Manhattan 1984

Etherwalk writes "The New York Times is reporting on developments in the quest to charge driving fees for all vehicles headed below 86th Street in Manhattan. Notably absent from any part of the discussion is that a record is made of every car or truck that enters, together with the vehicle ownership information and the date and time of travel — either as part of EZ-Pass or in license-plate photos taken for subsequent billing."

Comments

Re:Funny

[squoozer]

Quite, the law was recently changed in the UK to allow the police to use the motoway ANPR system to track any suspect. Before the change they could only use it to track "terrorists".

Re:I have no problem with this kind of thing

[apodyopsis]

Actually there is a lot of sense to that. It has been proposed before that a government DNA database would virtually solve crime - obviously this is not true but it would be a very useful tool for detection and prevention.

But before you go off on one and start ranting lets look at the facts...

From the Home Office: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-research/usin g-science/dna-database/

"Any intrusion on personal privacy is proportionate to the benefits that are gained.

By the end of 2005, about 200,000 samples had been retained that would have been destroyed before the 2001 change in legislation. 8,000 of these samples matched with DNA taken from crime scenes, involving nearly 14,000 offences, including murders and rapes.

In 2005-06 45,000 crimes were matched against records on the DNA Database; including 422 homicides (murders and manslaughters) and 645 rapes."

Thats 45 thousand crimes in one year. Think about that for a while.

And an anti database view: http://www.genewatch.org/HumanGen/Publications/Rep orts/NationalDNADatabase.pdf

"Errors and false DNA matches have led to miscarriages of justice, and these can create major difficulties for those wrongfully convicted because, like fingerprint evidence, DNA is widely regarded as absolutely conclusive, meaning that those without strong alibi evidence will tend to be presumed guilty. At the moment the DNA database itself can be viewed largely (but not entirely) as a growing suspect list that is mainly used to check samples from new and unsolved crime, but the existing data can be (and has been) used for broader purposes, and the UK practice of retaining the sample as well as the data allows it to be used for further testing for other purposes as the science develops.

We're seeing glimpses of what is possible with familial testing, which establishes links to family members where the suspect's DNA might not be on the database, and although the first instance of this was viewed as a coup, if used widely the procedure would find relatives you didn't know about, and reveal that people weren't related to the people they thought they were. So what have you got to hide? You don't know, and maybe you don't want to know."

--- I am *not* parroting a government line. Nor am I proposing GATACCA. I am simply stating that to dismiss this without thought on quaint and paranoid lines seems irrational and foolish. I realized that this viewpoint would run counter to many of the /. readers (yes thats a sweeping generalization) but it really is what I think.

read the post

[reddburn]

(some cops don't understand this) This is a longstanding right that has been reaffirmed a number of times by the Supreme Court. In fact, the ACLU at one point had a card that the group encouraged photographers to carry entitled "The Photographer's Bust Card" - outlining legal rights of photographers. There's more info at nyc.photobloggers.org and a PDF based on the card developed by an attorney that is pretty informative.