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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.
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.
Don't worry, the government will investigate and punish the guilty. In this case it will be the reporter.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
And this is where we all stop acknowledging the law anymore - it's pretty much useless at this point. The law is a big game where everyone tries to use sneaky underhanded games to redefine words, or redefine the scope of words. Basically we write a law and then tweak the language so we can ignore the law. We might as well not write laws in the first place and save the hassle. The mess that came out of Obamacare: Point at the word "Federal" (an implementation detail) and use that to derail the whole operation. Point at some hazy definition of what "Federal" can and can't do. Use that as a justification for denying healthcare. Whatever. At the same time send out American Community Surveys that are a complete violation of the constitution. Quote penal codes on the survey to make it sound extra scary. Even use the wrong penal codes or totally unrelated penal codes. There's no penalty when a government office lies, cheats or steals. See Civil Asset Forfeiture if you want to see some hot police stealing in action. Testimony obtained under duress? Plea bargaining? Nope...no penalty for bent police dealings and under-the-table sentencing.
That said, if I'm ever hauled in front of a judge for trying to be sneaky you're damn straight a judge is going to pound me into the ground for not following the "spirit" of the law. You see, politicians only have to follow the base language. Citizens have to follow the "spirit laws" as well. That means we have to guess what we're doing is somehow wrong by some random brain-fart interpretation and "not do that". If you think someone might take offense then just don't do it. Self censorship rules.
That said, if you're white, modestly well funded, and make at least a passing attempt at following the laws you can skip most of this. You can't follow all of the laws since some of them contradict and some of them are broad as all hell. The trick is to blag your way around it and never get arrested, never say anything in front of a cop, always nod and just go about your business. If you attract the ire of a cop then you're basically 100% fucked with no recourse. This is the system we've created now. That's why the headline here is to be expected. It's not unusual at all. Nothing will come of it and nothing will be done about it. Maybe some sap due for retirement will be retired a little earlier to placate the PR gods but that's about as much as we can expect.