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ACLU Study Says Police Cameras Create Database of Our Movements

Posted by samzenpus on from the somebody's-watching-me dept.

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.'"

10 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Well, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. the answer is yes, we will by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

    1. Re:the answer is yes, we will by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "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.

      We aren't merely surveilled, however, we're self-surveilling. In addition to government cameras everywhere, people put up webcams, buy into Google Street View, post their entire lives on Facebook, etc., etc., etc.

      This isn't entirely a bad thing. Not all of the Boston Bombing images came from government cameras, for example. Enough people get enough benefit from "Fishbowl Society" that I don't think it likely that we'll get that genie back in the bottle.

      But if we can't turn back to more private times, we need to at least establish some acceptable rules for what we have. Asymmetric intelligence (a la NSA) is a threat to liberty. Basic human dignity requires that we be circumspect about what we share. And general data, such as traffic cams and telephone records should have very strict rules about both access and retention. You shouldn't be able to simply march in, wave a flag with an eagle on it saying "National Security" and be able to plunder at will.

    2. Re:the answer is yes, we will by bondsbw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You shouldn't be able to simply march in, wave a flag with an eagle on it saying "National Security" and be able to plunder at will.

      There was a time when the 9th Amendment to the US Constitution meant something... such as the ability to simply say "No" to the federal government.

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
  3. Turn the tables... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Turn the tables... by spacepimp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... Then get flagged as a terror threat for monitoring police activity and obstructing justice. They may want to question you about a few of your most recent Google searches about "Open Source Software" as well, just to kick you in the nuts a little harder.

  4. Yes they can do that, but are they? by Nyder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...
    1. Re:Yes they can do that, but are they? by hawguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1. NSA's mission, to the exclusion of nearly everything else, is FOREIGN signals intelligence. I know you think they're doing a lot of other things, but they're not. They would never get involved in anything like this. (I realize you may have been making the comment tongue-in-cheek.) If ANY federal agency would be involved, it would be the FBI -- and they are, in fact, because they're the ones who keep the national databases that many state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies use.

      But isn't the NSA sucking up data on *every* phone call (whether its an overseas call or purely domestic) "just in case" it involves a foreigner? Why wouldn't they also want to suck up data from every police camera "just in case" it tracks a car driven by a foreigner? Even terrorists know that phones can be tracked, so if the NSA really is tracking terrorists why wouldn't they want to be able to track them by license plate even if they leave the phone at home?

  5. Re:1984 by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good governments can handle this kind of power.

    Even if that were true, good governments don't stay good. This is also the sort of power that can make a government go bad. It gives them too much power over the citizenry.

  6. Re:Quantity has a quality all its own? by ScottCooperDotNet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When the police manually trail someone, they usually have a reasonable suspicion to do so. When police electronically trail everyone, regardless of even a hint of crime, that becomes a system ripe for abuse.

    In ethics, not everything is a 1 or a 0.