Surveillance Cameras To Scan License Plates

[patric]

Saw a guy in a red or maroon dually pickup truck with license plate scanners on his hood driving around Sunday night near Memorial.
Had an insidious looking car-stealing rig on his back bumper.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

Saw a guy in a red or maroon dually pickup truck with license plate scanners on his hood driving around Sunday night near Memorial.
Had an insidious looking car-stealing rig on his back bumper.

That be the repo man that works for all of those pay as you go use car lots.

[patric]

License plate recognition camera helps locate murder suspect.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/08/26/tv-camera-crew-caught-in-active-shooter-situation-in-southwest-virginia/

Absolute vindication of using warrant-less mass-surveillance to automate another tedious police chore, because they never could have found the vehicle and suspect just by the detailed descriptions and normal good police work.

or as CF put it on another thread

Stop and search every vehicle...
Or to put it another way, 95+% of warrant-less government searches resulted in a failure to find what they purportedly were looking for - but we are all safer, right comrades?

Could save us money, though.  Dont need to hire more patrolmen when we can have robots at every intersection. 

[Ed W]

And then there's this...using mass surveillance to round up the guilty along with the innocent:

https://medium.com/@nselby/los-angeles-just-proposed-the-worst-use-of-license-plate-reader-data-in-history-702c35733b50#.y88mudhjs

[cannon_fodder]

Wow. Can you imagine being a business owner in the Pearl District early on if it was on a government list for prostitution and your customers received a letter for traveling to your establishment? A new employee at your factory? You name it, it looks bad.

I read a book like that once...

[patric]

Wow. Can you imagine being a business owner in the Pearl District early on if it was on a government list for prostitution and your customers received a letter for traveling to your establishment? A new employee at your factory? You name it, it looks bad.

I read a book like that once...

That book used to be required reading to keep whats happening from happening.

The detective's article is really well done, as well. Whatever happened to that type of policeman?

[patric]

Oklahoma House approves bill that would allow automated license plate readers

Senate Bill 359 would allow law enforcement officials to compare a license plate number with an Oklahoma Insurance Department list to determine if the owner of a plate has insurance.

"With the passage of this legislation, we are one step closer to addressing the uninsured motorist problem in Oklahoma," said Rep. Ken Walker, R-Tulsa. "Uninsured motorists drive up the cost of car insurance and often drive away from the scene of collisions, leaving the other party to foot the bill. With this, we can help law enforcement spot uninsured motorists and give them an opportunity to come into compliance before they face larger consequences."

The bill comes with privacy concerns for some, including Walker. The legislation requires that license plate photographs for insured vehicles must be destroyed.

A second proposal, Senate Bill 1144, would create the Automatic License Plate Reader Privacy Act, which would make the misuse of data subject to legal action.

Senate Bill 359 was approved by a vote of 52-38.



Here we go again.  The same "uninsured motorist" pretext, the same promises of "we wont abuse it."

Why does it seem mass-surveillance is the answer to so many problems?

[patric]

District Attorneys Approve License Plate Scanner Contract, Bringing Uninsured Drivers Closer to Automatic Tickets
http://oklahomawatch.org/2017/11/15/district-attorneys-approve-license-plate-scanner-contract-bringing-uninsured-drivers-closer-to-automatic-tickets/

Oklahoma finalized a deal this week with a company to use license-plate scanners to catch uninsured drivers, and the firm expects to issue an eventual 20,000 citations a month starting as early as next year.

The program, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, involves setting up automated scanners on highways around the state to detect uninsured vehicles and mailing their owners a citation with a fine of $184, according to the District Attorneys Council.

Gatso USA, a Beverly, Massachusetts-based company that specializes in red-light-running and speeding detection systems, will initially get $80, or 43 percent, of each fine.

It will be overseen by the District Attorneys Council rather than law enforcement, and the state's 27 district attorneys' offices are expected to receive millions of dollars in citation revenue a year.

People have been blackmailed, lost their jobs and gone to prison for abusing this technology, but isnt having your daily travels cataloged a small price to pay for catching uninsured drivers?  We'll worry about oversight later.

[patric]

Mass-surveillance under the pretext of catching uninsured motorists:

Plaintiffs in lawsuits in Florida and Iowa have accused cities of trying to outsource police powers to the Massachusetts-based traffic camera company Gatso USA.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/government/outsource-company-hired-to-catch-uninsured-drivers-in-oklahoma-is/article_28fe653f-1cb0-5b34-83d9-a77857695475.html

[heironymouspasparagus]

Absolute vindication of using warrant-less mass-surveillance to automate another tedious police chore, because they never could have found the vehicle and suspect just by the detailed descriptions and normal good police work.

or as CF put it on another thread

Could save us money, though.  Dont need to hire more patrolmen when we can have robots at every intersection. 

Repo man is not exactly warrantless - it is the lenders exercise of his contractual rights with the deadbeat driver.

[patric]

Repo man is not exactly warrantless - it is the lenders exercise of his contractual rights with the deadbeat driver.

I remember a security guard at work stopping a repo man driving a red truck modified as a tow truck (with ALPR cameras just randomly scanning tags on private property) after the repo zeroed in on the security guards car.  
My only other experience with repos was when a family member had to call TPD when one of them hooked up the car he had clear title to, and TPD refused to even look at the paperwork when they threatened to arrest the owner for interfering, in his own driveway.

It appears the powers to be are banking on the DA's association not being subject to the same accountability as police.  An older article from The Oklahoman:


A proposed traffic camera system being counted on by state leaders to generate at least $50 million in revenues from uninsured drivers this fiscal year may have run into roadblocks.

American Insurance Association attorney Jeramy Rich says the technology has weaknesses and claims many insured Oklahoma motorists are going to be harassed with undeserved fine notices if the system is implemented.

Jonathan Miller, chairman of a company that is part of a consortium competing for the contract, disagrees. Miller contends a good system can be put in place, but says continued delays could jeopardize the system's ability to produce $50 million this fiscal year.

Wellon Poe, general counsel for the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety, can't predict how much longer the bid review process might take.
"We're trying to evaluate everything from how it's going to be done to who's going to do it. There have been no final decisions on any of it."

Oklahoma Insurance Department officials estimate between 18 and 23 percent of vehicles on Oklahoma roads are uninsured. The contract calls for fixed or mobile cameras to photograph license plates on moving vehicles. Computers would transmit the data and match it to insurance verification information on national, state and insurance company databases.

Industry officials say technology has advanced to the point it is possible to almost instantaneously determine whether a car is listed as having insurance. If no insurance is found, the owner of the vehicle would be sent a letter giving the individual the opportunity to show that a mistake has been made or pay a $250 fine.

Rich said he sees several problems. His association was involved with the four-year development of the electronic database system Oklahoma law enforcement officers now use to determine if a motorist has insurance when they make traffic stops.

Fleet and company owned vehicles are special problems because blanket insurance policies don't electronically link the policies to each vehicle identification number in the fleet, Rich said. Law enforcement officers must rely on paper insurance verification card checks to determine whether fleet vehicles are covered.

"I don't know how you would ever coordinate that with the camera enforcement system," Rich said. "The way that system is going to work is that when you don't show up in the data search done by any of these companies ... then you get a ticket."

Company officials will get irritated if they start getting lack of insurance fine notices, he said. There would be an appeals process, but people won't want to have to deal with it.

Rich also questions whether the state has the authority to implement the program, whether it will really generate the $50 million a year and whether it is appropriate to allow a private contractor to issue ticket notices and keep a portion of ticket revenue.

Rich recommends scrapping the bids and relying on increased enforcement by state, county and local law enforcement.
"This system is not up and running and fully functional in any other state in the union," Rich said.

Miller discounted Rich's concerns, saying they are "simply not true."

He said insurance companies are against the camera insurance verification program because it will drive down insurance rates and that will cut into profits of insurance executives.
"They know that this will work," said Miller, chairman of Chicago-based InsureNet. "We know our business very, very well. ... Our technology allows us to know if it's a fleet vehicle."
Miller said he is "mystified" by delays in awarding the contract and hasn't heard anything from Oklahoma officials in a long time.

Poe thinks any problem with fleet vehicles can probably be resolved before tickets are issued.

However, he said, when a driver carries motor vehicle insurance, but the vehicle itself is not insured, a camera system won't detect that and owners of the vehicles likely will get ticket notices that will have to be corrected later. It's not a big problem in Oklahoma because insurance usually goes with the vehicles rather than the driver, he said.

[TeeDub]

The process stinks of big brother....    But, now that I am not poor anymore, I keep insurance.   

My wife was hit by a guy who only had insurance long enough to get his tags.   It was a fiasco.   I have little or no sympathy for that.   

I can't imagine that it will generate the numbers they claim.   If they don't have enough money to afford the insurance, what makes you think they can pay the fines?

[heironymouspasparagus]

The process stinks of big brother....    But, now that I am not poor anymore, I keep insurance.   

My wife was hit by a guy who only had insurance long enough to get his tags.   It was a fiasco.   I have little or no sympathy for that.   

I can't imagine that it will generate the numbers they claim.   If they don't have enough money to afford the insurance, what makes you think they can pay the fines?

Jail.   It is amazing how fast one comes up with cash - mostly from family and close friends - when one is sitting downtown in lock up.

[TeeDub]

Jail.   It is amazing how fast one comes up with cash - mostly from family and close friends - when one is sitting downtown in lock up.

So you say.

http://www.newson6.com/story/34395227/tulsa-county-court-system-eases-burden-on-failure-to-pay-offenders

[patric]

The process stinks of big brother....    But, now that I am not poor anymore, I keep insurance.   

My wife was hit by a guy who only had insurance long enough to get his tags.   It was a fiasco.   I have little or no sympathy for that.   

I can't imagine that it will generate the numbers they claim.   If they don't have enough money to afford the insurance, what makes you think they can pay the fines?

Im sure they know that.  Once we have been desensitized to being surveilled there will follow enough "mission creep" that you would be dismissed as "soft on crime" to suggest the mass-surveillance apparatus be scrapped because its failing in its one stated objective. 

Camera acts as a rolling tax collector
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/may/27/20040527-103628-7477r/


...and once installed, it will be "too expensive" to remove them.

Judge Scott D. Rosenberg earlier in the day had released an order allowing the cities to keep the cameras in place as long as they are not issuing citations because of the "substantial" cost the cities would bear to remove them.
Judge calls it 'significant omission' about who covers cost of camera removal.
http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/judge-des-moines-cedar-rapids-misinformed-court-in-speed-camera-case-20170518

GATSO USA had estimated it would cost $22,000 to remove each camera location. Meanwhile, the cameras continue to gather surveillance data for the corporation.


Then there's Gaspar's media scenario:

"We are interested in a flattering story about our ____ program, would you be interested in writing it?"
"No?"
"Well, perhaps we could meet over at the Sunrise Motel and discuss.  You are familiar with the Sunrise, aren't you?"
"No need?, Excellent!  We'll send you some ideas for the article."

The "database" these scanners alert to can be anything you put on a thumb drive, NCIC, CAIR, unfriendly reporters, gay bars, my daughters boyfriend etc., and there's no mechanism for accountability that puts limits on how this is used, especially for "custom" databases that can be traded and sold privately by individuals and corporations.
https://wtop.com/national/2015/10/private-database-lets-police-skirt-license-plate-data-limits/