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It's Not Just the NSA: Police Are Tracking Your Car
New submitter blastboy writes "Every day in Britain, a vast system of cameras tracks cars on the road, feeding their movements into a database used by police. And because that data is networked, cops can use it to go back in time — or even predict your movements. But even though there are serious concerns about the technology, and it's regularly been abused by law enforcement, it has now been exported by the Brits and put in place by police departments around the world."
Government surveillance is necessary in this date and age to protect not only our Freedoms but also our security.
England, the USofA, and the rest of the Free World have fought a long and hard battle against totalitarian, oppressive and stifling governments. And with the current trend of indiscriminate searching, monitoring and spying on its citizens, the Free World will stay free.
...it's regularly been abused by law enforcement, it has now been exported by the Brits and put in place by police departments around the world....
Well, of course, the Brits have always been the first to invent new technical concepts. The steam engine, the computer, the jet, radar, you name it.. In this case we wrote the book here, so I'm not surprised that we're exporting it.
The book was 1984.....
Boston police apparently abandoned their license-plate reading program after reporters found out they weren't using it for the stated purpose of finding stolen vehicles.
Of course, it is easier to get a crooked, ineffective police program killed when it is funded from the local budget, not windfall "homeland security" dollars in the US.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Tracking the movements of vehicles is quite a bit different than tracking cell phone conversations. There is no expectation of privacy when driving a vehicle on public roads. Operating a vehicle (at least in the US) is heavily regulated, requiring registration of the vehicle, insurance, and licensed operators. In my area, in addition to the traffic cameras there are license plate scanners on most police vehicles. They scan and record the plates of vehicles as the police drive around town, popping up an alert if they get a "hit" on a vehicle with issues (suspended registration, insurance, or involvement in a crime). You're also tracked via tolls (EZ Pass in my area) and gasoline purchases (credit card data), but the police don't have easy access to that data without a subpoena.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I believe it's because of the proliferation of ANPR and other cameras that I had a major reduction of my motor insurance premium this year. Society pays for the crimes of the minority, so using technology to take the crooks off the road pays dividends to all.
...and her Fascist Regime
" Another man, who spoke to journalists but chose to remain anonymous to prevent further harassment, says he was stopped more than 25 times by police under a variety of pretences after he had attended a peaceful local protest against duck and pheasant shooting. He finally made a formal complaint after police armed with machine guns pulled him over during an evening out with his wife."
Apart from the invasion of privacy, what a complete waste of resources, maybe some budgets need to be reduced in order to cut down on waste.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
I bet they have a GPS tracker on that bus you're on too! They know exactly where it's going.
To be fair, labour were just as bad - a lot of the survelience law was passed by them. The only real difference between the left/right in the UK is which way they shaft you. they both shaft you though.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Buses have gps trackers, internal cameras recording all journeys to hard disk, recorders on the vehicle management systems etc. They can replay who got on/off and every press of the brake/accelerator the driver makes. The latter is used for insurance purposes to prove how the driver responded to accidents etc.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
We're tracking ourselves!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
...which of itself has no value, as bus routes are publicly advertised. The trick is the widespread CCTV surveillance - if they want to know which bus you're taking, they can find out.
Tories bad, therefore Labour good, right?
while engaging in the statistically most dangerous everyday activity in the Western world
What?
Just wait until we export SCORPION STARE!
One picture from the article illustrates why we need this in the UK. Its the large muzzy threat that we face.
You know what? Fuck all this "no expectation of privacy" bullshit!
Sure, anything people do in public could be observed. But those are the keywords: "anything could." Not "everything will." And certainly not "everything will be observed and then get stored forever in an instantly-searchable government database!"
This Orwellian shit needs to stop.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> Tories bad, therefore Labour good, right?
Just as bad as the "GOP haters" here who criticize them for surveillance, then turn a blind eye when the dems do it. Remember Khrushchev: "Politicians are the same all over, they promise to build a bridge, even where there is no river" (only time politicians tell the truth is when criticizing politicians)
> while engaging in the statistically most dangerous everyday activity in the Western world
driving.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
they'll still run you down and pop you just to be sure.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
... perhaps they already are ...
Well I heard that they track the trains, so they're sure to be tracking buses too.
The original title of the book was 1948. He was writing about the cold war.
Editors made him change the title to 1984. Read 1985 for some more info.
Have gnu, will travel.
actually 1984 and Brave new world are both amongst some of my favourite books of all time.
The thing I find interesting is to think about what Orwell would include today. I mean, he had no way to know that it would be possible for so few to do so much. Even his view screens that could not be turned off and acted as cameras.... envisioned a world where nobody knew if they were watching when. He never considered a world where that act doesn't require an active observer, a world where they can just always be recording and then go back and watch later. Such technology was too far out to even be a pipe dream.
Hell, 15 years ago people in the know talked about it like it was a pipe dream. I mean sure, we could envision it then, but, the data requirements for both movement and storage were impossible, only maybe as an outside chance, in the hands of a sophisticated group like the NSA, and even then likely more than they can handle.... and now....today.... we know its true.
Hell I remember people talking about TCP hijacking and types of MITM attacks that always ended with "yah maybe if you were the NSA and could be snooping on every backbone connection".... 15 years ago, that was fiction; but it had become imaginable.
I have to wonder what 1984 would include if it had been written in the 90s.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
In November, some guy at the local mall went to several shops and asked the young women on staff to help him find stuff on lower racks. He then took some "upskirt" pictures with his camera phone. When he got noticed, he ran out of the mall.
Police reports in December give the follow up. Mall security went back to the cameras and found the guy. They tracked him outside the mall running to his car. The parking lot camera got his license plate number. License plate number was sent to the local police, who picked him up at home.
I have mixed feelings about the 'all cameras, all the time' thing. On the one hand: "good - they got the creepy guy." On the other hand, I'm also now REALLY aware that if I decide to leave a passive-aggressive note on the windshield of a guy who parks right up against my door, I could likely expect a visit from his friend-of-a-friend who works in a local police department.
I attended a conference on XML back in roughly 2004. A police technical architect was describing the ANPR system. He pointed out that the current deployments of the time were entirely local and not joined up nationally - but went on to say that it wasn't a very big step to do this, allowing the tracking of vehicle movements on a national scale. He looked embarrassed and uncomfortable as he said this.
I got the very strong impression at the time that he was trying to give a warning on where this technology was heading.
Many agencies don't bother with this since there are dozens (at least) of private companies that drive around with scanners. I have not taken any time to follow up on suits and laws that were being proposed to protect people, so can't say for sure where these people can no longer operate. This was easy to resolve in Michigan with no front plate requirement, I simply started backing in everywhere. In CA where front plates are required, the only protection is a cover when parked.
So the Police in Boston stopped, did the private companies stop? I don't know myself, but this is the next logical question to ask.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
as far as vehicle tracking goes, how about just requiring every car to have a gps that reports to the state all the time? that is what they are planning in finland and probably other countries as well.. of course cameras have the added benefit of recording everything else while at it.
I suspect you posted that story in support of LPR systems, but all it did was to make me naseous at the flagrant disregard for individual rights in a free society.
Sure, arson and theft are "bad things", and they guy deserves to face justice for the offenses.
But do we really want offenders apprehended "at all costs"? What price is too high?
I would prefer that he go free rather than to live in a world where these means of apprehending him are common. And yes, even if that means that I become on of his victims one day.
I think the most important and shocking thing in the article is the revelation that this technology is already being used for political purposes. The testimony from people who were stopped and harassed repeatedly simply because they attended some protest rallies should raise huge red flags for even the most dyed in the wool law-and-order types, because it proves not just that the system can be abused, but that such abuse has already occurred, and is very likely still occurring on a massive scale. When law abiding citizens are getting "placed on a list" that causes their movements to be tracked and mandates any police unit to pull them over and question them, repeatedly, all as a result of activity that is perfectly lawful, well... It's well past the time to be getting worried. This type of thing is flat-out Police State behavior, and should not be tolerated in any country still pretending to be a democracy. If we continue to blithely let this stuff be implemented by any law enforcement department that wants to (which is probably all of them), all without any civilian oversight, very soon it will be too late. Can you say dystopia? Better get used to it, cause we're almost there already.
I guess you're right, but what does driving being dangerous have to do with anything?
left = right = totalitarian
Just like the billions lost to nsa humping the cloud.
Perhaps I should cherry pick my examples in the same way you have, so I can show that Catholics (in the form of the IRA) kill many people every year?
It was the GP that cherry-picked (by having a cut-off date that excluded 2001) - I used National statistics. I think that if you wanted to show that Catholics killed a lot of people you would have to cherry-pick a few decades ago. We used to be evacuated from shopping centres and things fairly frequently with bomb scares, but haven't been for years
Or would it be unfair, because many/most of those Catholics are white, which would show that religious extremism isn't limited to those evil Muslims?
You seem to have a hang-up on race here. It may surprise you to know that not all Catholics are white, and not all Muslim terrorists are brown. people like Richard Dart, Samantha Lewthwaite, Colleen Renee LaRose, to name only a few are just as much murdering muzzy scum as any other muzzy.
True but irrelevant. The purpose of the GPS trackers (or the related ones that use short-range radios to trigger pickups in the bus stop shelters, which note the transit time of particular radios) is to document whether the bus company is achieving it's contractually required degree of punctuality. If the company fails to prove that it has good enough punctuality, then it could lose subsidy, or even suffer profit-destroying fines. (Note that for a long time use of GPS was considered too expensive and unreliable as it could have been switched off at any moment by a foreign government ; this issue has not been addressed fully yet, but it is being addressed.)
They could do that in the 1880s by the simple expedient of asking the driver (or conductor) if they saw someone carrying a bloody knife / head in a paper bag / blue jacket with "Wanker" written on it. Use of CCTV simply takes some of the vagaries out of the process. (Incidentally, the inside of a bus is the private property of the bus company ; they've as much right to video you there as if you were sitting in their office's waiting room. They don't even really need to inform you of the fact - though they probably do so to stay absolutely on the right side of the law.
By far and away the biggest use of on-bus cameras is to catch fare dodgers and people who assault staff.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Well I can't speak for the original commenter but, driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the threats that seem to require so much surveillance; yet huge swaths of the population engage in it on a daily basis, with barely a second thought.
Personally, I think that is extremely relevant to exactly where these concerns deserve to be placed. How do you justify all the tracking and surveillance to deal with a risk to people that is, by any rational measure, far less of a risk than things they actively choose to do on a daily basis?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You're right that on average terrorism dooesn't kill that many each year, but you're ignoring the issue of the worst-case.
One can't really see a way for traffic accidents to ever 'have a really bad year'. The variance on annual traffic accident deaths is presumably quite low.
The worst case for terrorism? The nuclear destruction of most of the populated areas of the world.
I don't agree with pervasive spying, but that's because there are plenty of good reasons to oppose it.
True but irrelevant. The purpose of the GPS trackers...
I don't see your point here.
They could do that in the 1880s by the simple expedient of asking the driver
For an individual, they could find out where you'd been that day, sure. The difference is the scale on which the tracking can be done. Tracking everyone, all the time, most certainly is new.