The US Government Is Using Road Signs Showing Drivers How Fast They're Going To Capture License Plate Data (qz.com)

Zorro shares a report from Quartz: According to recently released U.S. federal contracting data, the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding the footprint of its nationwide surveillance network with the purchase of "multiple" trailer-mounted speed displays "to be retrofitted as mobile LPR [License Plate Reader] platforms." The DEA is buying them from RU2 Systems Inc., a private Mesa, Arizona company. How much it's spending on the signs has been redacted. Two other, apparently related contracts, show that the DEA has hired a small machine shop in California, and another in Virginia, to conceal the readers within the signs. An RU2 representative said the company providing the LPR devices themselves is a Canadian firm called Genetec.

Comments

Driving is a privilege, not a right

[Anonymous Coward]

When you apply for your driver's license, you agree to certain terms. These terms are not negotiable. You drive at the pleasure of the state, not the other way around.

Re: Driving is a privilege, not a right

[Anonymous Coward]

Which state is the DEA a part of?

Re:Driving is a privilege, not a right

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say this SCOTUS ruling does not support that statement:
United States v. Jones - Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
" using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment."

So, that specific ruling was about attaching a device directly to someone's car, and being told they need a warrant which they didn't bother to get. As a result, that specific case got tossed, because the police essentially trespassed without a warrant and without having demonstrated probable cause to a judge ... ie, an Unconstitutional Search.

This bit of evil is to surveil everybody, and just claim a blanket exemption of "in the public view".

Basically, if they monitor everyone, they don't need to have to worry about warrants for specific people. This is the legal equivalent of "collecting the metadata" on telecomms, which the courts have already upheld.

The DEA has now decided that they will just hoover up all information they can get, and figure it out later. Which could have the effect of making investigations retroactive because they've already collected all of the information about you and can sift through it at their leisure ... no doubt by also demanding your information from cell carriers, ad companies, and everyone else who is tracking what you do.

Welcome to the surveillance state, it's only going to get worse from here. Expect every agency to start this kind of bulk collection of everybody, everywhere they possibly can, and can all be cross referenced and collated.

Honestly, the old Soviet countries would be proud of just how much the US has become a surveillance society. And they'd be laughing at just how many Americans are OK with this. Honestly, 9/11 did more to unwind freedoms than several decades of the Cold War ever did, and this shit keeps getting more normalized.

Papers please, comrade. Keep cowering as we keep sending those amber alerts to keep everyone in a state of panic.

Not so Free these days, and definitely not so Brave.

They do not care how fast

[SuperKendall]

The point of these things is not to measure speed, itâ(TM)s to disguise tracking cameras as something else you normally encounter on a road and do not think of recording anything. They are trying to get a sense of where people are using cars that may be evading known traffic cameras.

Re:They do not care how fast

[garcia]

My problem with these isn't even the 'being tracked' issue, it's that the Government (state or federal) was not meant to be a revenue generation machine. Unfortunately, governments use these tools not for safety, as they claim--especially in the instances of speed/red light/LPRs, but for revenue generation. They send automated civil fines for speed/light violations (potentially taken entirely out of context with no recourse) or to fine owners for any number of violations related to license plates.

We have to decide what levels we're willing to accept as intrusion. Papers please are not acceptable to me nor are these civil, out of context, fines. YMMV.

These are government roads

[superwiz]

Government also has people in cars with guns who can stop you and arrest on those roads, you know. You already have to REGISTER your car to drive it on a "public" (i.e. government) road. That means the government keeps track of what cars you own and such. Why should operating heavy machinery on a piece of land made by the government not come with no expectation of privacy? You wouldn't expect that you could operate a train and stay private about it. Just because cars are more versatile, doesn't mean the same principle doesn't apply. The only reason people care is that tracking cars used to be outside of the realm of what was possible. But the expectation of privacy that came with the fact no one cared to look was not the same a guaranteed privacy.

Vandalize them

[mapkinase]

That's all. We should start a national campaign of vandalizing this bullshit good-driver tax.

It's very well known that all the speed controlling devices are located in the areas where people are most likely to speed and people are most likely to speed in the areas where it is the SAFEST to speed.

The parkway with a healthy forest devider three lane on each side that has typically 50 mph limit in California is getting a 35 mph speed trap for no reason but to rob the drivers.

Vandalize them. Destroy them. A la guerre comme a la guerre.

Re:Outside their responsibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is it the DEA's responsibility to monitor driving speeds?

Mission creep, plain and simple.

The DEA, ICE, and everyone else are just continually ramping up surveillance on everything and deciding they need to monitor everybody just in case.

See, the DEA doesn't care about how fast your going, they're just piggy-backing the plate readers on the things which tell you how fast you're going ... this way they can monitor everybody. In this way, they can know where everybody goes in case they need to charge you with something later.

There will always be that idiotic segment of society who just think "well, they're doing this to keep me safe, so it's awesome". The problem is those people are incapable of realizing how much their own rights are being eroded in the name of Keeping You Safe From Bad People. The classic "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide" line of fascists and tyrants, accepted by idiots who haven't through it through.

Land of the free? Home of the brave? Not so much. Americans have been conditioned since 9/11 to just blindly accept this shit.

Thirty years ago this would have caused outrage in America, now everyone just goes back to the Kardashians and hopes the government is going to keep them safe.

At the end of the day, this is just the continuous surveillance state ratcheting up, ensuring they monitor everybody at all times -- and the ad and analytic companies can be secretly tapped to fill in the blanks about every aspect of your life. The dystopian state marches on.

Papers please, comrade ... the State is watching you.

Re:Redacted?

[BlueStrat]

How much it's spending on the signs has been redacted.

That right there. That disgusts me. How dare a government hide such information from the voting public that's paying for it all.

"Sit down and shut up, Prole, or we'll civil-forfeit everything you own and parallel-construct your ass into a life sentence in PMITA prison!" -- Government

Ain't freedom grand?

Hey everyone, let's allow the government an even wider scope and give it more power over more of our lives and give it more of our money to do it with! What could possibly go wrong? /s

Strat

Strat

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Um... where I am

[markdavis]

>"they are put in places folks are speeding or where they have been accidents. The data shows folks slow down when they know how fast they're driving, but it's easy to ignore your gauge and just go with the flow, which usually puts you 10-15 over."

Going with the flow is exactly what DOES NOT cause accidents. Accidents are caused primarily by:

1) Distracted driving
2) Impaired driving
3) Following too closely
4) Improper lane changes
5) Gross speed *differential*

And none of those have an "automated" "ticket in the mail" solution. Yet the obsession always seems to be over speed. Why? Because it is objective, easily obtained, and generates lots of revenue.