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L.A. Police: All Cars In L.A. Are Under Investigation
An anonymous reader writes with a link to an article by the EFF's Jennifer Lynch, carried by Gizmodo, which reports that the L.A. Police Department and L.A. Sheriff's Department "took a novel approach in the briefs they filed in EFF and the ACLU of Southern California's California Public Records Act lawsuit seeking a week's worth of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) data. They have argued that 'All [license plate] data is investigatory.' The fact that it may never be associated with a specific crime doesn't matter. This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. In fact, the Fourth Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution exactly to prevent law enforcement from conducting mass, suspicionless investigations under "general warrants" that targeted no specific person or place and never expired.
ALPR systems operate in just this way. The cameras are not triggered by any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; instead, they automatically and indiscriminately photograph all license plates (and cars) that come into view. ... Taken to an extreme, the agencies' arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime at some previously undetermined date in the future. If the court accepts their arguments, the agencies would then be able to hide all this data from the public."
ALPR systems operate in just this way. The cameras are not triggered by any suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; instead, they automatically and indiscriminately photograph all license plates (and cars) that come into view. ... Taken to an extreme, the agencies' arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime at some previously undetermined date in the future. If the court accepts their arguments, the agencies would then be able to hide all this data from the public."
I'm going to take a wild guess that claim is going to get bounced out of court. Sounds more like a stalling tactic than a real defense. Unless the L.A. PD is going to try and make the case that everyone in L.A. is suspicious, in which case they might have a point.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
is dying of thirst
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
LA's cops department is notoriously incompetent -- need I quote chapter and verse? -- and, perhaps the civic leaders see this as a substitute for real police work.
If so, perhaps the courts, in their infinite wisdom, will rein these devices in. If not, well, who cares? They can track my movements through my iPad or mobile phone anyway.
Where do I sign up for the tour of the Gulag?
This is a police force where the Chief of Police in the 1990's, Daryl F. Gates, said that casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot," which prescription being specifically aimed at those "who blast some pot on a casual basis."
Mr. Gates is no long with us, but not because of any repudiation by the LAPD.
That's the new reality. The laws just haven't been changed yet. Yet. And yes, the terrorists have won, by making the government and law enforcement do the terrorism for them.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Reasonable suspicion or probable cause first?
Nothing is reasonable about scanning every single license plate you see. If the camera could scan the color/make/year etc of the vehicle, the compare that against known stolen vehicles or vehicles used in other crimes FIRST, then I could see them scanning the plate and doing further investigation, but just blindly scanning plates and recording their location is very disturbing.
Thats a lie that has been repeated so often that you have started to believe it. In a civil society privacy is expected even when we are walking down the street. How you say? Because in a civil society we respect each other and respect each others privacy.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I don't know where you got your legal training, but you are plumb wrong on several points.
To wit: since the middle of the last century at least, police are prohibited from harassing individuals not suspected of a crime. They may *not* follow you excessively, even on a freeway in a marked car, waiting for you to make an error so they can charge you. Nor may they do similar in person. Case law substantiates this.
>When operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway, there is no expectation of privacy attached to your license plate number, or your location. A police officer can >follow you around all day without a warrant, and run as many checks on your plate number as he desires, and make a note of everywhere you go.
Actually no this would be called harassment and is illegal.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The law also does not provide that the police officers can stalk you 24/7 without some sort of warrant.
The laws were originally written when there was no "Orwellian" state where you could anonymously watched/recorded in public everywhere. Lets no pretend incidentally stumbling onto a suspicious conversation is the same as monitoring EVERY conversation.
It sounds like they have too much time on their hands. Perhaps they are overstaffed and in need of some headcount reductions in order to regain focus.
There is no expectation of privacy when you are out in public
Stop repeating this nonsense; there is some degree of privacy even in public. The kind of privacy that's being discussed is privacy from being spied on by ubiquitous government surveillance devices that are installed in public places.
nor in anything that can be investigated with plain human senses (plain view, plain smell, etc).
The idea that hearing a conversation (or something similar) is the same as sticking surveillance devices everywhere in public places is simply absurd. I don't know why so many people are so stupid as to not be able to see that using humans to conduct surveillance on other humans would require massive manpower that machines don't require, or that this gives them a convenient and cost-effective way to collect all this data in a central location. The differences are absolutely huge; quit being an idiot.
You guys need to get over yourselves.
You need to get over yourself; your mentality literally ruins countries.
Your arguments have been debunked time and time again. I think you people are just willfully ignorant, or hate freedom and privacy.
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No, the Berger court said the 4th does not apply.
The Constitution says no such thing.
Taken to this extreme, how would police officers ever observe anything? I'm all for privacy, but if I get mugged in the street and a cop drives by, I sure as hell want them to be looking out and come to my aid.
...Join them.
I believe another strategy on this would be to setup a crowdsource movement to create Android based ALPR devices and scatter them all over LA County and have these devices harvest data for uploading to the web for EVERYONE to view, especially with the ability to get real-time tracking on any California (E) plated (governmental) vehicle.
By doing this, it would encourage the lawmakers to make it a requirement to have a specific warrant before this data collected by anyone. This assumes that the new law would be designed to raise barriers to "amateurs" entering the ALPR business and use them indiscriminately.
Best results if that can also be done in the District of Columbia and Sacramento, CA so we can keep tabs on our lawmakers actions.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
I am not saying, "So we should let LAPD scan license plates". What I am saying is whatever argument you use against LAPD is valid an order of magnitude more for private companies too. And any solution, change we propose should also prohibit such private companies from consolidating such data into some kind of national data base queriable by private detective agencies, repossession companies, divorce lawyers, etc.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But neither party is interested in ending the intrusive, ineffective "War on Drugs".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The 4th Amendment's warrant requirement only applies when there is an expectation of privacy. There is no expectation of privacy when you are out in public, nor in anything that can be investigated with plain human senses (plain view, plain smell, etc).
When operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway, there is no expectation of privacy attached to your license plate number, or your location. A police officer can follow you around all day without a warrant, and run as many checks on your plate number as he desires, and make a note of everywhere you go.
An officer does not need a warrant to listen to a conversation you have with someone at a park, nor does he need a warrant to take a sniff of whatever it is you're smoking outside your office.
You guys need to get over yourselves.
In that case, taking a video of a police officer in a public place should not be a problem.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Actually, BOTH parties are interested, but thanks to the culture war (by the right) neither can make a shred of headway.
This is all about pretending the hippies lost.
If the state didn't have the power to do this stuff, it wouldn't matter whose interests it served. It's been almost 400 years, and we still have to put up with the damned Puritans' idiotic belief that you can make perfect human beings if you just swing the hammer of the state hard enough.
Sorry, but this is BS. I have such an expectation of privacy. That you would deny it to me means that this is a political, not a legal, matter, and merely stating that an officer does not need a warrant does not cut it in political discourse. I would also note that there is nothing, not one syllable, in the 4th Amendment about expectations of privacy in limiting the search of your "effects" (i.e., your personal property, such as, e.g., your car). All of this is a later invention by the courts; being invented, it can be changed as conditions change, and they have indeed changed.
In the internet jargon, surveillance in a free society does not scale. It is one thing if a policeman walks down my street and happens to smell or see something. It is quite another if, say, I woke up to find that there are 20 policemen stationed just outside my curtilage, each trying to peer in my windows with binoculars, and they stayed in position all day, every day. To be blunt, one is reasonable, the other, tyranny. SImilarly, if every time I drove away from my house I was followed by a convoy of police cars tracking my every move, I would conclude that I was the victim of official harassment (or worse), and react accordingly (say, by going to a Judge and / or the newspapers with my complaints).
Now that is possible to obtain this level of surveillance without actually delegating 20 policemen to peer through my windows, or to follow me about, and without it being obvious to the victim, the legal system will simply have to expand the legal expectations of privacy, or we will find ourselves living in a Stasi-like tyranny.
I love privacy and freedom, but not privacy to conceal criminal acts, and freedom to commit them.
If you want police to have the ability to infringe upon people's privacy and freedom to get at the 'bad guys,' then you don't actually love freedom or privacy.
The bottom line is that police are allowed to engage in general surveillance (it's called "patrolling") for the purpose of controlling crime.
Which has nothing to do with ubiquitous and automatic surveillance of public places. Stop trying to equate the two things.
Your expectation of privacy ends at the border of the public space.
Stop putting forth this nonsensical and incorrect (There is some degree of privacy even in public places.) argument as if it's a justification for automatic and ubiquitous surveillance. I do *not* believe for one millisecond that the government should have to the power to install surveillance devices everywhere in public places just to stop the big, bad bogeymen you're so scared of.
Having an expectation of privacy in the public space is antithetical to freedom, and is antithetical to a civilized society
It's antithetical to neither, and opposing ubiquitous surveillance of public places is certain not antithetical to either. Again, you fail at understanding the real issue.
I've never seen a bigger bunch of vocal kooks who don't want their rights protected, which is exactly what defines you and your ilk. You are the ones who hate freedom and individual liberty, because you want to make it impossible for those rights to be protected.
The government is supposed to be 'good'; it's supposed to respect people's rights. If we surrender our rights for 'safety' (Which likely doesn't even exist.), then we have tyranny. The government should be *better* than mere criminals. When it comes to these rights, you should be afraid of the government, not random bogeymen that the government claims it will protect you from.
I oppose this precisely because I want my rights and privacy protected. In a free society, individual liberties and privacy are considered more important than safety. That is why the TSA and NSA surveillance are evil, and would be evil *even if* they were effective.
If you're going to try to equate patrolling to ubiquitous surveillance again, don't even bother with a reply.
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And if it were actually used for this purpose you could simply download a list of plates whose registrations have expired or been revoked into each scanner, and have the scanner report it when it saw one of those plates. In other words the LAPD's monitoring goes way beyond what is necessary to enforce the law, which is (or used to be) strongly frowned on by the courts.
i'm getting tired of this, is anyone else?
they want not just license plate cameras, but to track all of your movements. disable your vehicle if they want. UAVs with cameras now and guns later. wiretapping everything. they want complete tracking of what we buy, who we know, where we go, who we fuck, our entire genome.
all this personal private data in the grimy hands of people that we don't know, and dont trust, collected with our supposed consent because a few people signed a 'protect us from everything at whatever cost' bills after some terrorist fear mongering.
'public view is up for grabs' is a terrifying concept. there's a big difference between someone taking a picture of you on the street, and a cop taking pictures of everyone on the street all the time, so it can be harvested electrically for suspicious activities.
i won't live in a police state, and i wont move either.
we are the nerds. we are the ones that made this shit up! they're misusing our technology here
that also means we are the ones with the capability to destroy these electronic monitoring devices in the least damaging way possible
we also seem to form one of the communities with a very high percentage of people that have a gut feeling that this kind of thing is terribly wrong, and that realise how much it's going to get worse.
we dont need activists or guerilla armies to get ourselves out of this mess, the future is now. we need nerds to fight, not guns.
at what point do we save the power hungry morons and the whining fearful masses that keep signing off on all this stuff from screwing ordinary innocent people over?
at what point will it be necessary to destroy these implements of monitoring with technological means?
i hope this gets me on a terrorism list. this kind of stuff comes to my neck of the woods, i'm going to try my best to fuck it up.
I agree. Anything in public view is fair game for recording
Yet another who fails to see any difference between incidental recordings of something in public view and massive systemic recording of everything.
There is a difference.
As a society we've consented to the idea that anything we say or do in public may be seen or heard by someone else. We also accept that it might incidentally be captured on film.
But we DID NOT ever accept the the idea that we accept systematic surveillance of everything we say or do in public.
We accept that the person at the next table at the restaurant, or the service staff might overhear a part of our conversation. We accept that the family taking birthday photos two tables over might catch us in the background.We do not accept that the police can install mic's and camera's at every table in every restaurant, record everything, and store it forever.
They are NOT the same damned thing at all.
I'm mystified why people like you wish to argue that they are the same, or that acceptance of the former means we automatically accept the latter.
I don't. Most of society agrees with me. We can see there is a difference, and we can draw a line between incidental recordings, and surveillance. What exactly do you find so difficult to understand about it?
The law should reflect the society we want to live in; its that simple. People like you seem to wish to want to trap society into the unintended consequences of the laws we have. But that's not how its supposed to work.
So...don't vote Republican?
Government is smaller under Obama, and the Bush tax increase was stopped by his continuation of the tax cuts for the rich.
WHAT
FUCKING
PLANET
DO
YOU
LIVE
ON?
US Government spending, 2008, (last budget sign by Bush II): $2.9 trillion
US govt spending, 2013: $3.8 trillion
What color is the sky on a planet where going from $2.9 trillion to 3.8 trillion in 5 years is smaller?
SMALLER!?!?!?!?!
The TSA is merely a trial program for a much larger notion. Yes, people are next. They just have to scale out the TSA's operation.
...to get/make an IR License Plate frame.
You do know that they are quite useless against ANPR systems. Most digital cameras can ignore or filter IR these days, even your cheap $75 point and shoot wont be stopped by it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
They are in their car, which the courts ruled a long time ago is not in public. Why do you think cops pull people over and then have their search and seizures thrown out on fourth amendment ground?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You are wrong. See Katz and post Katz cases. Here is a quote from Alito's concurrance in the most recent one, Jones, where the court found that the cops cant put a tracker on your car:
or maybe you like the EFF's analysis better:
Feel free to quote some laws, cases, lawyers, or professors that support your theory that the police following you is harassment and/or illegal.
you are implicitly agreeing to be subject to all of the regulations of the state.
That might be how the law views things, but in reality, going about your business doesn't mean you implicitly agree to anything. Tyrannical governments love this sort of 'logic', though. It's like saying that you implicitly agree to have government thugs molest you at airports merely because you try to get on a plane; I believe that's been argued, but it's bullshit nonetheless.
Absolutely, because anyone can do that and in that respect you have no expectation of privacy.
The whole concept of "expectation of privacy" is garbage, because if the government violates people's privacy enough, any expectations of privacy will no longer be "reasonable." Rather, the question should be, "Should people have privacy in this instance?" The question of whether an individual can observe others in a public place is *completely different* from the question of whether the government should have the power to install surveillance devices everywhere in public places; they shouldn't have such a power.
This forum is a voice for lots of people who speak very loudly about something they claim to care about (constitutional rights) but know practically nothing about it.
It's also apparently a place for cretins to speak of laws in place of morality or ethics, and pretend that everyone else is talking about laws, even when some are talking about morality.
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You forgot, Iraq was off the books.
There is a certain expectation of privacy while in public - and a cop who follows you around every time you leave your home and then repeatedly cites you for trivial violations would be found guilty of harassment. However, if you are suspected of significant criminal activities and investigators follow you to check those activities out - that's not harassment... it's like porn - the judge knows it when he sees it.
Expanding on an idea I posted above:
There are gunshot monitoring systems installed in many major cities - a network of microphones that can be used to determine where a shot was fired from. This is considered reasonable and not an invasion of privacy.
On the other hand, it would also be possible to install a network of microphones that monitor all conversations on the public street, with frighteningly good ability to zero in on individual conversations. The audio could be compressed and stored cheaply, and recalled at any time in the future. Use of this kind of information is generally NOT accepted in criminal investigations today....
You speak of "the law" as if it were some decree from a tyrant.
I speak of the law as if it isn't the same as morality. I speak of the law as if bad laws can be created quite easily, even in countries like the US.
This isn't how "the law" sees this: this is how the population sees it.
That would be true if the population were perfectly informed and agreed with their representatives 100%. Otherwise, claiming that that's the case is just bad logic.
Without "the law" that you so resent, you'd be hunkered down behind a mud wall in your hovel trying to hold back the hoards. Law and civilization go hand-in-hand.
I don't know what nonsense you're trying to put forth, but it isn't working, cretin. Objecting to certain laws and such is far from advocating anarchy. What I have a problem with is when people start referring to laws as if they're the be-all end-all and ignoring that many here refer to morality. I also have a problem when people appeal to authority figures and act as if their interpretations are objectively correct, but in this case, that's not the point.
If you want to get technical, the constitution does not confer a right of privacy.
If you want to get technical, the government will do anything to give itself more power, as we've seen. Using bullshit lawyer logic to justify their disgusting activities is obviously not below them, sadly.
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So if you have invalid stolen plates ...
Big deal. Just use a white list instead of a black list.
the existing system has a near-infinite upgrade path ... [your system is] a hardware locked-down system with limited utility.
That's the point.
What? How was Iraq off the books? You mean like they funded it through private donations? Maybe they had a car wash to pay for it?
Which word ? "Soviet" ?
In my youth we learned Russian in schools, and if I do not know what that word means, I might as well be blind.
The current situation in America is such that the councils are filled with people such as Feinstein / Obama who want to change the United States into a Police State.
And we have nothing else to fall back on...
Used to be that the congress / the court system and the White House are the three prongs of our government, and each of one is used to check the other two.
No more.
Nowadays the courts are being populated by judges who think we ought to give up our liberty in exchange for "security".
Congress ? That place is filled with dead woods who do nothing but looking for ways to create even more pork barrel projects.
White House ? You kiddin' ???
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If the EFF really wants to take a bite of Orwellian ass, they should campaign relentlessly to have the phrase "identity theft" replaced by the phrase "credential theft".
It used to be that when someone convinced the bank to given them your money, it was called a bank robbery.
"His name was James Damore."
Have a look. Then Google.
Don't forget 'deferred costs'.
The same people who are happy to demand that the USPS save up for the retirement of employees not even born yet are also perfectly happy to not count any of the future costs we have committed to in the war.
But to the broader point, for the last several decades it's been the Republicans running the huge deficits (even while talking about 'small' government). Clinton actually got us to a budget *SURPLUS* briefly, but GW Bush took care of that!
Obama hasn't done as well, but then he inherited an economic disaster of epic proportions.
... I moved out.
Currently I stay outside of America, only go back for business reasons (and for voting).
Oh yes, I, an American citizen, couldn't stand the way my country which is turning into a police state.
And the most disgusting thing that I see is, *MOST* of my fellow Americans still think it's good to trade in their liberties so that the BIG BROTHER get to "protect" them.
What can I do ? I have thought very long and hard at it, and still, I can't come up with a solution.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
... police officers are also there to protect you from those who might want to take your money or otherwise commit a crime against you.
No. No they are not. They are there to fill out the paperwork concerning your dead body. They have no requirement to actually protect you AND you have very few legal options to protect yourself.
Obligation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
Second Amendment rights being abrogated are evidence of the latter.
Enjoy
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
In a civil society privacy is expected even when we are walking down the street.
Not necessarily. Pre-industrial revolution most people lived in small enough communities that they would be recognised by many of the people they would meet in the street. The difference was that you would recognize the observers so it was a symmetric loss of privacy. With modern surveillance it is a one-way privacy loss: you have no idea who is doing the observing and yet they can look up all your details and track your every move which is a bit different from having the village gossip noticing your comings and goings.
If a police officer followed you constantly throughout the day would you be alright with it? Because the courts are not, it requires a warrant, otherwise it's called harassment and is illegal. How does changing the surveillance to an electronic type alter the law. This falls under surveillance abuse, a form of harassment.
Surveillance abuse is the use of surveillance methods or technology to monitor the activity of an individual or group of individuals in a way which violates the social norms or laws of a society.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The idea that you can somehow have both a society where everyone has a audio-visial recoding device on their person at all times, but somehow magically expect law enforcement to not be recording things of interest is pants-on-head-retated.
I also support people being allowed to carry guns as ubiquitously as cameras, and simultaneously expect them not to shoot each other with those either.