Surveillance Cameras To Scan License Plates

[patric]

(KOTV) TPD now has a couple of cars equipped with license plate reading cameras.
According to TPD, the cameras scan license plates non-stop, looking for stolen cars and officers say the system has been very effective.
Police say they rolled out the new technology at the beginning of summer and say so far, they've been able to recover more than a dozen stolen cars.

Auditor Releases Damning Report About Law Enforcement's Use of Automated License Plate Readers
"Instead of ensuring that only authorized users access their ALPR data for appropriate purposes, the agencies we reviewed have made abuse possible by neglecting to institute sufficient monitoring."
"A member of law enforcement could misuse ALPR images to stalk an individual or observe vehicles at particular locations and events, such as doctors' offices or clinics and political rallies. Despite these risks, the agencies we reviewed conduct little to no auditing of users' searches."
"[A]gencies have not based their decisions regarding how long to retain their ALPR images on the documented usefulness of those images to investigators, and they may be retaining the images longer than necessary, increasing the risk to individuals' privacy."
"We found that the three agencies storing ALPR data in Vigilant's cloud do not have sufficient data security safeguards in their contracts."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/california-auditor-releases-damning-report-about-law-enforcements-use-automated

[patric]

Privacy advocates are warning that the extensive surveillance network could be weaponized against people seeking abortions in states that have enacted bans and restrictions on the practice following the US supreme court's decision to repeal federal abortion protections, including by allowing police to monitor abortion clinics and the vehicles that are seen around it.

Technology like Flock's could be used to "criminalize people seeking reproductive health and further erode people's ability to move about their daily lives free from being tracked and traced", said Chris Gilliard, a tech fellow at Social Science Research Council, an independent nonprofit research organization.

Flock says the supreme court's decision on abortion and warnings about how law enforcement may use its services in abortion-related prosecutions haven't prompted it to reconsider its mission: "Flock's mission as a business is to eliminate crime," Josh Thomas, the vice president of external affairs at Flock said. "Our position at Flock remains consistent in response to the Dobbs decision. Our perspective is that we do not enact laws, and our mission is not specific to any particular laws."

Thomas said the company "trusts" and "provides technology for" the "democratically-elected governing bodies, and their chosen law enforcement personnel, to enforce the laws that they enact".
"We expect cities in California may operate differently than cities in Texas or Illinois or Rhode Island," he continued. "So it would be inaccurate to characterize Flock as being for or against any particular issue. We support local governments enforcing their local laws."

License plate reader companies are just one of several tech companies that are facing scrutiny for the ways in which they provide data or technology to law enforcement seeking to prosecute abortion cases. In August, for instance, Facebook came under fire for providing Nebraska police with the private messages between a mother and daughter who were being investigated for allegedly conducting an illegal abortion.

The information collected by companies like Flock is particularly alarming, experts say, because it can help police paint a deeply detailed picture of the movements of specific vehicles and individuals.

License plate readers, which are usually installed on streetlights, highway overpasses, or police squad cars, capture the details of passing cars and help police keep track of the vehicles that pass through certain locations or neighborhoods.

The information is collected in a database, which police can search to see where certain vehicles have been or what cars have been in a certain area during a specific time frame.

In addition to contracting directly with hundreds of police departments, Flock says in its privacy policy that it may share data the company stores with any government agency in response to legal requests like subpoenas or warrants.

Flock's Talon platform, its national law enforcement search network, also allows police departments it works with to share their license plate footage with hundreds of other police departments across the country. Therefore, law enforcement in a state where abortion is legal can share data with police in a state where abortion is banned. For instance, in California, the Vallejo police department, which has detected nearly 400,000 vehicles in the last month, shares its license plate reader data with law enforcement in Texas and Arizona.

"The cities and/or law enforcement agencies own the data and they decide – not Flock – with whom they share their footage and how they wish to enforce their laws," Thomas said.

Dave Maass, the director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization, said he hopes current and prospective Flock clients in places where abortion is legal will scrutinize the company's stance on abortion laws and "ask themselves the question: Can I trust this company with our people's data"?

Many surveillance companies pitch their services as a way to increase public safety, but "Flock Safety's position illustrates how surveillance isn't actually about benefiting society or protecting people – it's about enforcing the political goals of those in power," he argued.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/06/how-expanding-web-of-license-plate-readers-could-be-weaponized-against-abortion

[patric]

The response time seems too good to be true...

Two people are in custody following an overnight chase on I-44 in south Tulsa.
The chase began after one of the Tulsa Police Department's flock cameras captured an image of a license plate from a stolen car.
A stolen Toyota SUV was captured by a camera near I-44 and Riverside around 3 a.m.
The driver refused to stop for officers. The chase eventually reached speeds of 90 miles per hour on I-44.

https://www.krmg.com/news/local/tpd-flock-cameras-spot-stolen-suv-sparks-overnight-chase-i-44/BT7WQPHCBBHOZE5FLOQQVE5FDY/

[Red Arrow]

The driver refused to stop for officers. The chase eventually reached speeds of 90 miles per hour on I-44.

That's only 10 over the limit on some spots of the Turner Turnpike.

Absolutely absurd on city streets.

[patric]

That's only 10 over the limit on some spots of the Turner Turnpike.

Absolutely absurd on city streets.

You cant really tell from the "reporting" which is probably just a verbatim handout.

[Red Arrow]

You cant really tell from the "reporting" which is probably just a verbatim handout.

Sort of like a high "rate of speed" instead of just "high speed".

[patric]

In August, the Tulsa police department held a press conference about how its new Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), a controversial piece of surveillance technology, was the policing equivalent of "turning the lights on" for the first time. In Ontario, California, the city put out a press release about how its ALPRs were a "vital resource." In Madison, South Dakota, local news covered how the city's expenditure of $30,000 for ALPRs "paid off" twice in two days. 

All these stories have two things in common: One, they are all about the same brand of ALPRs, Flock Safety. And two, they're all reminders of how surveillance technology companies are coaching police behind the scenes on how best to tout their products, right down to pre-writing press releases for the police.

Flock Safety has distributed a Public Information Officer Toolkit, providing "resources and templates for public information officers." A Flock draft press release states:

    The ___ Police Department has solved [CRIME] with the help of their Flock Safety camera system. Flock Safety ALPR cameras help law enforcement investigate crime by providing objective evidence. [CRIME DETAILS AND STORY] ____ Police installed Flock cameras on [DATE] to solve and reduce crime in [CITY].

This Mad Libs of a press release is an advertisement, and one Flock hopes your police departments will distribute so that they can sell more ALPRs.

These kinds of police department press releases, and the news coverage that too often quotes them verbatim, should give you an itchy feeling—the same one you get when you know something is being sold to you by a voice leveraging its public standing. And that's because police have become salespeople. Brand ambassadors. Advertisers.

The trend has been growing for years. Police, on the hunt for easy solutions to the ebbs and flows of crime, are quick to reassure residents they have found the technological silver bullet. But police must also overcome growing community concerns about surveillance technology, and find ways to justify license plate readers that result in innocent people being pulled from their car by gunpoint, face recognition that too often misidentifies people, and acoustic gunshot detection technology shown by studies to not work well. To do this, police and companies work together to justify the often-shocking expenditures for some of this tech (which these days might be coming from a city's COVID relief money).

Flock is not alone. A 2021 yearly report to the SEC filed by ShotSpotter, an acoustic gunshot detection company, reports that their marketing team "leveraged our extremely satisfied and loyal customer base to create a significant set of new 'success stories' that show proof of value to prospects.... In the area of public relations, we work closely with many of our customers to help them communicate the success of ShotSpotter to their local media and communities."

What do police get out of these relationships? For one, they can get easier access to digital evidence. Why knock on doors or get a warrant to access a doorbell camera's footage, when an officer can send an email request to the company that manages the equipment?

But some police get more than just surveillance out of it. One investigation into Amazon's surveillance doorbell, Ring, found that Los Angeles Police Department officers were given discount codes—and the more devices purchased with that code, the more free devices were given to the officer. In this situation, how would a person know whether the officer encouraging them to purchase a security camera is making an independent recommendation, or hoping to win increased perks from the company? The LAPD has since launched an investigation into their officers' relationships with the surveillance company.

In police, surveillance technology companies have found the perfect advertisers. They are omnivorous buyers with deep pockets, they want to show voters they're being proactive about crime, and the news apparatus all too often takes their word as sacrosanct and their motives as unquestionable.

In his farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the formation of a military-industrial complex, a financial arrangement in which producing the tools of war would be so lucrative that there would be vested interest among manufacturers to ensure the United States always stay on a wartime footing. We must also beware of a police-industrial complex. As people's fear of crime continues to grow, regardless of the reality of crime in America, companies and police will be all too eager, for profit or reputation, to apply balm to that panic in the form of increasingly expensive surveillance technology.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/11/rise-police-advertiser

[heironymouspasparagus]

Sort of like a high "rate of speed" instead of just "high speed".

Spewing verbal vomit.   Can't think of enough good information to convey, so they add words and bloviate ad nauseam.

[patric]

The SkyCop camera that captured the beating is one of more than 2,000 that have been stationed around the city, all of which send back live feeds to the Police Department's real-time crime center.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/skycop-camera-tyre-nichols-memphis.html

[Red Arrow]

The SkyCop camera that captured the beating is one of more than 2,000 that have been stationed around the city, all of which send back live feeds to the Police Department's real-time crime center.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/skycop-camera-tyre-nichols-memphis.html

Have to log-in to read.   

[heironymouspasparagus]

The SkyCop camera that captured the beating is one of more than 2,000 that have been stationed around the city, all of which send back live feeds to the Police Department's real-time crime center.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/skycop-camera-tyre-nichols-memphis.html

Camera didn't help much.  Nobody watching anyway. 

More likely would have been a bunch gathered around cheering on... 

[patric]

Camera didn't help much.  Nobody watching anyway. 

It looks like someone was operating it:  https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/2023/01/28/memphis-police-release-graphic-video-tyre-nichols-beating/11137026002/

[patric]

Unlike a targeted ALPR camera system that is designed to take pictures of license plates, check the plates against local hot lists, and then flush the data if there's no hit, Flock is building a giant camera network that records people's comings and goings across the nation, and then makes that data available for search by any of its law enforcement customers. Such a system provides even small-town sheriffs access to a sweeping and powerful mass-surveillance tool, and allows big actors like federal agencies and large urban police departments to access the comings and goings of vehicles in even the smallest of towns. And every new customer that buys and installs the company's cameras extends Flock's network, contributing to the creation of a centralized mass surveillance system of Orwellian scope.

We don't find every use of ALPRs objectionable. For example, we do not generally object to using them to check license plates against lists of stolen cars, for AMBER Alerts, or for toll collection, provided they are deployed and used fairly and subject to proper checks and balances, such as ensuring devices are not disproportionately deployed in low-income communities and communities of color, and that the "hot lists" they are run against are legitimate and up to date. But there's no reason the technology should be used to create comprehensive records of everybody's comings and goings — and that is precisely what ALPR databases like Flock's are doing. In our country, the government should not be tracking us unless it has individualized suspicion that we're engaged in wrongdoing.

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/how-to-pump-the-brakes-on-your-police-departments-use-of-flocks-mass-surveillance-license-plate-readers