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Boston Police Stop Scanning Registration Plates, For Now
Ars Technica reports that after journalists gained access to a database readout showing a sample of the data gathered by the 14 registration plate scanners that had been in use by the Boston police and analyzed some of that data with embarrassing results, the police force has announced it will suspend use of the scanners indefinitely. Among other things, the data dump (which was not quite as thoroughly scrubbed as the police department had intended it to be) showed that a stolen motorcycle was detected by the cameras 59 times and red-flagged, but evidently no action was taken to recover it.
don't forget the time they shutdown the city over a sponge bob square pants lite brite.
The Ars T "story" is simply a re-hash of this (from the Boston Globe):
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/14/boston-police-suspend-use-high-tech-licence-plate-readers-amid-privacy-concerns/B2hy9UIzC7KzebnGyQ0JNM/story.html
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Except when it comes to the details of the motorcycle case in particular, it's baffling that it wasn't recovered. It passed by the same camera something like 40 times, on sequential days, in the same half hour period. Shit, you can just station a cop there and let them write speeding tickets for 2-3 days, and they'd be bound to run into it.
http://boingboing.net/2009/01/06/naughty-speed-camera.html
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/12/dont-like-speed-cameras-use-them-to-punk-your-enemies/
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
There's a reason nothing of any worth comes out of Boston.
Except, you know, the internet.
But yeah, nothing of any real worth.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.