Slashdot Mirror
"Mobile Plate Hunter" Cameras Raise Questions
The Washington Post has a story on "Minority Report"-style license-plate scanners that mount on police cars. They are the size of softballs, cost $25K, and can scan and run thousands of plates a day through the local Motor Vehicle Administration database. The easy mission creep these devices encourage is summarized in the article: "Initially purchased to find stolen cars, a handful of so-called tag readers are in use across the Washington region to catch not just car thieves, but also drivers who neglected or failed their emissions inspections or let their insurance policies lapse. The District and Prince George's County use them to enforce parking rules... 'I just think it makes us a lot more effective and a lot more efficient in how our time is being used,' [a senior detective] said." The article doesn't mention what happens to the data on legal plates. Suppose the DHS decides it wants a permanent archive of who was where, when?
How about the "Mobile Revenue Generator"?
The scary thing about murderers, is they drive just like you and me!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
They threatened to cut of your balls because you didn't pay your insurance?
Or maybe you meant incarceration?
WARNING: This sig does not contain a joke
Steven Wright mentioned accidentally putting his car key in the door to his apartment.
Turned the key.
Whole building started up.
So he drove it around for a while.
Cop pulled him over, asked "Where do you live?"
He said "Right here".
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If you have blind spots in a modern car, your mirrors are not positioned properly
Or you're driving a claustrophobic, poorly designed, small windowed piece of shit like a Dodge Caliber.
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They are the size of softballs
I'm just gonna start walking around with a baseball bat "defending our civil liberties."
If the burden becomes too great for society to bear, the enforcement can be scaled back - using a random number generator that takes skin color of perpetrator as the seed.
Hopefully a balance can be reached between supply and demand of enforcement.
He's from Arkansas.
All in favor of CAPTCHA license plates raise your hands...
Gotta get me one of these!
Is the third tard post that says the same thing: "as long this technology is used to torture, waterboard, send to Guantanamo and kill Mexicans, Arabs, Niggers and everybody that doesn't drink the same soft drink I am drinking, I am perfectly fine with it"
What is that I wonder? Does Guantanamo's torture personnel decided to post to /. all together at the same time?
Plates may have been for proof of registration, but I'd gather the tags are more for that... anyway I hate to break it to you, but your house has an publicly identifiable number on it too, most likely on the front in 5 inch tall numbers.
One huge difference is that you can't drive your house away from the scene of a crime.
plus I even pay for supplemental AD&D coverage
Is that so you're compensated if your level 12 rogue gets killed by an orc?