ACLU: Police record license plates by the millions

[link]

WASHINGTON (AP) — You can drive, but you can't hide.
A rapidly growing network of police cameras is capturing, storing and sharing data on license plates, making it possible to stitch together people's movements whether they are stuck in a commute, making tracks to the beach or up to no good.

For the first time, the number of license tag captures has reached the millions, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union based on information from hundreds of law enforcement agencies. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely, saying they can be crucial in tracking suspicious cars, aiding drug busts, finding abducted children and more.

Attached to police cars, bridges or buildings — and sometimes merely as an app on a police officer's smartphone — scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and pinpoint their locations, uploading that information into police databases.

Over time, it's unlikely many vehicles in a covered area escape notice. And with some of the information going into regional databases encompassing multiple jurisdictions, it's becoming easier to build a record of where someone has been and when, over a large area.

While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to use GPS to track a car, networks of plate scanners allow police effectively to track a driver's location, sometimes several times every day, with few legal restrictions. The ACLU says the scanners are assembling a "single, high-resolution image of our lives."

"There's just a fundamental question of whether we're going to live in a society where these dragnet surveillance systems become routine," said Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the organization. The group is proposing that police departments immediately delete any records of cars not linked to any crime

Although less thorough than GPS tracking, plate readers can produce some of the same information, the group says, revealing whether someone is frequenting a bar, joining a protest, getting medical or mental help, being unfaithful to a spouse and much more.

In Minneapolis, for example, eight mobile and two fixed cameras captured data on 4.9 million license plates from January to August 2012, the Star Tribune reported. Among those whose movements were recorded: Mayor R.T. Rybak, whose city-owned cars were tracked at 41 locations in a year.


from: ACLU: Police record license plates by the millions

[spdrun]

And as usual, the ACLU is right. The records should be kept for several years AT MOST unless they're a subject of an active investigation.

Punishment for violating the rule should be swift and harsh.

[link]

On photography sites, as example, many people in the USA vigorously defend the right to photograph anything they want in public. LEOs have the same rights. Of course LEOs extend that right to doing ongoing surveillance in a number of ways and this article addresses only one such way at their disposal.

It would be great to perform ongoing surveillance of 20 or 2000 average piglets and perform daily updates to web sites. But doing so would no doubt put one behind bars repeatedly on any of a number of BS charges. It would probably also expose a lot of piglets as something less than faithful public servants.

Originally Posted by spdrun

...

Punishment for violating the rule should be swift and harsh.

Here is the key problem regarding redress against public entities. How does one punish a public entity? Almost no one ever gets blamed, goes to jail, or forfeits a penny, and the public gets pfuked repeatedly when fines are assessed against public entities for nefarious deeds. The public never wins and as a culture, law enforcement has become a source from which to suck endless dollars to support things that betray the public interest. Ironically conservative morons appear to love this kind of social welfare and can't get enough opportunities to betray the public.

[link]

Video of cop urinating in public sent to authorities

Seattle Times staff

To pee, or not to pee?

One Seattle police officer’s answer to that question could land him in, er, hot water.

Seattle police say they have forwarded a surveillance video reportedly showing an officer urinating on the side of a building to the department’s Office of Professional Accountability and the officer’s commander.

The video, posted on a blog Wednesday morning, was shot behind a “well-known European performance-car shop,” according to the blog.

The Times learned of the video after it was posted on the KING 5 website.

The video shows a patrol car backing in behind the building. The officer is seen getting out of the car and walking to a spot just below the camera. While the officer is apparently relieving himself, he is seen looking up and muttering something once he spots the camera. He then moves out of camera range.

Urinating in public is an infraction in Seattle.

from:http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021413790_copcameraxml.html

[tbomachines]

Originally Posted by link

On photography sites, as example, many people in the USA vigorously defend the right to photograph anything they want in public. LEOs have the same rights. Of course LEOs extend that right to doing ongoing surveillance in a number of ways and this article addresses only one such way at their disposal.

It would be great to perform ongoing surveillance of 20 or 2000 average piglets and perform daily updates to web sites. But doing so would no doubt put one behind bars repeatedly on any of a number of BS charges. It would probably also expose a lot of piglets as something less than faithful public servants.



Here is the key problem regarding redress against public entities. How does one punish a public entity? Almost no one ever gets blamed, goes to jail, or forfeits a penny, and the public gets pfuked repeatedly when fines are assessed against public entities for nefarious deeds. The public never wins and as a culture, law enforcement has become a source from which to suck endless dollars to support things that betray the public interest. Ironically conservative morons appear to love this kind of social welfare and can't get enough opportunities to betray the public.

If anything the cops get a few days of "paid administrative leave" aka vacation

[spdrun]

Originally Posted by link

Here is the key problem regarding redress against public entities. How does one punish a public entity? Almost no one ever gets blamed, goes to jail, or forfeits a penny, and the public gets pfuked repeatedly when fines are assessed against public entities for nefarious deeds.

Pass a law that the penalty for deliberate unlawful retention of data involves personal forfeiture of life savings, followed by a date with Old Sparky on national TV. Public servants should be SERVANTS, and held to the very highest standard

[link]

Originally Posted by spdrun

Pass a law that the penalty for deliberate unlawful retention of data involves personal forfeiture of life savings, followed by a date with Old Sparky on national TV. Public servants should be SERVANTS, and held to the very highest standard

You're such a romantic! But anyway, i do agree that public servants should be held to a very high standard.

[Botnst]

What does ACLU (that bastion of constitutional rectitude) say about Zimmerman vs FL? 2nd Amendment?

[spdrun]

Originally Posted by Botnst

What does ACLU (that bastion of constitutional rectitude) say about Zimmerman vs FL? 2nd Amendment?

Frankly, I'd rather have the rest of the civil liberties so we don't need to resort to guns ... this being said, the NRA is doing quite a fine job defending the 2nd, don't know how much help they really need.

[MTI]

Doesn't EZ Pass do the same thing?

[spdrun]

Originally Posted by MTI

Doesn't EZ Pass do the same thing?

You can stick the Pig Pass box in an insulated baggie till you need to use it to pay tolls. Totally legal, unlike covering your plate.

[Air&Road]

Hmmm....... So is someone FORCING you to buy an automobile and drive it around? Whatdaya have to hide? Afraid they'll figure out your pattern of stopping by your drug dealer once a week? Maybe figure out where your favorite whore house is located?

Driving is a voluntary activity folks. Nobody is forcing you to do it.

[Jorn]

Originally Posted by Air&Road

Hmmm....... So is someone FORCING you to buy an automobile and drive it around? Whatdaya have to hide? Afraid they'll figure out your pattern of stopping by your drug dealer once a week? Maybe figure out where your favorite whore house is located?

Driving is a voluntary activity folks. Nobody is forcing you to do it.

By your post I assume you haven't been in Los Angeles.

[SwampYankee]

Here in suburbia, our PD has a couple cars running around with three of the cameras mounted on each. A cop buddy of mine showed me how it works. It's scanning plates as fast as cars pass any of the 3 cameras aimed in different directions, fast enough that should a plate be flagged for whatever reason they can still visually pick the car out for pursuit after the alert signal.

[Botnst]

Originally Posted by Air&Road

Hmmm....... So is someone FORCING you to buy an automobile and drive it around? Whatdaya have to hide? Afraid they'll figure out your pattern of stopping by your drug dealer once a week? Maybe figure out where your favorite whore house is located?

Driving is a voluntary activity folks. Nobody is forcing you to do it.

Turn that inside-out and think of it from the perspective of a country founded on liberty and limited government.

What would Geo. Washington say? John Adams probably would have liked it, being a law-and-order president (Alien and Sedition Laws). Jefferson would think it was horrible to treat citizens that way but okay for blacks and Indians.