License-Plate Scanners: Fighting Crime or Invading Privacy?

[midnight]

Source: Time

What concerns the American Civil Liberties Union and others is the accumulation and storage of the vast amount of data collected by the scanners. "We were disturbed when we began to see the technology used as a generalized surveillance tool," says Jay Stanley, a spokesman for the ACLU.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1913258,00.html?iid=tsmodule

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This technology is being used to keep us safe. It assists with Amber Alerts and sex preditors, but I share the same concern that ACLU has.

[Gormy Cuss]

1. The technology isn't being used to keep us safe. That's just the sales pitch.

As long as the system scans, records, and retains data on all cars it's principally a surveillance tool, not a safety effort. Amber Alerts and sexual predators aren't the only targets but framing it that way is one of the ways it's marketed to people as essential.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Franklin

[niyad]

2. keeping us safe is always the excuse--the police state is here, and people are so

complacent they don't even see it.

[midnight]

4. It is very concerning how many tools are being marketed for

keeping us safe.

[high density]

3. I don't know if privacy is a right one has when driving on a public roadway

I mean a cop could pull me over for any reason and demand my license, registration, and insurance. My license plate is out there for all to see, including any computer-based plate recognition that the cops may be using.

I understand the concern about crazy surveillance but I don't know what we can do about it.

[imdjh]

8. What can we do about it? Say no. But do we have the votes?

Look at the places where local government has gone ahead with photo-enforcement over the vocal objections of the citizens. Why? Because the photo-enforcement company promises huge revenues and the council thinks it's beneficial. Of course, that money never shows up, but each council seems oblivious to this fact when it's presented to them.

[marshall]

5. Can it be both?

Sometimes fighting crime creates an invasion of privacy. We as a society just have to decide how much of an invasion is worth the amount of safety we want.

[county worker]

13. You can't measure an amount of safety.

You can't presume that the scanners will give you x amount more safety than you had before. You can only put them in place and hope you have more safety but you surely can measure the amount of privacy you've lost. Anytime your privacy is invaded by new technology, subtract that amount the information gathered from the privacy you use to have and that's what you've lost. An example, if you go to the grocery store and pay cash without scanning a preferred card you did not record that purchase anywhere that can be connected to you. If you used a preferred card that purchase is connected to you and that information is stored in a data base giving you a profile that advertisers use to market to you. You have lost the privacy of not having that purchase recorded.

[Birthmark]

6. I don't want to be safe.

I prefer to be free from nosy governments and corporations. I'll see to my own safety. If that doesn't work, I'll call the police.

[imdjh]

10. You want your car back , don't you?

This system means that when your car is reported stolen, and the little angel that stole it is sitting in traffic on his way to wherever it is he's taking your car, the police car which passes him sees the license plate and goes "ding ding ding".

[Hawkowl]

14. Yeah right

The police almost NEVER get any stolen property back. Lazy useless pieces of crap they are. Simply show up, pretend to take a report, and tell you there is virtually zero chance of ever recovering anything.

[imdjh]

18. They haven't had this technology while getting that reputation.

What you have stated is true, but they haven't had the technology to do this kind of sweeping surveillance.

And, you are also correct that their concern level, which may or may not be generated by their ability up to this point, is disappointing. An acquaintance of mine recently had his car stolen, and then saw it in the parking lot of a local store. He called the police and told them where the car was, and said that they didn't do anything about it. I don't know if that's true.

Years ago, someone burglarized my house and I had a pretty good idea who it was. I did my own investigative work (apparently he made several enemies) and found his apartment. I called the police and told them I was at his apartment building, waiting for them to come back me up. They took almost an hour to get there, but they tricked him into a situation which allowed me to enter his apartment and identify my stuff, then they arrested him.

[Psephos]

26. Recovery of a stolen car is nothing but a PITA for a cop

In other words, there are a hundred other things they'd rather do with that license plate scan. You're naive if you think cops prioritize what they do based on helping unknown people recover property.

[LeftyMom]

30. They actually bother to take reports for you?

A neighbor of mine had her car stolen a few years back, and she couldn't even get somebody to come out and take a report. She went down to the local office and made one, which seemed to amuse the hell out of the clerk.

She actually did get her car back a month later, when it had been towed after sitting abandoned and collecting three weeks of parking tickets downtown. The city was happy to contact her about getting their money, but never even noticed that they had ticketed eight times and then towed an abandoned stolen vehicle.

She had to fight them to get out of paying the parking tickets and tow, too.

[Birthmark]

22. Oh, so it's not "to keep us safe?"

Try again.

[imdjh]

24. Unclear what you mean. Please be less laconic.

[Birthmark]

28. The OP said:

"This technology is being used to keep us safe."

Then gave an example using my car. I am not my car. My car's safety is not my safety. Therefore, the example fails to support their assertion.

[imdjh]

7. I saw one the other day in St Petersburg.

It took me a minute to figure out what it was but the angles of the gadgets gave it away. St Pete also claims that those boxes over the intersections are simply traffic monitors. I'm not a paranoid person, but yeah right. Just because they don't look like cameras doesn't mean that they aren't.

[county worker]

9. The data needs to be purged regularly.

I if they run 2000 license plates a day through the scanner. The ones that do not result in a hit for criminality should be purged that day. There is no reason to build up a data base.

[imdjh]

12. They think there is.

Sammy kills Sabrina and records show that right now he's usually at Bob's Billiards. Somebody there probably knows where he is.

[Fumesucker]

11. If you have nothing to hide..

You have nothing to fear..

See my tagline for an explanation of my comment.

[BlueSun]

16. If you have nothing to hide, you are a highly abnormal person.

Fumesucker, the only problem with the argument that, "If you have nothing to hide...you have nothing to fear" is that it is an argument against ALL individual human rights. Why bother with warrants or privacy laws? Why not let cops stop, detain, and strip search people on the street at random, or invade your home without cause at any hour of the day or night to paw through your underwear drawer and private effects? "If you have nothing to hide..."

In Nazi Germany, the "Good Germans" never had to worry about the midnight knock on the door by the Gestapo. After all, they had "nothing to hide." It was only the people who opposed the regime - or the regime opposed - who had something to hide.

Everybody has things private and/or personal that he or she wishes to hide - and our Constitution gives us the right to keep them hidden.

[Fumesucker]

17. But the Commerce clause of the Constitution trumps everything..

That is the clause which has been used by the SCOTUS to legitimize the drug war (among a lot of other outrages).. Because growing a couple of pot plants in my yard *might* have some nebulous effect on interstate commerce then it it OK for the government to throw me in jail for decades for doing so.

My comment was ironic, if you read my tagline you would have understood that I was not saying what it appeared I was saying but rather just the opposite.

Even here on DU there seem to be a great many people who feel that safety trumps all other considerations..

[imdjh]

19. I have nothing to hide, and I still don't like it.

I don't use drugs. I don't go to bars. I don't drive drunk. I don't rob people. I don't go to whorehouses or patronize prostitutes. I don't conspire with sleeper spies to undermine the US government. I don't belong to the Communist Party, the Aryan Nations, the Elephant Liberation Front, PETA, Ecoterrorists For Social Justice, the Society For The Destruction Of Society...

I've aged out of all that stuff.

And I still don't like it.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

21. Sheesh, you are boring!

(just kidding)

[Psephos]

25. If I have nothing to hide, then what business does the state have surveiling me?

The right most valued by all civilized men is the right to be left alone.
- Louis Brandeis

BTW, I like your sig :)

[Fumesucker]

27. Ah, but you *might* have something to hide..

We can never be too careful, eh?

And of course, those who have the most to hide are those who are going to proclaim their innocence the most vociferously.

[Psephos]

32. You're the kind of people we need in government

instead of the "pros."

;)

[Fumesucker]

33. I'm insufficiently cynical to be in government..

A babe in the woods, I am.

:evilgrin:

[BlueSun]

15. License-Plate Scanners

Orson Welles once said that the job of a policeman is only easy in a police state. Every new invasion of our privacy and every new chipping away of our rights under the Constitution is sold as something necessary to keep us safe.

William Pitt put it into perspective when he said: Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."

The problem with many new technologies is that they are double-edged swords, in that, for all the benefits they promise, they are easily misused and abused to turn our democracy into a national surveillance Big-Brother-type police state.

For example, for many years, it was routine to keep fingerprint records on every convicted criminal. These were valuable for identifying repeat criminals and few question their utility (as long as they weren't kept for people who were acquitted or had the charges dropped).

Today, the big thing is DNA and a DNA sample is saved from most convicted criminals. However, where a fingerprint was suitable only for identification, and will never be anything more, each year brings new technology that allows the extraction of more and more private and personal information from your DNA. How long before somebody will discover some genetic marker that indicates an increased chance of anti-social behavior or even possible criminal predilections? Are we really comfortable giving a DNA sample to the State without knowing what it is going to reveal about us with the advanced technology of 10 or 20 years from now?

It is one thing to use a license plate scanner to hunt for an already wanted car of somebody for whom there is probable cause has committed a crime (preferably requiring a judicial warrant). But, the same technology, coupled with the amazing speed and massive storage capacities of today's computer systems, allows the State to literally track every citizen of the United States everywhere he or she goes by car.

How long before everybody is chipped at birth, ostensibly to protect them from kidnapping (it is already available as an optional operation)? What about the advent of credit cards or driver's licenses that have tiny rfid transmitters in them (the technology is already here - it's just a bit too expensive at this point). I've used them in software applications that track the movement of vials of medication in massive automated prescription filling systems for the VA. They can just as easily be used to track people, every second of your life.

In Europe (excepting Britain with its massive CCTV network), there are powerful laws preventing unwarranted (pun intended) surveillance of people using new technology. We have few such protections, and as the Bush Administration has demonstrated, they are pretty much toothless.

[midnight]

31. The chip was the promotion of Wisconsin's former Gov. Tommy Thomson.

While working as Bush's Health and Human Secretary. He left office after the first term and began working for the chip maker.

Thompson, who also served as Secretary of Health and Human Services during President Bush's first term, will have one of the security technology firm Applied Digital's VeriChip tags injected into his arm sometime over the next few months. Thompson joined the board of directors of Applied Digital on July 8.http://wistechnology.com/articles/2044/

[VaYallaDawg]

20. They're a major tool in locating stolen cars.

[yellowcanine]

23. Not to mention EZ Pass. Your plate gets scanned each time you go through a toll gate.

So the state highway administration knows what time you were at a certain location and which vehicle you were driving. Scary stuff.

[midnight]

29. Some state constitutions provide express protection for privacy

One question that the Court has wrestled with through its privacy decisions is how strong of an interest states must demonstrate to overcome claims by individuals that they have invaded a protected liberty interest. Earlier decisions such as Griswold and Roe suggested that states must show a compelling interest and narrowly tailored means when they have burdened fundamental privacy rights, but later cases such as Cruzan and Lawrence have suggested the burden on states is not so high.

The future of privacy protection remains an open question. Justices Scalia and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees. The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed. The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html