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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."
I say let the police do all the automated tracking they want, but encrypt the data and set the system up so that it can only be decrypted by court order. Then the police can use the data when they have reason to, but they can't go on fishing expeditions or use the data for personal vendettas.
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.
True, a future step is to analyze moving patterns with AI, recognize deviations from normal and preemtively bring criminals to justice before they commit crimes.
Recently, I received a questionaire from the police department to check out citizen's concerns. The language which was used in the questionaire was interesting: Repeated uses of "arresting criminals" - or similar as valuation item: not -> very important. Appeared to me they were suspecting "criminals" undiscriminately behind every bush. Looks to me one needs a certain training and frame of mind to see things in that way.
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.
Quite right - what I'm hoping that the ACLU will establish with this suit is strict procedures of when this information can be used. Searching should be entirely automated against the license plates of fellons and against license plates of stollen cars. Searching would also be valuable at the request of citizens, as it may help them prove an aliby - or just remember one:
Trailer Park Joe: Shucks officer, I don't remember where I was three weeks ago, why don't you just run my license plate through that database of your.
Officer: Your car was seen at Billy Bob's Bar at 10:26PM
Joe: Oh yeah, now that I think about it, I'm there every night - I was just too drunk to remember.
What the system should not be used for, is so the new police Lt. can check up on where his girlfriend's car was seen last night. If he does, he should be straight out of a job.
Finally, citizens should be able to request that their data be removed. As beneficial as the data can be to its citizens, the government has no right to keep tabs on them at all time. A provision to allow for the removal of that information insures that this program is in line with similar privacy laws, which allow citizens to have their criminal record as a minor destroyed, or allows them to have the records of a DNA test destroyed imediately after the test has been completed.
With the above provisions, the program is more mundane than OnStar. Yes, it can get you in some shit if you are doing something wrong, but more likely it will help you out when you're already in a tight situation.
The problem here is that they of course want to go after misdemeanor suspects first. Its the cliche slippery slope argument. The problem is they will lower and lower the bar for what is acceptable. Eventually minor crime will be what they search for.
The problem i see here is that this is a small attack on our liberty from all sides. Imagine in the future the government makes some really asinine illegal, like burning an American flag. They make it a crime but to appease the people who want it to be legal they make it a tiny tiny offense, a slap on the wrist. What they don't make clear is that anyone who is wanted for this crime is probably going to be arrested on their way to work causing serious hardship.
Also view this police practice in light of the ridiculous war on drugs we have. Marijuana for person use is not a serious crime but that is where i see this tactic being used in the future. Overzealous cops trying to make a career for themselves with no care for the greater good of society will vigorously pursue average peaceful citizens. Their property will be seized for to pay for the inertia of the police force. Too many people's careers are involved in policing small things for this is lighten up.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
People should be allowed to go about their legitimate business without regard to time, place, coat, pants, slanty eyes, skin color, reported need for pharmaceuticals or food. It isn't your place - or the cops - to judge why she needed her meds suddenly; there are all kinds of situations that can come up, ranging from not having the money to stock them up in advance, to prescriptions that force refills to happen at the end of a supply that may be fully depleted, to spilling a bottle down a drain, to your kid getting into the medicine closet and feeding them to your goldfish, and so on, ad infinitum.
I live in a rural area (Glasgow, Montana) with a diabetic; she uses a med called "Byetta" that has, at most, one extra shot left when the prescription is refillable. More common diabetes drugs don't work for her any longer, though they used to. She really needs this; without it, her blood sugars reach for the 400's, which is just plain no good. The only local source for the med - the only place that has been willing to carry it, since it is moderately expensive, about $225 per monthly refill - is the local Pamida. I convinced them by paying in advance for a years worth of prescriptions. One time, they simply didn't receive it, though they had ordered it. I drove her to Billings, 300 miles from here, to get that med. We bought it at an all-night pharmacy. It wasn't about money. I have lots of money. It wasn't about stupidity. I'm a reasonably smart fellow, and she's smarter than I am. It wasn't about planning. The prescription is specific, and it isn't an option to get extra. We bought it late at night because it's a five hour drive and we learned the Pamida didn't have it after 5 pm, and the fastest I could get to Billings was five hours. Part of the reason for that is mommy speeding laws. There are four very small towns between here and there, and it used to be that the parts of the trip between the towns could be made legally and safely at 95 MPH; I'd have been there with daylight to spare. In a car that is well designed to handle those speeds. This time, I couldn't do that, because some minion of Montana's legislative mommy core might have stopped us and put her at even greater risk. Does that piss me off? Yes, and you have no idea just how much.
What am I doing about it? I am in the process of getting my pilot's license, and as soon as I have it, I'll buy a plane. That'll put Billings a lot closer in time. Luckily, I'm in a financial position where I can do that simply because I want to, I can dedicate the time required, and I'm capable of learning to fly one. What about people who don't command the inherent and developed resources I do? Should they be subject to opinions like yours? "Attempted suicide"? "Stupid"?
When police actually protect you from an intentional assault, or stop someone they know to have done same because they have probable cause and a warrant, they're doing the jobs that naturally arise for such a role in any society. When they take on the role of mommy, second guessing safe traffic maneuvers, coercing you to wear seatbelts, concerning themselves with which seat your kid is in, worrying about what you're smoking, wearing, buying, saying or doing with a consenting, informed and competent partner... they're the enemy of the citizens. No less than that.
Rules? Doesn't matter if they're following the rules or not; There's an underlying social rationale for having police, and being your mommy isn't it. AT&T's's minions were just following the government's instructions when they tapped people's phones without warrants, too. When bad government makes bad rules, following them is no act of public service, and it is not "ok." A good cop is looking for direct threats from one source against another. Watching residences for people breaking windows and doors; looking for accidents; stopping altercations, that sort of thing. Y
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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?
I think that the part that the ACLU (and myself for that matter) is objecting to is that there's absolutely no notification of how long the data will be stored and for what purposes used in the future. Sure, if it's nabbing a stolen car now it makes a lot of sense. But if you're driving around in your normal, law abiding ways, by what right or to what purpose should data relating to your movements be stored by the government? Imagine the day that there's a camera in your home's front entry-way that's automatically wired to Police HQ for the "sole purpose of knowing when your house is being broken into," but you're never allowed to shut it off, and there's no way you can now where the data is being used, or for how long that imagery will be stored. Heck, while we're at it, let's start slipping the RFID tags into our right hands, and placing sensors all over so that we will always know if you get kid-napped or hurt! What seems to be your boggle?
Okay, it seems to be far-stretched... but 50 years ago, would anyone have imagined that everywhere they go in New York City or in London that they're always on camera?
If this system is grabbing felons and stolen cars, all the power to them! Once they've determinded that they've grabbed someone, and the court process has occurred, dump the data. If Joe Trooper has sat for 5 hours filming car-plates and has found exactly zero offenders, drop the data... there's no need to keep it.
--- no sig to see here... move along.
Imagine a world where jaywalking gets you automatically direct-withdrawal fines from your bank account? And how about when your credit score goes down because you took a right-on-red where you weren't supposed to, therefore marking you as "risky?"
Imagine you live in Virginia in 2007.
In Virginia, you now get civil _AND_ criminal charges against you for running a red light or speeding. The civil stuff comes in fines starting around $1,000 payable in 3 payments which are independant of the criminal charges. If you don't have the cash handy, then you are sent to collections, your credit gets screwed, and I would imagine that they then do the same tricks they have for years like not telling you that your registration is expired on your car, so it lapses and then you are subject to having your car impounded on the spot w/o a court appearance or legal represntation whatsoever.
I'M SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF DRIVING BEING A CRIME.
To be clear, I don't want to drive. Its dangerous both physically and legally. I'm a pretty boring guy, but driving on the US highways is a very risky behavior.
Another true story. I drove a "stolen" car for somewhere between 1 and 2 years without knowing it. When I was in highschool, I did a stupid highschool thing and took off for a weekend. My dumbass father reported my car (registered in his name) as stolen, and never reported it as unstolen. I went to renew my plates or something at DMV, and they told me that they couldn't because my car was reported stolen.
Now, imagine if this scanning thing was in place, and I got pulled over? I would guess that a number of "stolen" vehicles are driven by their owners.
Now, with the people with warrants. I mean, how tough is it to find these people just by looking? Don't you have to show 10 forms of ID to do anything? Also, most stolen cars are not driven as is outside of joy rides.
As a citizen, I don't feel more comfortable or safe having the police scan license plates. I feel less safe and comfortable.