Slashdot Mirror
US Cops Can't Keep License Plate Data Scans Secret Without Reason, Court Rules (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Police departments cannot categorically deny access to data collected through automated license plate readers, California's Supreme Court said on Thursday -- a ruling that may help privacy advocates monitor government data practices. The ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation sought to obtain some of this data in 2012 from the Los Angeles Police Department and Sheriff's Department, but the agencies refused, on the basis that investigatory data is exempt from disclosure laws. So the following year, the two advocacy groups sued, hoping to understand more about how this data hoard is handled. The LAPD, according to court documents, collects data from 1.2 million vehicles per week and retains that data for five years. The LASD captures data from 1.7 to 1.8 million vehicles per week, which it retains for two years. The ACLU contends [PDF] that indiscriminate license plate data harvesting presents a risk to civil liberties and privacy. It argues that constant monitoring has the potential to chill rights of free speech and association and that databases of license plate numbers invite institutional abuse, not to mention security risks.
I do have a problem with them keeping that data for years. IMHO, a day or two at most should be sufficient .
I'd say a bit longer than that- maybe a week, but no longer than a month- say someone has their car stolen from their home and don't discover it until they come back from a vacation- it would be nice to be able to track it down.
What I really want to know is what they are truly doing with the data and the contribution to solving crime and public safety.
Thanks to this ruling, the data can be accessed by any company wiling to fill out the proper forms. This is the information age and data can be bought and sold. Quickly you will find big data finding some use fo this data. If only to allow anyone to search your license plate and find out where you've been in the last 6 months. (your spouse, your stalker, etc). That sort of process is a good way to collect marketing data, as you can quickly associate a Google or Apple account once the sucker installs an app to access your stupid website.
6 months is an edge case which is effectively a logic fallacy.
The points of WHY to keep the data need to be determined first. If its for tickets then delete it after review (except for the offender until after court). If its for something else then that something else first needs defined and why it benefits society.
Does this mean I can request data on the whereabouts of my wife and the government has to help me? She hasn't had a good beating in ages.
By scanning it in the right places, you can establish patterns that strongly imply those things, assuming the psychologist or cancer specialist is in a clinic dedicated to that specialty and not in a general hospital. You can also determine that your husband or wife is in a particular neighborhood on Friday nights and not at work as he or she has claimed, thus leading you to discover that your husband or wife is having an affair. You can determine whether clusters of adjacent houses won't have anyone nearby to report someone breaking in and stealing everything. (Just be sure to cover your plates a few blocks away.) And so on.
The general public gaining access to such a database would be a privacy nightmare. And as a rule, if disclosure of information would be a big enough disaster, the right solution is to not retain the data, or where possible, to not create the data in the first place.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
A friend in Missouri had an old Camaro stolen - almost certainly for a joy ride because it was old. He thought he'd get it back quickly because they are usually abandoned at the side of the road afterwards. He checked with the police several times to see if they had recovered it to which they responded in the negative. A few months later, he went ahead and bought a new car.
Nearly a year after the car was stolen, the police impound contacted him asking if he was the owner of a car they had. It was his car. It had been in the impound since the day after it was stolen. They actually asked him to pay the impound fee for all of that time.
Do not for a moment believe that police departments really care about recovering stolen vehicles unless, perhaps, the victim is influential. Do not use such trivialities to justify these databases. They will not be used for that. Too much paperwork for things covered by insurance.