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

What's the difference?

[jafiwam]

Really, what's the difference?

I am sure disguising it as something else would be easy enough.

Someone has a sense of humor.

Re:What's the difference?

[ka9dgx]

The difference is that doing this would put Google maps drivers in danger.

Just like when the CIA sent spies disguised as vaccine workers, and set back the effort to eliminae smallpox worldwide.

Re:What's the difference?

[ka9dgx]

What's wrong with police cars being marked as police cars? Why put Google drivers at risk for no good reason?

Re:What's the difference?

[dave420]

Do you really need this spelled out to you? If the police masquerade as Google cars, people will perceive Google cars as possibly police cars, something entirely unreasonable without the actions of the police. That means anyone with a grudge against the police, be it premeditated or in the heat of passion, will now have reason to assume any marked Google vehicles are actually cop cars. The comparison with the CIA's operation was to illustrate to you that by masquerading as another entity blurs the lines of perception between the two. If one actor is subsequently discovered to be acting in poor faith, then the other, possibly innocent actor is tainted.

This is not difficult to understand. Sure, it shows you are wrong, but it's not difficult to understand.

Another case of bullshit government overreach

[surfdaddy]

You know, the issue is that what has happened since Osama Bin Laden created the 9/11 disaster is that the U.S. has been creeping toward a surveillance state, but it has been slow enough that it's like hair growing. You have short hair, and you still have short hair, and a few weeks later you still have fairly short hair, and then a few months later you finally realize that you have long hair. But it happened so slowly that nobody is very alarmed. We have Clapper lying to Congress, we have Comey saying the government needs to get into terrorist encrypted phones, and we have Feinstein putting (essentially) backdoor encryption legislation out for comment. Meanwhile, police departments are going wild with Stingrays and cameras. Welcome to Big Brother and the surveillance state. "Land of the Free" and the home of the spied upon...

Not Approved

[Luthair]

So some lowly peon opened their wallet and paid out of pocket for printing the Google vinyls? Bullshit.

The decals removed

[pablo_max]

thank goodness...since you know..the decals is what everyone is concerned about. Not the mass tracking of the population without any cause.