Massachusetts Plans To Keep Track of Where Your Car Has Been

Attila Dimedici writes "Massachusetts wants to establish a database with the information gathered by license plate scanners installed in police cars. The scanners will scan license plates of every car the police vehicle passes and transmit that information (along with the location) to a database that will be made available to various government agencies. The data wil be kept indefinitely."

Comments

I've been waiting for this.

[Tsingi]

This is about as 1984 as it gets. Not only do Americans have no rights anymore, their movements are tracked by the government.

Fascism.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[SputnikPanic]

The fact that Mass. would even put together a plan like this shows you just how weakened the 4th Amendment has become. Of all the amendments in the Bill of Rights, this one, it seems to me, is the one that's the most gone.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[interkin3tic]

This is about as 1984 as it gets.

Lets not get into hyperbole here, lest people take us all for nutters and disregard our warnings that this is an invasion of privacy.. Government-mandated propaganda and webcams in every home is more 1984 than cars being tracked, but this is pretty horrible.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[tibit]

So, if a corporation would do that, it's OK, but if a govt. does it, it's not? I think it's time to decide either way and make the choice apply to everyone...

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[SputnikPanic]

Maybe, but 2nd Amendment cases have lately been succeeding in court. DC, for example, had its gun ban struck down about a year or two ago.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[fredrated]

Yeah, even after the Supreme Court made an unprecedented ruling that the second ammendment gives a fundamental right to bear arms that cannot be violated by state and local governments, there go our gun rights! NOT!

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

The issue here is not a 4th amendment violation, at least directly. It's a technology advance that combines things that aren't 4th amendment violations 'what a police officer sees while patrolling' into a fully itemized searchable tracking database that does violate the 4th amendment's 'spirit'.

The data 'seen' at the time is not 4th amendment violating, but the storage and persistence of said data *should* be a 4th amendment violation. Technology is trumping even the Constitution and we need to update our concepts to match what is now possible for the government.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[imric]

The states keep trying though.

I can't WAIT until the Feds use their own gun-running operation as justification to try and eliminate the 2nd, too.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

So, if a corporation would do that, it's OK, but if a govt. does it, it's not?

Actually yes that's correct. What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast. (mobile phones are a different story as people receive significant benefit from said 'tracking'; i.e. the mobile connectivity).

The 'government' can't be 'boycotted' in the manner of a corporation so yes they aren't supposed to be allowed to do such things. Corporations also don't enforce the laws (theoretically anyway) so they don't have the leverage the government does over your freedoms either.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[lupis42]

The Supreme Court may have made the ruling, but it hasn't helped anyone in MA yet. Google TJIC, and then talk about violation by state and local governments.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically - why is government spending your money on this? A company can spend their money as they see fit but, the government is already in default - people will never learn that this non-sense can't keep up until it's too late. Gov is ridiculous - they've lost their way and so have most people.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[GeorgeS]

Thank you for explaining this better!
You are correct that anyone can walk down any street anywhere and tell anyone else what they see.
The issue here is the retaining of that data indefinitely BUT, only allowing government agencies access to that data!

I would not have as much of an issue with this plan IF they allowed public access to the stored data so we could snoop on the Politicians, DA's and Judges just as much as they will snoop on us.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Quiet_Desperation]

lest people take us all for nutters

Dude, that ship sailed long ago.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[vgerclover]

You are right, this is more A Scanner Darkly.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah.

Just look at the IPhone, and Galaxy S? We no longer have to suspend disbelief when reading 1984, we have the technology. And the population willingfully subscribes and pays for the dis-privilige.

not only does every home recieve the daily broadcast of the 5 mins of hate (Fox,CNN), we have personal tracking devices with up to 8 megapixels of resolution.

What amazes me it that these surveilance devices are considered must-have by the slaves that carry them.

1984 has arrived

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[GooberToo]

May be, but IMOHO, because of how poor the education system has become in the US (largely thanks to the no child left behind movement), the majority of people don't understand the extreme importance of every amendment contained within the Bill Of Rights. People are literally happy to relinquish their rights, usually because they are too uneducated or afraid of ignorant and completely unjustified fear mongering.

Accordingly, the majority of states have extremely unconstitutional state laws; frequently which specifically target the second amendment rights. Furthermore, most people are too ignorant and/or stupid to know and/or acknowledge the second amendment is not only what empowers the first amendment, but only as recently as WWII, is the primary reason the continental US was not invaded.

Even recently I have been told that the tyranny of McCarthyism should be once again embraced, in the name of terror prevention, and that failing to do so makes you anti-government. And the really sad part was, this was from TWO people, whereby they absolutely were not trolling, and at least one had a four year technical degree. This was on a technical forum.

Without a doubt, stupidity is alive a well and the stupid masses are working overtime to dis-empower, if not out right destroy the protections afforded by the US Constitution.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or if one person was to do track another person, or group of people, for that matter. Is that ok? It might even be possible in the future for a single person with average means to track a large population of people, like a whole country.

I agree, one standard for what kind of privacy and anonymity I can expect, regardless of who or what is watching. Please note that I am not saying that the government, corporations and people are all the same legal entity and fall under the same law or rule, but rather that every person gets a the same law or rule, and it does not matter what or who is wanting to track them.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Seumas]

US Students Say Press Freedoms Go Too Far

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.

The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.

The findings aren't surprising to Jack Dvorak, director of the High School Journalism Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Even professional journalists are often unaware of a lot of the freedoms that might be associated with the First Amendment," he says.

The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time," he says: Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes. It also tracks closely with recent findings of adults' attitudes.

"It's part of our Constitution, so this should be part of a formal education," says Dvorak, who has worked with student journalists since 1968.

source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-30-students-press_x.htm

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[jmcvetta]

What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast.

False. Acxiom for example collects incredibly detailed dossiers on every American citizen, ostensibly for "marketing" purposes. But you can bet your last dollar they have some big, fat pipes from their datacenter up to McLean & Ft. Meade.

So why don't consumers run this kind of company out of business? It's simple - these businesses make money from the purchasers of the dossiers, not from the citizens who are tracked against their will. There is basically no legal way, and certainly no way that is practical for an ordinary citizen, to avoid being tracked.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[digitig]

I would not have as much of an issue with this plan IF they allowed public access to the stored data so we could snoop on the Politicians, DA's and Judges just as much as they will snoop on us.

And spouses/partners, of course. Hmm...

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Operation Fast and Furious"

(Reuters) - U.S. firearms agents told lawmakers on Wednesday they were instructed to only watch as hundreds of guns were bought, illegally resold and sent to Mexico where drug-related violence has raged for years.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/us-usa-mexico-guns-idUSTRE75E49N20110615

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been accused of allowing guns to slip across the border and fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

The allegations made by senior agent John Dodson came after it was discovered that the gun used to kill a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Mexico was first bought in a Dallas, Texas store.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363293/U-S-Justice-Department-ordered-ATF-allow-guns-cross-border-Mexico-used-kill-American-agents.html

The investigation into a federal operation that allowed Mexican drug cartels to acquire U.S. weapons escalated Thursday with new revelations that an Arizona gun dealer repeatedly expressed fears that his guns were falling into the "hands of the bad guys" but was encouraged by federal agents to continue the sales.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/15/nation/la-na-guns-20110415

The US has a special class of victim, called a 'citizen'.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[nschubach]

So your employer can look up your habits (or lack) of religious ceremony on the weekend? How will they treat you if they don't agree? So they can see if you went to the bar the night before work (even if you didn't drink?)

No, I think that your private life should not be open to the eyes of anyone in a position of power over you during any part of your day.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

I believe there two distinct differences here. Acxiom is not tracking your 'movements'. Just your actions at various transaction points. That's significant. If you just drive around and don't buy, sell or otherwise interact, Acxiom doesn't have any knowledge of that. This proposal is simply pure survelience (can't spell this to save my life!) not action based tracking of 'what' you do.

Secondly, how many people actually *know* about this? I'm guessing quite bit less than 1/100th of one percent of the population. Hence, no uproar.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[readin]

In this case I don't think a corp ought to be doing it either. But in general the government should have more restrictions than a corporation because 1. you don't have a choice about whether your money goes to the government and 2. the government gets to use force to make you do what it wants you to do. "I think it's time to decide either way and make the choice apply to everyone..." That's exactly the problem - too many people think all the government's choices should apply to everyone. In reality most government choices should only apply to the government.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Massachusetts is one of the first to always trample on our bill of rights & the Constitution. But this will go to the Supreme Court where we actually have a majority of judges who understand what the Constitution means. This will get squashed and that will be the end of it. This is an invasion of privacy. This is what happens when liberals are at the helm.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[hedwards]

Indeed, around here the parking enforcement officers have cameras on their vehicles that can scan for license plates. Most recently it's been deployed to find people with multiple outstanding tickets so they can boot those cars.

But, ultimately, it is perfectly constitutional at this point, the vehicles are on public property and the main change is the efficiency with which a handful of people can cover the entire downtown area.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I loved the translate feature of my phone, but then realized that the phone isn't doing the translation, but instead Googles servers were. Yea, that function went from neat to scary.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

This is what happens when liberals are at the helm.

And lets not forget actually care for their citizens humanely by providing universal health care. A significant improvement over everybody else, though VT has now surpassed them with *actual* universal health care as opposed to mandated insurance coverage.

Bad actors exist on *both* sides. Need we bring up the Iraq war and the Bush tax cuts that are bankrupting us? Neither helped that many people, but they are actively hurting the majority of people.

Social Security and Medicare, also 'liberal' inventions that are quite popular and actually provide universal service...something no corporation would even attempt.

What have the GOP ever done for you besides artificially lower your taxes and then leave you with massive deficits caused by those low taxes?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[im_thatoneguy]

Corporations can't really be "boycotted" either.

I honestly don't care if a corporation or a police officer tracks me. I'm on a street. Someone could hire a private investigator to follow me around all day.

If the government wanted to follow me around... they could. This isn't a privacy issue. There is no such thing as privacy while in my car on the street in public.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[DreadPiratePizz]

The government sure as hell CAN be boycotted. If everybody refused to pay taxes, shit would stop really quickly.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[dkleinsc]

What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast.

Pretend for the moment you're somebody who has a lot to lose if material about your location got out. For instance, maybe you're a highly respected conservative pastor who also frequents a gay bar using a pseudonym. A corporation has been tracking everybody like this for some time, and gets caught. Their business is run into the ground, and they go bankrupt. A tabloid thinks that this tracking information might have a lot of value, so they buy the data during the mess of the bankruptcy. The tabloid then publishes that information to grocery stores across the country.

You can sue the tabloid for defamation if you aren't really a public figure, I guess, but regardless of what you do the damage is already done.

Also, as the stories of people like Carly Fiorina have proven many times, running a company into the ground isn't necessarily a bad career move.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

Corporations can't really be "boycotted" either.

Funny, last I checked you just don't frequent those businesses and don't spend money at them. Like I no longer stop at any BP gas stations.

If the government wanted to follow me around... they could

Yes they could. They also should have to get a warrant to do active tracking. Freedoms should be *hard* to impinge. My issue is not the observational nature, it's the persistence of that data after the observation.

The issue is not simply that tracking you is bad, the issue is that later the government will use that data later for wholly unrelated reasons. What government wouldn't want to have a correlated list of where someone has been every day of every month of every year of their life. If you can't see the massive damage that does to our civil liberties, well I'm not sure you'd see the bus coming at you on the street either.

Until you can prove I have something to hide, you don't get to track me. That's what courts and warrants are expressly for.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

It's not illegal to boycott a corporation. It's expressly illegal not to pay taxes.

A corporation does not give you, the customer, the ability to change it's policies. The government does give you that express ability. So if you don't like something, change it.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[lgw]

I just can't distinguish USA Today from The Onion by reading the stories these days ...

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

The 4th Amendment protects against searches and seizures. No part of this is a search or a seizure. It could be used to perform either of these things, either legitimately by creating probably cause that in turn is used to get a warrant, or illegitimately, by the police using to generate bias based on correlation and not factual evidence.

Or it could be used in many other ways that have nothing to do with the 4th Amendment. In and of itself it is only data gathering and storage, which isn't unconstitutional unless you start arguing about privacy rights (which is only a penumbral right anyway).

Use we should be concerned about, absolutely, but we already have a system that can handle such concerns. Assuming those people in the system are adequately educated on the technology so as to not be led falsely to erroneous conclusions (look at you, judges and justices).

Nothing has really changed except ease of tracking; such gathering and retention was always possible before. Probably even done to some extent. This doesn't mean I like it. I'm just explaining that this dislike is from an inherent aspect of the world, not some new violation of the Constitution.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[roman_mir]

What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast

- Correct. News of the World shutdown once it was publicly apparent what they were doing, but governments around the world are doing this same thing, and what happens? What happens to US or UK or French or German or Chinese or Russian or any other government, when it gets discovered that they spy after their citizens?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[gorzek]

Headline should be rewritten: "US Students are Goddamn Retarded."

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Paracelcus]

"if a corporation would do that, it's OK, but if a govt. does it, it's not?"

There is no difference, the corporations ARE the government!

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[lgw]

Keep blaming Bush, that worked so well in the last election, and realy has mindshare now! Yup, it's all Bush's fault. Those wars we didn't exit, the debt that went up more in the past 2 years than all of Bush's presidency, the should-be-illegal wiretapping that didn't stop - all clearly Bush's fault. That line is sure to be a winner in the 2012 elections!

Medicare is, of course, not even remotely sustainable - it's being funded at a tiny fraction of what it would need to be. It's so bad that the Medicare liability ($79.6T) is larger than the entire net worth of all people, companies, and corporations in America combined ($75.7T). But I'm sure it's just because Republicans are mean and greedy that we can't manage to spend more wealth than actually exists.

As far as universal service, I have a family member in bad financial shape because Medicare simply won't cover her injuries - because they're the result of a car crash and they don't cover that (at least in her circumstance). Hardly universal in reality. It's also *really* hard to find specialists that will even talk to you if you're on Medicare, even with supplamental insurance. But that's merely my family's real world experiece, your fantasy may vary.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tracking people that have done nothing is incredibly 1984.

You can read the book if you don't believe me.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[jmcvetta]

I believe there two distinct differences here. Acxiom is not tracking your 'movements'. Just your actions at various transaction points. That's significant. If you just drive around and don't buy, sell or otherwise interact, Acxiom doesn't have any knowledge of that. This proposal is simply pure survelience (can't spell this to save my life!) not action based tracking of 'what' you do.

While there is a difference, I think it's more technical than substantive. In either case, ordinary non-criminal actions are being tracked. Yes, you can avoid Acxiom's tracking by not buying anything with a credit card (or a store loyalty card). But you can avoid the license plate cameras by not driving.

Tho actually I wonder, does Acxiom nowadays purchase customer location data from the telcos, so they can also track cellphone-carrying customers who pay with cash?

If you want to avoid being tracked in Soviet Amerika, you need to:
- only pay cash
- never carry a cellphone
- never place or accept a phone call of any sort, including skype
- never use email
- never use postal mail
- ride a totally non-descript bike everywhere (there already exists gait-tracking software that can use CC surveillance cameras to identify citizens based on how they walk)
- when you must travel by foot, affect a random-ish silly walk
- always wear a disguise (to avoid the facial recognition cameras)
- if you must travel by vehicle, only hitchhike
- never fly on an airplane

So pretty much if you have anything resembling a normal life, you will be tracked against your will by bigcorps and government alike.

Secondly, how many people actually *know* about this? I'm guessing quite bit less than 1/100th of one percent of the population. Hence, no uproar.

Here I think you've hit the nail on the head. Sometimes if I describe even a small part of current surveillance technologies to people, they at first think I am warning of some distant dystopian future. Many are unwilling to accept the reality of actual, already-existing surveillance even when it's brought to their attention.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[racermd]

You hit the nail on the head. Usage such as that IS legal and constitutional. I would go so far as to encourage the municipality to use technology in similar ways throughout the city as they are being more efficient in the discharge of their duties. More 'bang' for the tax buck, so to speak.

Storing all the plates that were scanned along with some location data so someone can be tracked to a specific location is, arguably, a violation of 4th amendment rights, particularly when that data is being shared with other agencies.

The hypocrisy is outlandish, really. As tax-paying citizens, we grant our governments (federal, state, county, city, etc) limited, special rights to act on our behalf and in the best interests of the collective citizenry - rights that the ordinary citizen may not or should not be granted. In exchange, those with those rights should be held to the highest standards and should be punished if that power is misused or abused.

The intentions may be well-placed - the article quotes the MA state police spokesman, "What about the rights of someone who is already a victim to have their assailant brought to justice? There’s a freedom to being able to live your life not worried about being the victim of crime that’s also a freedom worth protecting." The plan they propose might mean more accurate and timely arrests. I'm not doubting that fact one bit. But tracking the entire populace is akin to assuming everyone is a criminal or a suspect before a crime is even committed. Not only is this constitutionally problematic, but the open sharing of the collected data with other agencies is a violation of privacy rights, as well. The potential for abuse is enormous, even with strong internal privacy policies in place.

Ultimately, at best, the police appear to be trampling citizen privacy in an effort to be more efficient in discharging their duties. At worst, this is a whole state police department that is too lazy to want to do actual police work. The truth, as usual, is most likely somewhere in the middle.

I am certainly not a lawyer, nor have I ever played one on TV. I have, however, casually studied my own rights on a regular basis. I am also a *#&@ing human being and know right from wrong. As a result, you should probably take all of what I wrote above with a huge amount of table salt.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

I'm just explaining that this dislike is from an inherent aspect of the world, not some new violation of the Constitution.

I believe that's what I was saying. My point is that small accruals that are collectively organized start to become something that the Constitution would prevent; such as in depth tracking of every individual in the country. They need a reason before they are allowed to do this.

which isn't unconstitutional unless you start arguing about privacy rights (which is only a penumbral right anyway).

You've lost the argument there unfortunately. The Constitution is expressly about privacy rights - the government does not have the right to anything except what is expressly granted. That means my privacy is more important than random 'passive' tracking because they can.

Having this much detailed data available just begs it to be used...more problems can occur than could ever be justified with the small increase in benefit you might get from this.

And I'm a flaming liberal saying this...

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[socz]

You're very right about that... I was interviewing at a place that does custom spas and kitchens.... and everything went great, they took me up to a board room and I met some more people. Was loving it! Sounded like a tight knit family operation... until they started asking what I liked to do on my "off time." I explained I like music and art etc etc and they kept pushing at "what else?" lol Eventually, I understood it to be what do you do on Sunday (they were very discrete). So after I got the hint, and I could say it's fairly obvious they were Christian, I didn't believe they had to know what I believed in, so of course I didn't share. And needless to say, I didn't get the job. My religious beliefs should not be the deciding factor for my employment.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[mabhatter654]

So will Apple bring back the Speed Trap apps??? After all, those are just a list of places the public sees officers staked out often, right!

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[mabhatter654]

But there is... It's called stalking. Go stake out a playground and take pictures of all the little kids... See just how fast they find something you did wrong when you have two years of pictures...

Watch Numbers... Even with their "armchair mathematics" approach the stuff they point out is getting easier every day.

I think a big problem is that police really aren't there to "protect" they are there to referee the fight according to the law when there is disagreement. For a long time they were called "officers of the peace" to mediate disputes before they turned "not peaceful". It's only been since Prohibition that Police were tasked with FINDING crimes NOT REPORTED by citizens personal disputes.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[flyneye]

I claim my own rights thank you.
I acknowledge no authorities or peers.
I do pretty damn much whatever I damn well please.
Not a problem as I usually don't hurt anyone in doing so.
Tracking the movements and filming the habits of cops for my own soon to be published purposes is on the radar.
Better believe I'll scare the tards in blue long before I even think of fearing them.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, the 10th amendment is pretty widely ignored or willfully infringed.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a state full of Democrats still has ANY rights left?
The shuddering cowards traded freedom for security from Big Brother generations ago.
It takes a commonwealth to raise an idiot.
The bit about giving them enough rope is true, the time-frame lingers a bit long though.
Democrats seem to be the foolish wing of our one party system.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[uncqual]

[...] because of how poor the education system has become in the US (largely thanks to the no child left behind movement), the majority of people don't understand the extreme importance of every amendment contained within the Bill Of Rights[...]

Although I agree that the public education system in the United States has generally done a horrible job of teaching the US Constitution, this started long before NCLB became effective slightly less than ten years ago. Therefore, I have a hard time seeing that a continued decline (to the extent it may have become worse) in this dimension is attributable "largely" to NCLB.

Of course, the mentality you refer to was anticipated by Franklin when he wrote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[darkwing_bmf]

May be, but IMOHO, because of how poor the education system has become in the US (largely thanks to the no child left behind movement), the majority of people don't understand the extreme importance of every amendment contained within the Bill Of Rights.

Most adult Americans were out of school when no child left behind became law. I understand your point but you don't have to be overly political about it.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[uncqual]

And it would make stalkers' lives so much easier! Please, won't someone think of the stalkers.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

Keep blaming Bush

Are you saying the tax cuts aren't causing massive deficits/debt? We would literally be debt *free* NOW if we hadn't passed the Bush tax cuts. Seriously, that $14 trillion debt would be gone given projections. Would it be exactly that way, of course not, but we'd be in a hell of a lot better shape financially without them. Please try and say that isn't true.

Those wars we didn't exit

Funny who argued that leaving was 'giving up', oh yes, the GOP.

the debt that went up more in the past 2 years than all of Bush's presidency

And why did that debt go up? Because of a massive economic recession caused in large part by a 'less regulation' mindset. Who do we usually associate with less regulation and who with more regulation? Oh yes, the GOP and Bush, the Dems are always putting restrictions on 'business'. Who fought tooth and nail to prevent new restrictions from being added? The GOP. Sensing a pattern here yet?

the should-be-illegal wiretapping that didn't stop

It's an interesting philosophical debate as to which is worse. Starting said wire tapping, or continuing it. Nobody comes out looking good. Obama is quite wrong to continue it, but Bush did start it.

The Iraq war. There was *zero* reason to go into Iraq. None. Yet we did have spent well over a Trillion dollars. Again, refute that if you can.

As far as universal service, I have a family member in bad financial shape because Medicare simply won't cover her injuries - because they're the result of a car crash

I suspect because your family member has or should have had 'auto insurance' to cover such industries. Medicare is universal in that it covers everybody, not that it covers every condition. It's fair to discuss what should or shouldn't be covered, but not that people should have medical coverage without worry of your job. Or are you saying having insurance companies simply cut you off because they want to is good?

It's also *really* hard to find specialists that will even talk to you if you're on Medicare, even with supplamental insurance.

This is the problem with 'hybrid' systems of public and private. Given that your 'health' is not something you can do without, Health Care providers have you over a barrel. They can charge whatever they want. And with private sector insurance that can cherry pick who they accept, that means no they aren't going to accept less.

When the public sector is the *only* game in town, they providers have no choice and costs come down.

Medicare needs reform, I do not dispute this. I strongly dispute that it doesn't 'work'. It works pretty damned well but certainly can be streamlined and improved. Likewise with Social Security.

Means testing is something even this 'liberal' endorses. I see no reason to provide Medicare to Bill Gates, he simply doesn't need it. I don't plan to need either program, but I want them there *if* I do need them; which is why it's called the 'safety net'. Make these things more like life insurance...you pay the premiums/taxes and get the benefits *if* you need them. Everybody's covered but not everybody needs to receive the benefits. Is that really so bad?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

Tho actually I wonder, does Acxiom nowadays purchase customer location data from the telcos, so they can also track cellphone-carrying customers who pay with cash?

This is also a perfect example of my idea 'accrual of data' becoming 4th amendment issues. The Telcos do collect location info, I've said as much, but we also get a significant benefit of the mobile connectivity. Do the Telco's really need to keep that data beyond a month or two? Does it need to be *everybody* or just a random anonymized sample for system reliability?

Another great example is the current Copyright legislation being debated. The Government wants to require ISPs to maintain detailed logs of your online surfing. This information would normally be protected by the 4th amendment; i.e. they'd need a warrant to tap your connection. Now the government just subpoena's that info from the ISP. It's not 4th amendment because it's ISP data not yours.. Nice end run around the 4th amendment.

If the Gov't collected the data or required the data be collected on you they should forever be banned from using it without due process. How is that different than say an organized mob figure simply asking an associate to steal something and then just taking it from the associate? The mob figure didn't steal the item.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[ultranova]

Actually yes that's correct. What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast. (mobile phones are a different story as people receive significant benefit from said 'tracking'; i.e. the mobile connectivity).

So a corporation that tracked everyone would get run out of business, except the corporations that actually do, which don't?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Gutboy]

Do the Telco's really need to keep that data beyond a month or two? Does it need to be *everybody* or just a random anonymized sample for system reliability?

Yes, they do. They need data about usage and location so they can track cell usage growth (or decline) in areas that might need more cell towers to handle the load. The data could be anonymized, though.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Onymous Coward]

In Salinas, CA? Or maybe family-run and very religious is common in kitchen shops?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boston just took down all city cams stating, "the steady erosion of civil rights prompts us to just do away with them". I was very proud of Boston for doing that.
This I-cam 5th-ammendment-violate-o-base is worth protesting about!

So in case you want to do more than argue on slashdot, join us in

eliminating stupid speeding tickets worldwide!

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[prograsm]

Of all the amendments in the Bill of Rights, this one, it seems to me, is the one that's the most gone.

Personally, I'd go with the 10th Amendment. If #10 wasn't being completely ignored, a lot of the Big Government Problems today simply wouldn't exist.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Burz]

Corporations also don't enforce the laws (theoretically anyway) so they don't have the leverage the government does over your freedoms either.

Pardon me, but who do you think runs the government in this country?? Wall St. corporations write the laws and send them to politicians who are absolutely beholden to their approval and largesse.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[socz]

i don't think it's very common... lol but it was south of Rancho Cucamonga.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism actually, and fitting that it started in Mass.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology is trumping even the Constitution and we need to update our concepts to match what is now possible for the government.

One possible solution to this problem is creating a legislative compatibility layer over the Constitution on the federal level. That is how the problem of the general nature of constitution is solved in here, on the other side of the globe. That might lessen the effect of case law in these kinds of cases against the officials. It would also lessen the power of states significantly.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure Stinking BULLSHIT

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is about as 1984 as it gets. Not only do Americans have no rights anymore, their movements are tracked by the government.

Fascism.

The State that Gave us an Inconvenient Truth, now gives us the final Big Brother Blow to our Freedoms,,, that State gave us the Tea party and went to hell from there, John Adams is turning over in his Grave.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[jenningsthecat]

A corporation does not give you, the customer, the ability to change it's policies. The government does give you that express ability. So if you don't like something, change it.

Really? And just how much did the last vote you cast do to change anything of importance? Seriously, short of mass-uprising 'blood in the streets' scenarios, when was the last time that the will of the people became law and/or government policy anywhere in the world?

The corporations that run the world WANT you to have the illusion that you have the ability to change government policies, because that belief makes you quieter and easier to manipulate. But if citizens' votes really mattered, shit legislation like this would never even be proposed, much less implemented.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Overzeetop]

Yeah, but that's not really news, is it?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Tsingi]

Sad what you say. Thank you for saying it.

I came across 6 cops arresting a guy on my bike ride home. I recorded it. I watched for a while from the bike path. Then I moved up and started recording.
Not for any particular reason, mostly in an effort to irritate them.
That didn't work. Although I got some looks.
Eventually they moved the guy off up the path, so I carried on past them.
as I passed I said, "Remember the G8?" 1000 cops with no ID beating up civilians? It's us against you now."
Two or three of them wished me a nice day.
I think I'm going to make this a regular practice whenever I see a cop.
I have to say though, Ottawa cops are pretty proper.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[dr2chase]

You SHOULD be a flaming liberal saying this, because social conservatives ("Griswold v. Connecticut was wrongly decided") don't believe in a constitutional right to privacy.

I'm in the camp of "this is probably a bad idea, but I do so hate the way so many people drive, why not stick it to them". This is similar to "that anti-smoking law sure seems draconian, as soon as you nicotine addicts speak up for the right of other people to consume other drugs, maybe I'll give a shit".

Though really, I'd be happier with black boxes for accident and insurance purposes. If we sold auto insurance by the mile (and by the behavior), people would drive less (converts fixed costs into incremental costs, allows you to save more money by not driving) and they would drive better ("tailgating surcharge activated"). In terms of harm to society, since cars kill roughly twice as many people as are murdered in a given year, we'd get a higher social benefit from this, than from giving the police more tools that *might* allow them to solve crimes that had already been committed (and that's assuming that both choices are equally effective, but I think that the black box would be more effective).

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Tsingi]

On the way hometomight...
Cops, a lot of them (6), in the park arresting some guy.
I watched for a while from the bike path. Then I moved up and started recording.
Not for any particular reason, mostly in an effort to irritate them.
That didn't work. Although I got some looks.
Eventually they moved the guy off up the path, so I carried on past them.
as I passed I said, "Remember the G8?" 1000 cops with no ID beating up civilians? It's us against you now."
Two or three of them wished me a nice day.
I think I'm going to make this a regular practice whenever I see a cop.
Hopefully it will make them think.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[justanothersysadmin]

I think I'm missing something here.

I came across 6 cops arresting a guy on my bike ride home

Routine enough. Having 6 officers there may be excessive or it may not. If anything, having more people available to take someone in reduces the risk of harm to that person, the police officers involved, and any bystanders.

I recorded it. I watched for a while from the bike path. Then I moved up and started recording.

No problem there. You should be able to film what you want & those in authority should be held accountable, so no problem.

...mostly in an effort to irritate them

...mkay...so...cops are busy busting somebody, which, sure, I guess I can give you that 0.5% chance their abusing their authority, but overwhelmingly they're likely busy, you know, keeping the peace and picking up somebody who has either committed a crime or is a suspect in a crime. So...you feel the need to irritate the people who put their ass on the line almost daily to try keep people safe?

...as I passed I said, "Remember the G8?" 1000 cops with no ID beating up civilians? It's us against you now."

Here's where we disconnect a bit. When you get into an intense situation like that, you need to identify and suppress the flash points in the crowd, otherwise things become really messy really fast. So, when someone strikes out at the police or throws a rock or whatever, you need to isolate that, remove it from the crowd, and deal with it. If you leave it alone, the energy starts to build up around the flash point until you eventually reach a tipping point where something snaps.

Just look at the recent Vancouver riot for examples of this. In '94 the cops got lambasted for being too harsh. So, there were reviews, changes in tactics, training, etc., contributing in a big way to the "Meet & greet" policy of showing police presence that has developed since. This year, the cops start with their meet & greet thing and try gentle crowd dispersal, see that it's simply not gonna cut it, switch into riot control mode, and you end up with a bunch of cars flipped & burned, looting, dozens of people in the hospital, thousands if not millions of dollars of damage, a PR black eye for the city, and they get hammered for not being tough enough. Damned if you & damned if you don't, but if the cops need to slap on some riot gear and take out the instigators to keep the situation from getting ugly, you bet your ass that gets my vote over being nice and cuddly and then having to deal with the consequences.

At the same time, I get it: It was an intense situation and there is a lot of controversy over how it went down. People in that level of authority and need to be held to the highest standard of integrity. While I don't know the state of mind of every single police officer who was there, I'm willing that bet that the vast majority and very likely almost every single one of them were there with an intention to keep people as safe as possible. Yes, I understand that there are exceptions and problems. Generalizing the actions of some people and simply labeling a huge group as your enemy as a result hardly fixes the problem, though.

I'm veering off course here now. What started me on that point was mostly the It's us again you now bit in your story. When you draw up battle lines like that, you only escalate the situation. What were these 6 cops doing wrong? The mandate of a police force is to enforce the laws of the jurisdiction and to protect the people within that jurisdiction. That includes protecting you. Would you rather spit in the face of someone who's charged with protecting you and make it harder for them to do their job, and find a way to keep them on task?

Most people have no idea of how much police work goes on every singl

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[bobcote]

Being from the same state that produced John Adams, John Hancock and Paul Revere it is so hard to believe that this is happening and Massachusetts is at the heart of it.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

Really? And just how much did the last vote you cast do to change anything of importance?

A massive landslide in '08 followed by a massive counter-reaction in '10. How is that not having votes 'count' and 'affect' the government?

True both are mostly of the same corrupt cloth, but you *do* have a say in things, just like everybody else. And it's a far cry more say than you get as a customer of a company or even as a shareholder, as some shareholders get more 'say' than you do.

But if citizens' votes really mattered, shit legislation like this would never even be proposed, much less implemented.

Hardly. The Constitution and our legal system do nothing to prevent bad legislation. They expressly give us the ability to remedy it though and that is heads and tails more powerful.

What they want is for you to lay down and just whine about it so they can continue to bribe, I mean lobby, our elected officials. Stand up and tell your reps you won't vote for them if they continue...and then follow through and vote for someone else with better ideas. But don't just whine that 'its all corrupt we cant do anything'.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

Funny, you can run for office and take them on. If they are so beholden and corrupt you should find it easy to win support of the people, no?

The Dems at least *try* to put restrictions on corporations...the GOP flatly admits they want to anything and everything to reduce any restrictions on corporations. I'll take the Dems thank you very much.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Cant use a slash wtf]

I'm failing to see how tracking where you drive correlates with un-warranted searching.
Not to say I like this idea of being able to track where people have been driving, but I don't see that it really infringes on the 4th amendment. Unless I'm thoroughly mistaken.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yes that's correct. What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast. (mobile phones are a different story as people receive significant benefit from said 'tracking'; i.e. the mobile connectivity).

Umm ... no they wouldn't. See Corp A would make the tech available to track any given person (of course X fee per person tracked). Corp B, C and D would then purchase that to track their employees. Citizen A and B would buy it to track their kids. Citizen C to rest of country would boycott and buy nothing. Overall effect to the Corp A == lots of money from other corporations and a little from random parents.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Crayon Kid]

The data 'seen' at the time is not 4th amendment violating, but the storage and persistence of said data *should* be a 4th amendment violation.

The problem is that without storage and persistance of data, police activity becomes a lot less effective.

Example: a live policeman sees a car while on patrol and remembers its details, including location, occupants, license plate etc. Later on, when a call comes in regarding a crime, he puts those things together, realizes that car or its occupants were involved and is able to provide details.

A fully automated system would be able to deal with this much better than a live policeman. But not if you only allow it the ability to recognize live details while denying the ability to store and relate to them later on. This way, the tech becomes usable only for encounters that happen after the call comes in, which drastically limits its efficiency.

It is unclear to me why people consider it ok for stuff to be stored indefinitely in a live policeman's brain but not on his HDD.

It's especially ironic since, when the situations are reversed, the same people cry foul. Example: people argue it's ok to photograph anything you can also see with the naked eye and remember with your brain; have a policeman interfere with this and everybody's up in arms about it.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[mikechant]

It is unclear to me why people consider it ok for stuff to be stored indefinitely in a live policeman's brain but not on his HDD.

When there is a manual effort involved in collecting and storing data, it will be more likely to be targeted towards serious criminal activity.
When data is collected automatically in bulk, there is no such targeting and lots of data is collected and stored about people with no criminal connections. This can be used against them (e.g. corrupt policemen selling info about 'celebs', policeman targeting his 'love rival' etc.)

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[flyneye]

Can I get an AMEN!?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[bwcbwc]

We may have to take this as a trade-off for being able to film cops on public streets. They're not placing a tracking device on individual vehicles, they're filming a (presumably) public location and interpreting the data. Personally, I think the right of anyone (including the cops) to film a public view is important. The storage of the data "indefinitely" is my biggest concern about this.

But in that case, someone should start a similar archive tracking all police vehicles and store that data indefinitely. There's probably just as much "interesting" information in that data set as there is in the Massachusetts official data, and if they have the right, so do we.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[bwcbwc]

So, if a corporation would do that, it's OK, but if a govt. does it, it's not?

Actually yes that's correct. What do you think would happen to that corporation if it came out they were tracking everybody like this? They'd be run out of business quite fast. (mobile phones are a different story as people receive significant benefit from said 'tracking'; i.e. the mobile connectivity).

The 'government' can't be 'boycotted' in the manner of a corporation so yes they aren't supposed to be allowed to do such things. Corporations also don't enforce the laws (theoretically anyway) so they don't have the leverage the government does over your freedoms either.

You mean like AT&T and Verizon have been run out of business for turning call records over to the government without a warrant? You mean the way Facebook has been run out of business for tracking every damn thing its users do on the web?

Methinks you need to change the tinting on your glasses to something a little less rosy.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Tsingi]

Yes, I should be grateful to people who try to protect me. Watch this and let me know if you think Canadian police forces have something to account for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llKGp1NvDas&feature=channel_video_title

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

(they were very discrete)

They were separate and distinct? You do mean "discreet", yes?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

My point is that having the police tail you 24/7 recording where you go would require a warrant. They just can't decide to follow someone 24/7 because they want to. Now with technology, they can literally do this simply having their cars record and store and correlate and search who they see in their travels.

What an officer sees during normal daily activity is clearly not a 4th amendment issue. But now add up everything that every officer sees, store that information and pretty soon you have the same set of data as if they literally had been tailing everyone 24/7.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

You've changed the situation. Your examples are people actively *involved* in the lives of those being tracked and who have a legal right to track said people; company-employee and parent-child

The article concept and my example is if a company just started tracking everybody everywhere out on the roads.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

It is unclear to me why people consider it ok for stuff to be stored indefinitely in a live policeman's brain but not on his HDD.

It's especially ironic since, when the situations are reversed, the same people cry foul. Example: people argue it's ok to photograph anything you can also see with the naked eye and remember with your brain; have a policeman interfere with this and everybody's up in arms about it.

There's a very large difference in your example. The Police are doing their jobs, using tax payer money; we have a quite reasonable expectation that they are behaving and acting appropriately. Whereas individuals are simply individuals in public. You have no reasonable expectation on other people nor do they have any of you, least off all do the police have any expectation of you.

More over it's the police who cry foul at being recorded, just like I'm crying foul over this 24/7 tracking.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

You might want to reread my post. I specifically exempt the cell companies because we *agree* to such tracking by purchasing their product. If I don't have a cell phone, AT&T and Verizon aren't tracking me. Ditto for Facebook.

This article and my objection is about wholesale tracking of *everybody* they encounter, not just people who have opted into the 'business' of the company in question.

As far as the turning over to the police, yes that's *really* bad and I've said as much to my congressman and senators. It's also a prime example of what will happen if this goes into place. They no longer even have to ask someone else for the data, they have it in house.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[krishkrish]

The next could
1) Mounting a camera on every mailbox facing the road
2) Then with 360 view.
3) Then with zoom capability.

will it be 1984 then?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[lgw]

I suspect because your family member has or should have had 'auto insurance' to cover such industries. Medicare is universal in that it covers everybody, not that it covers every condition.

Not touching the rest of your comments, since you seem to be in output only mode, but this is a common misconception. My family member's medical bill have passed $300k and it isn't done yet, and that's not out of line for a severe injury - some stuff is just expensive with technology where it is today (yes, you can use the power of the state to force people to charge less, but technological advancement slows dramatically if profits drop, and technological advancement is vastly more important to pricing than anything else).

How much of that would you be covered for? If you're really lucky, the person who hit you might have $100k in insurance. How much more is your own insurance going to pick up? Fundamentaly, the point of medicale insurance is to cover uncommon and unexpected catastropic losses, by spreading those costs across a pool. It's the big and unexpected expenses that insurance is for (why would you need insurance for predictable day-to-day expenses? charity is a different topic). And yet medicare fails its fundamental purpose.

Medicare is an amazingly crappy system, we're paying about 40% of federal revenue for it (40%!! really!) and funding it at about 1/10th of what would be needed for long-term solvency. Social security is in trouble, cahflow negative and getting worse - at a cost of 35% of federal revenue we can only do a little, but it's a reasonable debate what we can do. Medicare is impossibly insolvent.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not the last step for invasion of privacy. The state which borders on bankruptcy wants to spend money tracking every citizen. Every citizen should object as where you are going and where you have been is none of their business. If they want traffic volumes, let them put a rubber air pressure hose across the roadway and count the vehicles passing per hour.

They want to spend a few fifty millions to recover 5-10 million in files. And then their system will be obsolete, but you the citizen will pay for it in your taxes.

There is absolutely no saving of lives, or reduction in danger in their justifying what they want to do. It is, as I wrote and write, an invasion of privacy.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

My family member's medical bill have passed $300k and it isn't done yet, and that's not out of line for a severe injury

How much of that would you be covered for? If you're really lucky, the person who hit you might have $100k in insurance. How much more is your own insurance going to pick up?

Which is why I carry an umbrella policy of $1,000,000 for a whopping $9/month (State Farm). That's over an above anything my other insurance policies don't cover.

So yes your family member should have had more insurance.

Not touching the rest of your comments

It is hard to argue with facts, I agree....

Fundamentaly, the point of medicale insurance is to cover uncommon and unexpected catastropic losses, by spreading those costs across a pool. It's the big and unexpected expenses that insurance is for (why would you need insurance for predictable day-to-day expenses? charity is a different topic). And yet medicare fails its fundamental purpose.

Funny, try pricing out the cost of private insurance for someone who is 80 years old. Medicare will look like a bargain in terms of cost to the individual.

As for 'output only mode' you seem to do it well yourself. My point was that when you have private insurance, which is what the vast majority of our system is, then it's all about arguing over who pays. When you have just a single government system, there's no argument over who pays, it just gets paid.

You still haven't explained the 'reasons' why Medicare isn't covering the claims you're talking about, I suspect it's because there is other insurance involved, which is not a criticism of Medicare, but of the private insurance system we currently have.

Medicare is an amazingly crappy system, we're paying about 40% of federal revenue for it (40%!! really!). Social security is in trouble...at a cost of 35% of federal revenue

Sources please - 70% of current federal revenue is just these 2 programs? I seriously doubt that. Future expenses is more likely but not current.

Medicare is a good system. It is significantly inefficient, but it succeeds at what it is supposed to do which is provide health care to seniors who wouldn't otherwise be able to get it at anything other than massive premiums.

Medicare itself is also not the problem. It is health care costs that are the problem. Solve that and Medicare's problems go away pretty fast.

So time to put up or shut up...how would you provide insurance/retirement to the elderly if not Medicare/Social Security?

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[AmiMoJo]

It isn't that people are stupid, it is that they are more concerned about crime rates. Politicians will take the flack over violations of privacy and Orwellian levels of surveillance because they know that come the next election the falling crime rate will be of more interest to swing voters.

Of course it can backfire if the new measures lead to more crimes being detected, but usually they are careful to put in "safeguards" that are claimed to protect the innocent and limit police power but are actually just to make sure they are only used for solving already detected crime. The goal is to get more crimes solved, more convictions and more people in jail, not to spot more crimes in the first place.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[AmiMoJo]

Meh, over here at Airstrip 1 we have had this for years already. The police touted it as a way to "deny criminals the use of the roads", but in actual fact it has mostly been used to harass lawful protesters and other agitators.

The current government said they were going to restore some of our freedoms and do away with the surveillance society, but they seem to have forgotten about that now. I think it was about the time the minority Liberal Democrat part of the coalition realised that they can't get any of their major policies through and have basically been set up to support the Conservatives.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to reread my post.

No thanks.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[im_thatoneguy]

Funny, last I checked you just don't frequent those businesses and don't spend money at them. Like I no longer stop at any BP gas stations.

But you still buy Gas. Thank you for proving my point perfectly. I also see that you and your peers have made a huge impact on BP's profit margins... oh wait.

And that's an example of a company where it's easy to boycott them. Now try boycotting Foxconn.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[pixelpusher220]

But you still buy Gas. Thank you for proving my point perfectly.

What point exactly is that? That you still have to keep doing things to live? News at 11 and all that.

I simply gave you a concrete example of how I have boycotted something refuting your point that you "can't". If most sheeple aren't going to play along not much you can do, but you can still make your own personal stand on issues. Apparently you'd just sit there and take it. How many issues have you written your congressman about this year? I'm guessing zero. I probably average 2-3 letters a month. If you aren't speaking up, you have no credibility to criticize the results.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[justanothersysadmin]

I was looking for G8/G20 material but couldn't really find much of substance. Thanks for the link; will check it out.

Re:I've been waiting for this.

[lgw]

Which is why I carry an umbrella policy of $1,000,000 for a whopping $9/month (State Farm).

Don't know if you'll see this, but you should double-check that. "Umbrella" policies cover your liability if you're sued, and nothing else - I have one myself. Maybe you're using that term loosly, but still, might want to give your agent a call and ask.

70% of current federal revenue is just these 2 programs? I seriously doubt that. Future expenses is more likely but not current

The link is in my sig. The numbers are also in Wikipedia. Future expense are far, far worse. We spend 100% of federal revenue on money transfers to the old and poor, and another 60% on everything else the government does. Spending 160% of what we take in has led to the problems that have started to make a little press (not that we're doing anyhting serious about it).

I'm going to opt out...

[Anonymous Coward]

... of making a reasonable and thoughtful comment. Instead, I'm going to just say "fuck you Massachusetts," because that's really all they deserve.

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[syphax]

As a lifelong Masshole, right back at ya.

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[SeeSp0tRun]

As a lifelong Masshole myself, I'm going to have to agree... However, that is not to say I can't wait to defect to NH ASAP...
This is not the straw that broke the camel's back, it is a long list... this just adds to it.

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think Massachusetts is the only state doing this, you are sorely mistaken. El Sag, the LPR recognition company I'm familiar with, claims to have installations in all 50 states.

Ohio doesn't have a state police; only a state highway patrol. Still the state signed an agreement with El Sag (http://www.elsag.com/index.asp); every county has an installation and other governmental agencies (munipalities, state colleges, etc) can get in under the state contract.

At work, we're using it to catch staff who park in visitor parking lots. We have a problem with patient parking running out, and most of it is used by staff. Its important people can park when they want to go to our hospitals, but its complicated by the fact that a faculty/staff member could also be a patient and we want to respect their privacy. So we look for plates that are visiting frequently and compare them to a database with known faculty/staff license plates.

I think the data is only kept for a rolling 30 days, so its not quite the same. Since we don't want to even know about a plate until there is a trend (to try to preserve privacy), it is necessary to store it short term. Also, this doesn't catch everyone; if you don't abuse it often enough we'll never know. Still its the best we've been able to come up with to balance privacy and ensuring our patients have available parking.

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto, Fuck you "Assachusetts." and all of your pathetic citizens, living in one of the founding states, for being such pathetic pussies.

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[Lawrence_Bird]

So fitting that it all starts in the Commiewealth

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[http]

I disagree. They deserve all members of the legislative branch executed. Firing squad preferable, fire acceptable.
This couldn't be more blatent - "You are not a citizen, taxpayer, you are a suspect."

Re:I'm going to opt out...

[Anonymous Coward]

no fuck you for allowing your state to do such a thing

Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

No reason to do this. As a Massachusetts resident this is totally unwarranted.

Re:Police State

[derfy]

No reason to do this. As a Massachusetts resident this is totally unwarranted.

"No reason to do this. As a fucking US citizen this is totally unwarranted."

FTFY.

Re:Police State

[Jeff Carr]

"No reason to do this. As a fucking US citizen this is totally unwarranted."

"No reason to do this. As a fucking human being this is totally unwarranted."

FIFY.

Re:Police State

[frosty_tsm]

"No reason to do this. As a fucking US citizen this is totally unwarranted."

"No reason to do this. As a fucking human being this is totally unwarranted."

FIFY.

"Every reason to do this. As a citizen this is totally warranted."

- Stalin

Re:Police State

[Lost Race]

As a dangling modifier this is totally ungrammatical.

No More

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the time has come for We The People to declare all-out war on these fucking surveillance cameras and destroy them at will.

Re:No More

[qbzzt]

We're talking about surveillance cameras located in police cars. Do you:

1. Attack the car with the cops still in it, getting into a violent confrontation with people trained to fight.

or

2. Break into the police station at night to destroy the surveillance cameras, when the place is, well, also guarded.

Try voting the bastards out. It's hard, but a lot less bloody.

Re:No More

[Caerdwyn]

Cameras don't make policy. Tyrannical politicians and corrupt-to-the-core police do.

Your policy proposal is close, though. Make the one edit and you're there.

Re:No More

[morari]

You kill the cops while they're standing at the doughnut counter, then torch their car.

Re:No More

[Krojack]

Try voting the bastards out. It's hard, but a lot less bloody.

Only to be replaced by bastards. It's a never ending cycle. A lose lose situation. Pretty sad.

Re:No More

[adolf]

The cameras in question are typically on the cars, not in them.

Around here, they are specifically mounted on the trunk lid, and are very conspicuous indeed. They could be disabled very quickly indeed with a good ball-peen hammer, or a sharp knife.

I'm just sayin'.

Re:No More

[Caerdwyn]

"Trained to fight?" No, most police are not trained to "fight". They're trained to shoot at the slightest provocation (though not well), trained to taze, trained to kill barking dogs at the wrong address, and they're trained to call in half the department on any excuse. Mano a mano, they're not much better than anyone else. A hardened street thug who is used to real combat, who from experience knows how to endure a boot to the skull or a knife-cut and keep going anyway, will chew up and spit out the average cop in a straight-up fight.

Cops rely upon intimidation and the ability to bring disproportionate force. If you're not impressed by a badge, if you realize that a cop's gun is no different than a citizen's, and if the cop can't bring in overwhelming force, they're meat and they know it. Why do you think they're trying to eliminate the ability of ANY citizen, honest or not, to resist the whims of ANY cop, honest or not?

Re:No More

[JoeMerchant]

Try voting the bastards out. It's hard, but a lot less bloody.

Only to be replaced by bastards. It's a never ending cycle. A lose lose situation. Pretty sad.

Because only a bastard would devote their life to politics for the sake of power... it's a fundamental flaw in the system. I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who suggested rule by conscription - but that's bad for business because it's less predictable, at least with the present system you get a chance to know the bastard before they rise to a significant level of power.

If we're going to have this level of accountability to government, they should have twice the level of accountability to us - public databases exposing their movements (30 days delayed for "safety" of the tracked), income sources and spending destinations down to the penny, voting record, meetings with other politicians (easily generated from the movement tracker), and family and friends' business profiles, all exposed on a tablet interface in the voting booth as well as the internet.

When they start holding the citizenry to a higher level of accountability than they hold themselves, they're asking for revolution.

Re:No More

[JoeMerchant]

Or, less violently, with a paintball gun.

Re:No More

[pixelpusher220]

Only to be replaced by bastards. It's a never ending cycle.

Then run for office yourself you bastard!

oh wait... ;-)

Re:No More

[black soap]

"Great Stuff" expanding foam. Might not destroy the camera permanently, but will have to be removed carefully. Also good for tail pipes.

Re:No More

[rickb928]

It's Massachusetts. Voting the bastards out is a lot, LOT harder than you think, not just because everyone in Massachusetts is a fat bastard.

And you people in Massachusetts, you KNOW who I'm talkin bout. Ayuh.

Re:No More

[Quiet_Desperation]

3. Saints Row option. Gather up homies and deliver a rocket launcher parade to the police station.

Try voting the bastards out. It's hard, but a lot less bloody.

It's impossible when there's no one running for office except bastards.

Re:No More

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

You want to shoot at a police car? I think if you think about that for a minute or so you can come up with several reasons why this would not be a good idea.

Re:No More

[The Gaytriot]

"Trained to fight?" No, most police are not trained to "fight".

Yes, they're trained to fight. I guess they would get beaten by a hardened thug. I guess they would also get beaten by a trained MMA fighter, or a combat vet with a lot more training time. But don't let those ridiculous comparisons stop you from trying to push your anti-cop agenda. We're not talking about either of those, we're talking about a skinny nerd with a paintball gun who is considering whether or not to shot the camera on a police car.

Re:No More

[Anonymous Coward]

Try voting the bastards out. It's hard, but a lot less bloody.

This assumes functional democratic machinery that allows open, free, and fair elections. There is no evidence that such a system exists in Massachusetts

Re:No More

[JoeMerchant]

As opposed to assaulting it directly with a hammer, yeah, I guess if I had to choose, I'd choose the ambush attack from a distance. Not that I personally think either is a good idea.

Re:No More

[nschubach]

I'm not sure you really even have to kill the officers. As much as some of them are bastards, not all of them are. I think the better message is a well placed sticker over the camera while nobody is looking. Most of them are just sitting there on the trunk of the car. Make sure you don't park next to them while you do it though. ;)

Re:No More

[TheGratefulNet]

or:

3. hire lulzsec to teach the government a lesson

(I do see this as a true world war. people vs their government. it won't be G vs G, it will be people vs their G's).

keep pushing the citizens, government types. we will all be sorry, but YOU will be to blame for escalating your war on human rights and privacy.

I would really love to see some DE-escalation but I am quite quite sure this won't happen. the slope of the line is so upward, it has to crash in order to come back to normal again.

I do worry a lot about this. we only need a bit more depression-era out-of-work folks and poor folks who were once middle class and are now homeless - and those folks will have nothing left to lose. THOSE are the folks that you don't want to have to fight since they have nothing to lose and you, the ruling class, have everything to lose. everything.

stop the madness now or[well], it won't end nicely for either side.

this is not a threat. its a prediction.

Re:No More

[Cartman's Mom]

Perhaps a couple of random scraps on tape on the license plate would render their ill-gotten info quite useless..... Don't fight on their terms, easier to simply poison the bounty.....

Re:No More

[TheGratefulNet]

voting is rigged and ineffective.

I have given up hope on elections. the same asshats get in over and over. in order to GET in, you have to be a low-life (but with xtian family values, of course!)

no, elections are not the answer. I think ammo box is what comes next. the way we are going, could be as little as 5 years before the econ collapses. at that point, when people have nothing to lose, THEN there will be real riots in the streets. followed by martial law and even more restrictions from the gov to the citizenry.

no matter how I cut it, I fail to see hope in the future for the world. not even talking about US, but its a human power-grab fight that we are seeing. does not matter if you have D or R or some other letter or are in some other country's gov system. not one has raised rights for human beings. they all raise rights for corporations and ruling classes. not a single country (please, name one if you can) has made things better for common people in this privacy and control-grab that we are seeing.

Re:No More

[tnk1]

Tyranny or corruption isn't the problem here. It's bureaucrats and civil servants simply trying to find ways to do their job with less hassle. The problem is that they care more about making their lives easier than they do about the Bill of Rights. And why would they? Sure, some people are scrupulous about how their jobs affect other people, but lets be honest here, you don't have to be a totalitarian monster to not give a shit about other people's rights if it interferes with you getting a higher performance score or not having your every move paparazzi-ed.

If you wonder why these people think you are strange for wanting to thwart them, its because you're framing them as some sort of monster. They're not mustache-twirling villains, they're apathetic or overly interested in doing their jobs as effectively as possible with as little hassle as possible. I bet you wouldn't like your boss filming you while you surfed Slashdot either, even if it was totally justified by the amount of responsibility you have been given.

I actually think that being able to record stops and such is a good idea, but we need to work to make the process less adversarial. Cops have firepower and training, but they are acutely aware that they are outnumbered and they are certainly in more danger every day than almost any one else outside of Afghanistan. As long as it is adversarial, the good cops will end up forming a front with the bad ones and we'll get nowhere. Its not like we can abolish the police, we have to work to make them the best force we can.

Re:No More

[PoopMonkey]

Yeah, they're not all bad. 99% of them give the rest a bad name.

Re:No More

[readin]

So if there happens to be a cop in or near the car that you didn't see for some reason, and he sees you pointing a gunshaped object at his car (close enough to him that you might be pointing at him) do you expect him to wait until you shoot so he can be sure whether you're shooting a cap gun, paint gun, or bullet gun?

Pointing a paintball gun at a cop car is a good way to get yourself killed.

Re:No More

[JeffAtl]

Yes, they're trained to fight.

No they're not. They are mostly taught restraining techniques (e.g. joint locks) to use on a person already on the ground.

Even the hand-to-hand fighting training that special forces receive is on a far lower level than most people think.

Re:No More

[Caerdwyn]

No villain believes they are a villain.

I think we decided some time ago that "just following orders" wasn't a defense, though. We don't give parasites that eventually kill their hosts a free pass; we should afford no more sympathy to the bureaucrats who trade their convenience for our freedoms. Sure, the bureaucrats in question might not think they are doing harm; neither does an elephant who steps on a mouse. But the mouse is just as dead, regardless of intent. In the same vein, no snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche, but the avalanche victims are just as dead. In your example, maybe they're not totalitarian monsters, but that shouldn't save them from being treated as monsters if the results are the same.

Who gets to decide "fair"? The person doing the harming, or the person harmed?

As for the "thin blue line"... I don't buy it for one second. Good cops who knowingly side with bad cops ARE bad cops. A good cop should treat a bad cop as "you're the asshole that gets me shot at" and go out of his way to burn down the bad cop, but they don't. They pull this "blue brotherhood" crap, conspire to suppress evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses (yes, it happens in the U.S. New Orleans, Chicago, and New York have all had systemic problems with witnesses against rogue cops being murdered by other cops). In so doing, they are no longer cops; they're thugs with badges. They ARE the problem, because they should know better, and took a solemn oath to BE better.

Cops won't change as long as they view themselves as a paramilitary elite, as opposed to citizens protecting citizens. "There's wolves, sheep and sheepdogs", as their saying goes. The function of sheep is to be herded and fleeced at the convenience of the sheepdogs, not the wolves. I have acquaintances in the San Jose police and Santa Clara sheriff's office (uniformed officers, not clerks) and they all have this look-down-their-nose attitudes towards civilians. Sheep indeed. Well, the self-styled "sheepdogs" won't become the best force they can unless they get their asses thoroughly kicked for NOT being the best force they can... by the "sheep".

And if the "sheepdogs" violently suppress the "sheep" when the sheep can't tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf... it's time to eliminate the "sheepdogs". Vigilantism, in its proper definition, arises when the protectors fail, or are themselves the criminals.

Re:No More

[Caerdwyn]

The problem is not a surplus of trained MMA fighters. The problem is that there is a surplus of hardened thugs and a shortage of understanding of what a hand-to-hand fight is really about.

In a real fight, the first solid blow landed usually is the winning blow. The recipient stops fighting/counterattacking because they don't know how to deal with sudden pain, and the attacker can immediately parley that one blow into as many unresisted blows as they feel like. If you want to know what a real fight is like, spar with someone where you allow them one free blow before you start to fight back. Until you can function in a situation like that... and you WILL NOT be able to, until you've experienced it a few times... you're meat.

And that's exactly the situation most cops are in. They're not trained, hands-on, in combat where the training consists of getting clobbered THEN starting the fight. Cops have no idea what it's like to have to fight when they're hurt until it's too late. When the perp rings the cop's bell or lands a kick to the groin, the cop folds. Then loses his gun. Then dies.

That's hardly an "anti-cop agenda". But if you're getting the idea I disrespect the combat abilities of most police, you're right. I'm a hobbyist shooter, averaging maybe 100-200 rounds a month. The range I shoot at is also used as a check-range by the police local to where the range is. I am a better shot than they are, and that's not right. Having spoken with police and asked about how much time they get on the practice mat, the answer is almost always "little to none". If a cop knows how to brawl, it's strictly because they practice on their own, or knew before they joined the force. And that's hardly a majority.

Cops are given the authority to use violence in the name of society. I'd rather they be judicious in its application AND competent to do it. Right now, neither condition seems to be met particularly often.

Re:No More

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I'm condoning that activity by ANY means, but many police officers take the squad cars home. There are two parked in front of my apartment building right now, in fact.

Re:No More

[wwphx]

Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were so. And had I mod points, you would get them.

Re:No More

[JoeMerchant]

So if there happens to be a cop in or near the car that you didn't see for some reason, and he sees you pointing a gunshaped object at his car (close enough to him that you might be pointing at him) do you expect him to wait until you shoot so he can be sure whether you're shooting a cap gun, paint gun, or bullet gun?

Pointing a paintball gun at a cop car is a good way to get yourself killed.

Good point, however, the parent was suggesting attacking the cop car with a ball-peen hammer, between the two, I'd take action at a distance, with appropriate discretion in the visual profile presented to any observers, especially the cops. I think the appropriate distance is to challenge the whole notion through the courts, but you can take it to the other extreme too...

Here comes the Police Hive Mind

[GameboyRMH]

Funny, I just wrote about this yesterday:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2339756&cid=36833636

Re:Here comes the Police Hive Mind

[blair1q]

Police are already a hive mind. Radios and records departments did that a long time ago.

This just makes them one tick more cyborgy.

Re:Here comes the Police Hive Mind

[what2123]

I guess that's not as cool as a cyber-orgy

That could be very helpful.

[MarkvW]

This kind of thing would be utter hell on suspended and uninsured drivers. It could help make the roads WAY safer.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking shill if I ever did see one.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Tracking everyone always makes everyone else safe, the politicians that is.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what else would get suspended and uninsured drivers off the roads? BANNING CARS!

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of thing would be utter hell on suspended and uninsured drivers. It could help make the roads WAY safer.

Safer how? Does a database prevent car accidents somehow? Please explain how that works.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[gl4ss]

nope. it's for profiling surveillance and for batching people together. for catching uninsured it makes some sense, but not for suspended drivers.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Safer? Just because someone is uninsured or has a suspended license doesn't make them unsafe drivers. Now if there were a scanner to measure drivers stupidity, now THAT would make the roads safer.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[epicmaneuvers]

That's the type of thinking that strips citizens of thier rights.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[amicusNYCL]

The fact that police cars have cameras which can identify license plates and flag any vehicles with violations will make the roads safer. Storing that information along with location and date/time information for an indefinite period doesn't help anything. You know, for the citizens at least.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[MarkvW]

The uninsured and suspended drivers get tracked, the cops use the tracking to find and arrest them. Their cars get impounded. Essentially, they are harassed off the road. Suspended/uninsured drivers cause most of the accidents.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Tsingi]

You know what else would get suspended and uninsured drivers off the roads? BANNING CARS!

Yup that would do it. I totally agree with the sentiment as well.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[CRCulver]

Suspended/uninsured drivers cause most of the accidents.

Cite?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[blair1q]

When cars are banned, only bans will have cars.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Jeng]

Suspended/uninsured drivers cause most of the accidents.

Citation Please

Re:That could be very helpful.

[h4rr4r]

1. lets see some statistics on that
2. the police would not bother with that.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

The uninsured and suspended drivers get tracked, the cops use the tracking to find and arrest them. Their cars get impounded. Essentially, they are harassed off the road. Suspended/uninsured drivers cause most of the accidents.

Proof. Now.
As an uninsured driver myself, I was never in one accident. I've since switched to public transit but please do explain exactly where you get this data.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that police cars have cameras which can identify license plates and flag any vehicles with violations will make the roads safer. Storing that information along with location and date/time information for an indefinite period doesn't help anything. You know, for the citizens at least.

I've no mods points, but still, +1 insightful

Re:That could be very helpful.

[interkin3tic]

They're already safer than they've ever been. I prefer my freedoms and privacy to a vain pursuit of taking all possible danger out of life.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[characterZer0]

If a previously unreported stolen car is involved in a crime, they could go back a few days or weeks and find out where the car has been.

I cannot think of a reason to keep more than a few weeks of history.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[grimmjeeper]

This kind of thing would be utter hell on suspended and uninsured drivers. It could help make the roads WAY safer.

One problem there, Ace. All they are doing is tracking the cars. A car belonging to a person with a suspended license can be driven legally by someone with a valid license. Also, some insurance covers you no matter which car you drive so even though the owner may not have insurance on the car the driver may be covered. So yeah, this is really not very helpful.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[John Bresnahan]

Generally, a driver's license is suspended because the driver has done something unsafe.

Often (usually?) uninsured drivers are uninsured because they have demonstrated that they are unsafe drivers, and therefore can't get insurance for a reasonable price (or at all).

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

When cars are banned, only bands will have cars.

fixed that for you

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Mia'cova]

I think that plate numbers can already be flagged. They're just not tracked. So this doesn't really affect the uninsured case. I sure got pulled over quick when my registration expired. I rather doubt it was the super tiny sticker which the cops noticed at night. It was probably flagged as recently expired. The difference here would be that you could look back for sightings of a car that was just reported stolen or silently track someone without a warrant, eg anti-terrorism. But I honestly think that we need more of this, not less. I'm constantly annoyed by blatantly illegal driving. It annoys me that chronic speeders and such aren't flagged by stationary plate readers along the highway, etc. Seems like a small investment would make things a whole lot safer if people stopped crying because they got a ticket..

Re:That could be very helpful.

[tibit]

Oh yeah, but guess what they will do. They'll pretend that each car has only one driver, because many cars do so. Then they'll harass every car owner who happens not to have a valid drivers' license at the time their database report got generated. And then they'll say "oh, but it's a very small minority of car owners and we have a right to verify anyway". And so it goes.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[stonedcat]

Because the person who owns the car is always the driver right?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Dunega]

I can think of a lot of reasons, none of which are very good.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Reverand Dave]

The driver of a car is not necessarily always the one with the suspended license. Would you have police pull over someone just because they might have a suspended license? What if you are having your friend, spouse, or significant other drive you around in your car due to a suspended license. Pulling that car over for a possible violation is a punative action against the vehicle and a person that is acting perfectly responsible. Also, I don't know where you live, but the police in my state don't keep a record of who does or does not have insurance on a car. Just because an individual has at one point was driving without insurance does not mean they are eternally doing so and should not be persecuted as such. I don't understand how you are making the correlation between harrassing people as if they are guilty until proven innocent and the safeness of a given stretch of road.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[JoeMerchant]

This kind of thing would be utter hell on suspended and uninsured drivers. It could help make the roads WAY safer.

If you truly believe that suspended and uninsured drivers are the real problem. I lived in a "segregated" neighborhood, 80% middle class, 20% waterfront (4-10x the price for real-estate on the water). The dangerous drivers in that neighborhood lived mostly on the waterfront - they could afford the tickets, they could afford whatever the insurance companies wanted to charge, and when they got in trouble, they could afford the lawyers to make it go away.

The suspended and uninsured tend to be as careful as they are capable of, and if they're incapable of keeping a low profile, they usually run deep trouble pretty quickly.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[F.Ultra]

And what exactly would that solve? It's not like they steal the car and park it at home until it's crime time. You either steal the car just before the crime (so it won't be reported stolen before you commit the crime [you don't want to be stopped by the police of course]) or you steal the car the night before and stash it at some location that is far away from your home. I seriously doubt that this car tracking will solve any major crimes more than todays detective work does.

Actually there is data that point to such schemes beeing negative for the clearing rate. Here in Sweden for example the clearing rate for the top 10% of murders (that is because in 90% of the murders there is a known subject, only about 10% has an unsub. Something that is labelled as "reconnaissance murder") has gone down from about 75% to about 40% since the police started to use DNA and mobile phone tracking (where they empty the cellular towers to get a list of which phones that where active in the area at the time of the murder).

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Suspended/uninsured drivers cause most of the accidents.

Citation Please

Google is *right there*. I'm not here to do your homework for you. Do your own research. Get Informed. Educate yourself.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[JoeMerchant]

2. the police would not bother with that.

Exactly! Florida already tracks uninsured drivers through a database, if they wanted to impound the cars, they've got the addresses, all they'd have to do is drive around and pick them up - won't happen unless prompted by some other motivation.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Niris]

Disagree. I had a stint of being uninsured for about six months after being laid off from my job simply because it's too damn expensive to pay 100 a month when you're a male under 25, even if you've never had an accident AND have taken driving classes for work. It's also damn near impossible to use public transportation in parts of California, like the Central Valley.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[black soap]

What if it only recorded when it hit on a fake plate? Why does it need to store the data for all the non-lawbreakers?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[JoeMerchant]

If a previously unreported stolen car is involved in a crime, they could go back a few days or weeks and find out where the car has been.

I cannot think of a reason to keep more than a few weeks of history.

I was hit and run'ed by a stolen car, got a good look at the driver and his passenger. Saw them again, same road, different car, a few days later, phoned them in to the Miami Police, as I started describing the scenario, the officer on duty completed the description for me - they knew all about them, and didn't care, reason the officer gave over the phone was that the courts considered car theft a "non-violent crime" and would just kick the perps back onto the streets anyway.

Those non-violent criminals were driving 70+mph on Biscayne Blvd (35mph limit, traffic rarely exceeds 45), struck my vehicle and a city bus, knocked me into a spin in rush hour traffic, and the 2nd time I saw them they had a 9 year old with them who was standing up between the front seats.

Nobody (of any importance to them) was telling them to make it a priority, so instead they detoured the police helicopter for a quick stop at the Dunkin' Donuts (ok ok, different cops, different day, but same city.)

Re:That could be very helpful.

[characterZer0]

Actually there is data that point to such schemes beeing negative for the clearing rate. Here in Sweden for example the clearing rate for the top 10% of murders (that is because in 90% of the murders there is a known subject, only about 10% has an unsub. Something that is labelled as "reconnaissance murder") has gone down from about 75% to about 40% since the police started to use DNA and mobile phone tracking (where they empty the cellular towers to get a list of which phones that where active in the area at the time of the murder).

Could part of the decline be because with DNA evidence they are no longer charging (and convicting) as many innocent people because the newly available evidence clears them before it gets that far?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[rickb928]

Nope. It's to circumvent the 4th and 4th Amendments.

In other words, it's so the police can break the law.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[JoeMerchant]

This kind of thing would be utter hell on suspended and uninsured drivers. It could help make the roads WAY safer.

One problem there, Ace. All they are doing is tracking the cars. A car belonging to a person with a suspended license can be driven legally by someone with a valid license. Also, some insurance covers you no matter which car you drive so even though the owner may not have insurance on the car the driver may be covered. So yeah, this is really not very helpful.

Except, in Florida, if you have a vehicle registered in your name, and there is no current insurance on that vehicle, your drivers' license is automatically suspended by the computer - no questions asked, no notice given, doesn't matter if the vehicle is stored in a closed garage and hasn't seen the light of day since before the insurance lapsed. BTDT.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Jeng]

So what you are saying is that your accusation was completely baseless, thank you.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[jk379]

That might be the case but the data doesn't need to be kept for very long. If the computer scanner ID's a car that shouldn't be on the road save just that section of video everything else doesn't need to be stored for very long.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[John Bresnahan]

If you can't afford the insurance, you shouldn't be driving.

I know that sounds harsh, but part of being an adult is taking responsibility for your actions. Why should the rest of us have to pay for your irresponsible behavior?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[black soap]

In Texas, for example, it is officially recognized that at least 21% of vehicles are uninsured, but that more than half of all car accidents involve at least 1 uninsured driver. If you have insurance, there is a very good chance the car that hit you does not.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Niris]

How is it irresponsible driving when it's the only way to get to school or find a new job? Would you rather just pay for unemployment for everyone in that sort of a situation instead?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Isn't it amazing? A few weeks ago I mentioned an obscure location in a post, and someone asked me where that was. They were sitting there, with a computer, online, functioning browser, asking me where some city was.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[grimmjeeper]

Except, in Florida, if you have a vehicle registered in your name, and there is no current insurance on that vehicle, your drivers' license is automatically suspended by the computer - no questions asked, no notice given, doesn't matter if the vehicle is stored in a closed garage and hasn't seen the light of day since before the insurance lapsed. BTDT.

That only makes a difference with no insurance. If the car is insured but the registered owner has a suspended license, the car can still be legally driven by a different licensed driver. Sure, there are a few situations where the license plate scanning can help. However, the number of false positives when scanning plates (and not drivers) dilutes the utility of this method when used in an enforcement capacity.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[pulski]

And in Massachusetts, you can't get a license plate without proof of insurance. If your insurance falls off, your car is no longer legal to be on the road.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[John Bresnahan]

So you equate being lucky with being responsible?

Your desire to go to school or find a new job doesn't override your responsibility to be able to pay for the damage, injuries or even deaths you could cause by driving.

I, and my insurance company, have had to pay for several accidents caused by uninsured drivers. Why should I have pay for insurance to cover you?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Or, according to the Massachusetts driver's manual you could have your license suspended because you owe child support, haven't paid your Massachusetts income tax, or made a payment to the RMV [Registry of Motor Vehicles] that didn't go through (page 7 in the PDF) or if you're convicted of a drug offense or vandalism (operation of a motor vehicle not required -- page 10) or if you have unpaid parking tickets, were cited for an abandoned vehicle, or had an outstanding warrant (page 17.) How would those offenses indicate you're an unsafe driver?

That seems to be a lot of exceptions to cover with "Generally."

Re:That could be very helpful.

[jmcvetta]

the cops use the tracking to find and arrest them.

Dude, get real - that would require actual work. Police just don't do that kind of stuff, and if you think they do you're living in a fantasy land.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[93 Escort Wagon]

In Texas, for example, it is officially recognized that at least 21% of vehicles are uninsured, but that more than half of all car accidents involve at least 1 uninsured driver. If you have insurance, there is a very good chance the car that hit you does not.

Given that, in this case, the probability is additive... the "more than half" statement is not as damning as you seem to believe. Even if uninsured drivers were no more dangerous than insured drivers, given that 21% of vehicles are uninsured you'd expect that, in 42% of accidents, at least one vehicle would be uninsured.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[ortholattice]

In Texas, for example, it is officially recognized that at least 21% of vehicles are uninsured, but that more than half of all car accidents involve at least 1 uninsured driver.

While your statistics might be right, they may or may not prove that "suspended/uninsured drivers cause most of the accidents."

If exactly 21% are uninsured, then by random chance alone there is already a (1-(1-0.21)^2)*100% = 38% chance that in any two-car collision at least one is uninsured (not a 21% chance as a naive person may think and/or the media might imply).

And if "at least 21%" really means 29%, then there is a 50% chance that one car is uninsured, which might mean that being uninsured would have nothing to do with it.

If you have insurance, there is a very good chance the car that hit you does not.

Yes, but it might not be nearly as high as "more than half", since you're conditioning the problem on "at least one car insured".

Re:That could be very helpful.

[nschubach]

That means hiring detectives... oh man, that's more money. We need those warm bodies out generating revenue pulling people over and giving them tickets for every little thing.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[swv3752]

I am more than happy to pay for the occasional person that is out of a job and happens to let the insurance lapse for a bit. I was out of work for a year myself and it sucks, and you are forced to let some things slide so you can pay to eat and still try to find a job.

It is the bastards to cheap to pay for insurance or are such poor drivers that their insurance is so expensive that should be kept off the roads. The guys with a half dozen or more points that are driving without insurance, yeah, those bastards need to be removed from the streets. The ones with suspended licenses, no sympathy.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not his homework, it's yours. The one making the positive claim bears the burden of proof.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, blame all your woes on people who drive faster than you.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[ironjaw33]

But I honestly think that we need more of this, not less. I'm constantly annoyed by blatantly illegal driving. It annoys me that chronic speeders and such aren't flagged by stationary plate readers along the highway, etc.

The implications of this go far beyond promoting safe driving.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[MarkvW]

Tracking stuff you expose to public view won't implicate the Fourth Amendment.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[roman_mir]

I got into my first accident once I had insurance, because I leased a car, so I couldn't continue driving without insurance, as I did for about 8 years before that, and they don't let you lease a car without also buying insurance. If you just own a car though, you don't need to own insurance if you aren't driving it (that's the trick).

But I thought it was funny that it happened that way, insurance works just like government moral hazard works - makes you less careful.

I think there should be no mandatory insurance and no road signs or lights - will make drivers much more careful

Re:That could be very helpful.

[weilawei]

I had this exact situation happen to me recently, and I'm a Massole (guys, guys, masshole is NOT an epithet. You're doing it wrong. And most massholes don't actually support policies like these!). I needed to drop off my girlfriend at South Station, but my car needed repairs. My friend agreed that we could use his car if we threw in gas. So, the three of us drove there (with myself doing the actual driving--my friends and I often drive each others' cars) and dropped her off. Then, on the way back home, I was pulled over by a local police officer. I had done nothing wrong, however my friend's license was expired. There was no ticket whatsoever, as the car was insured, inspected, and being driven by a currently licensed driver (myself) in a manner commensurate with all federal, state, and local laws. tl;dr: the police will stop you for potential violations--not actual, observed and proven violations.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[John Bresnahan]

I am more than happy to pay for the occasional person that is out of a job and happens to let the insurance lapse for a bit. I was out of work for a year myself and it sucks, and you are forced to let some things slide so you can pay to eat and still try to find a job.

I have no objection to you volunteering to pay for uninsured drivers if you wish. I object to other people informally dumping their obligations on me simply because not doing so is "hard".

If you can't afford car insurance, you should not drive.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Texas, for example, it is officially recognized that at least 21% of vehicles are uninsured, but that more than half of all car accidents involve at least 1 uninsured driver. If you have insurance, there is a very good chance the car that hit you does not.

Given that, in this case, the probability is additive... the "more than half" statement is not as damning as you seem to believe. Even if uninsured drivers were no more dangerous than insured drivers, given that 21% of vehicles are uninsured you'd expect that, in 42% of accidents, at least one vehicle would be uninsured.

<pedantic> Actually, the correct figure would be 1 - (1 - 0.21)^2 = 38%. This assumes we are talking only about two-vehicle incidents of course. </pedantic>
 

Re:That could be very helpful.

[John Bresnahan]

You do remember that driving is a privilege, not a right?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain how flagging vehicles with parking tickets will make roads safer.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[demonlapin]

I think I'm missing something: are you telling me that Florida requires you to insure a car, rather than a driver? I have to insure my car - it's a lease, it actually belongs to Toyota - but my wife's ten-year-old Tahoe is a completely uninsured vehicle. She has insurance, but it doesn't. If she runs off the road and smacks it into a ditch, that's too-bad-so-sad for us.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[rickb928]

Darn it, I meant 4th and 5th Amendments.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[rickb928]

Well, I'm thinking keeping track of me just because they can violated the 4th Amendment, As in the police need some reason to keep records of my whereabouts, other than 'just because they can'.

And this is virtually not any different than working with whatever provider and downloading the GPS history. With license tracking, they collect that data before they have a reason to know of me. With GPS searches, they gather the data elsewhere.

Fundamentally, I expect the police to be prohibited from gathering substantive informatio about me unless they have a reason. Driving past me doesn't seem to be much of a reason.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "full coverage" vs. "liability coverage". Full coverage is what you call "insuring the car". Liability coverage is what you call "insuring the driver".

But in my state, at least, both sorts of insurance are purchased for a car, not a driver. You can't get a license plate without showing proof of at least liability coverage on that vehicle, i.e. if an approved driver hits someone with that vehicle, they'll pay for the other vehicle. As you said, it's too-bad-so-sad for your vehicle - you have to have it fixed yourself. If you have full coverage, however, they'll fix both vehicles, even if you caused the accident.

And yes, if it's a leased vehicle you have to get full coverage.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[mabhatter654]

Like the Auto-BAN?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[JeffAtl]

Cops don't usually investigate stolen cars (or any property crimes) unless it is part of a larger crime.

My car was stolen a few years ago and when I called the police to report it, they just took down my info and said they'd let me know if it run across it. When I asked why they weren't coming to the scene to investigate, the reply was "Why? The car's not there anymore".

Re:That could be very helpful.

[mabhatter654]

Bit at some point it does...

For normal people photographing "everybody" is a crime called stalking as soon as you act on it. It's also called blackmail or extortion when you threaten law enforcement over something you collected.

There is clearly a difference between looking up ONE license plate of somebody, and just "collecting them all for later". Up until J. Edgar in the 1950's the technology and manpower didn't exist for large scale tracking.

IDEA! how about a "grass roots" effort to add "privacy of personal data" to our Constitution when the Tea Party comes around for the balanced budget.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[demonlapin]

Actually, it's called "comprehensive" - as I noted, I have one vehicle with it and one without, so I'm pretty familiar with the different types (including uninsured motorist coverage). However, the liability coverage is for the driver, not the car. My liability coverage covers any vehicle I drive - mine, my wife's, a rental, a friend's. It's not attached to the car at all - is your state's policy just some odd means of preventing the buy-insurance-register-car-cancel-insurance gambit?

Re:That could be very helpful.

[desdinova 216]

I couldnt find any statistic indicating more than 50% of auto accidents have a suspended License or uninsured driver at fault.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[treeves]

Huh. Really. Just the other day I told a friend was in Springfield and couldn't come help him move, and he said "Where is that?" and I said "Just Google it, you lazy bastard!" That shut him up!

Re:That could be very helpful.

[chrismcb]

Actually if you are insured and you get in an accident, it is a very good chance the other driver is also insured. The 21% of vehicles number is irrelevant (despite what the other posts are saying) You claim that more than half of all car accidents involve at least 1 uninsured driver. I'm not sure how much more, for the sake of argument assume it is 50%. That means 50% of the time both cars are insured. A portion of the remaining time both cars are uninsured, the remaining one car is uninsured. Given this, the number in the insured/insured category is larger than the insured/uninsured (otherwise there is not uninsured/uninsured) Since the insured/insured category is larger, it means if you are insured and in a wreck, chances are the other car is insured.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[The Dawn Of Time]

You could move somewhere that doesn't require you to drive. You aren't entitled to the lifestyle you want, only the lifestyle you've earned.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[mikechant]

You do remember that driving is a privilege, not a right?

You mean the government *claims* it is a privilege, not a right. In order to control you.

Re:That could be very helpful.

[F.Ultra]

It could of course be that way but according to the police themselves it has more to do with the fact that instead of performing "old school detective work" they rely on the DNA and mobile phone searches to do the work and if no one turns up then it's like "we tried everything and no one could be found so case closed". That is they have shifted focus on how they approach cases.

And then there is a secondary effect in that they have made the criminals better at what they do. Since DNA become mainstream, the criminal gangs no longer uses domestic hit men but instead have contracts with gangs from other countries that come here and do the dirty work (and then our domestic hit men get contracts in those other countries), this way they circumvent the DNA register completely. That however will most probably be seen as a rounding error in the statistics due to the extremely low amount of contract killings over here (we have only about 70-80 murders a year in total

Re:That could be very helpful.

[JoeMerchant]

In Florida, a liability policy is required for each license tag - if you tag the car, you must show proof of insurance for that car to get the tag. If said insurance lapses, then they suspend your driving license. I see more than one logical flaw in the system, but that doesn't change the laws or how they are enforced.

IR LED?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone want to comment on the laws about surrounding your license plate with IR floods?

Re:IR LED?

[GameboyRMH]

If you make an IR-obscured license plate that works, it will be illegal.

Re:IR LED?

[blair1q]

Does that law say that? Because I'd bet existing law only outlaws making the plate non-visible. Visible means eye, not camera. IR light is, by definition, not visible.

Re:IR LED?

[GameboyRMH]

You may have a point, but try that argument in practice and see how far you get...

Re:IR LED?

[meloneg]

That is only a matter of time. States like this didn't outlaw radar-detectors before they impeded the revenue stream.

Re:IR LED?

[JoeMerchant]

If you make an IR-obscured license plate that works, it will be illegal.

It may not be illegal, yet, but certainly will become so if somebody in power thinks it's a problem.

Re:IR LED?

[JeffAtl]

If the cops couldn't scan your license plate they would interpret that as suspicious behavior and would be immediately pulled over - it may even give them probable cause for a search of your car.

In theory a much better approach would be a system that fools the scanner into returning a different plate number. If the plate number doesn't raise a flag, then they would have no reason to verify that the number scanned is different than the actual number.

Unless a person was actually on the run from the police, I don't really see how it would be worth the effort and risk.

Re:IR LED?

[blair1q]

If the law don't say it, I'll get as far as pointing that out to the prosecutor, and that I have a right to a trial by jury. Cops, they do what they think is their job, and they're not the sharpest tools in the junk drawer, most times.

Re:IR LED?

[blair1q]

"I don't know who you are" is not cause for anything. They have to observe a crime in progress or about to occur before they can have probable cause. Reasonable suspicion is a wider standard, but they still have to have some evidence suggesting a crime is in progress or about to be committed. If the law reagarding these devices isn't explicit about making the plate visible in invisible light (why are they IR anyway? either it's daylight or you're required to have them lighted) and you're otherwise doing nothing wrong and have nothing wrong with your vehicle then they can observe you but not detain you.

Re:IR LED?

[JeffAtl]

"I don't know who you are" is not cause for anything. They have to observe a crime in progress or about to occur before they can have probable cause.

That sounds great, but in the real world obscuring your plate is going to have the same effect as driving around without a plate. You will repeatedly get stopped by the police and pretty soon you're going to get a cop who isn't satisfied with your explanations and decides to escalate the matter.

Cops have a saying, "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride" - time spent on the ground on the side of the road or at the police station while things are getting sorted out is not going to pleasant.

The wise course of action is to minimize any interaction with the police, but obscuring your plate does the exact opposite.

Re:IR LED?

[blair1q]

Cops can't decide if you're guilty. They can only decide you did something they think is wrong. Yes, it does have to get escalated. Then the cops get direction from above not to write that ticket any more, and most of them hear it and stop bothering you.

This is how the system works. There is no other one that works better for this price.

Here's Your Sign

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why I moved out of Massachusetts

Re:Here's Your Sign

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you had a massive fever, and during your sweaty restless sleep had a dark vision of the future where police cars had cameras mounted on them to read your license plate and track you, and you said to yourself "Self, I need to get the fuck out of here before this vision comes to pass!"

Just curious.

Fight the Power

[Anonymous Coward]

SQL injection attack in 3...2...1...

Re:Fight the Power

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been thinking about having an SQL injection bumper sticker made. I would do it in reflective material and OCR friendly font. I think just a simple ');-- immediately to the left of the plate should do.

Re:Fight the Power

[dietdew7]

Eventually all programs susceptible to SQL injection will be fixed and then you'll be doomed like the rest of us. Just kidding... carry on.

Re:Fight the Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, for deniability, a series of artistic dents in your bumper, that only a computer would even try to interpret as writing.

Re:Fight the Power

[Anonymous Coward]

According to wikipedia-- 'for the most part, however, the North American design will be based on a variation of the "Zurich Extra Condensed" font.' Good place to start.

Attention, Driver! We Have a Special Offer for YOU

[Lance Dearnis]

...Because, seriously, I'm thinking, but, I cannot think of ANYTHING the state can do productively with that kind of information that isn't going to be thrown out in court. It's the 'held onto indefinitely' part that's damning.

An idea I could get behind and understand: Immediately comparing on arrival the information with a database of license plate numbers of people with warrants currently out on them. Bonus points if you can get the hits back to the officer in time for him to turn on the lights and go after the guy. But there's no need to keep the data for more then a minute after the search is done.

The 'redundant' idea: You already -have- a list of what plate goes with what vehicle and where it's supposed to be, it's your Motor Vehicle Registry. Cops already delve into this all the time.

The 'criminal' idea: Immediately taking said registry information and...doing much of anything with it, you've just performed a dragnet search.

The 'likely' idea: Guess what! Facebook and Google, along with many other valued partners, are now government affiliates! (Seriously, I'm thinking, and this is the only thing I've come up with so far that wouldn't go to the Redundant Department of Redundancy, considering the data retention)

Objective: computer vision defeat

[AdamThor]

How to defeat the computer eye without defacing your plate? Try to wash it out with IR? Something else?

Would the scanner stop the cops every time there was a misread?

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[TheSpoom]

In Soviet Russia, the cops would stop YOU every time there was a misread. No wait, I meant here. It'll be considered reasonable suspicion, just wait.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[Ant P.]

Blasting camera sensors with IR is already feasible; it's used in Copyrighted Public Spaces.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[JoeMerchant]

I imagine, someday, it will become like what driving around with no tag used to be like - possible, but a big hassle - every cop with nothing better to do is going to stop you and make sure you're not "up to something," then kick you loose because you're not. In the case of the IR obscuring mechanism, they just might find you interesting enough to harass you to the limits of their comfort zone for harassment, which probably exceeds your limit of comfort at being harassed.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[codegen]

There are those licence plate holders that have lights on them, make them brighter at the same(limited) frequency as the camera uses to detect auto exposure levels. That might underexpose the picture.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[jmcvetta]

Blasting camera sensors with IR is already feasible; it's used in Copyrighted Public Spaces.

I'd be fascinated to learn more about how this is already used in public spaces. Any good links you'd suggest?

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[hedwards]

Most likely you'd get a ticket for having damaged the license plates. There are rules in most if not all states that govern how a license plate is to be displayed. Things like making sure it isn't covered in mud, that there's a plate on the front and back of the vehicle and in many states that there isn't any covering on the license plate.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[ddpriest]

Most likely you'd get a ticket for having damaged the license plates. There are rules in most if not all states that govern how a license plate is to be displayed. Things like making sure it isn't covered in mud, that there's a plate on the front and back of the vehicle and in many states that there isn't any covering on the license plate.

In Massachusetts you can be ticketed if your plate is too faded to be read by fast lane / red light cameras.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[Ant P.]

Try google.

Re:Objective: computer vision defeat

[jmcvetta]

Thanks - I hadn't thought of that!

Change the national Anthem

[isotope23]

"Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free or the home of the slave?"

Re:Change the national Anthem

[blair1q]

Dude. Please go read about slavery, then never compare having your license plate kept in a database to being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

Moron.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[torgis]

"Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free or the home of the slave?"

Subject: Stop Work Notice or Notice of Violation
Site Address: slashdot A.P.N.: 210590 Case Number: fkall

Dear sir,
On 7/22/2011 the State of Massachusetts posted a Stop Work Notice or Notice of Violation on your post for "illegal star-spangled banner pole height".
As of this date, no permits have been issued to clear the Stop Work Notice or Notice of Violation. You must apply for all required permits and approvals, pay all associated fees or take necessary action to correct the violation within 30 days of this notice. No permits, licenses, or other entitlements may be issues by any State Department until this violation has been cleared.

Sincerely,
The State of Massachusetts

I'm gonna say that's a no. No, it doesn't.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Read your history - slavery didn't start with balanced power between a people and their government.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Please go read about slavery, then never compare having your license plate kept in a database to being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

Moron.

Dude! Please go read a good dictionary definition of the word "slave" and notice that while what you describe IS part of that definition, there are many other forms of slavery and degrees of slavery.

Idiot.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about as unreasonable to call it freedom as it is to call it slavery.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Lighten up before your arteries harden.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm down chief, it is alright to use a little hyperbole when considering average citizens and the police state by satirizing the beloved star-spangled-banner. Or were you offended?

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not the bastion of common sense you so desperately wish to get Slashdot to see you as, and you never will be.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Please go read about slavery, then never compare having your license plate kept in a database to being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

What do you call being forced to give up a large chunk of your wages other than being a slave for the government part of the year? No, we aren't chained and fed garbage (unless you count McDonald's) but neither were a lot of slaves. Open your eyes and you'll see that we are slaves in a way.

Moron.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[blair1q]

here's 50 of them.

http://www.onelook.com/?w=slave&ls=a

find me one that even comes close to "letting the cops remember where your car was".

fucktard.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Please go read about slavery, then never compare having your license plate kept in a database to being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

Moron.

What a load of shit...

Re:Change the national Anthem

[blair1q]

That I might agree with, except that it's wrong.

You're free to stay home. You're free to go out. When you're out, anyone is free to take a picture of your license plate and save it for later. None of them subsequently own you. Everyone involved is still free, and none is a slave.

It is therefore reasonable to call it freedom and not reasonable to call it slavery.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Slave (noun): a person held in servitude as the chattel of another; also: one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence

How exactly is this a stretch?

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't list "bred like a dog" I'd think you were talking about an IT dept.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

In a modern industrialized society, slavery does not take on the same shape it had in the past. You should be keen to understand that enourmous stockpiles of heavy weaponry keep you in check, doing the things you do, with the implicit penalty of jail time or perhaps even abject anihilation.

why would you spend all day beating and yelling at someone, when you can drug them, jail them and even shoot them or bomb them. Simultaneously, we have vast VAST arrays of automated factories that change the demand for back breaking labor. Sure, they still require a degree of human activity and intervention to keep production going, but division of duties is different.

Thus the affluent get what they want, but by different means. You'll live in the slums, life will be miserable, but not the same type of misery. Not caveman brutality. You may be neglected, ignored and left out in the cold, or killed but ultimately contained and confined by your class. But the bottom line is you won't have a choice.

Modern industrialized convenience makes the old way on enslavement through brutality obsolete. Now the only thing that happens is YOU COMPLY OR WE JAIL YOU. OR WE KILL YOU WITH A DRONE STRIKE. BUT NO MATTER WHAT YOU ARE BLACKLISTED, AND WE'LL NEVER FORGET THAT YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE, AS FAR AS WE'RE CONCERNED. WE WILL WATCH YOU TO YOUR LAST BREATH.

I'm not saying the old slavery wasn't bad or unfair, I'm just saying you fail to recognize the new slavery.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

"slave" can mean lots of things, each with varying degrees of severity...

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

give me a break on behalf of all uppity african slave decedents. you get no special treatment and sure as shit deserve zero self righteous indignation. There are many vision of slavery throughout history and still present today that are better and worse than your narrowly scoped perspective can digest. You don't have to be an 1830s cotton picker to be a slave, although, my determination from your trite indignation is that this would probably be YOUR PLACE. Get over yourself. LuLz, capcha = astute

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Ant P.]

being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

Yeah, modern-day American life is *nothing* like that.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Its is slavery, just more subtle than you describe.

When you own a slave, you have to feed it. Water it etc. Quite a nuisance.

Maintain economic slaves, well. They're responsible for feeding themselves. Let them vote in theatre elections, and they even believe they are in control.

Sir, its clear you are not a slavemaster! Back to work!

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Please go get a job, then never you'll also start comparing it to being chained in an office for years, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a cubicle, barelly bred at all, and fed fastfood for the rest of your short, stress-ridden life while being tracked by the government because you are a guilty of everything until proven innocent.

Moron.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that the word "slave" can only be used in one context? If a person isn't suffering the same type and quality of hardships as an actual American slave, then no one has any right to invoke the sacred power-word, "slave"? That seems unreasonably inflexible, don't you think? I mean, under what circumstances is it acceptable to use the word "slave"? If you can't come up with a situation besides the aforementioned, you'll have to admit that your restrictions on usage are absurd. If I didn't think you were on a linguistic power trip, I'd suggest that your sensibilities needed to grow a slightly thicker skin.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn that slavery takes many forms.... While it is not "you live in this hole and I beat you if you try to leave", it's still slavery.

Just the "you weren't born with a silverspoon, so you can't afford college, so you make minimum wage, but can't afford anything, and eat like a dog, then breed like a dog because there's not exactly anything else to do. Then you turn to drugs, and get caught and charged because you're unable to pay a nice lawyer when the cops trump your rights and illegally search you.

It's still slavery. The end result is 100% the same. People living in substandard conditions, eating substandard food, without any luxuries, without any health care, without any money, and inability to fix those problems.

They just switched slavery from something you're *forced to do*, to now something you're a fool *NOT* to do willfully.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, let's see. We get strip searched before boarding cramped metal tubes to fly in the air. We go around begging to work for people in little boxes all day long so that we can go out and eat McD's...

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a fairly myopic interpretation of slavery. You would think Europeans invented it by your account...moron.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be a nigger.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

By your definition: nothing is slavery unless it contains all of the very worst things associated with it. Saying "How dare you complain when you have it much better than the African slaves had it?" implies that it is wrong to complain about our country's many civil rights violations. Just because early Americans took very poor care of their property, doesn't mean it is not slavery when the property is kept fat and happy. The point of calling modern US citizens slaves is to express the opinion that the ruling class believes that it owns you.

Requiring citizens to register all travel is a hallmark of a fascist regime. I have to be careful to which regime I compare, because people like you use Godwin's law to erase comments like this from history.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, whoa! PC asshat aboard! He was *definitely* trying to compare both things. In fact I think he must be from Georgia. Damn southerners!

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait did this happen to you? Oh wait. not possible. Go cry yourself to sleep about the injustice that was done to someone else.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Do work
Have shelter
Have food
Have sex

Man those slaves sure had it rough

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude. Please go read about slavery, then never compare having your license plate kept in a database to being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

considering most people have to deal with 3 out of the 6 you list on a constant basis, it's still a good analogy.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because African Americans are the only example of slaves throughout human history.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a nigger, and his grandmammy got slammed behind the woodshed, so now he's got semi-white relatives, and he's pissed about it. Jeez, you try to improve the breed and folks just go off on you ...

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I'll wait and complain once I am sold, bought, and chained in the dark; but then it will be too late.
At least you have an appropriate sig.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[j33px0r]

Dude. Please go read about slavery, then never compare having your license plate kept in a database to being chained in the hull of a ship for months, sold, forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

Perhaps you should reconsider your definition of slavery. Does it include indentured servants? Many relief organizations would say that slavery is bigger today than ever before. Just because someone thinks that they see a potential rebuilding of a slave-like state does not make them a moron.

Moron.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Please crawl back under your rock.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[blair1q]

You get to vote on how your police conduct their business. And you get to move away if you don't like it. And you don't get whipped if you don't pick enough cotton despite the festering wound on the foot that had three toes cut off because you were late to the fields the week before. And you don't get used for target practice by the massa's retarded adolescent child.

Seriously. From the answers to my post I can tell that there is a whole generation of simpletons who don't have the first fucking clue what slavery was, or why it was a thing so bad that comparing any feature of our lives to it is utterly insensible. And most of them are cowardly enough they won't even reveal their fake names along with their ignorance.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a quote moron. and if you are going to imply that the only slavery that matters is what happened to black people in this country's early history then you need to take your own advice. There are many forms of slavery, many incidents, many variations of a theme. So tone it back a couple notches and learn think instead of just reacting and jumping on your high horse.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Burz]

Many slaves throughout history have been well-treated in the material sense. Ignoramus.

I'd say your response shows how people will refuse to grapple with repression in the midst of relative abundance. The cop-out also implies that people who protest are ungrateful for what they have been given.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

American slaves were not the only slaves to have ever existed.

Many cultures had slaves throughout history, and they were treated with vastly varying degrees of humanity. We're not there yet, but having no privacy and a government recording our every move is not far off from some cultures' forms of slavery.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

blair1q?

Tony, is that you?

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Faggot

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

..., forced to labor, quartered in a shack, bred like a dog, and fed garbage for the rest of your short, disease-ridden life.

Don't worry; this will come soon enough.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Well now, as I understand it slaves were on the expensive side. Why would you not at least feed them properly and give them reasonable care?

The rest sounds true enough.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more than one way to be made a Slave. When you have no freedom, you are a slave. When you give up even a little freedom for security, you are a slave in training. There are many kinds of slaves and you sound ready to join the masters by obfuscating the truth with rhetoric and over the top despicable imagery that has nothing to do with the discussion at hand

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

a person who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something

What about that one? The government is trying more and more to control its citizens. This is but one example.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

given recent trends like the refusal to stand up against the rapescanners, more like land of the sheep, home of the slave...

Re:Change the national Anthem

[shiftless]

Never been to prison, I take it? If you wanna see what modern day slavery looks like, just let the police catch you growing the wrong plant, or drying it and selling it to another consenting adult. It's much easier for them to catch you doing this when they can follow and track your every move electronically.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because certain slaves had it worse (presumably you're talking about African American slavery), doesn't mean that you can't be a slave and have nicer conditions (certain slaves in the Greece/Rome area). You can have slavery without the things you mention, and just because some slaves have it worse, doesn't mean that it's acceptable.

Parts of our society ARE akin to slavery, like working 80 hours a week at minimum wage but still not making enough to support yourself in the worst part of the ghetto, and having no ability to complain about horrible, dangerous working conditions or abuse and sexual harassment from those at your workplace, because if you do, you lose one of your jobs and thus your home and everything else. By the way, having been in this situation myself *and* having a disability (and finding it impossible to get government support), there is no way out of calling wage slavery a form of slavery. Now that they want to track our every movement, take away sovereignty over our own bodies (TSA patdowns, banning certain substances, searching us without cause, etc), there are other forms of slavery in our society as well. Again, just because African-American slaves endured harder conditions does *not* mean that this is the only form of slavery.

Moron.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[Anonymous Coward]

blair...do you really think you aren't a slave?
chained to a desk for years, everything about you is sold to one corporation or another for the express purpose of keeping you in forced labor so you can go buy their crap. Quartered in ever cheaper accomodations as the building industry cuts corners to help their bottom line. Fed all sorts of nasty crap because it has become too expensive to eat healthier foods. And so you live your short, disease- and obesity-ridden life.

The only thing that doesn't happen (like most slashdotters) is you aren't bred like a dog. Most of you have never seen a real woman naked, let alone been able to touch one.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[blair1q]

I can walk out of here a free man any time I choose. I can go to another country. I can vote to change the laws and regulations. I negotiate my pay. I can associate with others to change the Constitution. I can buy and use a gun.

The person/people wilding on their replies to me, however, are pwned.

Re:Change the national Anthem

[blair1q]

You're controlled by people looking at you and knowing where you are?

What color is the foil in your hat?

Ummm, this is news?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I don't know how many states are doing this now, but they also under at least SOME circumstances share with the feds as well. Vermont I KNOW for certain has had this for some time, though far from all PDs have the equipment yet. They're way ahead of the civil rights people on this one, and their official line is you're in public, you don't have a right to privacy in public, and "oh we keep it all secure and only accessible under controlled conditions" which of course means every intel agency in the govt has it of course...

Truthfully though, this stuff is inevitable, the issue is the sneaky way they're kind of sliding into it. There was NO debate on this at all in our state.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Jeng]

Is Vermont storing a database of where and when everyone's license plates have been scanned, or is it they just have scanners that connect to a database that lets the cops know that the car is stolen or being searched for in some way?

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

But you are in public, and you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are in public.

They have a point, its the same point people here make when someone gets arrested for video taping a cop. We don't get to take both sides of the argument.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[blair1q]

I don't see why there would be, since they probably aren't breaking any law by doing it.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[sjames]

So, of course, if the police were all to be followed by citizen chase cars who report their position on a live map and offer a live video feed, there will be no objections at all since the car is in public and has no expectations of privacy, right?

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[0123456]

They have a point, its the same point people here make when someone gets arrested for video taping a cop. We don't get to take both sides of the argument.

Yes you do. On one side you have agents of the state with a legitimised right to commit violence, on the other side you have ordinary everyday citizens; obviously very different standards should apply to the two sides.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Yes, they retain this data. I've confirmed that. I don't know how long it is retained, but it IS uploaded. I've pointed out to some people over there that this seems quite dubious, but that's what they do and they're not interested in whether people like it or not.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

This is true, but what is the justification for it? And why is it being done without any real discussion? I mean it isn't a SECRET, but it isn't as if there was any effort made to have a public debate about it either. Just sort of "oh, by the way, we're now tracking where everyone goes. Have a nice day."

I'm not even saying I necessarily have a huge problem with it. In fact it can work in your favor if there's ever a question about where you were at any given time. There should simply be a more thorough discussion in public about what can be collected, how it can be used, what the ACTUAL safeguards are, when or how you might be notified of who may be interested in this information, etc. Lots of questions that should be answered, and given the documented fact that the Federal Govt has essentially no qualms about illegally obtaining similar kinds of data I for one have serious questions about the wisdom of creating this monstrosity in the first place. OTOH this sort of thing is virtually inevitable, so it is best done in the light of day and openly. And it would be a VERY good idea to have independent outside control and verification that is answerable to the people through channels that are not controlled by the police.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[JoeMerchant]

The big problem is that driving is a "privilege not a right," mostly because it was invented after the revolution.

In the US, you are technically free to walk around in public without plastering your identity on your forehead, but because the nature of transportation has changed so drastically, those getting around on foot (without ID plates) can actually be considered suspicious just for the fact that they are walking, and summarily be stopped and their ID demanded - at least that's how it worked in Coral Gables when I lived there.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was NO debate on this at all in our state.

Devil's advocate: If the information is already public, why is there a need for a debate?

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Attila Dimedici]

The big problem is that driving is a "privilege not a right," mostly because it was invented after the revolution.

And because the court precedents were set at a time when it was as practical to travel about without a car as with one. I would actually like to see someone force the courts to rule on whether or not requiring a driver's license to drive an motorized vehicle on a highway that you are only allowed to travel on with a motorized vehicle still passes constitutional muster. When the courts first upheld the principle that driving was a privilege not a right there were no such roads. I am pretty sure that the Founding Fathers would come down against driver's licenses.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, then, the best possible response (since sense in politics is obviously impossible) is for people to buy their own scanners, start tracking all the police cars, and post the results to an online database anyone can mine...

I suspect that will turn out just about as well as all the videotaping of police in public has.

On the other hand, if you track all public vehicles, things could get really interesting. "Hey, Governor, why were you parked outside The Pink Cathouse for four hours last Sunday?"

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[demonlapin]

Technically, they can't demand ID for someone on foot. They can demand to know your identity, and they can detain you for long enough to confirm it. Of course, that detention will occur downtown, and when they let you out 48 hours later they're not going to take you back to where you were before...

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Giant Electronic Bra]

I don't think they would have. Clearly the government has the responsibility to regulate the use of public property and thus the authority to do so. Note too that there are undoubtedly limits to that authority. Anyone can get a driver's license by meeting certain basic qualifications. A state could not refuse to license a category of people without being able to show compelling interest. Remember, it is the government of the people, the 'privilege' is permission to use the property of the people at large and in principle should the regulation of that privilege become onerous it is the people who have only themselves to blame for choosing representatives who passed such laws. There is no 'them' in government, it is us.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[JeffAtl]

On one side you have agents of the state with a legitimised right to commit violence, on the other side you have ordinary everyday citizens; obviously very different standards should apply to the two sides.

What relevance does the power to commit violence have? By those standards, professional boxers and NFL players should have these protections as well.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[JeffAtl]

But you are in public, and you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you are in public.

Cops also drive through parking lots and subdivisions and scan the plates of cars on private property to see if any generates a red flag.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[cheekyjohnson]

There is no 'them' in government, it is us.

No. It's the majority.

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some states I think that is the reason they require both a front and rear tag

Re:Ummm, this is news?

[JoeMerchant]

Technically, they can't demand ID for someone on foot. They can demand to know your identity, and they can detain you for long enough to confirm it. Of course, that detention will occur downtown, and when they let you out 48 hours later they're not going to take you back to where you were before...

Which was (is?) also practiced in Miami, the day before the Orange Bowl parade - all the homeless are arrested and taken to Krome (out in the Everglades) and summarily released - by the time they can get back downtown, the event is over.

thanks massachusetts

[circletimessquare]

fight this massachusetts citizens, or indeed deserve the epithet "masshole"

Re:thanks massachusetts

[Ksevio]

Should we fight Google driving around doing the same thing while we're at it?

Re:thanks massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

No. That's a private corporation, and private corporations are BEAUTIFUL!

Re:thanks massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Google have the legal monopoly on the use of deadly force? I don't recall ever getting shot at for doing a search at Duck Duck Go

Re:thanks massachusetts

[amRadioHed]

The same thing? Is Google really maintaining a continuously updated, searchable database of the license plate number and location of every car it captures on street view? It seems to me they aren't doing anything like that.

Re:thanks massachusetts

[rickb928]

They deserve the epithet 'Masswhole" already. Funny thing, it was already about driving...

Re:thanks massachusetts

[JoeMerchant]

Should we fight Google driving around doing the same thing while we're at it?

Oh, come on, Google at least tries to blur the faces and license plates sometimes. They're not evil, on purpose, most of the time.

Re:thanks massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. There is no difference between having a public database that allows you to easily identify a location you are looking for, and a private database that you have no access to that tracks all of your movements...

Re:thanks massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

"Masshole" isn't an epithet in mass. More like a badge of honor. Just sayin'.

Re:thanks massachusetts

[rwv]

This link to help people contact MA government officials took WAY to long to find from the state's website, mass.gov. I hope people get good use out of it.

Re:thanks massachusetts

[rwv]

And what the hell... right? A form letter for anybody who wants to write their state rep:

Representative,

I have voted for you in the past. I am very curious if you have any comments about the subject of this recent news item:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1353264

Specifically, the quotes from Terrell Harris from the Executive Office of Public Safety does not make it seem like the state is doing anything to respect the privacy of law-abiding citizens. My understanding is that data retention for the data gathered by ALPR scanners is not under any reasonable level of control.

I believe it would be appropriate to place limitations on the level of access given to law enforcement and also limitations on how long the commonwealth can archive the information that it collects on law abiding citizens.

If you know of any work being done so that ALPR can help to make the streets safer without compromising personal privacy, it would be good to share that with the world. If no work is being done to limit ALPR, it's worth noting that personal privacy is an important issue in the commonwealth and it would be wonderful to see you take up this cause.

Best Regards,

*signed*

Re:thanks massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

You could make a movie about citizen zombies. That would be great.

Great idea!

[torgis]

This sounds like a wonderful idea, but something isn't quite right. I just can't quite get my thumb on it.

That's it, freedom! There are still some lingering freedoms out there, they must be found and eliminated.

Old Laws Before Automation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I think the problem rests in old case law, developed when automation like this was just science fiction, that anything not on private property is fair game. We need a new legal concept of "public but ephemeral" that applies to information that is normally soon forgotten like who was in a parking lot a week ago. Any collection of ephemeral data that occurs without a warrant should itself expire within a short period of time as well should be distribution limited - i.e. no sending it off to another database at the FBI that is exempt.

That may still be too much of a slippery slope, because once its collected there will always be pressure to extend the retention and expand the distribution. All it would take is one kid getting kidnapped and the license plate data expiring a day before the cops thought to look at it and voila, ready-made emotional argument to push for doubling retention time.

In Florida, the cops download a list of license plates of interest and only check scanned plates against the list instead of uploading everything they scan to a database. I'm not too happy with that either because I don't think that requiring a driver to regularly prove their innocence is valid, even if it is done passively, but at least it is miles better than what Massachusetts is planning.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[pz]

Damn, and I just ran out of mod points. Very insightful comment!

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[John Bresnahan]

In Florida, the cops download a list of license plates of interest and only check scanned plates against the list instead of uploading everything they scan to a database

Ever since I moved to Florida, I've wondered why almost everyone backs into parking spaces, rather than pulling in as most people did in Illinois.

Someone finally explained to me that it is because in Florida, cars only have a real license plate, and by backing in, that plate ins't visible to passing police cars. In Illinois, cars have plates on the front and backs of cars.

I understand the desire for privacy, but it does worry me that so many people here seem to feel the need to "hide" from the police.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

In Florida, the cops download a list of license plates of interest and only check scanned plates against the list instead of uploading everything they scan to a database. I'm not too happy with that either because I don't think that requiring a driver to regularly prove their innocence is valid, even if it is done passively, but at least it is miles better than what Massachusetts is planning.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the Overton Window in action. This is how we lose the battle, because all of us (me included) as susceptible to it.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[LunaticTippy]

I live in a state that requires front plates, and a lot of people back into spaces for safety reasons. Especially with large vehicles or in congested areas, it is safer to back in, knowing the foot and vehicle traffic around you at the time. Front-in forces you to back out with reduced visibility into unknown foot and vehicle traffic. If you think about it, it is no harder to back in than back out. I guess people tend to do what they see other people doing, plus the human tendency to procrastinate. It is less work right now to front in even if it makes things harder later.

I know as drivers age it becomes harder to see clearly and turn your neck all the way around, so that may be a factor as well. here is an article I found on the subject.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[John Bresnahan]

Hmm... I can't say that I agree with the reasoning in the article, but it's an interesting premise. Either way, you're backing the car up and trying to see over your shoulder. The difference is when you're backing in to a spot, you have much less clearance than when you're backing out of a spot.

Of course, drivers often pull into a spot and then continue pulling into the spot facing it. I once almost got into a fight because I was pulling into a spot at the same time the other driver was pulling into that same spot from the next aisle over.

The only conclusion of which I am certain is that drivers in the Orlando are the worst drivers I have ever seen!

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Culture20]

In many other states, cars only have rear license plates too, but they park "normally" like your Illinois example. Maybe it's just easier for the elderly to back into a space than it is to back out of one?

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years ago in Florida I got a ticket for parking "the wrong way" since that made it difficult to see the license plate.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[jmcvetta]

I understand the desire for privacy, but it does worry me that so many people here seem to feel the need to "hide" from the police.

Most decent, hard-working, non-violent citizens whom I know are as afraid of the cops as they are of criminals. Most people realize that nothing good ever comes from interacting with the police. And this is in California, where our cops are well behaved by comparison to many other states.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[hedwards]

Regardless of motive you should always back in when parking unless it's prohibited or impossible to do in that location. The reason is that it significantly decreases the likelihood of having an accident when pulling out.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Idarubicin]

Ever since I moved to Florida, I've wondered why almost everyone backs into parking spaces, rather than pulling in as most people did in Illinois.

If it weren't Florida we were talking about, I might suggest it had something to do with better-trained or more-skilled drivers. If you're competent at moving your vehicle in reverse, it's far safer to back in to a parking spot than it is to back out. You want and need a clear, broad field of view when leaving a parking space; when you back out your vision to the sides is almost completely blocked until you're halfway out into the lane of traffic.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand the desire for privacy, but it does worry me that so many people here seem to feel the need to "hide" from the police.

If the concept that is being discussed here doesn't bother you, then you don't really understand the desire, nor need, for privacy.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if our government and police didn't behave like thugs, the citizens wouldn't feel this way.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Solandri]

We need a new legal concept of "public but ephemeral" that applies to information that is normally soon forgotten like who was in a parking lot a week ago.

I don't think we need a new legal concept - reciprocity is enough. Just make it so that if the government wants to track the license plates of the public, first require that the plates of all government employees (especially elected officials) are always tracked and those positions made available to the public. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Then you'll see this idea die faster than the proverbial snowflake in hell.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[demonlapin]

You probably got that for parking facing the wrong way on the street. Common practice in residential areas, but still illegal.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Rodney King might disagree with you.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[JeffAtl]

Someone finally explained to me that it is because in Florida, cars only have a real license plate, and by backing in, that plate ins't visible to passing police cars.

That explanation was just silly. Georgia only has rear license plates as well, but very few people back into parking places. You probably just moved into an area with a culture that prefers to back into parking spots.

There are some places where backing in does make sense, like concerts, sporting events or night clubs where the arriving traffic is spread out, but everyone departs at the same time.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[JeffAtl]

Regardless of motive you should always back in when parking unless it's prohibited or impossible to do in that location. The reason is that it significantly decreases the likelihood of having an accident when pulling out.

But it more than makes up for it by increasing the likelihood of causing an accident while pulling in, especially due to the confusion caused to other drivers who aren't aware of your intent.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably just moved into an area with a culture that prefers to back into parking spots.

It isn't a big leap to say that the local culture was influenced by the fact that the police scan plates. Maybe Georgia doesn't do ANPR yet. Florida definitely does it aggressively, they even have a history, going back decades, of entering the parking lots of major employers and checking for out-of-state plates in order to issue citations for not registering the car soon enough. For every one person who gets dicked over about something trivial like that, hundreds of others will hear the story and decide that its better to be safe than sorry. Pretty soon you've got a bunch of people doing it just because everybody else is doing it.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is in California, where our cops are well behaved by comparison to many other states.

I'm Rodney King, and I approve this message.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[randyleepublic]

You've never been to LA County.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[http]

It should worry you MORE that said people are behaving in a sane and reasonable manner.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Orly? Wasn't the Rodney King beating in LA, which last I heard of it was in... California?

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[drinkypoo]

Maybe it's just easier for the elderly to back into a space than it is to back out of one?

Why would it be harder to back into an aisle than into a space between two cars? It's hard for the elderly to back up, because they can't turn their head. When you lose the ability to look behind you they should take away your license immediately.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Last night three cops showed up at my door, announcing themselves with "This is the police, open up!" They told me they were looking for a little girl that was missing and wanted to ask me a few questions. Immediately my mind began to race. I'm a peaceful, law-abiding citizen, but with some of laws we have here in California and this country as a whole (usually some little girl's name, like "Kaylee's Law"), you never know when you're going to basically get a death sentence (people accused of crimes against children are often killed in jail before their trial, and some of these laws make it much easier to get arrested and screwed over for doing nothing at all). After what seemed like forever, they told me I wasn't in any trouble and that they were asking everyone in the apartment complex the same questions. They left and knocked on the door next to me. I agree: when the police show up, it usually means trouble.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Culture20]

Why would it be harder to back into an aisle than into a space between two cars?

Because the aisle has a higher potential for moving vehicles and pedestrians.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Ol Olsoc]

While we all decry this as the end of Western civilization, keep in mind that this database will at some point give an accused person an iron-clad alibi. Proof that they were where they were, and not committing some crime somewhere else. Its like DNA. Powerful evidence of guilt, but also of innocence.

Re:Old Laws Before Automation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That's all fine and dandy except for a few points:

o A society that thinks keeping track of our innocence should be a priority is rabidly paranoid.
o A database is many orders of magnitude easier to fake than DNA evidence. One "delete" and that exculpatory evidence is gone.

Dummy data

[Anonymous Coward]

While I know it is illegal to alter to obscure your actual plate, would getting a mass movement to have bumper stickers or other decals on vehicles (or even mailboxes or other things on the side of the road) that bear a superficial resemblance to license plates so as to flood them with garbage data work (until they ban that)?

Re:Dummy data

[Jeng]

Anything you do to piss off a cop will not work out well for yourself.

If you make his sensor go off because of a sticker then prepare to be investigated for interfering in police business or some other horseshit.

I.... don't really see a problem

[CCTalbert]

I know most folks are going to run up the "holy crap it's Big Brother!" flag... but I don't know if I really care or not.

It's sort of like data retention, in a way- one firm I worked with was very concerned that every scrap of "evidence" from their work be discarded- they tended to do sloppy work and get sued a lot, and were working under the assumption that our own records would generally show how f@#Ked up we were.

The company I'm working for now almost has a totally opposite mindset- they find that their records typically support their assertion that they've done good work, and so keeping records is a good thing.

Big Brother knowing where I've been, assorted points on a map... well, how does that really harm me? Now if I'm out doin' crimes, then obviously I'm bothered, but otherwise.... I just don't see a reason that I would care.

I can see it being part of a "slippery slope" issue, but this is public- there is no assumption of privacy. If you *are* expecting privacy in public, well, that went away as soon as everyone started carrying cameras.

(And, if I'm doin' some crimes, I'll game the system and use it to my advantage!)

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[0123456]

I know most folks are going to run up the "holy crap it's Big Brother!" flag... but I don't know if I really care or not.

You will care. But only when it's too late to do anything about it.

The time to stop rolling down a slippery slope is at the top, not at the bottom when you're smashed and broken after running into a brick wall.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It all depends on your view and level of trust of Big Brother. You could see Big Brother for what its supposed to mean, a caring over-seeing sibling looking out for you and whom you help look out for others too. Or, you can view Big Brother as an omnipresent faceless being that is indeed still controlled and overseen by humans beings with all their personal emotions and faults.

Are you (generally speaking, not just at the above post) part of the system, adverse to the system or apathetic towards the system?

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[tibit]

One problem I see is how is this data protected from tampering. They need a correctly designed, executed and audited scheme of digitally signing the records when they're created. Otherwise anyone can modify data in such a database, and how would anyone know?

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[dave420]

So, by that logic, get rid of the police too. Awesome.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[4iedBandit]

Big Brother knowing where I've been, assorted points on a map... well, how does that really harm me? Now if I'm out doin' crimes, then obviously I'm bothered, but otherwise.... I just don't see a reason that I would care.

You're out late at night, just driving all by yourself enjoying a nice night. The next day the police come knocking at your door. You were in the area of a murder, driving away from the scene. You have no alibi, no witness. You say you have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. The problem is that you have no way to prove you have nothing to hide. You think it's simple, but if you are the wrong ethnicity or say the wrong things they will make your life miserable at the least and at the worst they will convict you of something you didn't do. Don't believe for a second it won't happen with this new "tool."

Now lets talk about this from a government waste point of view. How much money is going to be spent on the hardware, software and personnel to support this system? These systems are going to be very expensive to purchase and maintain and it's not a fixed cost. The data is going to be kept indefinitely which means the data set is going to grow and the maintenance costs associated with it will balloon. Is the benefit going to justify the cost?

Is the system even necessary? Law enforcement will argue that it is. Could it help solve crime? Absolutely. Will it be abused? Absolutely. Just look at our history. A hundred years ago the limited power government agencies had was abused. And you're willing to keep giving them more power? By the time they do something you really don't want them to do, it will be too late. You'll have given up so much already that you won't be able to stop them. Some would argue that we're already at that point.

Why does the government need to know where all of the citizens have been? Why does it need to keep that data indefinitely? You absolutely should care. Not because of what they say they are going to do today, but because of what they will do tomorrow if we say it's okay to do it today.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[mbone]

Didn't pay attention during your history classes, I see.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[LunaticTippy]

The police already use this data to harass people for political reasons. If your vehicle is seen at certain rallies or events, or near an activists house, prepare to be subjected to special treatment. Even if you are certain that none of your hobbies or interests are on the official shitlist right now, you never know when the boundaries will shift. Perhaps going to an electronic parts store or the army surplus store becomes suspicious, or you just have the bad luck to live next door to a wannabe terrorist.

They used to have to assemble the data manually, but this labor saving innovation will ensure the practice becomes more widespread and far reaching.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[JoeMerchant]

Collect this data for long enough, and you'll have a pattern of "normal behavior" - do you want a cop stopping you because you chose to take a new route home today, like the credit card companies do now when you buy something that is "out of your normal pattern"? Do you want to live in a world where the state (or anyone) knows that much about every single person that they can single out you and start asking for justification of why you chose to do something or other unusual on the night of the 17th of last month?

At least I still have the option of using cash for a small premium if I choose to (I get kickback from the CC company on every purchase.) Taking my bicycle to work isn't really an option.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[jmcvetta]

Now if I'm out doin' crimes, then obviously I'm bothered, but otherwise.... I just don't see a reason that I would care.

Have you noticed how the scope of actions counted as "crime" has been rapidly expanding? Just because you don't harm others or the environment does not mean you are in compliance with the arbitrary and capricious dictates of the law. One reason to put limits on the state's ability to use technology to enforce the law, is to ensure that at least some degree of social cooperation from the populace is necessary. When grossly unpopular & unjust laws (e.g. file sharing as a criminal offence) become just as enforceable as laws that almost everyone supports (e.g. murder is illegal), it's a safe bet that citizens will loose much or all of their autonomy.

Re:I.... don't really see a problem

[jmcvetta]

Why does the government need to know where all of the citizens have been?

To make sure everyone is in compliance, of course.

Why does it need to keep that data indefinitely?

In case you commit any "crimes" before they become crimes, of course.

Patent idea!

[torgis]

I'd like to propose a new line of designer license plate, the CAPTCHA-plate. You heard it here first, folks.

Re:Patent idea!

[Steauengeglase]

Whoever has that patented will make a boat load.

Re:Patent idea!

[Bob the Super Hamste]

As good as that sounds the character set allowed by license plates is very limited and in may states anything that covers, obstructs, or otherwise interferes with the reading of a license plate is illegal. Now if you wanted to have fun most license plate readers are being designed to operate in the IR range so you could have some fun and add some IR LEDs to your license plate illumination and really overexpose the image, and if powerful enough actually damage the camera. This modification would probably go unnoticed by most law enforcement, at least for a while.

Re:Patent idea!

[coinreturn]

As good as that sounds the character set allowed by license plates is very limited and in may states anything that covers, obstructs, or otherwise interferes with the reading of a license plate is illegal. Now if you wanted to have fun most license plate readers are being designed to operate in the IR range so you could have some fun and add some IR LEDs to your license plate illumination and really overexpose the image, and if powerful enough actually damage the camera. This modification would probably go unnoticed by most law enforcement, at least for a while.

But would obscuring the reading in the IR range be illegal? I bet there's no case law for that!

Re:Patent idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be the first to attempt an injection attack against their database with my license plate.

Re:Patent idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

Been tried in New York State, IR filters and FOV (Field of View) Limiters for license plates. The governor quickly labeled the individuals as "helping the terrorists" and got legislation shoved through to make it illegal. Of course its not used to combat terrorism, like speed/stop cameras its being used for revenue generation.

"We are at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia."

Re:Patent idea!

[Bob the Super Hamste]

That I don't know but given how rulings are being made recently it probably would be ruled illegal if the laws don't already cover this. Isn't it comforting that when the spirit of the law benefits the individual the letter of the law is followed but when the letter of the law benefits the individual the spirit is followed.

Re:Patent idea!

[Bob the Super Hamste]

But those obstruct reading, or cover the license plates so they probably did run afoul of the law.

Re:Patent idea!

[torgis]

I want my plate to be '; drop and I'll drive on the left side of my buddy whose plate will be sys;go;

to help spot traffic pattern

[Anonymous Coward]

They could use the information to understand better traffic pattern, and employees commute routes. This information could for planning road construction, and public transportation.

Re:to help spot traffic pattern

[JoeMerchant]

Anything relevant to traffic planning can be collected by anonymous car count. As it has been forever.

In Soviet Amerika

[Anonymous Coward]

the license plates take pictures of YOU!

great

[jonpublic]

just another database tracking all my movements. like at&t, apple and google.

Re:great

[jonpublic]

i forgot facebook should be added to that list too.

Re:great

[JoeMerchant]

just another database tracking all my movements. like at&t, apple and google.

And your credit cards.

Rights.....this cop is an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

“What about the rights of someone who is already a victim to have their assailant brought to justice?” Procopio asked. “There’s a freedom to being able to live your life not worried about being the victim of crime that’s also a freedom worth protecting.”

That statement is so Orwellian ...

So, we're going to violate everyone's rights and treat them with suspicion and perpetually watch them because someone was a victim of a crime? And if someone were a victim of a crime, was their rights violated if it wasn't Government doing it? And if there rights were violated, then that means all the private companies that are collecting information on me are violating my rights. Slippery slopes have to sides, baby!

What next, the cops are going to say, "Hey, we're searched at airports for public safety. This is the same thing!" You'll see.

Oh! And you can bet your ass that the cops and politicians will be exempt from this!

Re:Rights.....this cop is an idiot.

[JoeMerchant]

Crime is (thankfully) rare - it can be very bad (murder, bombing buildings, etc.), but it is, in the greater scheme, not a leading cause of death, not nearly as financially impacting as taxes or insurance, and just not a big enough problem in the real world to require everyone to get a GPS tracking device that radios their every movement into a central database implanted at birth or entry to the country.

We could do it today, we have the technology, and it could virtually end crime as we know it - anybody caught with a defective tracking device will be immediately arrested and taken in for repairs - otherwise, if you know the time and location of a crime, you will know who did it.

The slower we move in that direction, the better (says the engineer who makes surveillance drones for a living.)

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[Attila Dimedici]

No, this is Massachusetts. It means they won't keep a record of license plates belonging to Democratic politicians ever because it would be too easy to figure out who they are taking bribes from. According to something I read, the last three speakers of the Massachusetts state legislature are in jail for corruption (they are all Democrats). The current speaker is a protege of one of those three.

I was thinking, this system existed for while now

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, I am totally ignorant, but I was thinking this "license plate scanning" thing was going for a while now and not only in MA, but in other states as well. I clearly remember seeing on TV one of those devices installed in police vehicle (and it was many years ago). System would take pictures of license plate of bypassing cars and scan them through the police database.

So, what is exactly different in Massachusetts system ?

F*CK THE POLICE

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was younger there was a RAP group called NWA who had a song called FUCK THE POILCE.
Back then it was about racial tensions. Now it is all about basic freedoms.
Either way I still agree FUCK THE POLICE!

Mosaic theory

[Intropy]

First let me get out the way that I am opposed to the police doing this sort of thing. The legality of doing this is obviously going to be challenged. I suspect that the "mosaic theory" is going to come into play. In that theory, aggregated data can be more than the sum of its parts. For instance if a person aggregates all of the publicly available information on internet cables crisscrossing the US into a map, the US government could, under the mosaic theory, hold that while each part of the data compiled is and ought to be publicly available, the compilation of that information constitutes a security risk and can be considered sensitive. I think it's going to be interesting to see if that same theory can cause the compilation of non-private publicly-available data, the license plate at location at time data, into a database to be considered unwarranted invasion of privacy.

Re:Attention, Driver! We Have a Special Offer for

[ohcrapitssteve]

Neat ideas, but unfortunately if an innocent, law-abiding person is driving the vehicle of someone who's license is suspended / is uninsured / a criminal, we're going to have a lot of false positives. If my license was suspended and I was obeying the law and not driving, it's totally possible that a family member or friend would then be driving my car, and it'd be out on the road getting scanned by these scanners.

Whoops.

[Steauengeglase]

Guess I won't be helping out with that after school reading program in that bad neighborhood.

Re:Whoops.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... can you find a nicer neighborhood to score your crack? And crack whores?

Re:Whoops.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's okay - I won't be buying crack there anymore, either.

Just Make Their Jobs Easier

[arthurpaliden]

Everyone should just start phoning the police, FBI, DHS et al and letting them know where you and who you are with every time you change locations. In addition you should forward them copies of all the emails that you send and receive.

Re:Just Make Their Jobs Easier

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a mobile phone, they already know.....

Re:Just Make Their Jobs Easier

[Gideon Wells]

Make it too easy and those departments can be axed more readily in the budget. Hm, this would mean less of them to go through the data.

Re:Just Make Their Jobs Easier

[currently_awake]

They already have all of that. They also have road sensors to read the rfid tags in your tires so they already know where/when you travel.

Its been happing for awhile

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in California, its been going on for a long time now. 4-5 years.
Some city / countys not so much.
The do track time/gps, even while driving around.

Fine. I want to keep track of their Senators.

[geekmux]

You want to track me and my car in your state? Fine, let me see and track via public website every single location of all elected personnel working in that state then, starting with the Senators. Hey, might as well see where my elected officials are at, especially while "on" duty.

Oh, I'm sorry, shoe on the other foot doesn't fit so well? No room for privacy and freedom? Gee, go figure.

Massholes.

Re:Fine. I want to keep track of their Senators.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, You hit it on the head. I was never one to buy into all the "U.S. is turning into a police state" stuff, but this is just another step in the wrong direction.

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they'll have to turn them off all over Cambridge, and near Barney Frank's house when his houseboy is "entertaining". (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/tours/scandal/gobie2.htm)

The Innocent have NOTHING to fear!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right?

This has so many routes to abuse that I go cold thinking of it.
And just think, everyone near that bank job, where the cop was gunned down will be getting a "friendly" visit from the cops, just for a chat, you know..... Especially if they were going a little over the speed limit, or were giving their pals a lift somewhere.

Its not just "1984", its "Brazil" too, all crappy record keeping and bogus matches.

The Democrats run Massachusetts

[Quila]

By a very large majority in both houses. They have a supermajority in the House, and there are only a few token Republicans in the Senate.

Note that this kicks in not long after a Democrat takes the governorship, making the MA government absolutely dominated by Democrats. The only way Republicans have any influence is to get something the Democrats did declared unconstitutional in state court.

So your metaphor needs changing to reflect the reality of what exceptions would be. It's more likely the Democrats would be specifically tracking Republicans to catch them at gay bath houses.

Re:The Democrats run Massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

This...

Both parties are guilty of it. Yet they both blame each other like they dont. To claim only one party is doing this sort of thing you would have to be 100% not paying any sort attention.

Most classic way of doing this sort of thing is to pass a law. Then 10-15 years later accuse the other party of passing it or something similar to it. Then trying to look like you didnt want it all along. But it is a law now and is just too much trouble to undo.

Technology

[U8MyData]

I once told my IT manager, "Just because we can doesn't mean we should." Technology, very unfortunately, has erroded our rights simply because the "government" whether local or not can do these things without accountability or scrutiny. When you do make noises, they justify it by citing public safety, the welfare for women and children, and other politically correct BS. I don't think there is a corner left in life to find some privacy. It won't be log before *everything* you do is logged.

Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

this has already been put in place in many areas.. I say this with experience as a developer of a certain Law Enforcement Software package.

Did you know that many cars (even back before 2000) are equipped with 'black boxes' that record specific information?

Good Advice!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol google ad:

_Sell Your Used Car_
We'll give you an offer for your used car today. Get paid tomorrow!

Protecting records of "public ephemeral" facts

[DragonWriter]

I think the problem rests in old case law, developed when automation like this was just science fiction, that anything not on private property is fair game. We need a new legal concept of "public but ephemeral" that applies to information that is normally soon forgotten like who was in a parking lot a week ago.

I agree, in general, though there is room to quibble about whether the gap in the law is best sourced to "old case law" or to the fact that the Constitution itself doesn't consider the issue of public ephemeral data.

Any collection of ephemeral data that occurs without a warrant should itself expire within a short period of time as well should be distribution limited - i.e. no sending it off to another database at the FBI that is exempt.

That may still be too much of a slippery slope, because once its collected there will always be pressure to extend the retention and expand the distribution. All it would take is one kid getting kidnapped and the license plate data expiring a day before the cops thought to look at it and voila, ready-made emotional argument to push for doubling retention time.

Alternatively, you could retain the data indefinitely, but require a warrant for the search of the historical data, specifying the search parameters and providing the cause justifying the search. This would give non-current public ephemeral data similar protection to traditional private data, while at the same time not destroying the data itself. Since the data can be searched with a warrant issued with cause, this eliminates the risk of mandated destruction destroying evidence that could have solved a crime -- and thus eliminates the opportunity for exploiting that as the basis for lobbying for extension in the "casual search" window for the data.

Re:Protecting records of "public ephemeral" facts

[weilawei]

With the ease with which warrants are granted, I doubt that anything short of the data being physically unavailable will prevent corruption. And if the data isn't supposed to exist in the first place, a person would incriminate themselves by attempting to use improperly retained data in a court of law (assuming the judge/jury didn't turn a blind eye).

Re:Protecting records of "public ephemeral" facts

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Since the data can be searched with a warrant issued with cause, this eliminates the risk of mandated destruction destroying evidence that could have solved a crime -- and thus eliminates the opportunity for exploiting that as the basis for lobbying for extension in the "casual search" window for the data.

I believe that warrants are just one factor in protecting the public from over-zealous public officials. Another key factor is simply the difficulty of getting the information in the first place. That protects us from rubber-stamp warrants and other forms of illegitimate access. It's kind of like the difference between needing to go down to the telco to turn on a wiretap and being able to have any call anywhere in the country routed directly to the FBI with just a mouse click.

Re:Protecting records of "public ephemeral" facts

[Anonymous Coward]

This ignores that in US law there is a definite emphasis on being able to commit crimes and get away with it. The courts and laws are written such that only the most egregious cases should be pursued. Statute of limitations allows for you to move on, and stop worrying about crimes you've committed in the past.

If we evolve into a fully monitored environment with almost 100% enforcement and conviction, we're in a realm of law that was not envisioned by your for-fathers. This is the primary problem people have with automated photo-radar speeding tickets. The laws are not meant to be universally enforced.

Re:Protecting records of "public ephemeral" facts

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a state university. Our police department uses the county database and so I would see how you would cover their case.

I work for a different entity in charge of the parking lots, garages, and roads for the unversity. We use LPR to enforce visitor/patient parking. How would your purpose our data is handled?

Currently, the police never see our data. We could make it so they could use it, but they weren't itnerested. Ultimately I think it makes sense, if there is a vehicle wanted for an amber alert etc I don't see a problem with telling them we saw it. At his point the only thing they are interested in is perodicially parents call concerned they haven't heard from their child. If we can show their car is moving, the police can try to find a pattern and talk to the person. Typically they just find the student and ask him/her to call home. Its almost always a false alarm, but as a university they feel obligated to investigate.

Oy vey!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a sub million account number - some geek you are! What are you, a manager?!?

Let me explain something to you:

You assume that government and law enforcement's data are synced instantaneously AND without error - an impossibility! Horrible assumption! Anyone with any sort of software development or maintenance experience would know the problems with this system and with trusting technology. Garbage in - garbage out, Mr. PHB!

And even if they had all the data they could have on you, they still make mistakes.

But one would say, "So what! They make a mistake and I'll sue for false arrest!!" Yeah, good luck with that. With all this monitoring, even if you're Mother Teressa, they'll find something on you. And we are talking about Massachusetts here. The prosecutor will find some law from 1793 that you violated just to burn your ass citizen!

Re:Oy vey!

[Sectoid_Dev]

They might find out that I once dated a Wiccan. This is Massachusetts after all.

Re:Oy vey!

[Culture20]

But one would say, "So what! They make a mistake and I'll sue for false arrest!!" Yeah, good luck with that. With all this monitoring, even if you're Mother Teressa, they'll find something on you. And we are talking about Massachusetts here. The prosecutor will find some law from 1793 that you violated just to burn your ass citizen!

Consorting with wizards. As proof: crack open his CRT monitor. Wizard's magic smoke!

Re:Oy vey!

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume that government and law enforcement's data are synced instantaneously AND without error - an impossibility! Horrible assumption! Anyone with any sort of software development or maintenance experience would know the problems with this system and with trusting technology

Get real, desktop support / CS student dood. Rapid, reliable ETL processes are the rule, not the exception, in major corporations. Government agencies probably couldn't manage that with their own workers; but they have plenty of taxpayer money with which to overpay private consultants to do it for them.

For reference:

[Anonymous Coward]

To contact Governor Deval Patrick, here is the mass.gov contact page:
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=gov3utilities&sid=Agov3&U=Agov3_contact_us

F the police

[Anonymous Coward]

I still agree with NWA but for differnet reasons now!
F*CK the police!

Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[MoldySpore]

I work with dozens of police organizations that use license plate readers. They are extremely effective and even a small fleet of cars can easily gather thousands upon tens of thousands of license plates a day in their jurisdiction. Tracking people via this technology is a scary thing to think about because it would be extremely effective. I disagree with their use in regular police operations, so this database is just plain crazy in my mind. This should be fought against by anyone who values the small amount of privacy we have left in this country.

I can't stress enough how crazy this would be if this happened and started getting adopted outside of MA. This would be one of the worst invasions of privacy ever. There is already enough tracking that goes on with the toll passes (EZ-Pass, Sun Pass, etc) in all the states that have them as well as all the cameras that are up everywhere in most major cities. But that should be expected, as you are voluntarily signing up for the convenience of speedier tolls and most of the camera systems are used to help detect crimes (such as ShotSpotter hearing gun shots and dispatching police). But if you choose to not have any kind of electronic pass or GPS in your car, there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[misexistentialist]

Pretty much guaranteed to spread as the manufacturer's lobbyists push politicians' buttons.

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but just think how easier Dexter's 'hobby' will get now.

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

The only time that I could see myself agreeing with any type of license plate scanning is in the event of a kidnapping, serious offense against persons, or in an event of extreme necessity, and then the order to have used the scanner would have to be justified in front of a panel of reasonable and prudent persons. The problem is that since the technology will be available, the police will try to use it to its full extent and end up overstepping the spirit of the law...

Since I am a military police officer, I will expect not to see this in wide use at military installations for some time as we are generally a bit behind in use of this type of technology. But I definitely will expect to see it as we greet every vehicle and individual that enters our installation with a hearty "Hello, may I see everyone's Identification please". More than likely, it will simply be used on vehicles entering and exiting the installation. Many of our gates already have lic. plate scanners, but they just record the plate to video and not in any real database that can be queried.

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[real gumby]

There is already enough tracking that goes on with the toll passes (EZ-Pass, Sun Pass, etc) ...

Funny, these systems could easily have been deployed in a non-privacy-busting fashion (e.g. prepay them so they are like cash, and have no personally identifiable information in them). But somehow that option is never offered when these systems are deployed.

I assume the privacy-busting aspects are a major part of the appeal.

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

People who don't "get" the problem would be well advised to read Cory Doctorow's novel "Little Brother" which he has made available for free download http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Reasonable expectation of privacy On A Public Highway? That sounds like the "don't record the public servants working their public position in a public place."

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stress enough how crazy this would be if this happened and started getting adopted outside of MA. This would be one of the worst invasions of privacy ever. There is already enough tracking that goes on with the toll passes (EZ-Pass, Sun Pass, etc) in all the states that have them as well as all the cameras that are up everywhere in most major cities. But that should be expected, as you are voluntarily signing up for the convenience of speedier tolls and most of the camera systems are used to help detect crimes (such as ShotSpotter hearing gun shots and dispatching police). But if you choose to not have any kind of electronic pass or GPS in your car, there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Already in Oregon...

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110718/NEWS/107180322

Re:Amazing Invasion of Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend it was your moral duty to do that when or before you started working in this area. It was obvious few barriers other than "good intentions" prevented this mission creep. You need to look in the mirror on this one.

6th Amendment

[gstrickler]

The 6th Amendment to the US Constitution states [emphasis added]:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Just how do you confront a video recorder? How do you prove it hasn't been altered? How to you prove the date/time is accurate? How do you prove who was driving?

Can they go back and issue citations for expired registrations based upon these recordings? For how long? What about parking citations?

Will the videos be available via FOIA requests? If so, what's to stop a stalker, spouse, or other individual from using these in civil cases, or even for extortion? What happens when the preacher's/politician's car is spotted parked near an "adult video store", strip club, etc.? Even if they're "not available" via FOIA requests, people are corruptible and someone will get their hands on videos that they can use for criminal purposes.

There are just too many unanswered questions. While they might be able to make a case for keeping the recordings for 3-6 months, anything longer just presents too much potential for misuse/abuse, and even those short periods will allow the unscrupulous the opportunity to steal videos that they can use to blackmail others.

Note to Massachusetts' politicians: Such videos will be used against you at some point. Count on it. If you don't care about the privacy of the citizens, at least think of your self interest before voting for this.

Re:6th Amendment

[jpvlsmv]

Note to Massachusetts' politicians: Such videos will be used against you at some point. Count on it. If you don't care about the privacy of the citizens, at least think of your self interest before voting for this.

Which is why the first thing any legislative reform should do is apply personal liability for the sponsors of unconstitutional laws.

--Joe

Re:6th Amendment

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Just how do you confront a video recorder? How do you prove it hasn't been altered? How to you prove the date/time is accurate? How do you prove who was driving?

Unfortunately you can't cross examine it but it will be entered as another piece of evidence just like CCTV footage or a readout from a radar gun. Now there have been people who have successful gotten evidence from other devices invalidated but it does take some effort.

Re:6th Amendment

[coinreturn]

The 6th Amendment to the US Constitution states [emphasis added]:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Just how do you confront a video recorder? How do you prove it hasn't been altered? How to you prove the date/time is accurate? How do you prove who was driving?

Can they go back and issue citations for expired registrations based upon these recordings? For how long? What about parking citations?

Will the videos be available via FOIA requests? If so, what's to stop a stalker, spouse, or other individual from using these in civil cases, or even for extortion? What happens when the preacher's/politician's car is spotted parked near an "adult video store", strip club, etc.? Even if they're "not available" via FOIA requests, people are corruptible and someone will get their hands on videos that they can use for criminal purposes.

There are just too many unanswered questions. While they might be able to make a case for keeping the recordings for 3-6 months, anything longer just presents too much potential for misuse/abuse, and even those short periods will allow the unscrupulous the opportunity to steal videos that they can use to blackmail others.

Note to Massachusetts' politicians: Such videos will be used against you at some point. Count on it. If you don't care about the privacy of the citizens, at least think of your self interest before voting for this.

Even if you can get the "evidence" thrown out, the pressure they can exert by this knowledge is too much. A lot of fruit will be picked from the poisoned tree.

Re:6th Amendment

[Anonymous Coward]

Massachusetts doesn't allow the use of red light cameras for this very reason. My guess would be that this data would not be used as evidence of wrongdoing but would be used to determine where to look for evidence. In your examples, instead of using archived data to issue citations, an alert would be given to the officer in real time and the officer would issue the citation. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what they use the system for right now.

There are two concerns here - what the data can be used for and how it should be stored. Ideally, data should be discarded immediately if there is no cause to record it - traffic stop, expired registration, stolen vehicle, missing person, arrest warrant for the owner, etc. Unfortunately, there's no chance of that happening without a directive from one of the other two branches of government. If all of the data is stored, it should be given the highest protection possible due to the potentially sensitive or even classified data that it could contain once enough data is put together (yes, this can happen). Failure to adequately secure and control access to the data could result in the entire system being wiped or confiscated by the federal government in the event of a contamination. Sadly, even this would probably not result in the system being abandoned (or even properly secured), it would just wind up costing the taxpayers more money to replace.

Re:6th Amendment

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the first thing CATO, ACLU and EPIC should do for the first 2 years of this new policy is use FOIA's on very single DA, Politician, Judge and Gov/Gov Jr in the state. Since it is a database, it should be pretty easy to get get all the listings one one quick swoop. Then develop a google map with pin cushions for their where-abouts. This might not get their attention...but it will their wives when they have people knowing where their cars go when they pick up their kids from the private schools...or when the husband goes and sees his girlfriend.

Re:Attention, Driver! We Have a Special Offer for

[Baloroth]

This is pretty much the best summary of it I've seen. Even retaining the data a short time makes sense: say if a kidnapping is reported 2-3 days later, knowing where the kidnapper was could be very valuable. TFA mentions one of the city's has a system that overwrites the data after 30 days (still a long time, but moderately reasonable.) But indefinitely? Shared with any agency that asks? There is no good reason for that. No way this kind of info is ever going to be useful in court, as there would be no way to prove who is actually driving the car. Only thing it could be useful for is "probable cause" to harass people they have no real evidence against.

Then again, we do live in a world where courts consider an IP address personally identifying information, so who knows.

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[Anonymous Coward]

Way back in the seventies they had a special flag on registry records that indicated special treatment. I saw the data specs at the time. Among those who worked at the registry it was known as the "Kennedy bit"

California, another Democratic stronghold

[Quila]

Anybody have stats for the other states? It looks like there might be a pattern here.

Re:I was thinking, this system existed for while n

[compro01]

It will retain all license plates scanned and where they were scanned, rather than just comparing them to a list.

Re:if a govt. does it, it's not?

[TaoPhoenix]

Notice how much fun we would have if citizens reported the locations of all the police cars and speed traps? But no, they get to track us, where I'm sure "for a fee" the media can snoop to find out if the pastor went to the atheist rally or something.

Crowd-sourced alternative

[alispguru]

Is it legal for me to put a webcam at the end of my driveway, and have it recognize and record license plates of passing cars?

Is it legal for me to put a laptop/GPS in my car which does the same thing?

Is it legal for lots of people in Massachusetts to do this, and share their data?

Re:Crowd-sourced alternative

[TheGratefulNet]

only one question for you: are you sure that this is the kind of country you want to live in?

its not a matter of 'it can be done'. its a matter of: is this a direction we really want to move in?

can you really not imagine abuse from this kind of new social norm?

we really have to THINK about where this is all going and not just move steps at a time that put us in a totally different place.

I'm not liking how things are headed. I want to pull things back a bit, give them some thought (oh, 10 or 20 years of thought, study and testing on micro scales might be a good start) and THEN lets consider making these huge changes to how society lives with itself.

you have no idea what you are really proposing and even less of what you will end up getting, both short term and long term.

tl;dr: stop being in such a fucking hurry and think about this shit, first.

A very good idea for peaceful resistance

[Quila]

Imagine only 10,000 people, each calling the MA Executive Office of Public Safety every ten minutes to tell them their exact location.

"You wanted the information, so I figured I'd save you the trouble and money of purchasing these systems and just tell you myself."

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[Dunega]

The Massachusetts government is completely controlled by Democrats with a few token Republicans. Guess that puts a dent in your trolling huh?

At least it will get government employees

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Putting the grave 1984* issues aside. The best way this could be used would be know keep tabs on government workers especially politicians, but I doubt they will ever release that information.

I don't know if Massachusetts is a two party consent state for wiretapping, but if it isn't then there have been judicial rulings that support that you don't have a right to privacy in public

This is old news

[snsh]

These ANPR systems for law enforcement have been around for a really long time. They're even become more common for private businesses, owners of parking lots, event parking, and the like.

The real question is today is having personal services using them too. Earlier this year, AutoTrader in the UK had an iPhone app that could snap a photo of a plate, OCR the tag number, and spit back at you the make, model, and KBB value of the car it's assigned to. For some reason, they were asked by the government to remove that feature for privacy reasons, even though the information they're using is publicly available and not personally identifiable.

It's only a matter of time before ANPR is available to the masses. Then it's not a question of Big Brother watching you, but a million annoying Little Brothers following you around.

So what if...

[Enry]

What if I had a LCD panel over my license plate...

During normal driving operation, it's off and thus the license plate is visible. But if I park in a private driveway or parking lot, I switch it on and thus obscure the plate. You probably couldn't use it when parking on a public street, but if on private property, it could be an effective block.

Re:So what if...

[GameboyRMH]

Yeah it would be legal only when parked on private property.

Re:So what if...

[currently_awake]

If you block your plate in any way they can arrest you. What if you cover your car with fake plates? What if the fakes are only visible to cameras?

Let's simplify this

[Anonymous Coward]

When a common man spies on another common man, it's called stalking, because it represents a threat to individual sovereignty. Stalking is clearly a form of harassment, and therefore grounds for an initiation of self-defense.

What makes government exempt from this age-old law of human nature? After all, government is merely a group of human beings, same as you and me. How is it that a group of human beings can elevate themselves above the laws of human nature that everybody else must follow?

Answer: government made themselves exempt, because government has the guns. (I was about to say "because government makes the rules", but let's cut to the chase.) Does this make you trust government more, or trust government less?

Different?

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how this is functionally different than them employing an army of employees to document the same information. Yes it's on a massivly larger an automated scale, but it's no different than any observation you or I could do. I can be at an intersection, see your car and plate and make a note as to where I was and when I saw you in the same place.

public officials

[borgasm]

OK

Then I want access to a record of where every public employee is at all times of the day, fed right into my Google Maps

Re:public officials

[TheGratefulNet]

if you can't get it directly, what you could try is to get the 'full list', subtract it out from the 'everyone list' and what you have is, well, interest residue. ya'think?

I hope that experiment happens, if this big database-on-the-citizens ends up happening.

Learning from the UK again

[Wowsers]

So my American friends are learning from the UK again.. http://www.kable.co.uk/automatic-numberplate-recognition-police-anpr-gc-feb10

Many of these [automatic number plate recognition] cameras are less of an intrusion on privacy than may be feared: the 6,600 ANPR traffic monitoring cameras run by the Highways Agency and Trafficmaster do not transmit numberplates. But according to the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), there are 10,502 ANPR cameras collecting data for police forces - including cameras run by councils, which pass data on - which transmit full registration numbers, and in some cases photos of drivers and passengers, with the former held for two years at the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC).

However, this article suggests that the plates, locations, times, and photographs of people in the cars will "only be kept for 2 years". When have you EVER known government to throw away information it collects on you - EVER???? With storage so cheap, they will keep data forever.

The UK feels like a virtual prison, spied upon everywhere you go. That's not a free society, but they will bullsh*t you that it's for your safety.

I was contravening the assumption

[Quila]

That the Republicans must be doing it.

In reality, the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse. They can be worse because of that successful marketing pitch that they're looking out for the little guy, when they're just trying to screw him in a different way.

The Republicans are "evil" and want to take away our rights, so we put a microscope on their actions. They can't get away with quite as much.

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

They won't record license plates belonging to Republican politicians near gay bath houses.

Well, thank god for that! We wouldn't want their wives to find out where they have been.
On another thought: Are there non gay bathhouses? (Assuming within the continental US.)

Because what can possibly go wrong ?

[mbone]

Just wait until some Governor starts blackmailing people with this information. This is Massachusetts, you know it will happen.

If. And ONLY If.

[nege]

I'm over reading all these stories already. How about I just get in line to let them embed the microchip, swab my cheek, barcode my ass, gather a stool sample, map my brainwaves, embed cameras in my retinas and install the collapsible satellite dish in my urethra. I mean, I AM ok with this.

As long as they use Linux.

Live free or die!!!!

Re:Attention, Driver! We Have a Special Offer for

[Lance Dearnis]

Neat ideas, but unfortunately if an innocent, law-abiding person is driving the vehicle of someone who's license is suspended / is uninsured / a criminal, we're going to have a lot of false positives. If my license was suspended and I was obeying the law and not driving, it's totally possible that a family member or friend would then be driving my car, and it'd be out on the road getting scanned by these scanners.

True, but, that still leaves out why the information is being retained. I'm somewhat supportive of dragnet'ing the uninsured/suspended: Mainly because I come from New Orleans, which had the highest auto insurance costs ANYWHERE because of the number of uninsured drivers. See, if both drivers are insured, the insurance company for the driver at fault pays out for the repair of both cars - if the other dude is uninsured, then even if you're not at fault (Someone rammed your car while it was parked in the driveway after plowing through an orphanage), then your insurance company has to pay. The higher rates reflect that - not that you're a worse driver, but that they've agreed to repair your car. You might not pay, but someone will.

And, hell, even if it's a false positive to pick up someone driving a criminal's car, if you're driving his car, that's a good enough reason to guess you might know where he is. But there's still no reason for the retention if that's your goal. It's got to be something else. That's my point here - a lot of people are discussing the right/wrong about the police implications here, but the police implications do not fully explain this policy.

life in public is, well, public

[markhahn]

shouldn't you expect everything you do in public to be potentially monitored? yes, the scale of modern life has, until recently, made most activity relatively anonymous, but only because no one bothered to look. I'm not sure why we should be worried about this.

HOWEVER, we should make sure that this be done above-the-board. for instance, the activity of police in public is clearly also something that should be public, and thus legally recordable. what police do when they enter your property is up to you to record if you wish. and government records resulting from this kind of recordkeeping of the public need to be public records (accessible to anyone). (government can reasonably charge for access if some company wants to mine these records, but I should also be able to, for a nominal fee, ask whether any records exist of, say, vehicles speeding on my street.)

Re:life in public is, well, public

[i]

Do You understand that this leads to a situation where the current government (at an arbitrary level) knows exactly where the eventual opposition (dissidents ?) are geograhically, where they travel to and whom they visit ? Combined with laws that make it trivial to demand logs from ISP's and from mobile operators they will have a total control of thoughts and associations of the opposition. Of course, if You assume that those in power in general is god and don't misuse the possibilities You may not be worried. For those with knowledge of history - it's alarming... Lets hope that we don't will meet each other in a future Gulag.

Re:life in public is, well, public

[TheGratefulNet]

shouldn't you expect everything you do in public to be potentially monitored?

no. and you are stupid if you have already *assumed* this. dammit!

maybe its a generational thing. I'm in my 50's and I grew up with 'anonymity' and the freedom to travel and just *be* and not be disturbed if you are not bothering anyone. now, innocent or not, you are tracked and monitored and scanned at every chance.

people my age grew up in a country where all that we do now is what we said of 'those godless commies in russia'. so much of what I remember being told -as a kid - how different we are and what made us different; people don't say those things anymore. we don't compare ourselves to such-and-such a country and say we are the good guys, hands down. not unless we compare ourselves to the worst of the worst and that's not a very useful comparison for a world power, now, is it?

in just ONE generation, so much has been lost? this makes me incredibly sad. and that people of your age (I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong) are happy to accept google's CEO saying that privacy is dead. or[well], was that the oracle guy? I forget which power-happy CEO said that, but I don't care if jesus christ came down on mount high and said it - I will never agree that privacy is worth handing over and submitting for public inspection. just because there is tech ability to do X does not mean its ok to just plow ahead and say 'lets just TRY this and see'. no, some people can see this is already a bad idea and we don't need to try this out!

you don't realize what you give up. once its gone, its gone. you are asking society to fundamentally change and live in glass houses. people have varying degrees of 'their space' but you are all for pushing this limit, aren't you?

I think you are making a huge mistake simply giving in and accepting the conclusion that they feed you. there are varying degrees of information and privacy and its certainly not an all-or-nothing affair.

Re:life in public is, well, public

[Anonymous Coward]

You say you're in your 50's yet your writing "style" is that of an arrogant teenager who thinks his laziness with the shift key is cutting edge.

Un-freakin' believable!

[DrPeper]

I've got $50 that says they get some corrupt corporate stooge judge to rule this as completely legal.

Re:This is typical for Mass

[ElectricTurtle]

I see you are being modded down for telling the truth. Too bad.

How they justify this...

[tommy2tone]

They say this will cut down on crime, but criminals who don't want to get found will just use fake license plates, and then this just becomes another burden on the taxpayer. Honestly, I can't figure out why anyone would want to live in Massachussets or San Franscisco with the wacky laws they are implementing in those areas.

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[JoeMerchant]

the last three speakers of the Massachusetts state legislature are in jail for corruption (they are all Democrats). The current speaker is a protege of one of those three.

Does this reflect more strongly on the Democratic party, or the voters of Massachusetts?

Not necessarily a problem

[doug141]

until a cop like this get access to the database

Just overexpose the image

[Bob the Super Hamste]

I suggest that we overexpose the images. Most of the license plate readers are being designed to operate in the IR range, with modern license plates being more IR reflective. Simple solution would be to just overexpose the image by installing some IR LEDs. Since your car is already a 12v DC system doing this shouldn't be too difficult. Even multiwatt IR diodes aren't that expensive so for probably around $20-$30 you could really overexpose the image. Side benefit is that this may actually damage the camera if exposed to too much power since those cameras probably have a CCD sensor.

Re:Just overexpose the image

[TheGratefulNet]

assume 14 or so volts at peak. assume that IR diodes are like regular old LEDs, more or less, and are a few volts each (2v or so). if you put them in series, head to tail, the volts 'add up' and if you reach that 12-14 volts from the battery, that string of LEDs should light up in the IR spectrum real horrorshow.

don't do this IRL. that would be irresponsible of you. and you would likely anger those with clubs and guns and your life could be ruined. this is a thought experiment, only.

Re:Just overexpose the image

[HaloZero]

The sensor alarm's the cops console in this case. They may or may not pull you over and issue a ticket for an equipment problem. Something along the lines of 'License Plate Light Bulb Not Operational - replace and reinspect'.

Re:Just overexpose the image

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Typically an alternator that is correctly functioning will put out about 15v. If your alternator is only putting out 12 then it is time to replace it.

Re:Just overexpose the image

[Bob the Super Hamste]

To protect against this there is this little device that costs less than $5 at a hardware store. If you are getting pulled over by a cop you could activate this device thus making you not in violation of any law

3 Words

[applematt84]

INVASION OF PRIVACY!

This one has an easy method of protest built-in

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called junk data. If you don't like the law, find a camera and drive around the block a few times. If it doesn't record each pass, then I'll go out on a limb and assert that the DB is of limited usefulness. If it records each pass, then you have a simple way of flooding the DB with junk data. The burden of proof then lies with the state to prove your intentions of rendering useless their precious all-seeing eye.

New Legislation

[Pfil2]

In other news Massachusetts also is looking to pass a law redefining the term "police car" to be any traffic light, street sign, lamp post, or tree on public property.

Another reason to ride my bike.

[Anonymous Coward]

. .

Re:Don't worry, citizens

[Attila Dimedici]

It reflects that it won't be Republican politicians who will be protected by corrupt law enforcement behavior in Massachesetts, but instead it will be Democratic politicians. What it says about politicians of either (or both) political parties is something that one should decide based on the incidence of political corruption vs party affiliation throughout the entire country.

What a fantastic money making opportunity!

[night_flyer]

Think how much money criminals can make off of stolen license plates!

Mass -- you are dead to me.

[unil_1005]

ain't gonna go der no mo'

Don't drive in Europe then.

[Cragen]

Don't drive in Europe if you do not want to be tracked by your license plate.

Re:Attention, Driver! We Have a Special Offer for

[Anonymous Coward]

An idea I could get behind and understand: Immediately comparing on arrival the information with a database of license plate numbers of people with warrants currently out on them. Bonus points if you can get the hits back to the officer in time for him to turn on the lights and go after the guy. But there's no need to keep the data for more then a minute after the search is done.

They already do this. At least they do in Virginia. This was the original purpose of the system actually. That and to catch stolen cars.

Comments on the news story disheartening

[netbuzz]

As a lifelong Massachusetts resident, I find this abuse of technology and our privacy rights appalling if not altogether surprising. What was equally if not more disheartening, however, was the level of *support* for the initiative expressed by readers of the Boston Herald. Yes, I understand that it's the Herald and what that means demographically. But it's still sad to see so many of my fellow Bay Staters cheering enthusiastically as even more of their rights are stripped away.

Re:if a govt. does it, it's not?

[PingPongBoy]

Notice how much fun we would have if citizens reported the locations of all the police cars and speed traps?

That's what happens in Soviet Russia, you track the police.

This tracking is so pointless anyways. Except for a few notorious streets, there's hardly ever a patrol car. Unless you see a car parked near a place "of interest" for more than a few times, what of it?

eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that MA elected a Republican to Congress in 2010?
I'm not an American (I live in Europe) so if I'm wrong, please go easy on me.

When I worked for a while in Maynard in the 1980's it was so Democratic that I'm sure there were unofficial signs saying 'No GOP Here' in shop windows.

Re:eh?

[dr2chase]

Dems ran a candidate with (ahem) substandard people skills. Not real big on shaking hands, hanging out in bad weather at campaign events, that sort of thing. The Repubs were seriously energized on the whole health-care thing, and the economy's been crappy.

They also tend to elect Republican governors, (Weld, Celluci, Romney) for reasons that make little sense to me.

Re:Attention, Driver! We Have a Special Offer for

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone that lives with a State Trooper in a different state with these cameras (Virginia), I can say that this is not the case.

They do not look for suspended licenses or uninsured licenses. At least for now, I believe the state recognizes that a car does not necessarily correlate to a person.

It does look for warrants as well as stolen cars though. Surprisingly, the biggest problem with the system is invalid readings (as-in, the actual plate does not match the OCRed value).

It's not a problem if you are driving a criminal's car and you get pulled over though, as that means the system is working. They can use you to get the criminal that they obviously cannot find, or impound the vehicle. There are not many people out there with warrants that are loaning out their cars. The only negative is for people that have warrants out for them, that do not know about them (e.g., unknowingly having unpaid tickets). That does happen. However, these actually help fix that system. I originally thought they were outrageous, but really it's just the police catching up with technology.

Now, with all of that said, these scans are currently not kept in the system for longer than it takes to scan and return a result, unlike most manually entered searches by an officer/trooper. I definitely do not agree with changing it to the proposed approach.

it has to back-fire. plan on it, if you dare.

[TheGratefulNet]

imagine this: suppose there is data stored that has location information on 'everyone'. perhaps before sent to disk, some 'special entries' will always get pruned. the ruling class usually has exceptions architected in for them, so we should expect there to be special magic files of opt-out but no official acknowledgement that these do exist.

that as may be, suppose the data grows over the years and then there's the eventual break-in. suppose son-of-lolzsec (again, years from now) gets this info, normalizes it so that it looks for who is *not* listed in the day to day tracking and, well, think of that.

also think that once the history/data is hacked, a lot of people are going to be exposed. ie, public figures will probably be searched for, first.

law talking guys, this is for you. think about this before you take steps to increase the police-stateness. assume that some hacking group will be able to break into the info and know all this about *everyone*. and you are part of everyone.

think about it, lawmakers and law officers. think about how info can and WILL be used against you, should you push the public too far.

you have power from the people because we *let* you have it. if you cross too far over into orwell, people may want to retake their country.

best not to push things too far. best to NOT cross this line, ever, to begin with. best for all of us, really.

please consider this as just plain old wisdom.

Tracking Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

This is okay. Turn about is fair play, we need to start tracking the cop cars locations all the time, look at their patterns and see how they like it.

solution

[scharkalvin]

Drive car though mud. Don't wash car.

What about an opt out?

[Dutchmaan]

If they are going to track people who have not committed any crime, then there should definitely be a way to opt out of the system, and if there is not way to opt out then it should be fully legal for the public to track and post the locations and habits of law enforcement officials in a public space. After all, we as the public have just as much right to protect ourselves from potential corrupt officers as the police would have to track potential criminals, anything less makes us less then citizens and the police go from public servants to public masters, which is likely how they view themselves anyway.

Re:if a govt. does it, it's not?

[lgw]

Notice how much fun we would have if citizens reported the locations of all the police cars and speed traps?

Trapster and Speedtrapmap aren't illegal yet, thank goodness.

Universal surveillance is inevitable.

[ebusinessmedia1]

I don't like this any more than you do. However, I do see the logic in arguments made to show that *responsible and transparent* surveillance can help keep a society safe, *if* surveillance is not abused.

For instance, how are we going to prevent small groups of people from doing ungodly amounts of real harm (via violence) as the means to do that becomes more and more easy to access. Just look at Bill Joy's now-famous essay - "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us", written some years ago, to get a clear idea where we're headed http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html.

The key here is that all surveillance activity that takes place in a Democratic society *must* be transparent. You and I should be able to know when , where, for how long, for what reason, and by whom we have been the subject of surveillance *on demand*.

Two additional problems, yet to be solved accompany the coming of universal surveillance:

1) Massive retraining and transparent accountability of *all* persons involved in surveillance, with harsh penalties dolled out for abuse.

2) Keeping the most dangerous among us from knowing how and when they are subjects of surveillance. This is a complex problem, because it also deals with the "mission creep" of those who are governing surveillance systems, because they get to decide what and who is considered "dangerous". Thus, the absolute importance of #!, above.

Again, I don't like the idea of being watched; I don't like the idea of being groped at an airport; or, taking my shoes off before I board a plane; or, being made the subject of search based on nationality or skin color; or, the chilling impact that comes from having certain kinds of speech assumed as "terrorist", if they're clearly not intended to be so.

We are approaching a time when we *must* make ourselves aware of the impending trend toward universal surveillance - because it *is* going to happen. The advantage we have in a Democratic culture is to insist on and legislate transparency, and do everything we can to insure that abuses are not institutionalized, and kept to an absolute minimum, otherwise.

Re:Universal surveillance is inevitable.

[mabhatter654]

This isn't "survailance" this is massive record keeping... So they can FIND something you did wrong LATER. that is against the spirit of the Constitution as you can possibly get.

This isn't tagging you for billing a road toll. It is not doing a one-time check for parking violations... This is just recording what every car is doing..

Remember, POLICE organizations have said that speed trap or check point apps populated by CITIZENS are a threat to law enforcement... How is this any different?

So, does anybody know a way to build a license plate grabber, that can post to a DB in real time. It would seem if enough people set them up around town the could set up a public tracking service. Sounds like fun!

What about cellphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add the tags/plates tracking information to the cellphone tracking information and you got almost 100% of the population.. plus, cellphones are probably easier to track.

License Plate Bracket

[Fnord666]

Time to build and market a license plate bracket that is loaded with IR LEDs to overload the camera's sensor. It could be powered from a tap off of the license plate light socket, at least in the back. You would want to run it off of a source that is always on when the ignition is on.

Re:License Plate Bracket

[HaloZero]

The sensor alarm's the cops console in this case. They may or may not pull you over and issue a ticket for an equipment issue - generic or otherwise.
 
Your good passive defenses include:
  - Using a full plate cover which filters UV or is smoke-colored
  - Using a full plate cover with magic tape on the inside to change the IR appearance of the actual lettering of your plate.
  - Not washing your car.

Oh Noes

[diemuzi]

Oh no, the local government is going to track you. Wake up, they've been doing it since the day you were born and given that little piece of paper called a Birth Certificate. Then you paid the state to track you even more when you got a Drivers License and you paid even more when you bought a car and had to buy a license plate. Heck, you post alone is probably being tracked now too. Watch you, they're coming for you next! Who care's, when you're driving down the road and a cop passes you, you might think for a second did he just try and track me? But 2 minutes later you won't even remember having that thought. Not to mention, if something did happen to your car IE: getting stolen. I would think you'd want as much help as possible as to where your car might be located OR even better, where it's heading! Now if the public had access to this data, sure I'd probably be upset then. But not over this...

New York State already does this

[HaloZero]

The State of New York (atleast, out in the Western bit, where I live) already engages in this practice. A lot of the municipalities and law enforcement agencies here have taken advantage of state and federal money to equip cruisers with the Remington Plate Reader (read: http://www.elsag.com/detail.asp?i=17). The cars use the vehicles onboard AVL, combined with the results of the plate reader, and transmits the location of the cruiser with what plates its spotted back to the State Police.

Not 1984

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't match the spirit of the novel until they put devices in our cars that can report on our position in real time while simultaneously transmitting audio and video as well.

Like, you know, they way your smartphone can be remotely activated to do, even when turned off.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/12/can_you_hear_me.html

The New Pledge of Allegiance

[MajorBlunder]

"One nation, under surveillance."

Already in California

[Anonymous Coward]

Already in practice here. Patrol cars are being outfitted with 4-6 camera systems facing different directions. Reading is done via IR and works in the dark. The CHP, county sheriffs, and now local PDs are getting them. The system records: the IR image of the plate, the OCR reading of the plate, a visual picture of the plate, a visual picture of the car, GPS coordinates, geo-located address from the coordinates, and a timestamp. Additionally, there are stand alone plate readers being installed along busy roads and intersections that slurp in this data. Also, plate readers hit everyone crossing the border.

All this is placed in a database searchable state wide and with the Feds. I've long thought people are gonna freak when they truly understand how widespread this is. In a good single 10 hour shift I can read 5,000+ plates.

For what its worth, I've personally solved crimes with this. We are talking from kidnappings to robberies to homicides. It's widely used and the extent of its usefulness can't be overstated.

Is it legal? It certainly doesn't violate the letter of the law, but arguably violates the spirit.

IAAC (I am a cop).

GIGO

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem with these data mines, is that they can be corrupted fairly easily.

If I don't like the guy my daughter is dating, i can just add his license plate number to the list of plates seen at the crime, drop one of his socks into the crime scene and he'll never be a problem again. How would anyone ever know I had done this? Is there an audit trail? Hell, not even Wikipedia can keep their data clean!

This is nothing. Read about the next possible ste

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a what if the police scanned at every intersection.

http://before2525.blogspot.com/2011/07/license-plate-recognition.html

Car on every corner program

[Anonymous Coward]

And in related news the MA police department no longer returns their vehicles to the station at night. Instead they've implemented the "Car on every Corner" program. Cars are retired to street corners until the following shift. Swat vans provide police transportation to and from police vehicles.

Freedom of Choice still exists

[CozmicCharlie]

I do have a problem with this. I do not have a problem with refusing to travel to or through Mass.. I also do not have a problem with not living in Mass., not doing business in Mass., etc. I encourage anyone who feels the same to do the same. If the people who currently live in Mass. don't like this, then they can cast their votes against it in many ways, either at their polling place on election day or by picking-up and moving to a different state. New Hampshire is not that far away... Check out the Free State Project [http://http://freestateproject.org/] to learn more really cool reasons to move to New Hampshire. We always have alternatives.

Work Around?

[Anonymous Coward]

How 'bout a License Plate Frame containing a large array of ultra-bright IR-LEDs? These should overwhelm the CCD sensors in the cameras, showing only a white glarey blur where the license plate is, but still be un-detectable to the human eye, allowing normal viewing of the license plates by people.

I'd bet there'd be quite a market for something like that!

Another good reason...

[joerog]

Another good reason to move out of the country! America is rapidly becoming a police state. Freedoms we once took for granted are now abrogated in the name of 'homeland security'. I travel to the states once or twice a year and the entire time I am there I feel like I am being watched, restricted and at the mercy of the whims of whoever is in charge. When I land back home I feel safe again.

Re:if a govt. does it, it's not?

[Anonymous Coward]

In my town, public radio regularly reports the locations of speed traps. Police cars are a little harder to track.

What does Unreasonable mean?

[niftymitch]

What does Unreasonable mean?

To scan plates and match against a list of
wants and warrants does not bother me. That
is for all practical purposes the equivalent
of a paper lookup list.

To keep the information after a negative match
is documentation of the life of citizens involved in normal life.
That is unreasonable search and an invasion of privacy
that today would NOT be expected -- expectation of
privacy.

One positive is that each entry is also a log entry for
the location and movement of the squad car and the officers in
it. It is also a list of witnesses that can be called
to prosecute abuse of power problems. Why yes,
the squad car was driving erratically with aggression
without its lights and sirens on. These 50000 data
points prove that the officers consistently and blatantly
drives at speeds well in excess of posted speeds
in disregard to posted speeds.

When I park my car can I put a cover on the plate

[Anonymous Coward]

That reads: "Fuck off, pig."

Re:if a govt. does it, it's not?

[Coren22]

http://www.trapster.com/

Check it out and enjoy.