Unless the license plate attracts a cop's attention, he's going to forget it a few seconds after seeing it. Even if you have a cop with photographic memory who can rattle off every plate he's ever seen, that information is not going to be permanently stored in a searchable database.
The ACLU says that they leave second amendment cases to the NRA, and will continue to do so as long as the NRA is an effective advocate. Why shouldn't they? I once very graciously allowed my coworker to do some of my work too.
What I find interesting is that you not only blame the ACLU, but the constitutional rights they protect. I personally like freedom of speech, the ability to not be randomly searched, etc. Further, I would argue that they help limit the police's ability to act capriciously, thus focusing their attention on real criminals.
And while I would like fewer criminals on the streets, I believe I can safely say that you would disagree with having GPS chips send your position to the police every millisecond? Or the police randomly strapping lie-detectors on everyone in the town because a crime was committed? Universal fingerprint and DNA collection? Because if you object to any of these, then we have an area where reasonable people can disagree.
They get tax-exempt status because they exist to expouse a viewpoint, as opposed to amass profit. Much like the Catholic Church or Green Party, to use two examples whose viewpoint I disagree with. See, in a democracy, how much someone agrees with you or the government, is fortunately not a determining factor in legal status. Although I suppose that gets back to that pesky first amendment you hate.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I've seen an internet video of this technology in action and it's a bit creepy. It's clearly a cause of concern but here's a solution that I would not have a problem with:
1. Johnny Law compiles a list of license plates that belong to vehicles "of interest" BEFORE they patrol.
2. Scanning software has the requirement that it only logs license plates belonging to said list.
You could even add another layer of checks-and-balances by having a third-party (judicial?) review of which license plates belong to the list.
-R
As for the scanning of license plates...
The Supreme Court is clear in that this kind of observation by law enforcement doesn't constitute a search under the 4th Amendment. So you can't debate whether it is a reasonable or an unreasonable search as it never was a search to begin with.
1) Is the person in a public place? Simple yes or no. 2) Does the person have an expectation of privacy? For instance, a closed telephone booth is in a public place, but grants a person an expectation of privacy and law enforcement thus needs a warrant to record a conversation therein.
If 1 is yes and 2 is no, then it falls under the plain sight (or plain view) doctrine. It is an exception to the warrant requirement, requires no probable cause or reasonable suspicion, and is not considered a search (of any kind) under the 4th Amendment.
As for tracking/storing this data for long periods of time...
If the police can legally obtain information, there is nothing stopping them from amassing it in a database under the 4th Amendment. Something that wasn't a search to begin with doesn't magically become a search because it is entered it in to a database. A ruling stating otherwise would be groundbreaking.
However, the Court has ruled that you have a "right to privacy" under the 9th Amendment and some other numbers they pulled out of the butt of their number-gnome (since the Constitution doesn't explicitly say anything about privacy). So perhaps the Court will rule that the privacy of citizens outweighs the benefit to law enforcement in rearguards to warehousing this information.
If I had to bet, I'd say the ACLU is going to lose. But nothing stops the people of Springdale, Ohio from expecting a higher level of privacy than the minimums set by the US Constitution. I've not been to Ohio, but I'm pretty sure they have local elections there too.
I think that we are going to soon see a lot of events like this, wherein information is recorded and stored indefinitely. It's an inevitable trend in a world where the price per unit storage is decreasing at an exponential or faster rate. As processing power and networking rates do the same, they are creating a situation where the cost of archiving previously used data and sorting through it in the future ceases to be an impediment.
And with the proper safegaurds, this is not a bad thing. In fact, it's unbelivably wonderful. There's no question of whether or not I committed the crime; System records indicate I was not there. What do I mean by proper safeguards? To start with, the system must be "open." By this, I mean that anyone must have access to all recorded streams without exception. The police can regularly download the info out of the plate scanner, I can download it, you can download it. I also mean that all accesses of the data should be archived by a given system as well and equally accessible. In short, my answer to "Quis Custodiet Custodes Ipsos" is that everyone does. And everyone can also watch everyone.
This kind of situation would create a self-perpetuating cycle of positive feedback to prevent abuse. If you're being a dick, looking through the system for no reason but to invade people's lives or find minor technicalities to harass them, it will be discovered. Then, the reaction will be others subjecting you to the same. Since you do not want this and know it will happen, you won't do it in the first place.
What I'm saying is that digital recording, processing, and storage are rapidly supplementing human eyes, the brain, and paper. Digital systems offer enormously superior accuracy and recall, without the possibility of bias. If it's done right, we can prevent the wrong people from us that for the wrong purpose. But fighting against it's mere existence won't help, work to guide it to the right outcome!
ah, so I have the right to obfuscate my license plate if no human police officer is looking at it at the moment? ...
... or my appearance to any surveillance camera so long as I'm not committing a crime?
No, your department of motor vehicle regulations probably prohibit obscuring your license plate at any time. Also driving itself is not a right, it is a privelage. Your car would be an "effect" in the 4th ammendment context so searching the interior of your car would involve a right.
Most likely. However wearing a mask in certain contexts may create probable cause that would justify a search, and people and merchants would certainly be within their rights to refuse service in many contexts. So the mask may be counterproductive.
It's amusing to see all the people crying and bitching about the ACLU filing a suit in an effort to somewhat preserve our constitutional rights. Damn them for trying to protect what's left of the Bill of Rights.
Sure you want your car found IF stolen, the unwarranted tracking of innocent people be damned. What was it someone else said? Fuck the ACLU, if I were a cop I'd find their cases and shitcan them. The followup to that nicely pointed out that this is exactly why the government cannot be allowed to unilaterally track cases.
Government WILL abuse the system. And each one of you who criticizes the ACLU for attacking the system in the name of "convenience" and "safety" or "security" fails completely to understand the rights you have and why the ACLU does what they do. Just cause you're too blind or stupid to see the potential abuses doesn't mean they don't exist.
Anything that helps catch such criminals, and more importantly acts as a deterent to prevent the crime in the first place is a go. You'll have to come up with something better than not wanting to be spotted outside a strip club.
Freedom comes with a price. Terrible things happen. Wicked people are out there. I grew up in Los Angeles and I have 3 children of my own. I can't even watch the news anymore because it makes me a nervous wreck every time some smiling blond tells me all about some family's grief process after their 12 year old girl was abducted, raped and killed. I still think this surveillance system is a terrible affront to the rights we as Americans hold so dear.
While you are doing the the "think of the children" thing, how many rights are you willing to surrender to that end? If the government had the ability to know where every citizen in the country was at all times, would that be an acceptable sacrifice of your freedom?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Other than linking the results to a database of stolen vehicles, this is actually fairly simple to set up for a couple of hobbyists. It wouldn't surprise me if license plate scanners are already available in some open source project.
Regardless, the 4th amendment says that the Police can not get secret information through force, without first obtaining a warrant. This system does not, and can not, apply to getting already public information.
Suppose I suspect my wife is having an affair, and I sue her for divorce. I can subpoena that license plate database to see where she's been, and who she's been visiting.
Hey, wait -- she can do the same to me!
I'm against government spying on law abiding citizens. But I really have no expectation of privacy when I'm driving my car on public roads. Not only do I assume people can see me and recognize me in my car, I'm sure they could catch a picture of me picking my nose. Just taking snaps of license plates to see if it is a stolen car is doing me a service.
Dear ACLU, please stop protecting criminals and start protecting my rights. I would like to see school systems that provide the same resources to students in inner cities (who are mostly minorities) that are provided to richer students in the suburbs. Public education should be as good everywhere, otherwise why am I paying taxes for it? If rich folks don't like it they can send their kids to private school and the money can go to the poor schools.
There are a lot of causes worth fighting, tracking people by their license plates is not one of them. The unreasonable barriers being placed on gun ownership on poor blacks who live in high crime neighborhoods is completely unfair and unethical. Why can a white redneck out in the boonies buy 10 handguns a year at gun shows, to shoot at squirrels or whatever. but a single mother black woman living in Oakland cannot buy an inexpensive handgun to protect her family from crackheads and thugs who break in to steal the food from the mouths of her children?
It's time you get your shit straight ACLU, and actually protect the civil libraries of americans. And this goes to anyone who support ACLU with donations. cut the flow until they actually address the real issues. (I know they fight issues on many fronts, but why no real progress on the ones I have mentioned?)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It makes no difference if they're infrared or UV. As Scalia clearly explains in the opinion I linked to, that's quite irrelevant:
My sister owns a circa 75 Nova. The body is not in the best condition, but it runs. Every time I go to Utah to visit her and drive that car, the police pull me over and give me a ticket for something ridiculous. Here's a couple of cases in point:
Just after dark, going out for some food with my baby in my wife's lap. Illegal, I know. (A pox on insurance companies.) Dangerous? Maybe, but then cars are dangerous machines. If they're going to make laws against putting children in cars with restraints, they might as well start making up rules about how many minutes a day you can allow a child to be in a car. And when are they going to go after the repeat offender drunk driver without whom the risk of accident would drop like a rock?
(Don't tell me the one about the poor woman in south Florida rush hour traffic crying when she finally gets to the checkpoint because a sudden brake at low speeds put her baby's head against the windshield, and the cop's sob story about having to charge her with negligent homicide. I've heard it before, I draw a different lesson from it.)
Well, the cop pulls us over, uses language along the lines of calling me and my wife wetbacks, asks for me driver's license. I hand him an international permit. It's from Japan. He's never seen an international permit before, apparently. What is a white guy doing with an international permit from Japan? (Now that he's up close he can see that I'm noticeably white. He hasn't yet noticed that my wife is Japanese, which might not be surprising. She looks rather hispanic.)
I explain that I've been in Japan with my wife and kid for several years and my Utah permit has expired. He asks for it anyway, and why didn't I get it renewed? I apologize for not carrying it with me or getting it renewed when I'm only expecting to be in the States for a bit over a week.
Things go downhill from there, because, like many officers, this guy can't admit he's wrong.
He goes back to his car, radios in and we wait at least a half an hour while he discusses things with whomever. (No exaggeration. My kid is really getting hungry, and my parents and my sister are wondering where we are by the time we get back.)
In the end, the only thing he can get me on is the child carrier.
So I'm out $65, which is a week's worth of food back in Japan for my family at the wages I'm earning.
Several years later, my brother and I are in the same car making a late night run to Home Depot, first, to trade a fitting for a pipe so my sister has plumbing that works now that she is out of the hospital, and second, to pick up some medicine she needs within a few hours. We are calculating that Home Depot closes before the place with the pharmacy. It's Saturday night just after Christmas, snowing, the streets are not yet slick but will be a bit slippery in an hour or so.
Coming out of Home Depot, I stop at a traffic light. Full stop, like the law says.
Right turn on red is legal in Utah, but, of course, you must come to a full stop and signal.
Full stop. I signal. I turn. I need to get over to the left as soon as possible for a left turn, so I signal and change lanes. I get pulled over.
The ticket? Not waiting long enough between lane changes. $65 that I could not afford.
We missed the pharmacy.
Fortunately, there was another store that could do the pharmacy thing until midnight, but we had to call from her home to find it. Also, we were really lucky that she didn't end up needing the medicine before I could get back with it.
Can you charge a cop with (negligent?) homicide because he's busy profiling you when you are trying to get necessary medicine back to your sister?
No extenuating circumstances, no arguing the ticket. I'm sure my black, knee length fur coat and bright aquamarine silk trousers didn't help settle that poor cop's nerves when I got out of the car to explain that my sister's life really was in danger.
I can understand some of the ambiguities here. You have to understand, my
Of course this resolves down to a case of the public being monitored vs. an agency serving the public being monitored, so they're not directly comparable. But you made the comparison, I didn't. I think a pretty good argument could be made that the police should be monitored in this way while the general public shouldn't.
We're talking about things clearly visible with the naked eye here. Entirely visible to any officer without any technological aid. Less technological aid than rendered by a flashlight or binoculars.
Your example simple does not apply.
In. The. Home.
Fourth. Amendment. Moron.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Well, I don't see that looking at my car in public has anything at all to do with this. Nothing has been searched. Or even seized. Moron. Ah. The name calling has begun. Thanks for making my argument.
This has been (or at least something very similar) in SA for about 6 or 7 months now, accept they install the cameras at traffic control points. I think the logic is that you have to slow down so that they can make sure they scan ALL the cars on a certain road during the time of the scanning. There has also been a number of Metro cop cars spotted with camaras on them, but no word yet of what they actually do - could be the same thing, or it could just be a speed monitor. For some more SA specific speed trap info, visit http://www.speedtraps.co.za/
Need an ISP in South Africa?
Okay, honestly. Which of you earnestly believe these 'in ten years' theories? I mean... from a policing standpoint, what the hell would they care about if you left your normal route to work? Hell, if you take the same route to work every day, you're already an idiot.
To me the real concern with these issues is the potential for abuse. But allow me to pose a rational, but I'm sure highly unpopular view. Currently, if you are convicted of being a witness, being at a crime scene, committing a crime, etc, your guilt rests in the hands of witnesses and the police. It's common knowledge that a cop's word is better than yours in court. Currently, it's very easy for someone to pay off witnesses, pay off cops, and even pay off judges and juries to win their innocence against a schmuck like you. If anything, this is another brick in your wall of facts that you can use to say 'I wasn't there, I didn't do it, and you have no proof'. By the same token, this provides another tool to knock out a criminal. I would rather have my innocence rely on an automated system (provided that the system itself isn't electronically abused), than the word of Officer Dick.
Furthermore, when someone steals that nice new volkswagen you just poured years of your money into, I'm sure it would really make your day to have it back in 15 minutes. When someone rapes your daughter, abducts her, and takes off in your car, it sure would be grand to have that scumbag against a wall in a half hour before he can kill and dismember her.
Of course, car doesnt mean you're in it, so there needs to be very strict rules about where and when it can be used. But I don't really care if the government knows where I am, until there is law or precident on the books that says going here or there is illegal. If uncle sam wants to know where you are, he can find you. Trust me. He hears your calls, he reads your emails, he knows what magazines you subscribe to, he knows what you buy or sell, and what you do. Uncle sam already ownes you, so quit bitching on slashdot about relatively innocuous advances in technology and start rallying about the gross abuses, scandals, extreme unabashed war profiteering BY YOUR ADMINISTRATION, unlawful detainment, no trials, disregard of the Geneva Conventions, oh yeah, and an entire war based on a premise of lies and deceit of the layman. Seriously. What a disgrace.
driving a car is a privilege, not a right. that's the point at hand.
If this system didn't keep a gps record of my where abouts even when i'm completely innocent i'd be fine with it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The problem is we ALL do things that others may object to, or that may be embarrassing in some situations, but that isn't wrong.
Do you want your mother to know about everything you do? Even if you're not doing anything wrong? I certainly would not want to live to the moral codes of an arbitrary number of people around me.
To people living in conservative societies (enough of them in the US...) or coming from conservative families this would be particularly stifling on their freedoms and abilities to make choices they want to make, but who would cause severe problems with their surroundings.
Well OK that was unprofessional of me to snap at Someone. Who. Writes. This. Way.
The relevant question as far as the Fourth Amendment is concerned, is whether the increased surveillance constitutes a search. Because your Fourth Amendment rights aren't forfeited when you leave your house. Ordinarily a policeman can conduct ordinary surveillance of plates on a public road- within human ability- which is one of the parameters under which the legislature and the courts defined the limits of police surveillance. It has still always been possible, if you behaved yourself, to travel on a public road anonymously, and to get where you were going without anyone knowing.
But not anymore, if the police can conduct this ordinary surveillance with superhuman ability. Many people here are looking at the legality of each atomic operation in isolation, and ignoring the fact that thousands of them can soon be carried out each second- a sudden, vast increase in surveillance efficiency. There may be no way soon to avoid traveling by car without having the government record where you are. We will suddenly find out a lot of stuff about a lot of people. This is a vast new development in the power of law enforcement, and the legislature and judiciary should both be expected to react in some way. The law often fails to prohibit things before they become humanly possible to do- it has to be maintained occasionally.
The right to privacy was originally a right derived from Common Law. We all have heard the expression "An Englishman's home is his Castle." This was the rough summary of the right to privacy enjoyed by freemen in England. Of course, it was an ideal, and was not perfectly executed in practice, but the same could be said of much that goes on in this country.
In the US, much of our law is based on a combination of British Common Law, Statutory, and Constitutional law. And, once a statute is written that enumerates what was previously common law, the statutory meaning takes precedence. The right to privacy was one of those unspoken, but widely accepted theories of British Common Law. But with the publication and ratification of the US Constitution, many areas of Common Law became statutory.
Nowadays, the right to privacy is a statutory one, carved out of the intersection of individual rights derived from the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments. For instance, the 5th Amendment gives you the right not to self-incriminate, the 4th gives you protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the 14th and 6th amendments insure that you have due process rights and can't be sent to a prison in Cuba. In the middle of the 20th century, the USSC began to interpret the nexus of these rights as creating an area of individual activity that should be free from government interference. Some of the more famous cases, Griswold v. Connecticut and progeny, Roe v. Wade and progeny, found that while the right to privacy was not enumerated, it was implied, in the same way that if you say "I consult with my attorney Monday through Sunday," you have implied that you also talk to your attorney Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
While it may be true that you can't travel on public roads with an expectation of privacy, it was always implied that you can travel in public without an expectation of having your travel being monitored. Especially not with God-like powers. Nobody even envisioned such a thing. And let's be realistic here. The only conceivable purpose of a monitoring system designed to track motorists in their daily movements is to effectively conduct surveillance on all citizens in the most effective way possible. It's clearly beyond the pale.
I have not RTFA but we have a system in use already here in the UK. It is linked with the Driving Vehicle License Agency [DVLA] and Insurance companies. Lazy cops just cruise the motorway and wait for the computer to bleep. They also have a 'special' unit which drives around with this technology which is assigned purely to 'terrorism'.
I have developed such a system myself, and have it mounted in my car. I spend most of my days driving randomly around the city, and have developed quite a good databse of where cars were at specific dates and times. I post this information freely on the internet at http://www.fakestory.com/
Now - how would people use this information?
Well, the police could go back through it when a crime is committed, and then harass anyone that was seen in the neighbourhood of the crime within 2 hours of it happening. This would be "pre-surveilence" of people who should be presumed innocent. Even though the database doesn't prove any connection to the crime, it'll certainly make life hell for anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if a crime is only reported 3 years from now, they'll be able to go back and check if you were in the area.
Your wife could also use it to see if you actually did attend that Marketing seminar in Albequreque last week... or if you spent the weekend with your mistress upstate instead.
Your insurance company could use it against you too - parking your car in high-crime areas too often? How about your next potential employer - does he like the fact that you have parked near the last 3 anti-war rallys, or were seen near an abortion clinic last week?
So - the question becomes; what's the difference with me doing this personally, versus the police doing it? Certainly I could argue that anything done in public and plain view is "public information"... nothing that people couldn't gather by themselves perfectly legally. Where does it cross the line? If the police do this, what checks and balances are in place to ensure THEY don't cross the line, and that the information is not kept or used outside of accepted applications? Keeping positive-hit information only from a "hit list" of _already_ active cases would be acceptable to me. ANything that surveils people who are not wanted for specific reasons at the time of the information capture is NOT acceptable.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
If you are 100% honest, and have nothing to hide, you are not human.
Every single child (there has experiments been done , check the human doco) will break rules.
They have done studies with children young as 3 and they will LIE, if its advantagous!!, think about it. Its in our GENES TO LIE!!
we have to lie to survive, if we couldnt, we would be toast. Only pure slaves and drones follow all orders and rules.
If a lie can save your life you would do it. The govt are the ones who are run by paranoid psychos who had bad childhoods that probably
missed out on fun. To think everyone is your enemey, to record everyone is just pure evil and the mark of the beast.
Now who has the most to loose and who has lied the most? The govt stupid. Why else do they have so called national security secrets. To protect
other liars of past and their family decendants who have profited from evil deeds.
Society didnt break down with lax and simple policing rules in the 50s and 60s, sure people broke laws, but society still ran ok.
Any society can live with minor levels of crime, no need to be a nazi to everyone, just to catch that 1 percent.
So who should the govt be? Maybe a massive super computer, because it wont lie, unless told to do so by its leader.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I keep looking for where someone added "editable" to the database desciption as well, haven't see it yet, but if this type of database stays in existence long enough, there will be an example of it, even if only the editor knows about it.
"Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil." --Thomas Paine, Common Sense
Let's keep the evil to a minimum.
The London Congestion Charge works mainly off ANPR.
When you enter the chargable cordon, your registration plate is scanned and looked up in the DVLA database - this is how they know where to send the penalty notice if you don't pay up.
I believe at the same time a lookup is made of the Road Tax and insurance databases although if such a system is not yet operative then it surely will be soon, same for powers to track the movements of stolen and wanted vehicles
Perhaps it might be "feature creep" but in this case it's a good thing - if there are all these cameras then damn right I want them used to track criminals and people who are driving illegally.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
An openly displayed license plate is not private. It's a broadcast and a legally required one.
Uh, no. There was no implication of that sort. Airlines, train and bus systems all monitor you. Good thing too, else you'd show at the station when the junket was cancelled because they couldn't call you. Would you have those systems dismantled because someone might abuse them?
It's clearly not beyond the pale. You think it is, as is your right. But you decry your agenda with your italicized words because another conceivable purpose is the 111 felons and 95 stolen cars found.
I do not see the problem the ACLU has. Somehow its different than an officer radioing in a plate #? Seems like an efficient and effective way to achieve enforcement. If someone's child got murdered and the police came to see if I had seen anything because my plate was scanned in that area earlier, I would have no problem with it. In addition, when you or your vehicle is in public you have no expectation of privacy....now if this scanner could see through your garage door then I would have a problem with it.
The ACLU is doing nothing but continuing to drive the US into the hole it's in by protecting criminal and ignoring the law abiding, hard working, common citizen. I am sick and tired of the battles the ACLU picks.
dB Masters
The biggest problem here is that cops are quite often worse than the criminals they hunt. That and the crime ring the have going with the lower court judges and prosecutors. I am FAR less concerned with my car being stolen than I am about being targeted by the police AGAIN. They will make your life hell and if you stand up to them they will stomp on you.
They say a conservative is a liberal that hasn't been mugged yet and that a liberal is a conservative that hasn't been beaten up by the police yet. However, the sad reality is that most of us harmless people are constantly juggling which criminal is more dangerous. Well, check your pain and suffering count sometime and I think you'll find that government criminals have your average thief and mugger beat by a long shot.
If the police were generally a bunch of guys who really lived to protect and serve and defend the rights of the community, it'd be great. They're not though. A few are, but they're the exception to the bullies or even the average types that have felt the taint of authority and let it go to their heads.
I don't think the ACLU is some bastion of greatness--their stand on gun rights is asinine--but just because something makes it easier to "catch criminals" doesn't mean it's a "good thing" and it doesn't even mean it's going to protect anyone.
Oh yeah, one more thing:
"Let's roll back though. These are license plates. Plates that are government issue, on highways that are government funded (yes by the taxes of the people, but government funded) and a device that is government controlled. So where's the problem?"
I'd say the government issued plates are the first problem. And yeah, the roads are government funded, but who owns the government? They're PUBLIC roads, NOT government roads. They're MY roads as a tenant in common. Why in the hell do I have to ask my SERVANT pretty please to use MY roads and get a plate from them? And roads get paid for if you use them. For the time being gas taxes do a good job of being a fair user fee. The more you use, the more you pay.
I might not have the same expectation of privacy on road as I do in my house, just as there's a big difference between a PUBLIC room like a living room and my bedroom. However, I don't want a camera on every street corner and all my movements tracked just because it might catch a few car thieves. It's just not worth it. Especially given the direction it WILL go and HAS historically gone. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It will ALWAYS be used by whoever is in power to suppress opposition.
I have thought about this too. I think that the idea is wonderfully optimistic, in a similar way to political ideologies like anarchism and communism which sound good on paper but simply cannot work in practice. In this case, it's because all of the information would not be available to everyone. Although everyone with an Internet connection might be able to use basic features (e.g. search for a person's current location), the most useful features would only be available to officials. Governments and businesses are not willing to give up their secrets, so there will be people and places that simply do not show up on the system. They'll be able to watch you, or anything you did since the accurate records began, but you won't be able to watch them or monitor for abuses of that information, because of national security.
But wait, it gets worse. The system makes it easy for citizens to spy on each other. Look at the current fascination with blogging. Everyone seems to want to be famous... but in order for people to listen to you, you have to have a story that people want to hear. What could be better than a DIY reality TV show about the neighbour you do not like, who visits sex shops or takes drugs or cheats on his wife? The surveillance system provides the footage, and you provide the commentary, and you'll be #1 on Youtube for sure. And he'll be in Gitmo with the rest of his kind.
And hang on, it's even worse than that. There is a need to restrict access to surveillance data, but unfortunately digital information is extremely easy to copy. Therefore, a draconian system of centrally managed digital restrictions will be needed to secure the information against unauthorised copying. Inevitably, this will include a system to allow viewing priveleges to be revoked. The result of this will be that even if you do get hold of surveillance data showing (for example) an abuse of political power, you won't be able to show it to anyone because it will be centrally disabled. Unless you can get a clear copy... but then, what sort of device are you going to play that on, when 99% of the population owns devices that only play Government approved media using Government-approved software and hardware?
I don't know if this really can be steered towards the right outcome. I simply don't trust the authorities and citizens of today or tomorrow with this level of power.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
It's called the right to travel. It moves with the common, majority travel means of each age from when it was recognized.
.court system, it didn't get extended properly to cars, mass transit and airplanes. Which is part of the reason we are in the pickle we are in.
.gov on a daily basis.
So first it was horses. Then railways. However, due to the myopia of the
You are arrogantly in error and actually part of the problem. You, like so many others, don't understand that in a country based on freedom, having a Bill of Rights that encodes the Ninth and Tenth and now 14th amendments, that virtually all your activities are mostly rights and are violated by
The sooner we return to a more absolutist view of individual rights the sooner we will get out from under this fascism-lite that is being foisted on us.
There's a reason that many crimes in the US elicit such a harsh punishment, and that everything from bouncing a check to picking your nose in public is now a felony (ignoring the corporate-prison industry and other such arguments for the moment); the long prison sentences and exorbitant fines are thought to be a deterrent to other nare-do-wells who would now think twice before committing the same crime and getting the same sentence.
But part of the deterrence theory of punishment is premised on the fact that law enforcement can't catch all the criminals. To make up for the fact that there will always be Joe Robber or Tina Car-Thief who gets away with something, the hope is that they will be deterred from breaking the law in fear of receiving the harsh punishment.
The whole punishment-as-deterrent system will become quite warped however, when cops across the nation can cruise around scanning hundreds of license plates and arrest X number more felons than before. As law enforcement is armed with new technology, do the punishments ever decrease despite law enforcement being more effective in catching the bad guys?
To take this thought to the extreme: if police suddenly developed new drug-detecting technology that could scan people's surrounding air-mass as they walked out in public and determine with certainty whether they were carrying illegal drugs, should we still retain the harsh sentences that many states do for simple drug possession?
Police are already scanning in all license plates at airport parking lots looking for suspicous cars possibly involved in drug trafficing, and it was upheld as legal. Capturing the license plates of cars on public roads is not that much different, and in some ways, I could see the courts being more sympathetic to it than the parking lot situation.
In the UK not only do the police have cameras on Area cars doing this,
But all major roads have anpr cameras on to check road tax.
The police are now gaining access to these databases to check a cars movements.
There is even talk of them taking this one stage further and issuing speeding tickes based on how quickly you get from A to B.
Yup.
In 1999 I was pulled over by a police car with such a system. The put in the police car for a while and I could see each cars place number come up on a laptop and it would run it's plate, then run a check on the registered owners. All automatically.
I was pulled over for a suspended license from some mixup with the franchise tax board in California.
Anyhow I don't know if it was a trial or business as usual, but I was shocked to see it, Each cars plate numbers came up,
grey at first then would turn either red, yellow or green. Most were green with some yellow, and red's were pulled over.
This was being done in the downtown bar and club area of San Jose on a Saturday Evening as cars pass by on one of the main streets there.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
The police and my government are making me feel so safe by doing this. It's all good. I will always be safe from crime because of this. They will never misuse the data to put any of us in jeopardy. It's all for our safety!!!
Accept this.. live this... love this... Repeat this...
Set up a web cam tracker with a geo tagging setup say on a google map for instance. In this case it only geo tags public vehicles, city officials, squad cars etc...
Got Code?
The ACLU will protect criminals at all costs, they don't care that the cars are on public roads, and that police calling them in is no different. For quite some time the ACLU has moved away from protecting the rights of people to being a liberal shill.
Are you saying it is only liberals that care about the U.S. Constitution with its "thing" against warrantless search and seizures? The ACLU will try to make the government follow the constitution at all costs!
Would you rather some of those rights be amended?
I suggest that GPS transmitters be installed on all vehicles (public AND private) of all elected officials (local, county, state, and federal). Further, such info should be posted, continuously, to a web site for the public to monitor and review. Historical information should be available for download and/or searching. Who would be against fighting potential corruption?
With the continuing advances in technology and in price/performance ratios, it is not hard to imagine such plate recognition technology becoming ubiquitous. This could with continuous expansion lead to continuous surveillance of all vehicles. Just to make sure there are no problems with doing such a thing, I would like to see our government leaders actually LEAD and demonstrate to us how effective and safe it is, before they require such a thing for the rest of us.
Accuracy I've not yet seen a post addressing the accuracy of the license plate recognition. OCR technology is far from perfect, and that is with a *stationary* document; not a vehicle moving at highways speeds. I saw no mention of how they address the issues of false positives AND of false negatives.
...be going against a very fast typist that is manually recording the exact same thing with a pad of paper and a pair of $12 binoculars?
Uh, no. There was no implication of that sort. Airlines, train and bus systems all monitor you. Good thing too, else you'd show at the station when the junket was cancelled because they couldn't call you.
OK, I think I see what is going on here. In this country the surveillance is not yet quite as Orwellian as you're used to in the UK.
In all honesty, I don't have much of a problem with this system. When it is applied to those accused of crimes, not only is it the responsability of the court system to provide you with a fair trial, but it is your responsability to engage in that process. If the government has upheld its side of the bargain by offering a fair trial, then I don't have any pity if your license plate is flagged.
/. post) What is our job, is making sure that we block the laws that could abuse our rights, and make sure that there is clear oversight on the system. That is our part of the deal.
Granted, this system should only record numbers that are registered to fugatives, and other situation within reason (Yes you can quibble about it, but I'm not going to enumerate the exact situations in a
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
This technology spun off from automated letter address scanners. Need for rapid OCR under less than ideal conditions.
Machines don't lie unless the data and software they record and use is altered or defective by error, design, or malice.
CAPTCHA for license plates is amusing since they are designed to be easily readable. Taking lessons from current CAPTCHA tech they could harness free wet-ware post processing. Make the interesting hard to read plates available as CAPTCHAs on gov websites.
If you see your own plate you could type the wrong tag and try to avoid a speeding or parking ticket.
From the way a lot of people are talking you'd think this scanner follows every car all around town and records every visited location. That's not what it does, though. It sits on top of the squad car like a radar gun and scans license plates, then compares them with a list of stolen cars and licenses owned by wanted felons. It's not listing everywhere your car went, it's not a police version of your travel plans, it's showing one place that you went, probably just some random road where the policeman is looking for speeders. I don't understand how anyone's privacy is violated, unless you don't want the cops to know that you were driving down Periwinkle Lane last Thursday at 4, or you think that criminals have the right to not be apprehended following a computer-assisted process. Perhaps the database shouldn't be permanent, or maybe it should only save matches, but the information of where your car was at any given time, seen only be police (and none of the police care enough to look at it, probably. They'd rather let the auto-matching to the work) is harmless unless you stole the car or you're a wanted criminal, in which case there shouldn't be any expectation of license plate privacy.
So what they are doing is creating a database of where all cars have been, whether they belong to the guilty or the innocent. When I read the summary I thought, "Wow, the ACLU has crossed the line here"; which made me suspicious, usually when folks want to vilify the ACLU they leave out key facts like this one. Read the article, this tidbit is buried in the second to last paragraph and is likely key to the ACLU's concerns.
While technically its not doing anything that crosses a line, noting plates and locations of cars in the public, technology is enabling some very concerning capabilities that need to be addressed. Distrust of the government isn't just a liberal thing, its an American thing.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
Quite right - what I'm hoping that the ACLU will establish with this suit is strict procedures of when this information can be used.
You can't just have a policy that says when the information can be used - if the data is there, it will be searched in violation of policy. The only way to be SURE the information is not searched inappropriately is to now allow its retention at all.
So, I'm all for automated license plate scanning. And if a scan turns up a felon or stolen car, that information should be retained for prosecution. But if a license plate is scanned and the computer doesn't find a felony warrant or stolen car, the information should be immediately bit-bucketed by the scanning device.
paintball
Did anyone else notice that there's literally no attempt to explain what the ACLU's rationale was in TFA?
Education is the silver bullet.
If you want to find out where criminals live, send out a bunch of questionnaires asking what priority the police should put on arresting criminals. The people who respond that the priority should be low are your criminals, and now you know where they live!
paintball
I remember an article about the LAPD doing this and it was reported in WIRED magazine months ago!! Where was the ACLU then?
I for one have no problems with this at all. You're driving on MY highway, you've already complied (hopefully) with all the laws related to vehicle registration, insurance, licensing, sobriety, armament, etc.
.. you were driving by here right when the kidnapper stopped to bury the bodies in the Interstate median. See anything?" "Wait .. you said you were drunk in New Orleans the night of the murder! Why was your car here, not a half mile from the site of the burning orphanage?" "Hmmmm .. our records show you _here_ at 8:05:15, and _here_ at 8:06:00. You traveled 2.1 miles in less than a minute. Hmmmmm ..."
So we (the ominous "we") "remember" where you (well, the car license plate anyway) were. Doh. Big bloody deal.
Usefulness of this data? Can't say. "Soooo
Maybe useful, maybe not. Violation of your precious privacy? I don't think so. You want privacy, don't drive.
Toad
Uhhh, no.
If you had any idea of how many laws are on the books you would realize it isn't possible to do ANYTHING without breaking some law. Also you KNOW that you have cut little corners each day and probably more serious corners when you were younger. Maybe you step out of the marked crosswalk before reaching the curb. (jaywalking $75) Possibly you dropped your receipt when you were trying to put it in your pocket. (littering $1000) Did you ever do something like egging a car when you were a kid? (we used snowballs)
Technology exists and is coming that will let every waking moment be scrutinized in a fashion that the laws never intended. (facial recognition, object recognition, biometric identification...) If you don't think the government will try to do it you haven't been paying attention. Automated enforcement isn't about safety. It is about generating revenue.
The big example: "But what about speed cameras?" you say. You have been brainwashed. Everyone runs around saying that going faster is dangerous. Do you have any proof. "Speed Kills", but at what speed do I suddenly die? In the 80's the NHTSA commissioned a study to show how many lives 10 years of the 55mph limit had saved. The release of the report was delayed 18 months.
Why?
Because they kept getting the 'wrong' results. After playing with the numbers for an additional 18 months the best they could spin the numbers were that if they completely ignored better safety technology, better tires, etc... and assumed that ALL reductions in fatalities were only because of reduced speed the grand total was:
For every 150 man/years of time lost on the freeways they could come up with 1 life saved.
Now we all know that improved tires and improved car safety had to improve things more then that paltry sum so why didn't we get a better result? Because we had bred a generation of drivers that were so untalented (brain dead) that they were unsafe at 55. If you raised the tire pressure of all the tires on the road by less then 2 psi you would come up with a larger savings of lives!
So when you actually analyze the data in the report you find that the safest speed to drive on the freeway is 10 to 15 mph faster then the general flow of traffic. This won't improve revenue generation so they aren't going to advertise this. If they really wanted to improve safety they would become hardcore about little right-of-way violations or lack of attention, but they are too hard to enforce. Remember... Your government thinks you are their source of income. You are giving Them money instead of Them spending Your money. If as a group we don't stop them we will be living in a fascist state beyond anything that Orwell could have imagined.
Why? Because it will be economically possible for your government to do it.
Oh, and you still won't be safe. Safe is an illusion. Grow up. You are mortal and you are going to die. (God didn't screw up there.) Get over it. A 'safe' life isn't worth living. A lot of the experiences that people treasure over their lives are special BECAUSE they weren't 'safe'.
"That getting from point A to point B in the way society has designed it (i.e. by driving)"
You'd have a MUCH better point if you didn't insist that something was true when it clearly isn't.
I am currently sitting next to a gentleman who has never had a driver's license, and has never owned a car. He seems to have made it just fine.
When you have to assume a falsehood to make your argument valid, that doesn't say much about your argument.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
"It moves with the common, majority travel means of each age from when it was recognized"
Source please.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Ya' know I'd like to know where you live. In my neck of the woods police forces have INCREASED (noticeably) and usable mass transit is umm not available to say the least unless you wish to use a taxi. Your world sounds much nicer than mine! While folks in my area may get along without a car it's not easy. They're pretty likely to be run over as there are few sidewalks and no lanes for them on bicycles or on foot. I have to travel 18+ miles to work each day - one way - and that's a pretty short commute compared to some I know. I'd live closer to work but sadly I cannot afford a million++ dollar home. Telecommuting is not an option available to me nor will it ever be. If I had no car I'd have no job commensurate with my skills and would instead likely be flipping burgers at near minimum wage.
So, while I'm not quite to the point of arguing that driving is a right I do feel pretty strongly about the requirement to drive. I understand where the previous poster was coming from, many places in the US have little effective way of getting around sans car - we're too spread out for that.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Sample 1000 people who've had their liberty severely curtailed by some overzealous, god-complexed, and/or prejudiced cop, and see if they don't think this is a jolly good idea. Or do you live in some magical fantasy-land where cops don't harass innocent people? Is one worse than the other? I'd wager that the one that has a lot of potential for government abuse is the worst of the two. So how is it oh so horrible that the ACLU wants to check in and ensure that (at a minimum) checks are put into place on this? (You do understand that protesting this is a form of making sure that it's at least regulated, right?) Or would you rather the government just go ahead and monitor everyone cause we have nothing to hide in public? Such as trips to abortion clinics, strip clubs, political affiliations, etc?
Information on us is gathered by computer every day -- credit card transactions, flights taken, bank transactions and the like. Most of that evidence does not give officers grounds for arrest but thankfully, it is available to determine if further evidence can be gathered against a potential criminal or if a search warrant can be granted. If total information privacy existed where most economic activity occurs (digitally), law enforcement staffing budgets would have to increase to an untenable level to get anything done. So, in the information age, privacy can only come by protecting such information from the public eye and by denying access to it from other agencies of goverment. Civil liberties can only be upheld by protecting the public from unwarranted search, ceasure, arrest and incarceration. The ACLU is totally off the mark on this one. It should step out of the 50s, and retool their thinking for the information age.
Freedom comes with a price.
This is why the founders wanted the right of citizens to bear arms to be explicitly preserved. It's "necessary for the security of a free state".
...you rarely hear people screeching about the video records and databases kept by private toll operations.
Are they somehow inherently more trustworthy? Do people think they don't share that information with government when demanded?
This isn't terribly different, imho.
If the data were tagged with an expiration date and were actually purged upon expiration then I think it would be a helpful tool that doesn't infringe upon privacy. If a crime is reported in the immediate vicinity then an extension on the expiration date for that local should be permissible.
This would be a nice compromise between the all-or-nothing options that are usually argued about.
I would think that a 30 day expiration would be reasonable.
Sir, you are wrong. The justification for the Second Amendment is the ability to have a well-regulated militia, but that's not its purpose. If the intent of the Second Amendment had been to protect the right for states to maintain militias, then it would have read: The rights of the several states to maintain armed militias shall not be infringed.
That's not what it says.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The real criminals will simply use fake or stolen plates after a couple of years. Then it'll just be the law abiding folks that get stopped when there plate is linked to things like an unpaid parking ticket. Great.
So, for those who have no problem with this... how do you feel about a new police program that uses facial recognition to identify everyone walking through public areas (you know, to catch felons and such), remembers the GPS, and stores that information indefinitely? You've got nothing to hide, right?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
On that note, there's not much that would stop a company from doing the same thing. For instance, the toll road company here in California records your plate. So what's to stop a company from putting a high-res camera on billboards, for instance, collecting the same data and selling it? There wouldn't even have to be a correlation to the plate info at the DMV. So that tells you where that car was, or more accurately, only where that plate was. So this company could charge nothing for the data on where the plate was and when, then charge for the hi-res frames showing the driver/car/passengers and cars it might be following or cars following it.
What I would love about such a system is the ability to start a moderation system for cars. That idiot who was yapping on a cell and nearly clipped me at 90MPH in a 9 ton mallrunner SUV? -1 Inconsiderate asshole. The guy who stopped in time for the crosswalk? +1 Paying Attention. I could check on the plate before buying a car. I could report drunk or reckless drivers. People would have a reason to pay some attention again.
This is already available from a technological standpoint. Hell, I'd be surprised if there wasn't already something in place at some level.
I would argue the law prohibits obfuscation only to a human observer, not a camera if I'm not committing a crime. I wasn't speaking of a mask or anything else that would affect a human eye's recognition of me.
> Also driving itself is not a right, it is a privelage.
a spx?MsgNum=539
No, it is actually a right, not a privilege. It's even an enumerated right: See the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Also, see the following which also apply:
Magna Carta (1215 AD) Section 42:
It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and Merchants who shall be treated as it is said above.
United Nations - Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
See more info at: http://llabmik.net:8081/MessageBase2/ReadMessage.
"At least in my state, driving an automobile is not a RIGHT, but a privilege granted by the department of revenue."
You don't understand the meaning of "right" versus "privilege". Driving is a privilege because without government there would be no need to be licensed at all. We aren't born with the right to drive, in other words. The government has no right to deny you a license without grounds and, in that respect, driving is a right. Voting is a privilege, too, by the way.
"With that privilege comes certain restrictions."
So what? Do those restrictions include giving up your constitutional rights?
"All they are doing is scanning the license to see if there are any stolen vehicles or warrants."
No, they're doing more than that.
"Don't give me the "probable cause" argument either...it won't fly."
Who's giving you that?
"Once again, the ACLU is looking out for the bad guy at the expense of the good guys."
Hmmm, you have an interesting view on who the bad guys are. They bad guys are the ones producing tracking information on me without cause. The ACLU is taking them on.
Stop listening to government propaganda and start thinking for yourself.
Just because you have the freedom of movement, doesn't mean it has to be in a car. No one's stopping you from walking.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
But that severely restricts my right to go anywhere out of walking distance.
There's a bus or a plane, sure. But with all this talk about "modernizing" the laws, it's pretty much a given that an automobile or motorcycle is needed to exist in today's society.
It would take me about 3 hours to walk to work, and no bus goes the whole distance for me, and taking a taxi would be prohibitively expensive. So your argument fails.
"No, your department of motor vehicle regulations probably prohibit obscuring your license plate at any time."
;)
Yep, all those I know about have a specific regulation to that effect.
However, none of them say that I've got to stop and wash the mud off my plates after driving down my unpaved road.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
How long until we get a tiny [i]mandatory[/i] device in each vehicle that broadcasts the vehicle's location 24/7, and that data is tied to a person, whether a criminal or not?
Then you could bike to work in 30 to 45 minutes. No license plate required. Wear reflectors and good luck not getting hit. I've done it before.
If a private sleuth can track my movements, so should be able a police. I have nothing to hide: I go to the mosque, then I go to work, then I go to the grocery store. In fact, I invite every government official to take a swipe at my townhouse.
/. about advancement of technology use in the government.
For a religious person who believes he is being watched 24/7 by God, those privacy concerns do not matter much.
Actually, I enjoy reading on
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Come up with a better argument.
"Then it would have said"-type arguments are bogus. It says what it says, and says clearly that the Constitution guarantees that "the people" have a right to bear arms for the purpose of maintaining a well regulated militia, not for duck hunting, personal safety, or gun collection.
That's not just my opinion, that's what the Supreme Court and lower courts have consistently interpreted the Constitution to mean.
Idiocy rages here... The whole purpose of a LICENSE PLATE is to identify your car to law enforcement. Just because they have found a more efficient way to gather that information you are suddenly crapping yourselves? The liberal panic room mentality here is truly amusing...
I am currently sitting next to a gentleman who has never had a driver's license, and has never owned a car. He seems to have made it just fine.
His food isn't delivered to the store by a licensed driver driving a truck? He doesn't need a licensed driver to be transported from place to place?
Shifting the requirement to your neighbors doesn't significantly change the facts. Travel and transportation of supplies inside the border ought not require government permission.
It's about time a great idea such as this was implemented. I usually side with the ACLU on issues of privacy, but scanning publicly viewable license plates to catch offenders (something the police do manually already) is a step in the right direction.
i know the kids that designed this technology. they were ECE majors at rutgers with me.
The way I read that is: "all liberals are criminals"
Yeah, it's hard to believe that an organization called the "American Civil Liberties Union" would have a liberal bias.
BTW, look up the word liberalism, and you will see that "Liberal" does not mean "Democrat". It is the idea that the individual is the most important part of society. That what is good for you and I, is more important than what is good of the nation. This is in contrast to totalitarianism, communism, and fascism; which all espouse the importance of society over the importance of the individual.
Obviously, a liberal society is going to have more trouble catching criminals. But that is the price we pay for our freedom.
My problem with the ACLU is that they aren't liberal enough. Sure they defend my right to surf the web (or drive) anonymously. But where are they when I decide I want to open a bar (my own private property) and put a sign on the door that says "This is not a health club, if you don't like cigarette smoke, I suggest you go somewhere else."
I just can't wait till I get pulled over on my way to work, and hauled off to jail because of one of these cameras, because someone reported me for smoking within 20ft of the the door to a bar.
Well that's because the ACLU opposes anything good for America. Why do you think the ACLU attacked the Boy Scouts? Or support pregnant women who endanger their unborn babies by using cocaine? The list goes on. This is not a good organization - ACLU members are ideologues who impose "my way or the highway" with their lawsuits.
Rirelobql xabjf gung EBG-13 vf gur yrnfg frpher rapelcgvba rire, ohg jbhyq lbh jnfgr lbhe gvzr npghnyyl qrpelcgvat vg???
try driving a car w/o license plates and insurance. I don't think the cop that gives you the ticket or the judge levying the fine will give a damn about the Magna Carta or some UN declaration.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Perhaps all activity should be thought of this way... using the internet is not a right, so let's track all internet usage from your computer and save it. Then when you finally screw up by speeding, bouncing a check, or any other small mishap, the cops have full access to your past.
The fact is that driving is a right. Don't you have the right to go to the DMV and get a license?
Watch Gattaca, you will start to understand how this could be the path to a dark world (and from what I remember, they didn't even track everyone's movement on public streets).
Unintended Consequences:
1. Car theft will probably shift to those vehicles with out-of-state plates that are not tracked by this system.
2. Carjacking will probably increase with victims either killed or kidnapped along with the vehicle to prevent report of car theft.
3. Motorcycles probably immune to this system as the plates are smaller and mounted in non-standard positions across models. Criminals shifting to two-wheeled transportation likely to help community improve traffic congestion, pollution, and fuel conservation.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Why would you respond to me when your point has nothing at all to do with mine? GP said society required a driver's license, That's wrong.
Your examples have nothing to do with that fact. In fact, apart from a rant about what "should happen" your examples seem to support my point.
"Travel and transportation of supplies inside the border ought not require government permission."
You mean like having a driver's license? Let me know how far you get with that.
On second thought, don't.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Just because something is a PRIVILEGE, does not mean others have the RIGHT to monitor every activity associated with it.
So, the cops can have access to the fact that my car was at Taco Bell at in Encino, CA at 12:45pm, and that my car was seen going north on the 101 in Hollywood at 5:12pm. Oh Noes!
Since most criminal steal their cars or license plates of cars so they can commit crimes in another person's name. These are the "smarter" one but there are still a bunch out that uses their "own" cars for this stuff. I recently seen many cars here where I have without their license plates and I read the vehicle code in my state and it definitely states you must have a legal license plate visible and have the current registration on the rear license plate and that license plate must be visible and not be covered by any device, including any "protectors". I know many people are playing fast and lose with this law about the license plate so many criminals are just being "passed" up with these devices. However if they can tag anyone without a license plate or covered in any manner to prevent reading as much as ones associated with crimes we have something.
I want privacy as much as legal and constitutional abiding citizen but we need to have a level playing field so any vehicle must have a license plate, even those who where recently changed ownership or bought, and that is not covered by any means then this will work.
If we allow these types of systems to creep into our society on the merit of "it will savez the childrens!!" type arguments, with no objections, then it will be a sad day when the powers that be finally hook everything together and can pinpoint your exact location, with live video feeds, no matter where you go.
They've got that already (at least if you carry a cellphone or frequent areas with face-recognition software on the "traffic" security cameras). The cameras give them real-time feeds from known locations and the cellphone system checks where your phone is every 5 minutes or so (and I'm pretty sure it can be commanded to do it more often), whenever the phone is powered on. Resolution can be anywhere from "nearest cell tower" to feet, depending on the system and whether one, two, or more towers are in range. (This began to make it into public awareness when the mailbox bomber was captured in rural Nevada within 25 minutes of powering up his phone.)
Once they decide they want to track you they can do it quite easily - at least in urban areas.
What this controversy is about is keeping permanent records of where you've been, even if you're not currently wanted, so they can work this surveillance backward in time from the moment they decide to go after you all the way back to when the system was set up.
Also about who can access the records, under what circumstances, whether there's a limit on how long they're kept, etc. Right now there are no controls at all. So the police can keep the records forever, and in principle any police department functionary can access them.
Including the girlfriends of the local gang members who got jobs in the police department so they could tell the gang where the police are patrolling, if they've been dispatched to a location the gang members are currently "working", what residents notified the police they're on vacation, etc. Now they can also research the past habits and current whereabouts of potential victims.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How does it change the situation?
...
I've seen your argument dozens of times -- "government isn't allowed to use x because it reduces the effort required for y".
There are a number of things that government agencies might do that are harmful, but haven't been a major problem because the amount of it they can afford to do is limited by expense, which only a police state could afford. (Example from the WW II era: Maintaining dossiers on all citizens.) While this expense is high, even if the activity isn't legally recognized and subject to formal warrant requirements or other controls, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" tends to reserve its application to targets selected due to an individualized suspicion.
Automating these things makes them cheap enough that it becomes practical to use them on all, rather than just on suspects. They can then grow from an occasional nuisance to a pervasive menace to the freedom of all.
Whenever improvements in technology make such a breakthrough and government begins to use it to infringe the rights of all, the citizens, via the legal and/or political systems, must actually get around to determining whether the activity is proper and restraining it if it is not, or lose the associated rights.
Thus, as computer technology improved record keeping and searching, you saw Supreme Court rulings explicitly recognizing a constitutional right to privacy. This is a continuation of that trend.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The fact that the license plate is public property, and designed to be displayed publically aside, the privacy issue matters only in respect to how the data is collected.
If an automated system only records positive results, and ignores negative results discarding them, then the negative result vehicles aren't under surveillance- the computer can't tell "who" passed in front of it, it's just looking for a specific pattern that's it's been told to spot.
If there is a record of all the vehicles passing by the sensor, then everyone is under surveillance- which may or may not be illegal on a state-by-state basis. Radar detectors have been justified in states where there is a "right to know" if you are under surveillance, and outlawed in states where that right is not presumed to exist.
FTR, I completely expect to see GPS tagged license plates in the near future that narc on me whenever I speed, or are activated if a warrant is issued for my arrest, or my car is stolen or suspected to be involved in criminal activity. I knew I shouldn't have bought that black 1986 Trans Am with the glowing red hood lights...
Remember, when non-GPS tagged license plates are outlawed, only outlaws will have non-GPS tagged license plates.
'nough said!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Kind of dumb that they put this information at the END of the article instead of in the headline. I thought there was not a problem until I got to the very end of the article.
This is a standard journalistic technique, used when the editors want to keep something out of general knowledge but not be accused later of trying to bury it.
In this case the entire POINT of the suit is that info on Joe Law-abiding Citizen's movements is being recorded forever in a searchable database. If the newsies approve of that they can't leave it COMPLETELY out of the article. So they focus on the use of the system for crime fighting, put this core issue in the last paragraph, and hope enough of the readership stops reading before they get to it that it doesn't become the day's hot topic or percolate into "the common knowledge".
The smart thing to do, as a reader: When you get bored with the droning, skip to the last couple paragraphs and see what they're trying to hide but don't quite dare to leave out completely.
(It still won't find the stuff they DO dare to leave out completely. But it DOES find a lot of important stuff you'd miss otherwise.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you follow the chain of comment and response, you will notice that Anagama was responding to somebody claiming that Anagama watches too much TV. Stating that they don't watch TV was a perfectly legitimate response and not worthy of your dissing words and profanity.
What about the cases where the car passed by before it was in the database as stolen/owned by a felon? If you only stored the matches and threw away the rest of the data, you lose the ability to immediately act to capture someone the minute they enter the list.
Which, no doubt, is exactly WHY they brought up data retention time, rather than solely going for an up/down on preauthorization for data collection (and risking losing it all).
Would, keeping the data for, say, 30 days, then destroying any that wasn't part of an ongoing investigation (and subject to a warrant), satisfy your objection?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
F*cking Wah! If you'd taken steps to protect your property like buying Lowjack or OnStar, you'd have gotten your Pinto back without the rest of us being watched like common criminals. A little forethought on your part would have saved the rest of us from your endorsement of a police state.
If you could demonstrate that the people rejecting you for the job made a false conclusion based on the data available, you might be able to take the organization that provided the data to court for libel.
Of course, you would need proof that you had a legitimate reason for walking around NYC while sick. That reason might be as simple as seeing a doctor or specialist, as well as doing errands while out. The proof would be the video record.
Personally, I would love to see more control of 'reference check' organizations, especially when it comes to data that could result in not getting hired. Ideally, a person should be able to demand a copy of their records at any time, for a nominal sum, just to verify that the data is correct.
They should also have the right to challenge the data, especially if there is very negative information associated with it.
2) Does the person have an expectation of privacy? For instance, a closed telephone booth is in a public place, but grants a person an expectation of privacy and law enforcement thus needs a warrant to record a conversation therein.
The expectation of privacy is why it's illegal in Michigan (not sure if it's local or national) to use directional microphones to pick up conversations, even in public places, when there is no obvious listener within normal hearing range.
DO ordinary citizens have an expectation that the whereabouts of their car is private when there is no cop watching? Do they have an expectation that, even if a cop IS watching, after a month or so he won't remember every license plate that went by without something special to make it "stick in his mind" or end up on a report (like a car involved in an infraction or a plate on a "be on the lookout" list)?
If they do, the case could go for the ACLU on the same grounds. Maybe so far that the recording of the data would be prohibited without a warrant or a B.O.L.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Anything can be abused.
The same deviation could be used to find the 'casual' criminal who is responsible for unsolved crimes because they are unlikely suspects and their crimes are infrequent. Some of the more infamous serial killers of recent years could have been found that way.
Still, abuses could happen in more ways than one, especially if people get up in arms about how a potential tool was available but not used. We need to watch for the media 'railroading' the masses when it comes to technology, and present ways for the technology to be controlled.
Show people both the benefits of the technology AND the ways it could be abused.
Driving is not (or at least it should not be) a privilege, a favor granted by rulers to the select. It is a subsidiary of liberty, the right to free action. It is subject to the common sense limitations that drivers don't endanger others or violate their rights, and the limitation that drivers should be competent to drive.
Although government owns most roads and it's a general rule that the owner of property should control its use, the government ownership of roads is a usurpation and thus invalidates this argument.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Here in the Free State of New Hampshire, we recently enacted a law banning automated license plate scanning. That, in conjunction with the fact that we just opted out of the Federal Real-ID program (video), makes New Hampshire a pretty good place to go if you're concerned about privacy.
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Either you're making this up, or there is more to the story. Cite sources when you say stuff like this.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
IANAL, but as I understand it, the current Supreme Court precedent recognizes a right to travel but not a right to any specific means of travel. I.e. you have a constitutional right to travel, but not a right to drive a car.
One of the concerns I see with this, however, is that it provides a powerful tool along with airplane manifests to track the travels of everyone in this country. And why not close the Greyhound loophole and require government issued IDs (and tracking, etc) of people taking busses (private or public transportation)? This is more data than I want the government to have on me. It does not seem that the 4th amendment seems to mean much anymore if this sort of thing is allowed.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
In other words, you don't have a right to drive a car. You do have a right to travel however. These are not synonymous.
Don't believe me? Next time you get in a taxi, note that you don't have to have a valid government issued ID to ride one. Yes the taxi driver has to have a drivers license, but you (the traveller) does not. The real issue here is the lack of 4th amendment protections on what is essentially a police search. I do not see this blanket archive of information to be reasonable and I hope nobody else does either.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Be careful of term limits. We have them in my state and it has turned out to be a curse. I was a big supporter of term limits but have changed my mind. Now we have an endlessly changing roster of new reps that are utterly in the pocket of lobbyists. Lobbyists now outnumber reps by an unthinkable margin and always get their way. In their first term the rep doesn't know anything about issues and tends to listen to the loudest lobbyists. In their second and last term they are looking for a job and really listen to lobbyists. In their third infinite term they are lobbyists, controlling legislature with no way to vote them out.
Man, you really need that seminar!
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I think that a surveillance system which magnifies normal abilities beyond anything humanly achievable must, by definition, raise questions of being an unreasonable search and seizure. If it is not reasonable to expect a person or an affordable group of people to achieve the same results, then it should be considered an unreasonable search. I oppose this practice on the same search and siezure grounds, but I think your argument is a bit overreaching. In short, it isn't a matter of the fact that this makes it somehow inhumanly efficient but that there *is* some reasonable and legitimate expectation of privacy even on the open road where one is not charged or suspected with having committed a specific crime, no traffic infractions have occurred, or the like.
This is not anything that seems fundamentally different than, say, blanket roadblocks just to look for potential crimes which have been declared to be in violation of the 4th amendment.
In other words, simply saying "there is no expectation of privacy" doesn't make it so. In reality there is *always* some legitimate expectation of privacy, though its nature and scope may be subject to debate. For example, Washington State says that students in public schools have no expectation of privacy, but this would not likely allow principles to randomly strip-search students.
For example, all carry-on luggage at airport security checkpoints is subject to an x-ray scan which is similar though more detailed and *far* more efficient than would be manually possible. Yet I have seen nobody argue that the blanket search of carry-on luggage would need to be limited to a manual search in order to be considered "reasonable."
The problem here involves its scope both in the initial search and in the retention of data. I believe that these do infringe on what limited but legitimate expectation of privacy one does have when travelling about one's daily life.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Meh, the easiest way to kill this is to point out that people can track public officials. How many legislators, bureaucrats, officers, etc. really want the public to track where they go? One little subpoena or a leak that lists high profile people who consistently drove their car to or at least near a known house of ill repute would make for a fun news story. Or where they go for lunch, and how long they're out of the office. Roaches dislike sunshine.
And don't forget the stalking lawsuits. As soon as an insider uses their access to stalk and hurt someone, there's going to be a big lawsuit.
Wow, and what if the guy they were looking for was the one who stole your car, and was escaping in it?
So police choppers and radar-guns are out then, right?
A helicopter just provides a vantage point you can get from the side of a hill, and a radar gun is required to enforce a law. You can't get a speeding ticket without a radar gun measurement backing it up. The radar gun is not an optional thing as far as the cop is concerned- it actually helps you that cops are forced to use them.
If it were a radar gun that lets me type in your name and shows me a list of everywhere you've been for the past few years and all of the occasions when your car momentarily passed over the speed limit, well then maybe you'd have a point.
Using a radar gun is just more efficient and by your argument it's got to go. If it were a radar gun that lets me type in your name and shows me a list of everywhere you've been for the past few years and all of the occasions when your car momentarily passed over the speed limit, well then maybe you'd have a point. Well, it just provides a vantage point you can get from a different time rather than a different place. Hell, helicopters are worse because they can see in your backyard!
I thought it was the right wing like the militia and Libertarians/Ron Paul who were most looking out for our constitutional rights (and I say this as a Green lefty while acknowledging the honorable qualities of true conservatives). Did something change when I wasn't looking or do you believe everything corporate funded false conservative (really state centralist) Rush tells you verbatim?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Using a radar gun is just more efficient and by your argument it's got to go.
It isn't that much more efficient than a pace. You still have to point it at someone. Comparing a radar gun to this system is like comparing a CC on an email to spam. The efficiency improvement is on such a different scale that the difference becomes qualitative.
Well, it just provides a vantage point you can get from a different time rather than a different place.
"A" different time? More like "all time from now on"- not such a subtle distinction. A radar gun isn't logging and recording people all day, and if you look up and don't see a helicopter, it's not like one can fly over later and take a picture of what you're doing right now.
>"Also driving itself is not a right, it is a privelage."
No, it is actually a right, not a privilege. It's even an enumerated right: See the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.
Actually, I think you should see it:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Also, you should look at the 10th since it is the most relevant to states declaring that driving an automobile on public roads is a privilege:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
That's very poetic and all, but less government for the sake of less government is no more wise than more government for the sake of more government. I'd rather judge government programs by their individual merits, whether or not taxpayers are getting their money, and if the program is unreasonably intrusive. Having law enforcement keep a database of the times and locations of innocent drivers flunks the intrusiveness test for me.
Sorry I was deliberate slim on identifying details. I'm a little on the paranoid side when putting personal information on the net, and what I gave was probably more than I'm comfortable with.
fyngyrz's explanation of his family's situation helps, I think.
The point is that the corner cases are precisely the ones you have a hard time getting anyone to believe until after people are dead, sometimes until after they are dead several years and medical fads change and you no longer have to fight established medical practice to get the right attention.
My sister was dying in the hospital because they could not feed her (rules wouldn't allow it, even if they could have understood my sister's requests) anything she could keep down. I had to cook meals for her and take them to the hospital. There were a number of reasons we all (family, friends, medical staff) felt it was better getting her home as soon as possible, even though it meant releasing her from the hospital fairly late on a Saturday. The docs weren't mad at her, they just knew by observation that they had done all they could, and that she needed to be home to have the best chance of recovery.
Anyway, I offered my sister's case as an example of why privacy is still important, and will be until every human is able to judge non-standard cases with perfect judgement. As you can see, there are a lot of us non-standard types out there, and when officers of the law have to enforce the standard instead of protect the peace (whatever standard is in vogue this week), people can get hurt.
joudanzuki
I've driven for a living, and I'll tell you two things.
Yeah, the seatbelt probably helped when I spun a stepvan full of newspapers down a steep snowy hill. I'm not sure how or why the van didn't roll.
But I was fool enough to go up that hill before the plows in part because I had the seatbelt and was required to wear it.
I've seen more people do stupid things on the road, wearing seatbelts, since the things became mandatory, then I saw before they were madatory. Cars are dangerous, but you make them seem less dangerous and people tend to drive at the limit of their perceptions of danger.
As for child restraints, even the ones that are any good in an accident are bad for children's health. Whether to use them or not is a trade-off, and not one that should be forced by law.
(And, yes, as near as I can tell, my kid was as safe in my wife's lap as he would have been in an infant seat, considering the variety of accidents that might have occurred and their probability. Infant seats can kill, too.)
joudanzuki
Anyone want to venture a guess as to why no one in Russia or Iraq has any respect for the law whatsoever.