Slashdot Mirror
ACLU Study Says Police Cameras Create Database of Our Movements
puddingebola writes "The ACLU has published a study saying the widespread use of police and traffic cameras has made it possible to track individual's movements, even across multiple jurisdictions. From the article, 'While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to use GPS to track a car, networks of plate scanners allow police effectively to track a driver's location, sometimes several times every day, with few legal restrictions. The ACLU says the scanners are assembling a "single, high-resolution image of our lives." "There's just a fundamental question of whether we're going to live in a society where these dragnet surveillance systems become routine," said Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the organization. The group is proposing that police departments immediately delete any records of cars not linked to any crime.'"
This is the backstory that hasn't been covered. It's not about the NSA or Google or Microsoft.
It's about Moore's Law and optical fiber and storage densities and the Internet.
Soon it will be about robotics and AI.
"There's just a fundamental question of whether we're going to live in a society where these dragnet surveillance systems become routine," said Catherine Crump
The answer is yes, we will, because not enough people care. Just as many people in the USA are in favor of these programs to "keep us safe from the omg terrorists!" as oppose them, according to many polls.
Hell the media hasn't even been talking about the issues, they've been playing up the celeb angle.
Our society is trending towards a total surveillance state, and people don't care enough to do anything about it. They'll keep voting for the same two parties.
Scan the plate to make sure its not hot listed, then delete the info you creeper
Create network of private cameras and open source distributed back end. Collect and record all the data, make it available for anyone, and add OpenStreetMap style metadata editing. Then users can flag vehicles of interest, like those owned by Law Enforcement, politicians, lawyers. If dragnets are really constitutional, then nobody should mind, right?
While the capabilities to do this are there, can the local police stations afford it? Or would they outsource it to the NSA (who in turn outsources to a private contractor) so they can claim they are not doing it?
If this is the future we are looking forward to, maybe it is a time for transparency in the local governments & police. Let's face it, while this has some good uses, the ability to easily abuse it is way too high. And it will be abused because that is what we humans do when we have no oversight (sometimes even when we do).
If we want to still have freedoms in America, we have to change the way our government works. We have to reign in the abuse of power that happens at all levels. Give no one total power and make sure there is always oversight.
Be seeing you...
A couple of years ago, I was driving behind a cop who initially appeared interested in the car ahead of him. That car prepared to make a left turn, and the officer signaled the same, and after I passed them (at about 35-40MPH) within two or three seconds he disengaged from the other guy and came after me, lights flashing.
Turns out my registration had expired, which is what he told me he pulled me over for. No way possible he could have visually read my plate and run it in the time he had - so I wondered if there were license-plate reading cameras in some LEO vehicles, then dismissed the idea as silly. Now it doesn't sound so far-fetched. Anyone have any direct knowledge of systems like this?
Right wing nut jobs have been screaming about this for decades. Municipalities keep putting these cameras and phone taps in place in the name of safety, both personal and the unnamed war (crime, terrorism, even poverty.) Unfortunately these measures don't stop crime. At best they help find the person(s) who did the deed a little faster.
If you say we need more cameras, need I remind you of the Boston bombing. It was a low tech pressure cooker bomb in backpack that easily got past heighten surveillance at a marathon. How many days did it take to find the people who did it? It was people that found them, not cameras.
Technology in the wrong hands leads to Orwell's nightmare and the direction of the Nazi nationalism before World War II. Good governments can handle this kind of power. But we've seen major abuses of this kind of power from Bush senior through to Obama's drones in our government. Governments, especial large ones, easily get corrupted or hung up on political correctness so they keep getting re-elected. Stop watching every move I make if I'm not doing anything wrong.
I'll end this rant with two quotes/cliches:
* With great power comes great responsibility
* Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean you're wrong.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I manage IT for a small city whose police department has two patrol vehicles equipped with LPRs. Officers download an updated hotlist of expired and stolen plates daily to the PCs in those cars and have the LPR software running while they patrol and answer calls. Our official policy is to let data expire from the PCs after 40 days. While the software has the optional capability to centrally gather reads and archive them, we've never bothered to implement it. The only inquiry we've had regarding plate reads in the last three years was from the NYCLU, wanting to know our data handling policies.
That's not to say that there isn't a very creepy Orwellian aspect to the proliferation of this technology. With enough zealots in the right places, this stuff is odious.
ride a bike... or walk.
They've been doing this for ages here in the UK.
When something happens the police also go into all the shops in the area and take their video data too. Also in central London we have the Congestion Charge. A camera based entry exit system. The people of England have paid for surveillance under the guise of easing congestion/pollution (and catching peodfiles should that ball'o'crap get the opportunity to manifest).
CCTV hasn't stop any crime. but it does give awful low res images for news teams to air.
Of no one.
Nope, not this time. I cannot find any room for humor as I read this and put together the sum total of all we have learned so far--moreover mostly recently--about domestic surveillance. Where will it end? Can we stop it and reverse it, or are we fucked for sure? What may come to light next? As an American I am a patriot regarding the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding ideals of my nation. But, at the same time, the reality we are now facing is harsh, confusing, desperate, and scary. I don't know what to think about my country anymore; our government has declared that every citizen is a criminal suspect subject to all kinds of constant surveillance, it's like they're just waiting for a slip up that gets you busted--mind your thoughts, thinking the wrong thing, or worse saying the wrong thing, could one day soon be your undoing.
It's not our fault, but maybe we could have done more to prevent this. And so it goes...
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
"There's just a fundamental question of whether we're going to live in a society where these dragnet surveillance systems become routine,"
Have you been asleep for the last 20 years or what?
Someone should have listened to those 'conspiracy nutjobs' a long time ago. Instead we made fun of them and told them to get more tinfoil for their hats...
The UK is far worst with 1 CCTV camera for every 12 people.. take a look at this recent article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2359825/One-CCTV-12-people-Surveillance-soars-care-homes-hospitals-schools.html
On top of that we also have ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition); facial recognition systems in some shops bars etc!
It does make me wonder though; what would happen when someone develops some malware that affects CCTV and similar systems? I think it is only a matter of time... just look at Stuxnet.
All cows eat grass!
"These dragnet surveillance systems" need a name that conveys the real impact - think something like "Sauron's eye" or "Gestapoization".
Yet another great reason to ride your bicycle!
A group of private individuals could do the same - and who is to say they don't already?
Companies already use plate tracking for permitting cars into their parking lots - nothing to stop them pointing them at the street outside and recording the movements of vehicles outside their sites.
is in primaries and at the ballot box. And even then, we need to be far more careful about who we put in office. Most of the people we can actually count on will not come with D or R next to their name, and you can pretty well bet that they won't be incumbents in over 90% of races.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The problem I have with the ACLU argument is that nobody argues that this same activity (following a person around in public to see where they go) is a big problem if the cops do it manually. People are getting worried now just because cameras and computers are allowing them to perform the same kinds of surveilence much more efficiently. But the engineer in me insists that either the base activity is OK, or it isn't. If it is OK, then it ought to be OK for the police to do it as efficiently (and cheaply) as possible. Conversely, if tracking a person with cameras and computer assistance isn't OK, then it shouldn't be OK to do it the old-fashioned manual way either.
Surveillance is not the problem per se. The problem is when people (read, government officials) can actually make use of the data without oversight.
If they needed a search warrant to do a database search of the video archives, then I would be fine with that. I would also want to see reasonable limitations on data retention by law enforcement agencies -- not to exceed the statue of limitations for felony crimes.
As others have said, the surveillance genie is out of the bottle. I believe it's time to talk instead about putting law enforcement agencies on a very short leash with regard to how they can use information systems. They will whine and moan that it "makes it harder to to catch criminals." It is really time to push back and say, "making your job easy is less of a priority than preventing crooked cops from abusing the public trust."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Time to allow people to cover license plates then. It amounts to forced self-incrimination.
Here is Portsmouth Virginia, the local government hired a private company to drive around the city with license plate scanners and boot any car it found where the owner was flagged for being behind on paying taxes to the city. Didn't matter if that left the owner stranded. If you didn't have the money immediately to pay your overdue taxes, better find a new way to get to work.
In Portsmouth, pay personal property taxes or get the boot
And if we didn't voluntary tag ourselves with our phones, they probably would be compulsory
Without these systems, how are we going to catch Dexter!?
With all the surveillance we should track police and officials misusing power. Though they'd never allow that even if it was legal...
Even as governments increase their secrecy, they demand increasing ability to track and spy on their subjects.
Virginia is a "pilot" state for the on-line identity system that is being promoted by Microsoft and will be used for both private and government transactions. This is being run and promoted by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).
The Cross Sector Digital Identity Initiative (CSDII), led by AAMVA is developing technology that will demonstrate the acceptance of commercial identity provider credentials by Virginia state government, including securely verifying identities online with the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. The pilot plans to make this technology available for voluntary access to on-line state services over the course of the project. State governments, including Virginia, are exploring leveraging commercial identity providers for secure online access to state government websites, ostensibly "as a means to improve customer service and reduce the costs associated with online identity management". In the case of sensitive government transactions, the credential is “leveled up” to higher assurances of identity verification and security.
Pilot partner Microsoft is providing a secure, privacy-enhancing cloud identity service, Customer Partner and Identity Manager (CPIM), and OpenID-based interoperable Windows Accounts to pilot participants. The pilot will also explore increasing the security of the Windows Account and other pilot interoperable credentials by enabling the Biometric Signature ID multifactor authentication solution, BioSig-ID. The BioSig-ID solution measures unique behavioral characteristics as the user draws a password on the computer screen, deriving an additional factor of authentication to supplement user name and password and thereby increasing account security in a user friendly fashion.
On the association's web site is the Policy Positions PDF document, which connects Real ID to PRISM. Page 15 includes:
What they don't tell you is that PRISM is the same system used for collecting and storing communications by the NSA. How convenient! So not only will they have all personal information about you, they will have all your communications integrated into one convenient data storage system.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
How is tracking a driver's location, "sometimes several times every day" a "high-resolution image of our lives"?
Technology is no longer just a crutch. It's a yoke.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
At every minor to above intersection, each lane has its own camera doing license plate recognition. That's over the whole, 1M count city, including most suburbs. No one talks about it. These stop light lane cameras have been here for close to 10 years, give or take.
It's "high resolution" the same way that 1024x768 computer screens were high resolution at the time they were introduced, and the same way that 1080p "high def" screens are high-definition: you have to compare it to what came before.
In the old days the police had your place of residence (based on driver's license and car registration details), and perhaps your work address. If you had a criminal record (traffic/parking tickets, arrests, etc) then they'd have documentation on where you may have driven or parked your car on a few specific days. If that gave them more than 5 data points on an average citizen a year that would be a lot of info. To know your route to work, shopping habits, associates, etc would require long-term surveillance (i.e. an officer's actual time) AND a court order.
In comparison, having multiple (automated!) cameras scanning plates 24/7 around the city gives them your daily driving routes basically for free (no cop salary to pay), potentially skirts the warrant requirements (this really needs to be challenged), and with a little more work they can correlate it to others to make a list of your associates. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of location data points per vehicle per day, depending on the number of cameras deployed. These days it seems like they can also request your phone records at a drop of a hat and get your list of associates for free, too. The phone company will happily give the police your exact location as well.
Seriously, it's a wet dream for a police state. And you're right, it's like upgrading from a single line on an oscilloscope to a fuzzy black-and white television; calling it high-resolution is a bit of a stretch. There's a lot more they could be doing and may be able to do in the future. In the mean time it's still a huge upgrade in Police capability and it's worth our time to discuss whether we even want them to have that b/w screen.
I thought in the not-too-distant future, the most precious commodity would be potable water.
Nope.
The most precious thing the Rich and Powerful will brag about possesing in the years to come is real, actual, tangible privacy.
Good. Now they KNOW how farking long it takes for me to get home.
Stop dragging your feet and fix the exit 9 connector and that whole farkup where 3 and 4 go down to two lanes; people can't figure that shiat out, it breaks their tiny brains.
Please go die in a fire.
You could just get a new plate every year. Oh never mind the person who had it before you was a drug dealer so now you are screwed.
First when you are in public you have no expectation of privacy. (This includes the police who can be videoed while in public). Anything that happens in the public space for good or ill is subject to snooping neighbors and anyone else that can see your actions.
Second after working with these systems for a few years now you find that the fonts used on each States Plates are different. Here in North Carolina plates from Virgina don't read as accurately and must be manually corrected. Plates out side the normal read less accurately (ie plates that start with a Special mark Team Logos etc). The Standard NC plate has a white reflective background with dark letters. However, plates that have darker backgrounds and dark letters are hard for the Plate readers to OCR. Trust me a lot of plates that must be manually corrected are never recorded. Films and sprays don't work. Most cameras have a color and a IR lens. The picture that is the most readable is automatically saved so if you can read it so can a camera.
Third we should be screaming about the Plugin devices to get better insurance rates. Most companies that use the devices are either giving the data to your local states or in the process of having that information shared. All in the name of a discount.
The ACLU says the scanners are assembling a "single, high-resolution image of our lives."
The resolution of the image is how often a license plate is scanned and the location stored. It is not a high resolution scan for the following reasons;
1. Not all police cars are scanning all the time.
2. Not all police cars have license plate scanners.
3. License plates are not visible/decipherable by the scanner all the time.
At best a license plate will be scanned a couple of times a day. That is not a very hi resolution image of a life.
I appreciate your civic-mindedness.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This kind of surveillance is fortunately illegal for the police to do in New Hampshire.
Liberty in your lifetime
A car does not equal a person, which is why they can do what they do. A car can be driven by multiple persons on the same day so they cant really track you just by looking at where your car goes. Manual collection also can do the same . I fear my store loyalty cards, for which there is very little control, more than a plate tracking device.
No, really? /s
The Police state! Well forget it!