Surveillance Cameras To Scan License Plates

[AquaMan]

Does the offence follow the car or the owner?

When I saw a car pull into my neighbors driveway and steal UPS off his front porch, I wrote down a description and his license tag. I was told that unless I could identify the driver and be willing to testify against him that it was useless. The owner maintained his car was loaned out to a relative who let another person drive it.

Make parking free and eliminate the whole thing. Save tons of money. Charge an admittance fee to enter downtown. Sell pike passes to collect those fees silently.

[patric]

Does the offence follow the car or the owner?

When I saw a car pull into my neighbors driveway and steal UPS off his front porch, I wrote down a description and his license tag. I was told that unless I could identify the driver and be willing to testify against him that it was useless. The owner maintained his car was loaned out to a relative who let another person drive it.

The law seems to swing both ways.  Oklahoma doesnt permit red-light revenue cameras because of a state law saying vehicles dont commit crimes, but that doesnt stop the PikePass system from issuing automated tickets based on machine-reading tag numbers.

[patric]

After a high-profile screw-up in Kansas where an attorney was mistakenly puled over at gunpoint,
http://watchdog.org/139668/police-plate-reader-error
vendors of the mass-surveillance technology go on the defensive:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140502/08382227098/company-uses-bogus-polls-gag-orders-to-protect-image-license-plate-scanning.shtml

[patric]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/06/opinion/crump-police-surveillance

What few people understand is that police increasingly make use of sophisticated surveillance equipment... NSA-style mass surveillance technologies are making it possible for local police departments to gather information on each and every one of us, on a scale never before been possible.

One key area in which the government is amassing large pools of data is location tracking, particularly of automobiles. You might think that location data isn't sensitive. After all, when you're out in public other people can see you. But that's not the right way to think about it. 

Most Americans drive everywhere. Most can't go to a therapist, a church, a gun range, a bar, or a casino without driving. And when all of that information about where we go is amassed into a large database stored by a government agency and held for months, or years, that's a sensitive collection of information. History has shown that once the government has access to massive pools of data, it's just a matter of time before it's abused -- for political retribution, or even simple voyeurism.

An important driver of this trend toward mass surveillance of Americans' movements is the automatic license plate reader. They sound innocuous -- and if they were used in a limited and appropriate manner, they would be innocuous. These devices snap a photo of every passing license plate.

If all the police did was check the captured plates against lists of cars associated with people wanted for crimes, there would be no problem. But in the era of cheap data storage, police are increasingly using the technology to amass vast pools of data tracking where people have been over time—and hanging onto it for months or even years.

The question is not whether law enforcement agents should be permitted to use license plate readers: The question is how they should be permitted to use them. You can agree that license plate readers are useful for identifying wanted criminals who are driving around, but disagree that the government should amass vast pools of data about everyone, given that most of us are not criminals. 

[sauerkraut]

I think it's great Oklahoma does not have any traffic cameras, one less hassle for drivers. In Arlington, Texas residents are taking up a petition drive to have the cameras removed with a vote of the people- they seem to cause more accidents and are a big money maker for the city. I'm surprised Oklahoma does not have license plate scanners, many states use them. Many car repo agency's use license plate scanners to track a cars location over a period of time and then the computer predicts where the car will likely be when it's time to repo it.

[Ed W]

Dubai police will get Google Glass with facial recognition. What could possibly go wrong?

http://petapixel.com/2014/10/06/dubai-police-will-start-using-google-glass-facial-recognition-automatically-sniff-bad-guys/

Ed W

[Red Arrow]

Dubai police will get Google Glass with facial recognition. What could possibly go wrong?

http://petapixel.com/2014/10/06/dubai-police-will-start-using-google-glass-facial-recognition-automatically-sniff-bad-guys/

Ed W

If they can get people to show their faces it might work.

[Conan71]

If they can get people to show their faces it might work.

Hijab recognition?

[Ed W]

I'm just wondering what happens when TSA agents all have G-glasses. Or mall security guards.

[heironymouspasparagus]

I think it's great Oklahoma does not have any traffic cameras, one less hassle for drivers. In Arlington, Texas residents are taking up a petition drive to have the cameras removed with a vote of the people- they seem to cause more accidents and are a big money maker for the city. I'm surprised Oklahoma does not have license plate scanners, many states use them. Many car repo agency's use license plate scanners to track a cars location over a period of time and then the computer predicts where the car will likely be when it's time to repo it.

Geez.....


Not only mentally checked out, but temporally 50 years out of phase.....


Guess what sauer....there ARE cameras!!  You got your tin foil hat on??

[patric]

New York and New Jersey have a PikePass system like ours, called E-ZPass. 
Guess who got caught using surveillance data from that system against political foes?




The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was under fire. It was 2012 and the agency had just hiked tolls on area bridges and tunnels. Inside a hearing room on Capitol Hill, the Port Authority's deputy chief, Bill Baroni, was absorbing withering criticism from Sen. Frank Lautenberg, the late New Jersey Democrat.

"Respectfully, Senator, you only started paying tolls recently," Baroni said, according to a transcript of the exchange. "In fact, I have a copy of your free E-ZPass," he continued, holding up a physical copy of the toll pass Lautenberg had received as a benefit from his tenure as a Port Authority commissioner. "You took 284 trips for free in the last 2 years you had a pass."

Within days, Christie himself disclosed further detailed information about Lautenberg's private travel records. At a press conference, he alleged that the senator didn't "pay for parking at Port Authority facilities" and said Lautenberg went "through the tunnel to New York three or four times a week in 2005 and 2006."

But the data that Baroni and Christie unleashed in assailing Lautenberg was not publicly available. Indeed, in a recent letter responding to an open records request, the Port Authority deemed those very same travel records off-limits to the public. Tim Feeney, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, confirmed to International Business Times that under New Jersey law, E-ZPass records can be obtained only with a civil court order or criminal subpoena.

Christie's office rebuffed an open records request from IBTimes seeking the data about Lautenberg's E-ZPass usage that the governor had himself detailed at a 2012 press conference, asserting that it had no such records. Neither Baroni, Christie nor the Port Authority responded to questions about how they had been able to obtain such details.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey issued a subpoena to members of the state legislature seeking records related to Baroni's testimony at a 2013 hearing on the Bridgegate scandal. At that hearing, Baroni disclosed that he possessed E-ZPass customer data showing the traffic histories of constituents of state lawmakers who were interrogating him.

Experts tell IBTimes that the disclosure of E-ZPass records appears to have violated state law protecting the privacy of drivers and also raises serious questions about the degree to which government agencies can keep tabs on the comings and goings of citizens.

"This is the kind of thing that reminds everyone why privacy is important: Information is power and always raises the temptation for abuse," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Any kind of data that reveals our locations and travels is potentially very powerful stuff that lends itself to abuse for Nixonian dirty tricks, embarrassment of rivals or leverage over critics. If officials feel comfortable using information against a prominent person like Frank Lautenberg, what is the ordinary person supposed to think about how data could be used against them?"

The apparent use of private traffic data as a tool in New Jersey's political jockeying underscores concerns about whether such information is being used in less public ways by government officials who have access to the data. Such concerns are particularly acute in an era in which technology has made transit and communications histories easily searchable to those with access to the pertinent data.

http://www.ibtimes.com/bridgegate-chris-christie-used-port-authority-political-weapon-1778062

[heironymouspasparagus]

New York and New Jersey have a PikePass system like ours, called E-ZPass. 
Guess who got caught using surveillance data from that system against political foes?


Within days, Christie himself disclosed further detailed information about Lautenberg's private travel records. At a press conference, he alleged that the senator didn't "pay for parking at Port Authority facilities" and said Lautenberg went "through the tunnel to New York three or four times a week in 2005 and 2006."

But the data that Baroni and Christie unleashed in assailing Lautenberg was not publicly available. Indeed, in a recent letter responding to an open records request, the Port Authority deemed those very same travel records off-limits to the public. Tim Feeney, a spokesman for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority, confirmed to International Business Times that under New Jersey law, E-ZPass records can be obtained only with a civil court order or criminal subpoena.

This ought to make it a 'lock' with Oklahoma voters - that they will vote for Chris Christie for President....

[dbacksfan 2.0]

I have to say that I have had an experience on the Golden Gate Bridge where a license plate camera was a help. Going across the bridge there is a toll charge for going south across the bridge into SF, no charge going north into Marin Co. To alleviate traffic snarls on the bridge, there are no toll attendants going south. (otherwise it would back up to Santa Rosa) They have an account that you can set up that is attached to your plate number for billing. The system is also set up so that if you go across the bridge with out a plate account or FasTrak Pass, you have 48 hours afterwards to pay the toll. If not then they send you an invoice for the amount. They give you a couple of chances before they fine you $25.00.

http://goldengate.org/tolls/tollpaymentoptions.php#paybyplate

[Vashta Nerada]

When the shoe is on the other foot ...



Police say Google's cop-tracker function threatens them

The GPS app Waze crowdsources a lot of real-time data, and with 50 million users contributing information in 200 countries, the app can show a lot. There are traffic updates, accident reports, and toll warnings. Users can even contribute the location of police they happen to spot, so drivers behind them know to stay within the speed limit and generally drive safely. But law enforcement agents are not happy about it.

Though the feature has existed since around the time Waze launched in 2008, law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned about it since two New York police offers were shot to death in December. The shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, does not seem to have used Waze to locate the two officers he killed (because he was not carrying his smartphone for a few hours prior to his attack).

Waze is owned by Google, and as the Associated Press reports, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck sent the company a letter on Dec. 30 explaining that Waze could "endanger police officers and the community" by tracking law enforcement.

During the National Sheriffs Association winter conference in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, Bedford County, Virginia, Sheriff Mike Brown said, "The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action."

But civil liberties advocates say that as long as Waze users are reporting police sightings that occur in public, they are conveying information in a reasonable and protected way. Nuala O'Connor, head of the Center for Democracy and Technology, told the AP, "I do not think it is legitimate to ask a person-to-person communication to cease simply because it reports on publicly visible law enforcement."

Given the extensive data and geolocation tracking techniques law enforcement is able to use on both a state and federal level (often without a warrant) to monitor United States citizens—and others—it seems contradictory that citizens shouldn't be able to share information about police officers who are in plain sight.


http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/01/26/waze_has_a_police_tracking_feature_that_law_enforcement_opposes.html

https://www.waze.com

[patric]

I have to say that I have had an experience on the Golden Gate Bridge where a license plate camera was a help. Going across the bridge there is a toll charge for going south across the bridge into SF, no charge going north into Marin Co. To alleviate traffic snarls on the bridge, there are no toll attendants going south. (otherwise it would back up to Santa Rosa) They have an account that you can set up that is attached to your plate number for billing.

Its not the toll-collection cameras that are the problem, but bulk spying by agencies or rogue officials (who have occasionally targeted individuals or groups for blackmail).


Even the FBI Had Privacy Concerns on License Plate Readers

Law enforcement's use of automated license plate readers has drawn increasing controversy in recent years amid concerns that the devices pose a threat to privacy. Now, internal documents show that the FBI, based on a recommendation from its own lawyers, was told to stop buying the devices for a time in 2012.

The documents, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a public records request, show the FBI's own Office of General Counsel was grappling with concerns about the agency's use of the technology and the apparent lack of a cohesive government policy to protect the civil liberties of citizens whose vehicles are photographed by the readers. That apparently prompted an order from the OGC to temporarily put the brakes on further purchases.

It's not known when the FBI resumed purchasing the devices, but the revelations show that even within the FBI there are those who have questioned the privacy implications of a technology widely seen by some as invasive.

Civil liberties groups argue that the readers, widely used not only by the FBI but by local police departments around the country, and the databases that store the license plate images pose a fundamental risk to privacy because in the aggregate they can reveal sensitive information about a person's travels and activities. Critics of the technology also say the readers capture more than just license plate numbers. A California man who filed a public records request to receive copies of images collected by his local law enforcement agency obtained more than 100 images of his vehicle in various locations, including one that showed him and his daughters exiting their car while it was parked in their driveway.

"Automatic license plate readers are a sophisticated way of tracking drivers' locations, and when their data is aggregated over time they can paint detailed pictures of people's lives," notes Bennett Stein of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project in a blog post published today about the documents.

Little is known about the government's use of automated license plate readers or how long it has been deploying the technology. The documents obtained by the ACLU show that the FBI was testing automated license plate readers in 2007 but seem to indicate the agency started using the tech earlier than this.

A Virginia man recently sued the Fairfax County Police Department in his state for unnecessarily collecting and retaining images of his license plate. The man was not a suspect in a criminal investigation and asserts the database violates a state law prohibiting government agencies from unnecessarily collecting, storing, or disseminating the personal information of individuals.


http://www.wired.com/2015/05/even-fbi-privacy-concerns-license-plate-readers/