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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.'"
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?
The federal government has been making grants to local police departments that allow them buy the equipment. There is no way the NSA is going to get involved, they are all about signals intelligence, not the Department of Motor Vehicles.
It should be much easier to get the city or county council, or maybe the state, to regulate this than trying to do it through the federal government. After all, police departments in the US are local jurisdiction except for the relatively small state police agencies.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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.
It's getting cheaper all the time. It's exactly what's going on in London, with the massive array of CCTV cameras there, but they quite refuse to share the data with citizens for tracking personal or non-political crime (such as personal assault or stolen luggage).
Been there, done that, got tracked and questioned about my presence at an anarchist rally. But the same network was left unused for tracking who stole my luggage or smashed my car windows.
Hey, I have an idea...why don't all of the luddites come out of the woodwork on Slashdot, the direct implication of their ideas which can only be that government must be restricted from using certain technology because it "could be abused". I have news for you: technology will ALWAYS make the job of government -- or anyone who uses it -- easier. That is why it is the LAW, not the technology, that is paramount. If you still want to believe the government is going to ignore the law and "do what it wants to do anyway", then there is no rational debate that can be had.
Also, you are completely, totally, 100% wrong about NSA, in two major ways:
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.
2. NSA cannot use contractors to "claim it isn't doing something." I have no idea where this completely false trope started, but it can't use contractors, second party nations, or anyone else to do things it can't do itself. This fact is extensively enshrined in law and policy, the chief guidance being USSID SP0018. (An older version is available for reading.)
"This is the backstory that hasn't been covered."
In this state it is illegal for police to look up your license plate unless they have at least "reasonable suspicion" that there has been either a crime (or traffic violation). They have to record their reason(s) for looking up information in the police database system.
That is not to say they never do it improperly. But when they have been caught, they were not just given a slap on the wrist. One cop a few years back was caught using the police data system to look up information on his girlfriend. He is no longer a policeman. (Not the only such case, either.)
Here in Seattle the traffic cameras are available for anyone to look at on the Dept. of Transportation web site, to check traffic. One day my wife and my niece were going to the mall, and out of curiosity I decided to look at the intervening traffic cams. Because of the timing of the stoplights I was able to see them on 4 of the 6 cameras between home and the mall. That was seven or eight years ago, there are a lot more cameras available to look at now.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
That ended when politicians recognized that building a giant nanny state would require more and more federal control, and about half the US demographic agrees that's the goal of federal government.
Duckspeak Fail.
A "Nanny State" is one that limits your freedom "for your own good". A Police State is one that limits your freedom for its own good.
Yes, I know that we're supposed to be submitting to this whole deal "because it keeps us safe from the big bad evil terrorists".
But consider who one of the the biggest proponents of Prism is: Dick Cheney. If he's your ideal of a Nanny, you're kinkier than most of us, I think.