Surveillance Cameras To Scan License Plates

[patric]

I have no idea if there will be a country-wide government conspiracy to track individuals using this tech.

I think "collaboration" and "meeting minimal metrics" are their preferred terms.

On average, agencies are sharing data with a minimum of 160 other agencies through Vigilant Solutions' LEARN system, though many agencies are sharing data with over 800 separate entities.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/eff-and-muckrock-release-records-and-data-200-law-enforcement-agencies-automated


Public surveillance for private profit is spreading into communities under the cover of promises of convenience and increased safety.
Police in Texas faced pressure from contracts with Vigilant which included vague references to quotas for how many cars the agencies needed to pull over. Failing to meet that quota would mean losing the system for the department.
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/investigations/2018/04/11/cashless-tolls-dark-future/439131002/


Here's the secret details of 200 cities' license-plate tracking programs
https://boingboing.net/2018/11/15/find-yourself-a-city-to-live-i.html


Automated license plate readers are collecting and sharing tons of data across state lines
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/automated-license-plate-readers-privacy-data-security-police/576904/


Automatic License Plate Readers, Vigilant Solutions, and ICE
https://psmag.com/magazine/not-all-surveillance-is-created-equal


California malls are sharing license plate tracking data with an ICE-linked database
https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/10/alpr-license-plate-recognition-ice-irvine-company/

[Red Arrow]

Don't forget about the REPO guys.  My car is paid-for but many are not.  They need to stay off private parking lots.  We see them driving through my employer's parking lot occasionally. 

[Ed W]

Don't forget about the REPO guys.  My car is paid-for but many are not.  They need to stay off private parking lots.  We see them driving through my employer's parking lot occasionally. 

They need permission to be on private property, though many of them don't bother to ask. My security guard son has had a few run-ins with them. The scanner car cruises the parking lot and if he gets a hit, he then calls for a tow truck.

[patric]

They need permission to be on private property, though many of them don't bother to ask. My security guard son has had a few run-ins with them. The scanner car cruises the parking lot and if he gets a hit, he then calls for a tow truck.

They make extra money selling their scans to the ALPR data brokers, and there is no law to stop them.  People who had the misfortune of parking near gay bars have been forced to pay blackmailers who use these scanners with impunity.

Seriously, there needs to be regulation.  There isnt any.

[patric]

A south Tulsa neighborhood has installed new technology to help catch criminals.

They installed a Flock Safety system that includes wireless cameras that read license plates. As cars drive through the neighborhood, the camera takes a series of pictures of the vehicles and their license plates with a date and time.

In a FOX23 investigation, FOX23's Janna Clark learned some people argue the system is more "big brother" than crime fighter, but others say it makes them feels safe.

Tulsa police said it could help them solve crimes because they rarely get video that shows license plates that are legible.

The neighborhood homeowner's association leases the cameras from Flock. The company takes care of any issues with the technology.

https://www.krmg.com/news/local/fox23-investigates-tulsa-neighborhood-installs-new-tech-catch-criminals/M9oEV3WlbyrQATkOeAffAJ/

Surprise! The data goes to Amazon Web Services...

https://www.cnet.com/news/neighborhood-security-cameras-sacrifice-privacy-to-solve-crimes/
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Snap-The-local-HOA-just-captured-your-license-13450561.php

[patric]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-surprising-return-of-the-repo-man/2018/05/15/26fcd30e-4d5a-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html

The company's goal is to capture every plate and use that information to reveal patterns. A plate shot outside an apartment at 5 a.m. tells you that's probably where the driver spends the night, no matter their listed home address. So if a repo order comes in for a car, the agent already knows where to look.

Repo agents are responsible for the majority of the billions of license plate scans produced nationwide. But they don't control the information. Most of that data is owned by Digital Recognition Network (DRN), a Fort Worth company that is the largest provider of license-plate-recognition systems. And DRN sells the information to insurance companies, private investigators — even other repo agents.

[heironymouspasparagus]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-surprising-return-of-the-repo-man/2018/05/15/26fcd30e-4d5a-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html

The company's goal is to capture every plate and use that information to reveal patterns. A plate shot outside an apartment at 5 a.m. tells you that's probably where the driver spends the night, no matter their listed home address. So if a repo order comes in for a car, the agent already knows where to look.

Repo agents are responsible for the majority of the billions of license plate scans produced nationwide. But they don't control the information. Most of that data is owned by Digital Recognition Network (DRN), a Fort Worth company that is the largest provider of license-plate-recognition systems. And DRN sells the information to insurance companies, private investigators — even other repo agents.

I saw a car just like that yesterday...was wondering what that stuff was all about on the trunk...

[patric]

I saw a car just like that yesterday...was wondering what that stuff was all about on the trunk...

" The Oklahoma Tax Commission's list of registered vehicles and the OID's policy registry are cross-referenced, making a narrowed list of license plates to scan rather than every Oklahoma-tagged vehicle. "

That is flat out wrong. Every single vehicle pasing a scanner is scanned. The scanner doesnt know who has insurance or worships at a mosque or synagogue. With revenue being the sole motive for the surveillance, we have no assurance that the personally-identifiable data the scanners collect doesnt find its way to for-profit databases (like Vigilant Solutions), or those operated with questionable accountability (like ICE:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/us-customs-border-protection-says-photos-travelers-into-out-country-were-recently-taken-data-breach).

"Prosecutor Amanda Arnall Couch said the program's three law enforcement officers have reviewed more than 22,000 images for accuracy in four months.
Since November, the program has sent more than 14,000 violation notices to drivers.
Of the violation notices issued, drivers have contested 692 tickets, and 663 of those tickets were dismissed.
946 people payed a $174 fine.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/state-and-regional/uninsured-drivers-decreasing-since-automated-ticketing-system-launched-nearly-got/article_639895d6-1e57-507e-8958-badf521b7b54.html

[patric]

And here comes the mission creep. A bill to "regulate" data collection actually expands it, and skirts accountability by exempting it from the Open Records Law. License plate scanners collect and store data from all tags regardless of vehicle type so the article is somewhat misleading by only referencing one particular use for the data.



OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma lawmakers are considering legislation that would regulate how information captured by automated license plate readers as vehicles enter the state is retained and distributed.

The bill requires that individual data collected by the Corporation Commission be exempt from the Open Records Act, which grants citizens unrestricted access to public records, The Oklahoman reported.

The measure would allow the collected data to be published and released but it would not authorize revealing the activities or identifying specific vehicles or carriers. Other agencies would be allowed to use the information for law enforcement and regulatory activities.

"It's to allow them the ability to use the license plate readers and to allow them access to the (Department of Public Safety) information database," said state Rep. Ross Ford.

As a commercial vehicle approaches a weigh station, the readers scan the license plate and verify licensing details, Ford added. If the data isn't accessible, the driver must then stop at the weigh station.

The state only keeps images of license plates attached to heavier commercial vehicles, semi-trucks and trailers.

The reader system does not collect other information, such as the details of license plates from non-commercial vehicles.

Matt Skinner, spokesman for the Corporation Commission, said the system saves a substantial amount of time for truckers as they drive through ports of entry, and past weigh stations.

"The real beauty of it is it speeds things up for trucks enormously. It used to be back in the day, you'd see long lines of truckers backed up at those tiny weigh stations, so much that it was dangerous," Skinner said. "Now, many trucks don't even need to stop."

The House Transportation Committee passed the proposal Wednesday. Rep. Roger Ford's sponsored bill can now be heard on the House floor.



Cleveland and Rogers counties, Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control and the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety have implemented license plate scanners. However, none is using them to catch uninsured drivers.
https://oklahomawatch.org/2017/04/20/scanning-license-plates-is-latest-revenue-boosting-move-by-das/

[patric]

Jonathan Miller will not be selling his automated insurance citation system in Texas. On Monday, state Attorney General Ken Paxton shot down the proposal of Miller's firm, the Texas Public Safety Consortium, to deploy automated license plate readers (ALPR, also known as ANPR) in Bowie County to ticket motorists for driving with lapsed insurance.

Miller was behind a similar failed effort in Puerto Rico last year, then operating as the "National Public Safety Consortium." He is more commonly associated with his other company InsureNet, which led an ultimately unsuccessful insurance ticketing effort in Oklahoma and several other states. Miller has been desperate to do business in the Lone Star State, having worked to influence state officials there for more nearly a decade.

"What is proposed herein can accomplish four important tasks for Texas," Miller wrote in a 31-page presentation prepared for then-Texas Governor Rick Perry. "It can generate an estimated $1.295 billion dollars in new gross revenues by simply enforcing the state's existing laws and do this without cost of any kind to government or insurers."

To the annoyance of InsureNet investors, the promised windfall never materialized. Despite heavy investment in well connected lobbyists and celebrities like football legend Barry Switzer, the insurance ticketing programs have never panned out in any state. Miller's "exclusive" connections with the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS) were supposed to be the key to ensuring no other photo ticketing company would be able to compete for the insurance ticketing business.

"This NLETS-hosted and approved solution, (the only system hosted or approved by NLETS), was developed specifically by and for law enforcement to provide accurate, instant, non-invasive vehicle insurance verification," Miller wrote to then-Governor Perry.

The claimed exclusivity is what allowed recent deals such as the one with Puerto Rico to come in the form of no-bid contracts. As a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, however, NLETS would have a hard time explaining a truly exclusive arrangement if it did keep other automated ticketing industry competitors from attempting to offer a similar service. Such a service would never fly in Texas because state law only gives authority to cities and counties to use of a red light camera system.

"The system may be used 'only for the purpose of detecting a violation or suspected violation of a traffic-control signal,' and it is an offense to use the system to create an image in any other manner or for any other purpose," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote in his formal opinion. "These provisions illustrate that when the legislature has authorized automated photographic or similar technology for the enforcement of traffic or vehicular laws, it has been specific about the circumstances and permissible uses of the technology. It has enacted no law granting counties authority to utilize an automated photographic insurance enforcement system."

Paxton's opinion also ends efforts by counties to deploy speed camera systems.
https://www.thenewspaper.com/news/49/4946.asp

[patric]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said Monday that photos of travelers had been compromised as part of a "malicious cyberattack," raising concerns over how federal officials' expanding surveillance efforts could imperil Americans' privacy.

Customs officials said in a statement Monday that the images, which included photos of people's faces and license plates, had been compromised as part of an attack on a federal subcontractor.

CBP makes extensive use of cameras and video recordings at airports and land border crossings, where images of vehicles are captured. Those images are used as part of a growing agency facial-recognition program designed to track the identity of people entering and exiting the U.S.

The Register, a British technology news site, reported late last month that a large haul of breached data was being offered on the dark web.

Perceptics and other companies offer automated license-plate-reading devices that federal officials can use to track a vehicle, or its owner, as it travels on public roads.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/us-customs-border-protection-says-photos-travelers-into-out-country-were-recently-taken-data-breach/

The Oklahoma District Attorneys Council concedes their license tag scanning program raises revenue for DAs,  (https://oklahomawatch.org/2017/11/16/district-attorneys-approve-license-plate-scanner-contract-bringing-uninsured-drivers-closer-to-automatic-tickets)  and that would likely include selling their surveillance data to large law-enforcement databases like CPB, for example, meaning its probably too late to close the barn door.

[patric]

(AP) — A federal jury in Minnesota has awarded $585,000 to a police officer who alleged that 58 fellow officers from the Minneapolis Police Department broke a federal privacy law by searching for her driver's license data without a lawful purpose.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/jury-awards-k-to-minneapolis-cop-over-license-lookups/article_97d0c5c9-965d-5335-a98b-12f4239fa489.html

[patric]

The longtime maker of license-plate scanners and other surveillance equipment used along the U.S. border was suspended Tuesday from federal contracting by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, who cited "evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity," federal records show.

The company was attacked by an unknown hacker and had much of its internal data — including images of travelers' faces and license plates, surveillance-equipment schematics and sensitive contracting documents — made available for download on the open Web.

The suspension is a crushing blow to one of the central cogs of the U.S. border-surveillance machine and comes at a time of growing questions over CBP conduct, security and oversight. Lawmakers and civil rights advocates said the breach illustrates the danger of the federal government's reliance on private companies to collect and stockpile sensitive data on people's locations and identities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/02/border-surveillance-subcontractor-suspended-after-cyberattack-misuse-traveler-images/

[patric]

One nightmare scenario -- that could happen very soon -- would be if a cop running an ALPR license plate scanner was using the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Telecommunications System database to stop any motorist who has a medical marijuana license, knowing that he could arrest that motorist for DUI based solely on the expectation of finding residual metabolites in their system. 

Oklahoma law considers motorists to be in the commission of driving under the influence of drugs if they have any amount of a schedule 1 substance or its metabolites in their system. Despite hemp recently becoming federally legal, state law continues to define "marihuana" and metabolites such as THC as a schedule 1 drug, which means that patients could be targeted for DUI arrests based on prior knowledge of cardholder status.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/marijuana/attorney-suing-omma-dps-says-potential-of-police-accessing-medical/article_417486e7-3a43-5c93-91b9-78572f7354fa.html

[patric]

Under Trump, the fishing has only become easier. In December 2017, as first reported by the technology website The Verge, ICE gained long-sought access to the world's largest privately run database of license-plate scans — more than five billion historic images captured continually and automatically, thousands per minute, by infrared devices attached to lampposts and police cars and repossession-agent vehicles across the United States.

Plates are scannable because D.M.V.s now design them that way: In a 2012 A.A.M.V.A. best-practices guide partly funded by ICE's sister agency within D.H.S., Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.), A.A.M.V.A. advises its members to use opaque inks and "retro-reflective" surfaces and to always keep letters and numbers away from any bolt holes that could confound the machines.

The database ICE uses is run by Vigilant Solutions, a California company recently acquired by Motorola that has agreements with more than a thousand law-enforcement agencies nationwide. ICE's roughly $200,000-a-month contract — a previous version was batted down over privacy concerns during the Obama administration — lets deportation officers map immigrants' daily rhythms with true granularity. Now they can see precisely when and where vehicles of interest have been spotted during the previous five years, and they can upload 2,500-plate "hot lists" that trigger immediate iPhone alerts whenever a target is scanned by a camera in the network.

A key benefit of CLEAR is that it isn't restricted by protections on what data the government can collect or keep — because it isn't government-owned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/magazine/ice-surveillance-deportation.html