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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."
Fascism.
... of making a reasonable and thoughtful comment. Instead, I'm going to just say "fuck you Massachusetts," because that's really all they deserve.
You know what else would get suspended and uninsured drivers off the roads? BANNING CARS!
Cite?
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'd like to propose a new line of designer license plate, the CAPTCHA-plate. You heard it here first, folks.
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.
You kill the cops while they're standing at the doughnut counter, then torch their car.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
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.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
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.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
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.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."