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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.
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
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.
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.
So police looking at license plates is unreasonable search? I don't think so, it is a publicly viewable item. They are not taking extraorindary steps to view the license plate. It isn't hidden behind your closed drapes in your house, it is in full view on the road. I see nothing wrong with this as long as only license plates matching stolen vehicles or cars registered to felons with warrants for their arrest are logged and cataloged. I see absolutely no problem with that at all.
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 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)
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
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Exactly. That's why we should have checkpoints at major crossings into and out of cities or across state lines. You want the privelege of driving? Well give us a cheek swab for DNA and a rapid drug/alcohol test while were at it. We'll catch a lot more felons that way.
Also, why the hell don't they have x-ray scanners like they use to find drugs in trucks in Afghanistan. I mean, it's not really a search if they don't open your trunk, and besides driving is a privilege to begin with. I'm sure they'd find illegal weapons down south a lot of illegal aliens that way.
Face it, a police state is the only way for lawful people to be safe from the scumbags. So call your Congressmen and demand road checkpoints with DNA matching, instant drug/alcohol testing, and x-ray scanning. Because driving is a privilege and not a right.
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....
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.
That may be the fucking stupidest thing ever said.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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.
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.
The legallity of the action being performed doesn't change just because a computer lets them do more of it or do it faster
Though sometimes additional laws are passed making the "enhanced activity" illegal. For instance, internet hunting. It's illegal to hunt over the internet in some states even though the computer is just letting me do more of it or do it faster.
In your view, it would be perfectly acceptable to have every 10 ft a pole with chemical and radiological detectors, video and sound (with disclaimers posted) recording equipment tracking everything in public with computers running facial recognition software with a mounted weapons system and a mobile restraint system.
Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean it's right. For a living in an ex-colony that overthrew its legal English government, you sure want to live in a police state.
What, her life depends on the medicine, and she cuts it that close, getting her stock filled very late the same night she runs out? Why cut it so close? Is this some strange kind of suicide attempt?
I can well understand why the cop didn't think your story seemed likely. Few people are that stupid when their life is at stake.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
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.
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?
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.
...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.
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.
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.
Dumbass.
The Rights of the People are not what is written in some document. There are NATURAL rights.
For example, I doubt I could find a document that says you have the right to breathe freely. Yet I suspect you would argue that you do.
You must understand that codification of members of of a group does not modify the group itself.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
LOL. I have a good example of my feelings:
:-)
My last theft experience:
Robber:
Stole 2 wheels and hubcaps from my car.
Total cost $800
Police:
Towed my car for being on a jack without wheels (left by the robbers like that):
$30 ticket
$70 towing fee
$270 damage to the car by towing.
Police cost: $370.
So in my instance. The police was only around half as bad as the robbers.
------ Warning! You are too close!