ACLU: Police record license plates by the millions
 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You assume wrong. I have spent WAY too much of my life in the LA area, although probably a little more than half of it in Orange County.

Dallas is no different in that regard. If you aren't on wheels, you won't get around very much.

What's your point? As far as I know, no one in the LA area is required by law to own a car either.

Sounds like a good use of technology to me.

I can hear it coming. The liberals here will come back with "no one is forcing you to buy a phone." True. Is there a way to stand on the corner and see who everyone is calling on their phone? No, so that doesn't make it out in the open type public information.

SEE! It's not hard to figure out how a liberal thinks. Quite simple.

Let's say I'm driving along some road with a 45 mph speed limit, and my plate is recorded at one location, and then ten minutes later at another location ten miles away. Since I must have averaged 60 mph to traverse that distance in the observed time, the PD sends me a nice speeding ticket. I don't like this.

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.

I always wonder about that with EZ-Pass on the MA and ME Turnpikes. Less so now that I'm usually driving with a car full of kids and dogs and set the cruise at 70, but it certainly would be easy enough for them to do. Just be sure to stop for a pee break before going through that next toll reader!