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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)
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.
Yes Using Cops as Debit Collectors.
What Could go wrong?
See Ferguson.
The Citizens hate the Cops. Treat them like crap.
The Cops Hate the Citizens for Treating them like crap.
The Police Need to be liked and trusted by the Citizens to be effective.
Bad Idea, But they may go for it.
Agreed. TFS opens up with the headline "debt collectors," but there's a massive difference between private debts and public debts. And even then there's still a huge difference between debts like taxes, and punitive debts like fines.
If you can't pay your court fines, then you're supposed to be in jail in the first place. That you're essentially racking up more fines by being on lam (and causing the government to expend resources to catch you) doesn't seem all that problematic to me.
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
B. Mussolini defined fascism as "marriage between government and corporations."
I'm just saying.
So a sort of... debtors prison where the in debt person who cannot pay on the outside, is sure to find a way to earn enough while in jail to pay the fines... while also possibly costing the municipality even more to house & feed them.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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.
Municipalities Profit from poverty through excessive court fees
Texas judge blows lid on speeding ticket racket
Policing and Profit
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.
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.
You don't see any problem with police telling you: pay the fine *and* a 25% surcharge to a private company or I'm taking you to jail?
One thing I noted from the description was that the 25% goes to Vigilant, pure profit for them.
It is not pure profit as Vigilant pays for the following.
1. The scanners in the police cars.
2. The servers to handle the database and the queries.
3. The data entry and administration of the database
4. The dispute process for transactions.
but it's my understanding that in many cases they can't pay, not that they don't want to.
They should have gone to court and dealt with the issue. There are many programs to reduce fines for low income offenders.
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.
It is at least as possible that the word will get around about this process and many more fines will be paid when people realize that they can be found much more easily.
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.
Im not sure this is a helpful distinction. Fascism was a much more complicated beast than simply the collusion of government and capitalism. There was an underlying mythology of the nation and of violence. Fascism was the glorification of the dictatorship of the nationalists, and all had to fall into compliance, citizens, companies, the military and so on, and any opponent was to be smashes with maximum violence. I dont know this exactly describes this. Certainly the tendency towards unreasonable patriotism certainly doesnt help, but its not quite fascism, its something else....
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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....
Vigalent cameras (and one major competitor plus a host of smaller members of the scanned license plate database industry) are placed in fixed locations as well as attached to damn near every tow truck in the country. This is why tow trucks keep taking quick jaunts through parking lots, going too fast for a human to read plates and check lists. The cameras are reading every plate. It's a bonus reason for them to stage their trucks along congested expressways. These companies compile and keep the data for decades.
https://www.aclu.org/feature/y...
This fool thinks that it's horrible that a detailed database of every license plate that Vigalent cameras ever saw, and the place and time it was seen, is now in the hands of law enforcement and probably soon in available for a small fee. Spouse abusers, kidnappers and hitmen take note. NSA/FBI, whoever can't collect this legally themselves, can now fetch a outline of anyone's life and create a profit for the private industry supplier.
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.
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.]
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.
good luck getting a public defender for traffic court. they are overworked just doing criminal trials.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
lol. "Score: 0, Flamebait" should be "Score: 0, Horrible Truth".
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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.
until some minority driver tries to speed away and the cops chase him down and shoot him over an unpaid parking ticket.
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.
If the police end up caring about the public, then they can't be trusted to act in the interests of those in power when they're told to go bash skulls at a food riot in progress.
That just won't do. To prevent that, animosity must be generated between the police and the people. Psychopathic goons who want to lay a beat-down must be given hiring preference. Unjust court rulings must let police off the hook for their wrongs and overly punish regular folks for even the slightest perceived infractions.
That's how you get the people busy fighting among themselves and ignoring the real problems in our society: bankers/financiers, crooked politicians, and billionaire globalist industrialists.
Granted, the 8th amendment does say that we are not a country of debtors prisons and as such unreasonable fines shall not be levied, so assuming that the majority of people who don't pay the fines simply can't afford it, one does wonder how it doesn't violate the 8th amendment.
It does violate the 8th amendment, but the courts don't care.
The US Constitution hasn't been properly followed since the Civil War, and perhaps not even before then.
It is a nice concept, but we really don't pay that much heed to it.
Invalid argument.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.techtimes.com/artic...
Everyone is wrong occasionally.
I seriously doubt a major 15 minute segment would be wrong in any central and fundamental facts. And in this case, it's not.
You'd need to show the areas he said charge for public defenders actually do not charge for public defenders. Which you did not do.
Put it this way... you were wrong sometime in the past year about something, so your current argument is invalid.
It's just as invalid a technique when I do it to you as when you did it with john oliver.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually mussolini never said that. It is widely debunked, here is one of many such debunking articles that came up in google, you can find more if you distrust this particular author:
http://daniel-ruth.blogspot.co...
Jesus christ you are another one of those smug assholes whose ignorance of the real world is indistinguishable from evil.
You've mistaken your good luck for good citizenship. You live in neighborhoods where policing for penny ante shit is low unlike poor neighborhoods where that's practically all they do.
Fool for thought it is more like it. You need some real life experience of walking in the shoes of those you judge.
"While that is largely true, it is also true that the poor tend to do more things that are stupid and land them in court in the first place."
Yea, those poor were stupid enough to fleece Enron investors, and it was the poor who overleveraged housing derivatives out of greed, and the poor habitually hire teams of accountants to help them hide income from the tax system...
Oh wait. No, the poor do none of that. The only reason the poor are overrepresented in criminal cases is because they don't have wads of cash to pad their fall when they do stupid things. Thinking that doing stupid things is a poor person's thing is nothing but ignorant, bratty, first world, overentitled fuckery.
And since we now have face recognition, everyone who displays their face in plain view have no expectation of privacy either. If you don't want to be tracked, it's a burqa for you... or you can just keep walking with your head up your arse, I suppose.
Over here, privacy laws make a clear distinction between data being available, and the acts of collecting, processing and sharing that data. Each of those acts is strictly regulated, and the fact that your license plate is always in full view doesn't mean that everyone has the right to track your whereabouts 24/7. In this case, the idea behind this setup (catching outstanding fines with a license plate reader) does not clash with principles of good privacy, but the implementation does: a private company having access to that list of deadbeats, for instance. I would expect the police to (be ordered to) demand a system that is under their full control, with no 3rd parties having access to any of the data.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
http://www.rense.com/general37...
Make of it what you want. This does not mean the USofA is a fascist regime, but it is running in that direction, while yelling FREEDOM!
Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by govern
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"While that is largely true, it is also true that the poor tend to do more things that are stupid and land them in court in the first place."
When the rich make the laws, that's easy to arrange