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

Posted by BeauHD on from the master-of-disguise dept.

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."

17 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Attitudes and behavior like this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    from law enforcement are why the tree of liberty needs refreshing from time to time..

  2. What's the difference? by jafiwam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really, what's the difference?

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

    Someone has a sense of humor.

    1. Re:What's the difference? by ka9dgx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:What's the difference? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why are you assuming they are wrong or paranoid? If I remember correctly, they disguised somebody as a vaccine worker or a doctor trying to administer vaccinations to find Osama bin Laden. So once it was discovered by the local populace that they did this, people who were actually trying to help were threatened, but I not sure if any were killed. So I don't think they're being paranoid at all.

    3. Re:What's the difference? by royallthefourth · · Score: 5, Informative

      The CIA's bogus vaccine incident is well documented

      http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07...

    4. Re:What's the difference? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      set back the effort to eliminae smallpox worldwide.

      Minor quibble: Smallpox was eliminated in the 1970s. The CIA operatives were disguised as polio vaccine workers.

      Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries in the world where polio is still endemic. Several dozen polio vaccine workers were killed in the backlash against the CIA ruse. The CIA has admitted that impersonating vaccine workers was a mistake, and said that they will not do it again.

      The movie "Zero Dark Thirty" showed CIA operatives pretending to be vaccine workers, but did not mention the backlash.

    5. Re:What's the difference? by ka9dgx · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    6. Re:What's the difference? by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe take the tinfoil hat off before posting next time...

      Sorry, but this event is a fact. You may not like facts, but they are what they are.

      Yes, it IS a fact that the CIA sent agents (read: spies) to foreign countries who had official "covers" as health and vaccine doctors.

      When they were unmasked, many nations responded by flat-out refusing entry to real anti-smallpox vaccine doctors, and that DID set the effort to control smallpox back all over the world.

      This isn't some kooky conspiracy theory, this is a fact and the government has admitted it.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    7. Re:What's the difference? by dave420 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. Another case of bullshit government overreach by surfdaddy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Another case of bullshit government overreach by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You sound like you have something to hide.

    2. Re:Another case of bullshit government overreach by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

      the short hair has been growing for almost 100 years.

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

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. Not Approved by Luthair · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Not Approved by sumdumass · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It probably came out of some (un)official slush fund billed as community outreach or something. A peon in the sense of the chain of command could likely still have access to these funds.

      We had a chief of police run out because the department purchased paintball guns and rented some land which they claimed was for training purposes. That claim fell apart quickly when it was videotaped and appeared purely recreational. It really fell apart when the owner of the land was discovered to be one of the office's relations. They claimed some patrol leader set it all up and that the higher ups were unaware of it. The chief took a leave of absence and retired shortly after. But he went to work at the municipal court building two months later I

  5. they probably may, except in California by raymorris · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > I am not aware of any legal police authority allowing this

    There's no law that allows you to eat chocolate ice cream in your bedroom. You may do so because there's no law AGAINST it. So the question is whether any law prohibits this.

    Trademark law regulates the use of someone else's mark and name in TRADE, aka commerce. Because the cops weren't engaged in commerce, it probably doesn't apply.

    This looks a lot like "tortious interference ", disrupting business relationships through a guilty act which is not merely competitive. However, most jurisdictions require that tortious interference be "intentional", not just negligent. That means it would apply only if the cops were TRYING to harm Google or their customers. If business relationships are harmed as a sidee-effect of whatever the cops were doing, that's legal in most places.

    Some jurisdictions, including California, allow for recovery under tortious interference where the defendant both acted NEGLIGENTLY and did a guilty act, they were being a slimeball in some way. One could argue that the cops' actions qualify (and one could argue that they don't) . Again, most jurisdictions don't allow it anyway, they require intent to cause harm.

    Someone else may think of another law the police may have violated in this instance, but the laws which are most obviously relevant don't quite cover this case.

  6. The decals removed by pablo_max · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  7. Re:Context by stealth_finger · · Score: 4, Funny

    I come here for information not pointless mass debating.

    All there is here is pointless mass debation.

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