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.

Comments

Re:The police have no ability to control motorcycl

[Phyrexia]

From TFA:

One Harley Davidson motorcycle that had been reported stolen passed license plate scanners a total of 59 times between Oct. 19, 2012, and March 13, 2013. It was often recorded on sequential days or multiple times in a single day, all by the same scanner and almost always within the same half-hour span in the early evening.

The issue here is not cyclists driving like assholes.

Re: we have more important issues

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget the time they shutdown the city over a sponge bob square pants lite brite.

The machine seems to be working ok.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The problem is not the scanners are producing wrong reports or misreading the plates. Looks like no one is bothering to follow up on the alerts triggered by these scanners. Apparently the police were more interested in trying to detect movement of people, though the systems was allegedly installed to report stolen vehicles. Even the ars technica report is more than a year old. May be the police are just slow, to react to anything, from the scanner report to ars technica.

Anyway the license plate scanners are not going to work. There was this news report about some precocious teens, taking a picture of the license plate of a teacher they did not like, printing it, pasting it over their own number plates and went through several red-light cameras and triggered a number of tickets for that poor teacher. So it ain't gonna work. Criminals are two steps ahead of the cops, they will easy mark some sap and pass the blame on them, use these cameras to create iron-clad alibi etc. Glad it is gone.

Re:The machine seems to be working ok.

[mariox19]

Apparently the police were more interested in trying to detect movement of people []

That would be my concern too, but for the fact that I suspect something else entirely.

I'm going to guess that someone in industry, eager to sell a product, got together with someone at the police department, eager to carve out a brand new, bureaucratic niche for himself; and putting these two together is why the scanners got bought—not for any legitimate police work. The cops in their cars don't really care about the scanners, and neither do their superiors; because catching stolen cars doesn't do as much for revenue generation as does writing tickets for expired registrations, pulling over drunk drivers, or setting up good old-fashioned speed traps.

Re:Why not just use it for for specific targets

[TheRealMindChild]

Take a gander at this: https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-all-location-data

Re:They Did Not Say They Would Stop

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any other programs that use LPR data?

CUPS?

Thank you! I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

Re:Boston PD

[OhPlz]

That's "Boston Strong" - wasting massive amounts of money to get no results, when simply not even trying would have allowed normal people to accomplish the goal immediately. And then being smug about it. There's a reason nothing of any worth comes out of Boston.

While I have no love for the Commonwealth, I think you're way off here. The reason a citizen found flash-bang (the kid) hiding in the boat was because the police had driven him into hiding. The other brother was killed while trying to escape the police. If not for the actions taken, those two might still be out and about planning who knows what.