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Public Records Request Returns 4.6M License Plate Scans From Oakland PD
schwit1 points out a report from Ars Technica on how they used a public records request to acquire an entire License Plate Reader dataset from the Oakland Police Department. The dataset includes 4.6 million total reads from 1.1 million unique plates. They built a custom visualization tool to demonstrate how this data could be abused. "For instance, during a meeting with an Oakland city council member, Ars was able to accurately guess the block where the council member lives after less than a minute of research using his license plate data. Similarly, while "working" at an Oakland bar mere blocks from Oakland police headquarters, we ran a plate from a car parked in the bar's driveway through our tool. The plate had been read 48 times over two years in two small clusters: one near the bar and a much larger cluster 24 blocks north in a residential area—likely the driver's home." Though the Oakland PD has periodically deleted data to free up space — the 4.6 million records were strewn across 18 different Excel spreadsheets with hundreds of thousands of lines each — there is no formal retention limit.
Future data - If I decide you are someone who I do not like, I can simply follow you around and log locations. But if you suspect me, you can change your habits.
Past data - With access to this data, I can see where you've been. Last week, last month, last year
They probably meant CSVs.
My biggest fear of this technology is that people may be investigated for no reason other than that their car was seen in close proximity to where a crime was committed. Police and district attorneys have been found to fit the evidence to match an individual. This has lead to, at a minimum an extended "interview" at the police station, and at a maximum being put to death. Was your car parked at the entrance to an alley while you picked up a pizza at the same time somebody was raped in the alley? How much money do you have for an attorney?
This is a common, but flawed, response to many types of privacy invasion. The thing is, scale matters. The aggregation of lots of data that could otherwise only be had by exerting effort (following someone, staking out a home, etc.) reduces the level of effort required to infringe someone's privacy, and greatly increases the chances that someone's privacy will be infringed. This is why forcing cops to get warrants is considered a good part of the justice system, while the mass "perusal" of aggregated information is considered bad (for privacy).
This is bulk surveillance data, you could not follow 1.1 million people around individually, but the police clearly are logging the location and time where they go via automatic number plate readers.
Imagine the sort of data Uber God mode offers. That one 'an employee' said was used to track a journalist critical of them, and he was promptly sacked.
Who is with whom, who is having an affair with who, where their kids go to school, if they see a source of a story, or investigate something, all that location data is there in Ubers hands. Metadata smetadata.
The anti-abortion protestors already do this, they record license plates at abortion clinics and try to follow people. This would give them a big chunk of surveillance data to locate where they live, their job, the kids schools, their friends, their hangouts, their shopping mall,....
They've committed no crime, so why do the police keep innocent peoples data?
Why would you put the private data of innocent people in the hands of every random nutter, some of which have a uniform and a gun?
Excel spreadsheets are what "The Business" uses when "you IT folks" can't make a "reasonable" system that retains all data forever fast enough.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
This technology is already available in the flying world-- where FlightAware makes a plane tracker that publishes flight data from the skies to the public.
Take away lesson is your data will be mined. If you think license plate data is a breach, just wait for ubiquitous facial recognition data going to the public domain.
Brave new world!
They can also figure out the address of anywhere you go regularly. That means your workplace, your friends' homes, the bar you hang out at, your mistresses' house, your drug dealer, etc.... any of which could open you up to blackmail or worse.
That last one might -- might -- be a valid thing for the cops to care about, but the rest aren't. Yet they still have the information, and that's a problem. Remember, even if you aren't a criminal, the cop looking through the records might be.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The risk of large scale surveillance is that it can generate data sets that can be mined for information. Tracking can show networks of friends, attendance at political rallies, books read, movies watched, foods and alcohol consumed. Does this pattern match for a potential terrorist - can't prove anything, but maybe you shouldn't keep your job at Lockheed, or should get extra screening at the airport? Did you watch "little miss sunshine" too many times for your demographic - could mean you are a pedophile - maybe you shouldn't have a job as a school teacher - think of the children.
Which political information should you see? Candidates can target their adds to YOU specifically. Same for news, and advertising.
Maybe you don't get enough sleep, or are found to meet women ( or other men) at bars and take them home. Sounds like "statistically" you might be a health risk and your insurance rates will go up.
Large scale tracking, data collection and analysis allow for statistical pattern matches. The public might be happy that a new system has a only 1% failure rate, and only a 10% false positive rate for recognizing people who are a danger to children - unless you are in that 10%
It is really quite a stretch of the imagination to think that a license plate contains any private information. And really it is not even a modern issue. In Virginia in the 1940s the city paid a bounty on a car found with an expired tag and the hunt started at midnight. People looking to get a reward would open garage doors into the wee hours and shine a light on the license plates. Think about it. Virginia actually allowed penetration of closed garages in the wee hours by civilians just to assure that everyone had purchased their license plate on time. In our case the garage was behind our home so they walked through our lawn or driveway into the back yard and raised and opened the garage door. And one might have that happen more than once in an evening as many people were eager to earn the bounties.