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Boston Tracks Vehicles, Lies About It, Leaves Data Exposed
An anonymous reader writes: License plate readers have been in the news a lot lately for the invasion of privacy they represent. Boston is the latest city to make mistakes with the technology. Two weeks ago, a reporter realized that the City of Boston had accidentally exposed records for their automated license plate reader system online. Anyone could have downloaded "dozens of sensitive files, including hundreds of thousands of motor vehicle records dating back to 2012." What's worse is that the Boston Police Department claimed in 2013 that it had stopped using license plate readers. A look through the accidentally-public database shows "hundreds of emails" dating from 2013 to the present, indicating that the police were still getting that data with help from the Transportation Department.
One motorcycle that had been reported stolen triggered scanner alerts 59 times over six months, while another plate with lapsed insurance was scanned a total of 97 times in the same span.
We are going to be partially rescued from the data collection efforts; not from conscience or court ruling,
but for the sheer, greedy mass of collections.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
There already was a pretty embarrassing episode in this very city, which is the reason why the Boston police had to "shut down" the program. That incident, if I recall correctly, involved public release of a very limited database in an attempt to allay to privacy concerns. Even with this extremely hobbled database researchers were able to find multiple embarrassing events, firstly that the area with the highest recorded density of vehicles with outstanding parking tickets was the police parking lot. Secondly that at least one stolen vehicle had went past the same intersection time and time again at a predictable time and day and no one ever thought post a cruiser to retrieve it and arrest the thief.