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Canada's Massive Public Traffic Surveillance System
New submitter cqwww writes "A small magazine in Victoria, BC just uncovered a massive public traffic surveillance system deployed in Canada. Here's a quote from the article: 'Normally, area police manually key in plate numbers to check suspicious cars in the databases of the Canadian Police Information Center and ICBC. With [Automatic License Plate Recognition], for $27,000, a police cruiser is mounted with two cameras and software that can read license plates on both passing and stationary cars. According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy. ... In August 2011, VicPD Information and Privacy Manager Debra Taylor called me to explain that, even though VicPD had the ALPR system in one of their cruisers, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] ran the system, and I should contact them for any information. "We actually don’t have a program," Taylor said. "We don’t have any documents per se." ... A month later, Taylor handed over 600 pages. ... [The claim they kept no documents] was apparently only in reference to digital information. VicPD had kept 500 pages of written, hard-copy logs of every ALPR hit they’d ever seen.'"
Anyone of those can trigger the boys in blue to give you a tug.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
No offense but I'm sure there are folks with far greater imaginations than yours (in this case) who will come up with many ways this could be used. Many uses of which I'm sure would definitely pertain to your rights, and not necessarily in a positive way.
The problem is they keep the logs, instead of comparing the read plates to a known search list and discarding the ones they were not looking for immediately. That way, they basically collect survelilance data on everyone "just in case they need it later". The only data that can not be misused is the data that does not exist, period.
The system has been in Quebec for several months now. They are using it mostly to find folks who haven't paid their drivers registration. They say they will not use it to find folks with outstanding tickets. The traffic divisions get all the big bucks. It's a real cash cow for the government. It was all over the news here though so there was nothing to really uncover. You can see the equipment and every once in a while I see a provincial car cruising slowly along the shoulder of the road with an array of equipment bolted to the roof scanning. Over here as far as I know though it's not used by local police yet.
cheers
Well, they could sell or give the info to auto insurance companies. By gathering data on which cars are where in relation to traffic accidents and traffic density, the insurance companies are bound to use that data to adjust their premium rates. And the tinfoil hat brigadier in me has the feeling they won't decrease.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I'm with the AC on this one. Normally I'm in the tinfoil hat crowd myself, and I detest the "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide or to fear" argument... but I honestly can't see how this information could be abused. It's not a violation of any privacy rights -- I'm out in public along with the data on my vehicle. It doesn't deny me any freedom of movement, it doesn't reveal my stash of weed or guns hidden under the seat, it doesn't make them privy to my whispered conversation about plans to rob a bank or blow up the nearest Chuck E. Cheese's. So what constitutional rights are being curtailed or even threatened?
On the other hand, it CAN more quickly locate my car if it is stolen or the gardener who let himself in and abducted my child; it will (as others have pointed out elsewhere in this topic) also make it easier to check for outstanding warrants or unpaid traffic tickets. As someone who has had my own share of speeding tickets, I still can't object to that -- it was my own fault for getting the tickets, and if I don't pay them on time, it's my own fault for making the problem worse when (not if) I get caught.
The cops aren't going to jump out guns blazing or taze the crap out of you just because the automatic plate reader flagged your car as possibly stolen.
Just like they would never pull someone over and end up tazing the crap out of them because their license plate frame was crooked.
Oh... well, er...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Stop the hyperbole. 1984 had cameras in every room in every house, and televisions broadcasting propaganda 24/7 that couldn't be turned off. Entrapment was both legal and encouraged to catch people breaking the law. If you want to put a soundproof room in your house to have a place you can guarantee you can't be snooped on no one is going to stop you. No one is going to arrest you for reading a history or politics book, even if it is about how great communism is. Even if you go grab a copy of the Anarchists Cookbook and get arrested for it no one is going to try to torture you into loving America while you're in prison. Anyone who thinks we're in 1984 hasn't read 1984.
Dear Mr/Mrs/Miss tbird81,
Your vehicle has been identified on several occasions frequenting liquor stores. Statistically, we find that drivers who fit this behavior pattern tend to be riskier drivers and poor insurance risks. Consequently, we are raising your liability insurance rates.
Signed, Your friendly insurance company.
Have gnu, will travel.