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Minneapolis Police Catalog License Plates and Location Data
tripleevenfall writes "The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Minneapolis police used automated scanning technology to log location data for over 800,000 license plates in June alone, with 4.9 million scans having taken place this year. The data includes the date, time, and location where the plate was seen. Worse, it appears this data is compiled and stored for up to a year and is disclosed to anyone who asks for it."
And nothing will come of it. The police will continue to do things exactly as they are now, and we'll continue to lose more of our privacy and civil rights every day. Oh, perhaps they'll throw us a bone by making it harder (although not impossible) to obtain their stored data, but the data will still be there. They won't give up that "valuable tool in the War Against Crime" and the courts will side with them, as they always have when this sort of thing comes up.
Start voting for politicians who will protect your rights and stop voting for just whichever idiot happens to be a member of your party.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
> Start voting for politicians who will protect your rights
I'd love to. Show me one
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
Step 1 : Request data on every member of the City Council (or whatever the local government equivalent is).
Step 2 : Find out who's "daily routine" includes frequent trips to a local strip club, and who is spending the night at locations not their home.
Step 3 : Publish anonymously in wikileaks.
Step 4 : Watch this policy change amazingly fast.
Most people don't care about privacy as much as they care about wedge issues. Sad but true.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Can I put a camera on my front yard that records license plates, and then feed that into a computer system that creates similar logs?.
Can I put a camera on the roof of my business to do this?
Can Starbucks or McDonalds put a camera on top of every store location and track vehicles nationwide?
Someone should log the Minneapolis police; somehow I think they'd object.
Actually, in Minnesota, you can be charged with a felony for giving people any warning of an upcoming speed trap. You can also be charged with one for providing information about the police' whereabouts. The first thing authority does whenever it violates your privacy is exempt itself from similar treatment. This is how you periodically hear about an off-duty police officer in plain clothes getting into a fight with someone -- even if they were the aggressor, and even if they fail to identify themselves as a police officer, the other person still goes to jail for many years for striking an officer. Or that case of how a man accidentally bumped into the President in a crowd, while waiting to shake his hand, and was then carried away by the Secret Service and held without a trial for several months because he "made a physical threat against the President."
Government agents can abuse whomever they want, whenever they want, for as long as they want. And you will take it, Citizen, or things will get even worse for you... as well as your family and friends.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This "ideal America". It actually existed? Despite the Indian wars, slavery, The Aliens and Sedition act, whiskey (and various others) rebellion, etc.? Might be a good idea to reread your history there. It wasn't exactly peaches and cream between the states and the feds then either. All things considered, I feel better off in the here and now. Either way, the "system" cannot prevent us from electing who we wish into office, not until somebody puts a gun to our heads and tells us who to vote for.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”