Government Spy Truck Is Disguised As A Google Street View Car (vice.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer and information science professor, discovered a SUV "tucked away in the shadows of the Philadelphia Convention Center's tunnel" that was labeled as a Google Maps Street View car. It had two high-powered license plate reader cameras mounted on top, meaning it had to belong to a government agency. The Philadelphia Police Department had admitted it owns the truck after the report from Motherboard was published. "Unless the Philadelphia Fire Department of Streets Department are using automated license plate recognition (ALPR), this strongly suggests the city's police department is trawling city streets under the auspices of Google while snapping thousands of license plate images per minute," says Motherboard. ALPR can photograph thousands of license plate images per minute and track and store a person's travel habits without a warrant. Google spokesperson Susan Cadrecha commented on the report, "We can confirm this is not a Google Maps car, and that we are currently looking into the matter." The Philadelphia Police Department since responded to the report: "We have been informed that this unmarked vehicle belongs to the police department; however, the placement of any particular decal on the vehicle was not approved through any chain of command. With that being said, once this was brought to our attention, it was ordered that the decals be removed immediately."

Comments

Re:Another case of bullshit government overreach

[110010001000]

You sound like you have something to hide.

Forest, say hi to the trees

[grasshoppa]

I don't know what everyone is getting so upset over. I mean, the decals were removed.

Re:Another case of bullshit government overreach

[PopeRatzo]

the short hair has been growing for almost 100 years.

And now they've got us by those short hairs.

Re:Another case of bullshit government overreach

[happyslayer]

...So if the government wanted to film you in the bathroom, that would be ok, also, right? After all, you aren't doing anything wrong so you should have nothing to hide.

According to my wife, there are LOTS of things that I do wrong in the bathroom: Biological and chemical weaponry testing, just to name a couple. My only counter-argument is that it's not "wrong", per se, but I admit to feeling unclean...

Re:Another case of bullshit government overreach

[110010001000]

You sound like a terrorist. What are you doing in the bathroom?

Re:If you have nothing to hide..

[Anonymous Coward]

The cops are the ones that get away with stuff. That's how you tell.

Re:Context

[stealth_finger]

I come here for information not pointless mass debating.

All there is here is pointless mass debation.

Re:Move along

[michelcolman]

Oh, I had no idea magnification could be expressed in Watts. You learn something new every day.