Because they can - not because it is legal or right.

[kentuck]

Vehicle Records Taken By Law Enforcement Agencies Across America: ACLU

<snip>
Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.

As the technology becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and federal grants focus on aiding local terrorist detection, even small police agencies are able to deploy more sophisticated surveillance systems. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to track a car with GPS, 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 assemble what it calls a "single, high-resolution image of our lives."

<snip>
"There's no expectation of privacy" for a vehicle driving on a public road or parked in a public place, said Lt. Bill Hedgpeth, a spokesman for the Mesquite Police Department in Texas, which has records stretching back to 2008, although the city plans next month to begin deleting files older than two years. "It's just a vehicle. It's just a license plate."

<snip>
The ACLU study, based on 26,000 pages of responses from 293 police departments and state agencies across the country, also found that license plate scanners produced a small fraction of "hits," or alerts to police that a suspicious vehicle has been found. In Maryland, for example, the state reported reading about 29 million plates between January and May of last year. Of that amount, about 60,000 – or roughly 1 in every 500 license plates – were suspicious. The No. 1 crime? A suspended or revoked registration, or a violation of the state's emissions inspection program accounted for 97 percent of all alerts.




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/vehicle-records-_n_3610770.html

[RobertEarl]

1. The little guy is being trounced

If his papers are not in order he is subject to years in jail if he stands his ground against an overbearing government.

But if you are a big corporation spewing tons of pollutants into the air and your paper work is so screwed up no one can make sense of it as you rip off everyone who does business with you, you are made into a hero by the same government.

[felix_numinous]

2. 'Just because you can doesn't mean you should'

--this is what everyone in power need as their daily mantra.