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EFF: License Plate Scanner Deal Turns Texas Cops Into Debt Collectors (eff.org)
An anonymous reader writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is sounding the alarm about a deal between Texas law enforcement agencies and Vigilant Solutions — a company that provides vehicle surveillance tech. The deal will give Texas police access to a bunch of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), and access to the company's data and analytic tools. For free. How is Vigilant making money? "The government agency in turn gives Vigilant access to information about all its outstanding court fees, which the company then turns into a hot list to feed into the free ALPR systems. As police cars patrol the city, they ping on license plates associated with the fees. The officer then pulls the driver over and offers them a devil's bargain: get arrested, or pay the original fine with an extra 25% processing fee tacked on, all of which goes to Vigilant. In other words, the driver is paying Vigilant to provide the local police with the technology used to identify and then detain the driver. If the ALPR pings on a parked car, the officer can get out and leave a note to visit Vigilant's payment website." Vigilant also gets to keep the data collected on citizens while the ALPRs are in use.
Wow. Who could possibly have seen this coming?
(yes, that was sarcasm)
The rest of us are glad that the cops are easily collecting fines that the government has already levied.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Good ole "small government" brought to you by hypocritical Repuglicunts.
The officer then pulls the driver over and offers them a devil's bargain: get arrested, or pay the original fine with an extra 25% processing fee tacked on,
The driver should just tell the Officer "That information is incorrect, the debt is in dispute. Do you have a warrant for this?"
think court fees are legitimate. Court fees are legitimate.
This is a perfect example of government and private industry working together. These are COURT fees that are either going to go uncollected, or
will cost more to collect than the debt is worth. Many people are scofflaws; this partnership catches them.
The alternative is to do away with fines as they are in essence "uncollectible." Or raise the traffic tickets from $15 to $1000 to make them worthwhile to collect.
How the fuck is this even remotely legal ?
Frankly i could care less, if they owe money, pay it, simple as that.
I fap to Data Data Data Data Data DATA MINING CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD...
Oh yeah (cis-/trans-)(wo-)man, this was DISRUPTIVE!!!
This is what happens when a surveillance state has a pseudo-libertarian vibe and refuses to raise taxes for road maintenance and other necessary services.
At first, you get speed traps and traffic stops from cops with bigger quotas looking to make up for revenue that would otherwise come from taxes.
Later on, you have cops enjoying the role of debt-collectors, working directly for shady corporations and taking a cut of every transaction.
Does this sound dystopian? Well, it is, it's the dystopia of modern America.
...you should pay them. It is crazy the lengths debtors will go to to avoid paying their debts.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It would seem like even the most resiliently learning-disabled law enforcement agency would be interested in repairing its tarnished reputation more so than becoming entangled in some shady information collection for-profit partnership with a dubious private enterprise partner.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Surveillance should be aggressively monetized as early and as often and as obtrusively as possible. It's the only way people will understand what it means for people to spy on you.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It's interesting when people die.
So if I have my identity stolen without my knowledge, *this* is how I find out? Seems pretty messed up...
One thing I noted from the description was that the 25% goes to Vigilant, pure profit for them. But if the person can't pay, it's arrest and probably jail, bail, and all that - which is a public cost. I'm sure vigilant isn't seeing any of those costs.
Not that I like the idea of people not paying their fines and judgements, but it's my understanding that in many cases they can't pay, not that they don't want to. In some cases they don't even know.
Given the disparity between fees and jail, I wouldn't be surprised if the county ends up seeing this system cost more in jail and processing expenses than it gains in fines being paid.
I don't read AC A human right
This sort of shit is why the DOJ is investigating St. Louis County, MO
MO is a purple state at worst, not your demonic "red state" - and ANY large city is going to have a very Blue government.
damn if red states aren't trying their best to bring it back
You JUST GAVE an example of a very blue area doing what you didn't like - speak to your own kind sir before slandering the less of two totalitarian dictatorships.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fight every accusation against you in court, however minor. $10 parking ticket? Fight it.
If everyone contested every civil fine, then there wouldn't be civil fines. There aren't enough hours in the day to adjudicate every fine, and courts know it. They expect you to pay it, and they love for you to pay it online.
If you must pay, for example, a $10 parking ticket, go into the office of the entity during business hours and pay with a $100 bill. If the ticket is some amount of money like 55 or 65 dollars, pay in singles. Do not use the Internet, mail, a credit card, or a drop box. Waste the maximum amount of time possible. If you want to speak with the cashier's supervisor, do it. If you got your ticket in a small town, get the mayor on the phone and have a discussion about it, seeing if he can do something to help you.
These are all things that I do, and they work great. When it costs more than a small percentage of $x to collect $x, people have second thoughts. Nobody wants the hassle of having to look a human being in the eyes. It makes people very uncomfortable.
Why do this? Because when you don't show up they hound you to pay them. Turn the tables and annoy the shit out of them instead. They'll get their money eventually, but there is always the chance that they'll make it go away just to make you go away.
If the fees were legitimate, most people would have already paid them.
Never been owed money by anyone, eh?
There are many people that blow off perfectly valid debt - student loans, tickets, etc - even though it leads to more financial trouble down the line.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Who had his drawer open to make this fly?
So, basically the police are now funding their activities by running a shakedown racket?
Is this shit even legal? Or have we gotten past the point where we pretend the cops give a shit about legal?
This is extortion, plain and simple. Congratulations, Texas, your entire fucking law enforcement needs to be indicted under the RICO Act.
Fuck the police, they're all crooks these days.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The cops just threaten the person to force them to pay Vigilient the fine + 25% "processing fee", that fee has no basis in law. If they pay the fine, that's the payment made.
The copy DOESN'T threaten to arrest them if they don't pay the FINE, he threatens to arrest them if they don't pay the FINE+Vigilents 25%.
The problem isn't that the police detect unpaid court fees or scan license plates. Such scanners have been used in the UK for years where they mainly trigger on cars with no insurance. A car with no insurance is 5 times as likely to end up in a crash than an insured car, which is why impounding uninsured cars is a matter of road safety. If people drive, their cars should be ok and they should pay what they owe according to the court.
The problem is elsewhere in the article. "Texas police fund it by gouging people who have outstanding court fines and handing Vigilant all of the data they gather on drivers for nearly unlimited commercial use." and "the ALPR data system Vigilant says contains more than 2.8-billion plate scans and is growing by more than 70 million scans a month. This also includes a wide variety of analytical and predictive software tools."
This mean the police builds a database for a private company telling where each car is whenever the police just happens to pass by. This can then make a history of positions for each car, which they can use for whatever they want or sell. Most countries ban private people/companies from having such databases.
I just happen to read on ALPR cameras yesterday. Real ones the police pay for and the police keep the data in police records and nowhere else. It saves each license plate it detects together with a timestamp and location. If there is no hit, then it will be deleted within 24 hours. If there is a hit, then it can be stored in 5 years as it may be used as court evidence. If something unusual happens and the police knows the criminals escaped in a car, but not which one, then they can keep non-hits for more than 24 hours until they know which license plate to look for. Specifics on who can order a non-delete and precisely why wasn't specified, but the examples were a bit extreme and sort of went into state of emergency. I would like to know the other end and ask what is the minimal it takes to trigger such a decision.
The computer connected to the cameras has a list of license plates to trigger on, but there is nothing technical in the system telling why the police should be interested in the car. This mean the hit list can be filled with cars wanted from crime scenes or where owners are wanted and so on. In other words it is possible it will react if the car driving past the police is driven by somebody wanted for assault, but without the ALPR system, the police wouldn't have noticed.
It sounds to me like a great tool for the police, but it should be for the police only and there should be a watch on it to prevent abuse, because it's clearly possible to abuse this, just like it is possible to abuse nearly all other technology.
I have a delinquent client in Texas that owes me money. It's inconvenient for me to try to get payment from him through the courts. Maybe I can just contract with Vigilant to have him pulled over or jailed....
This is only an issue until they make a mistake and arrest the wrong person for a debt that may or may not even exist. ( The courts never make a mistake right ? Like the parking ticket I received in Lubbock, yet have never set foot anywhere near it :| )
Then the police, the city and the company will understand how costly that mistake will be.
The police can generally use reasonable means to locate criminals, and when you fail to pay fines you owe, you knowingly become a criminal attempting to escape justice, and (once again, knowingly), give the state a specific and compelling reason to come after you. In short, you're an idiot if this happens to you. I'd rather have fewer idiots on the road thank you very much.
While the third party company probably has a similar profit-motivation, this is somewhat different than, say, speed cameras, because the crime was already committed in the past and you are now trying to avoid paying the price for your actions.
So I'm not crazy about a system like this, but seriously, if the idiots would actually:
A. Paid the damn fines when required. _If you can't afford gas, maintenance, and any fines you'll likely incur, you can't afford to drive_ and need to instead rely more heavily on on public transportation, carpools, or hell, get some frickin' exercise (where feasible).
*or*
B. Took appropriate actions to fight the violations and try to legally get out of paying, which might actually even work in many cases (instead of just ignoring them and hoping they'll go away).
*or*
C. Followed the laws and didn't get fines levied against them in the first place. Admittedly this may be easier said than done for some people, but I've _never_ had a single outstanding fine in close to 30 years driving in various U.S. cities. I've gotten zero parking tickets, never had any of my cars towed, never hit another car nor even been hit by one. It takes extra care, close attention to parking restrictions, patience, and sometimes even actively getting out of another car's way when they're being stupid (I've had several close calls that were completely the other driver's fault). Yes, I've gotten one ticket once for "unsafe backing" and a couple speeding tickets way back when; none within the last decade-plus. Fought one, paid the others, no problems.
Read my license plate all you like. Wow, I go to home, work, the grocery store, a restaurant here and there, really exciting stuff. It will never come up with an outstanding fine unless it's a mistake, in which case, I should have already received written notification and will have probably already taken care of it.
"When it costs more than a small percentage of $x to collect $x, people DECIDE TO RAISE THE FINES TO COVER THE EXTRA COSTS FROM IDIOTS LIKE YOU!"
Nice going genius.
This is merely another way to send poor people to jail. If a person couldn't pay the original fine, what makes us believe they can pay the original fine plus 25%? So, the result is they go to jail, and the tax payers then pay even more money to house and feed them, but ...still never get the original fine, do we?
Someone has not thought this through, completely.
Meanwhile, when they're in jail, they're being housed likely by a 3rd party whose making money on keeping people in jail, because they're providing security or food, or the physical facilities, or the parole services you offer when they get out, but they can't pay that either...so they go back to jail, where the cycle never ends.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Yep. What more needs be said?
They get a free and presumably effective tool to enforce the law and the fines go to pay the company that provides them the tool.
The flip side of this tool is also that the company can provide analytics to seniors in the political system on how the police are using their tool, and they won't get the tool dropped. Why? Because the agency knows that Podunk Jurisdiction ain't going to pay huge licensing fees in this economy to replace the system with a competitor's tool because the company responded to a request from the Attorney General or the legislature on how the police were using their product. It's a captive audience.
Law enforcement is fucking racket that stinks to to high heaven. Justice, no, $$$$ yes.
Give some guys power, and soon they will be pounding the shit out of you for money. Uniform or not.
Go back a 1000 years and it was the same story.
Power=money=more money=more power....
Believe the propaganda shit they are feeding you, and keep running your head into wall until the pain stops.
We're fucked.
until some minority driver tries to speed away and the cops chase him down and shoot him over an unpaid parking ticket.
It sounds like the police have hired Vigilant to provide automated licence place scanners for cop cars, as well as running the backend servers, so that police can catch people who owe the government court fees. But instead of getting paid upfront Vigilant works for the 25% mark up that is charged to people who made the police look for them instead of paying on their own. While there is definitely privacy concerns with the government allowing some potentially confidential information (though LPs are publicly visible and often court results are as well, I think) out of their hands, it actually sounds like a decent arrangement. Its pure profit for the police, they get better tech that allows them to easily track down people who owe the government money, and they do not even have to pay for it. And 25% is actually a far far smaller late-fee/threaten-fee then you normally see.
I think Vigilant got a pretty raw deal here, and are probably betting that their will be far far more things automated licence plate readers can be used for, and they are hoping to be on the ground flour when the market opens up. A camera on a police car, with the right backend, could almost completely replace police officers, so there is pretty unlimited growth potential for this technology.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I am sorry you think it is unhelpful; I intended to put it in historical terms. In context, though, to be fair, Mussolini said this before Hitler came to power. His was an Italian Fascism, and, as you say, it was based on brutality. Nonetheless, it is his definition, and it explains to me how, once fascists achieve power, they are corrupted by it.
Georgia just recently got into trouble for jailing people for failing to pay fines that they were obviously unable to pay due to hardship. See the NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/us/a-surreptitious-courtroom-video-prompts-changes-in-a-georgia-town.html?_r=0
It's obvious that Texas is hoping that the people they pull over are too dumb and poor to put up a fight. Of course you it might end up being a money losing proposition for towns that have to pay for the extra court time and overhead of jailing people.
Officer?
End of story.
Despite being power-hungry douches, most cops are reasonable. Tell 'em you mailed it in and it hasn't arrived. Then go home and pay the fine already.
you support big government controlling everybody's lives. It's entirely proper and rational. Follow along, boys and girls:
(a} If you are going to have ubiquitous rules, then those rules need to be enforced.
(b) If the rules are to be enforced without jailing anybody the moment he breaks a rule, then fines are the way.
(c) Once you have decided that fines are the way to control people then it only works if you COLLECT the fines.
(d) If government is going to churn out mountains of rules and then collect fines for rule violations then it's only practical and responsible to be as efficient as possible.
oh, and a related point:
(e) If a functional marketplace is to exist then contract laws must be enforced, so it's only natural that any "public-private partnership" collecting public debt will eventually work the other way too (enabling the police to more-efficiently assist in the collection of private debts). Remember: if private contracts and debts are not enforceable then its impossible to do business with anybody who is not rich (anybody who might need to borrow in order to buy something).
If people TRULY want this sort of stuff to stop, then they need to stop supporting politicians who put government into every aspect of our lives. Sadly, I'll bet that most of the people here who are outraged by this stuff are either supporters of massive-government Democrats or massive-government "establishment" Republicans. If you are going to insist on big government, then take a lesson from Dr. Strangelove and learn to love the bomb (in this case, of government-corporate "partnerships" collecting fines and fees)
If you lick the totalitarian boot, and love to see it used on your neighbors to make THEM comply, then you need to stop whining when it kicks you.
Texas <=> Taxes, coincidence? I think not.
-- Make America hate again!
...if it offer rockets, flame throwers and claymores as auto accessories.
Texas has so many sh|thole cities and towns with extortionists issuing traffic tickets I'm sure they will be big sellers.
This confirms the fact that the Ku Klux Klan didn't go away: they just traded their white robes for blue uniforms (citation: Ferguson, MO).
So many times, these last years, I have read and/or seen what "policing" means in Texas, I'm not surprised anymore, really, but I wonder, where did the "To Protect and Serve" go?
Vigilant upper corporate management. Yardarm. wash, rinse, repeat.
The root of this problem is that police are really just glorified fee collectors. Cities depend on the fees for their budgets.
And government decides if it is permissible.
While many court records are public, when these get posted online and *actually* accessible, too often there is a cry that this 'should not be'. sometimes fees 'solve' the 'problem'.
ALPRs give police an interesting tool - they can look for license plates they could already know about, but might (probably would) miss in reality. But to permit the data to be kept by a third party? I'm pretty sure I do NOT like that.
But more to the point, apparently it's too burdensome for an officer or two to visit the last known address of those with outstanding court fees and deal with them face to face. Add appropriate surcharges to cover the cost of the visit, k?
Oh and know that you will disproportionally impact the poor and under-/un-banked. Who don't deserve that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
> outstanding court fees
Solution: pay those fees, don't be late. Since those are court-ordered fees, there is no question about their legality. Pay, don't be late! If you have a car, you have money, because the car can be sold for cash. There is no basic human right to car ownership.
That's all this is about.
Fuck this country.
"Hey boss! How's this for an idea? We partner up with this company that will give us a bunch of free equipment to do unlimited data collection and then we get to pull over everyone they say owes monies. Then we get to pull them over and either arrest them or force them to cough up the monies plus more monies. Our arrest records will soar! And then if they can pay the monies we can use civil forfeiture to take the rest of the monies they have!"
Don't think they're not already rubbing their hands together with glee over all the money they can collect by stacking up the processes. It's all about the money and when they complain that they don't have enough officers to do the work up go the fines.
Sounds like it's time for the citizens to do a whole bunch of letter writing and protesting to make that go away.
Someone should make a dazzling laser that is invisible to humans but can "blind" cameras. Mount it on your dashboard.
the less of two totalitarian dictatorships
I've heard faint praise before, but somehow that sets a new low bar.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Cut a deal with Uber and Lyft and the whole public/private thing goes away.For that matter, just go full public, I'm sure lot of people would allow one in their car for a slice of the action as they drive around.
I wouldn't think that Police would like this. Most people don't pay their fines because they have no money; it's unlikely they'll be carrying that kind of cash anyway. These are mostly poor, hand-to-mouth type of people.
And then, if they don't pay, they have to get taken to jail? Jails are already trying to reduce overcrowding, they don't want a bunch of random people booked for not paying a fine when they wouldn't have been booked otherwise. That is definitely up to the discretion of the officer, and I can't imagine most officers wanting to hold up their entire day booking someone into jail when they aren't really even doing anything.
I'm having a hard time understanding how they sold this concept, I guess. It's hard to see how the company would make that much money off of it.
I agree that additional surveillance is a bad idea, but, is the underlying idea here that the government is levying fines for all sorts of topics that shouldnt be laws? If the legal code is the problem, lets fix that, not the symptom.
Can't say I'm surprised it's happening in Texas.
God, guns, and gold...
But also allow any victim of a drug fueled crime to defend themself lethally without sanctions. That will teach Jimmy that his Heroin habit was the wrong lifestyle choice.
Some people are perpetually stupid, no amount of schooling will fix that.
So are cops so lazy now that they can't bother looking up an address in their DMV database and drive there to arrest the debtor? Must be too busy listening in on people's phone calls.
I guarantee that the license plate readers will ALWAYS be in 100% working order.
...if the civilian companies are the ones determining "probable cause" for apprehending, questioning people that seems wrong. It seems like the officer no longer has the responsibility to "decide"...he just does what his equipment tells him to do. Yikes.
Law enforcement exists under some rather specific laws. /.
This sounds like a structural conflict of interest in favor of a specific company
and may prove sufficiently illegal to be interesting again here on
Years ago a drill sergeant would shout "Jump Up"
Then would shout "Give me twenty you did it wrong".
After about 150 pushups he mentioned that he did not ....
tell us to come down yet. At that point we hurt
but did not die.
Some laws have consequences that violate other laws and
or the constitution (charter) of the city, county, state or nation.
This is an obvious thing to do -- it is not obvious that the actions,
contracts and cash flow are legal. Lacking checks and balances
these processes could be lethal and judgements as a result
should eliminate the value and "profit" of the program and could
make the authors of an illegal contract liable to the point of conspiracy
to __full_in_blank__.
An officer may serve a valid court order or judgement but this
does not appear to be so processed.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Good idea. I like it. I think it makes law enforcement cutting-edge. Maybe they can deploy a side-o-the-road robot on the highways that automatically scans all traffic and mail fees to their house or court summons. Profit runs this country.
Also Texas sucks.
Heaping pile of shit and no fucking election is going to fucking fix it.
You can only hope they get shot in the face in the process.
Apparently, some jurisdictions are having problems, with people paying their court fines and costs, because of a motor vehicle violation. They made a promise to the court, to pay the fine, and failed to do so.
Cry me a river.
Does contempt of court, come to mind?
www.computerlegalexperts.com
Apparently, some jurisdictions are having problems, with people paying their court fines and costs, because of a motor vehicle violation. They made a promise to the court, to pay the fine, and failed to do so. Cry me a river. Does contempt of court, come to mind? www.computerlegalexperts.com
The government has no business tracking people *who have committed no crime*. We are suppose to have a right to be free from warrant less searches. A license plate is unconstitutional because its purpose is illegal mass searches. Think about what it is for. It's to be able to distinguish between those the police are looking for and those the police are not looking for. Don't search just the cars you are looking for. You are searching the cars you aren't looking for as well. If you weren't we wouldn't need license plates. A cop can pull someone over they suspect of a crime without that person having a license plate. There is no specific place to be searched here. It's search all cars on the road until you find a particular plate.
This is what happens when a surveillance state has a pseudo-libertarian vibe and refuses to raise taxes for road maintenance and other necessary services.
The idea that we need higher taxes is a myth.
Government in the USA makes plenty of money, indeed staggering amounts of money. Taxes relative to GDP are higher then many countries that manage just fine when it comes to paying for necessary services.
Even if this was not the case, there is no need at all to raise taxes. Simply trim down the 2700 or so pages of the federal tax code down to, say 20 pages, and you'll get rid of huge numbers of loopholes that greatly reduce government income (and turn a theoretically progressive tax system into something that more closely resembles a flat tax system).
You could do all kinds of good things with the extra money that would produce, especially if was all used locally. This could even be provided to local government to pay for roads and basic services, which would remove the feeble "justification" for having property taxes on people's homes (tax business properties, perhaps, but never homes: how are ordinary people supposed to be able to save enough for retirement when their government is forcing them to pay rent on their own home?).
Libertarians like less government, and would certainly like greatly reducing the size of tax law, a notoriously corrupt area of law (and one that violates the right to ethical practice of law: excessive and avoidable complexity creates an artificial demand for the services of legal professionals). It would be a good start to massive legal and governmental ethics reform ...
Then there's the issue of spending the money we already have in different ways, prioritizing infrastructure higher ...