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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.
did you read TFA? we "fools" think this is horrible because our public servants are bulk collecting data to be sold by a private company to the highest bidder.
Municipalities Profit from poverty through excessive court fees
Texas judge blows lid on speeding ticket racket
Policing and Profit
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.
What do you do when you encounter somebody that has $20 but not $1k? Toss them in jail, crediting them $100/day, while spending ~$100/day in expenses to keep them in jail?
Doesn't take many of them to exceed the money gotten from those who actually have it.
That's not how the modern for-profit justice system works, you don't get *credit* for serving time, instead you *pay* for serving time:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/1...
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.
Unfortunately, the one time I came to court for a poor friend I saw that is exactly how it is and I was so disappointed. All the poor people who couldn't afford lawyers were paraded in front of everyone in court with their charges being talked about by the judge ina very loud disapproving voice. But when it cane time for the well-to-do guy with a lawyer it seemed like a rock star came into court. Court people moved out of the way, the judge whispered for 20 mins to the lawyer, and then the judge announced all charges dismissed. All because the guy could pay to play. Meanwhile my friend was levied very heavy court fines she could never pay off -- more than the cost of a lawyer even. It is a rigged system where you do have to pay to play and I am so disappointed.
You may not be aware but many states and cities are starting to charge you for the public defender if you lose your case.
It's really evil. See John Oliver show for details.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I lived in Houston, TX for several years and can confirm that TX police is for sale to the highest bidder. This instance of TX police "for sale" isn't at all surprising.
This topic (and your reply) are interesting and topical to me. ... not all police cars but currently about half, and a continuous purchase program with the goal of eventually equipping every car eventually. A couple more years and they will be in every Cruiser.
The Municipal Police force have the mobile scanners in their vehicles
But with regard to " TX police "for sale" ", only last week it was decided by City Council and the Police Commission, after proposals from various private and charitable groups and organizations, that the Municipal Police would accept no monies or equipment in lieu of money, under any circumstances, in the interest of impartiality and public confidence in Police impartiality, from any party save for the Civic Administration's normal funding of the department via Property Taxes *.
I was impressed by a City Council and Mayor (whom I rarely agree with), and the Chief of Police showing some integrity for a change.
* Property taxes are relatively low so it's not like the City is scrambling for tax revenue; average is about $C 2200/yr ($USD 1540) with the City getting about half and one of the Boards of Education getting the rest, and whom set their own mill rate (property tax rate) ... taxpayers "elect" to fund one of the school systems, regardless of whether you have children in K-12 or not; the two largest are Public and Catholic, but there are others to choose from (French Immersion, Ukrainian, Cree [native American] Mennonite, etc.). My 2015 Property Taxes were just under $C 500.00 but my home has a relatively low assessment of about $65K.
Here in Tulsa, that's exactly the way it is. In fact, the Judge always tells whomever they can talk to the court clerk and work out a payment plan. I've had to do this before, they said $50 a month until it was all paid. They even sent a monthly statement / payment sheet to remind you. I'm assuming many people who get caught up in this just don't bother to talk to the clerks and are just so angry about it all they refuse to pay anything to anyone on it. "Sovereign Citizen" movements and such.