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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.