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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.
their brothers-in-cheating
I'm shocked, SHOCKED!!!!
Oh wait... How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips move.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Most counties do this, lie by omission. "We don’t spy on our citizens!" Correct, we allow other countries, then we swap data.
Police, "We don’t track license plates!", We let the DOT do it for us.
So many lies in government agencies.
Taking them at their word, let's assume the police department stopped using license plate scanners. They no longer own them, they sold them off, whatever.
That doesn't mean that a third party doesn't run the licence plate scanners and the police have a very cozy relationship for getting all the data whenever they need it.
It's much like the recent changes to the NSA's spying playbook. They say they will no longer collect and store that metadata themselves .... but they will use a third party to do it. In particular, that third party is not subject to the government's data retention policy limiting position of the metadata.
In both cases, it means the agency itself is no longer doing it. That doesn't mean it still isn't happening, just that the agency is not the one actively doing it.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Is anyone going to be charged, arrested, jailed, or even fired or fined for this act of blatant spying and the attempted coverup? My answer is, only if these leaked records embarrass a high-ranking policeman or government official (eg, their wife thinks they go bowling every Friday night, but the records show them actually going to a gay bar).
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.
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Cows don't have license plates, but if they did, I'm sure Boston would track them and lie about it.
If you believe this, you're a moron. The whole point is that they can selectively go back and pin things on you while they're on a which hunt / fishing expedition.
No agency, governmental or otherwise, willingly gives up surveillance or information. We must ignore their claims to do so, and;
Require watchdogs, monitors, and direct supervision.
Constant investigation of databases, storage, and records, as of this of a continuous FOIA request.
Assume that they are still collecting the data and institute legislation to render enforcement actions, either predicated on this data or potentially made possible by it, to be illegal and unenforceable.
And more.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I'm undoing all my moderation to post this, but to anyone who thinks "what a conspiratard!" they should be asking themselves what the point of all this collection was if they weren't using this to find stolen vehicles or uninsured motorists.
It is highly likely that the politicians who might vote for this sort of bill will have long since been nobbled; tracking their indiscretions by this means will have been... helpful.
I wish people would stop with the nickelodeon party line bullshit: That other political party is bad, they are eroding your civil liberties!!!.
Republicans and Democrats are both complicit. The depressingly small number of privacy protecting politicians defies party lines... People need to stop pretending their party is looking out for civil liberties. They aren't and you're still buying their lies, and pointing fingers. Until all sides are accountable they will play this finger wag game, because people like you fall for it.
And law enforcement wants us to respect them. Good fucking luck with that.
I wish people would stop with the nickelodeon party line bullshit: That other political party is bad, they are eroding your civil liberties!!!.
Republicans and Democrats are both complicit. The depressingly small number of privacy protecting politicians defies party lines...
Yep. Both parties are bought and paid for, and ethically (if not morally) bankrupt.
And you wonder why certain groups have basically given up trying to work with the police. I don't condone the violence, in fact I condemn it, but what do you expect when, seemingly, the police (and complicit city councils) don't respect you and repeatedly trample your rights? I would recommend that these groups give up the violence and focus on city hall and all the bastards that we keep electing. Insist on new management and ditch the entrenched LEO leadership, union or actual. Policing is big money and changing that is going to be really hard!
To measure which streets are the most congested?
They have traffic counting hoses for that. No need to have a complex system to measure traffic congestion.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There needs to be a name for this rule, because this happens all the time on Slashdot. Whenever an (R) does something despicable, it is proof positive that their party is horrible and needs to be disbanded for the good of the world. Whenever a (D) does something despicable, we all need to look past party lines and realize that both parties are bad. Conclusion: we can't criticize (D) but it is A-OK to criticize (R). I have seen this comment appear so many times, and it never appears on stories that feature (R).
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
That is where we must start. Replacing the current politicians, starting at the local level.
I'm not hopeful.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
They've got easily tracked RFID chips. They've bionic cows. Robotic? Despotic? Animatronic? something-ic!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
a) The police typically has better things to do in a big city
b) These things are built for the sheer necessity to build them. They are required by some law or agency in pursuit of terrorism or tech jobs, then promptly underfunded and mismanaged resulting in becoming useless as a tool to the people who would be able to use them. The collection part works but then we have things like a few weeks ago where the police just can't manage to upgrade the 40GB hard drive that has the data.
c) These things are built and often forgotten due to (b) unusable interfaces and/or given to untrained units and/or given to units where a union prevents them from being used because they didn't cater to the blind cop behind the desk.
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If that is the case, nothing is stopping you from posting the same thing when a Republican is being bashed.
Power corrupts, and the massive amount of money (and therefore power) that high-level politicians control is staggering. The partisan games are just a sideshow to distract you from the main corrupt attraction but even when this fact is pointed out you still feel the need to whinge about perceived partisanship.
Enigma
That's because in reality, most of the time when D's are doing something bad, R's are doing that bad thing too, but not necessarily the other way around.
Both parties are horrible assholes, but R's are much more horrible.
No the d's are much worse. All you need to do is look at cities like Detroit to see how messed up in head d's are. They find new ways to stupidly spend even more tax payer money. Just look at how bad we ate in debt thanks to Obama's vision.
Here in New Hampshire, the State is forbidden by law from using ANY automated license plate scanner technology. We are the only state to have passed such legislation. Not by coincidence; we have some two dozen hardcore libertarians in the State Legislature and thousands of liberty activists, with more moving in all the time. And you can join us http://freestateproject.org/
D's are enthusiastic children who try things which seem like they should be good ideas, but turns aren't out, and maybe they could have figured that out if they thought about it more.
R's, on the other hand, are malicious and evil. Have you ever heard of a Democratic candidate painting his war-hero opponent as having been a sniveling coward, who didn't adopt a child of color, but instead fathered said child upon a woman outside of wedlock?
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Is there anyone in Boston that is not a cheater, liar, or supporter of either?
In Boston the crooks and thieves and conspirators are exposed, in other places they continue to run amok.
Is anyone shocked at this from a state that criminalized everyone by barging in to houses to try and find the Boston bombers? But yeahhhh, think of the children.