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bbenz3
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Well.. you can't drive it legally on a public road, but you can drive it on private property. (ie the way many farms operate)
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ACLU Objects To License Plate Reader
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Well.. you can't drive it legally on a public road, but you can drive it on private property. (ie the way many farms operate)
jaegertech
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It is a given that the government will manage to screw up the simplest of tasks.
I stand by my previous statement: As long as the information collected is restricted until a crime can be linked to the plate number, I support the program.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The automated machine performs wholesale, indiscriminate searches. A police officer running a tag can claim the driver did something suspicious, drove erratically, etc. which drew the officer's attention and caused him or her to run the tag. Regardless of whether that statement is true, it will be regarded as justification for running the plate. The automated scanner can claim no justification for running a plate other than "the car was on the road". Being present in a public place does not constitute probable cause for the state to retrieve and examine personal information.
A lot of people seem to believe that law abiding citizens have no need of "privacy". Privacy is the term that has been assigned to citizens being "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Privacy is there to protect law abiding citizens from the government. The entire Constitution and Bill of Rights are written not to punish the guilty, but to protect the innocent.
I am not a fan of the ACLU. I usually disagree with the stances they take. I'm with them on this one.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The automated machine performs wholesale, indiscriminate searches. A police officer running a tag can claim the driver did something suspicious, drove erratically, etc. which drew the officer's attention and caused him or her to run the tag. Regardless of whether that statement is true, it will be regarded as justification for running the plate. The automated scanner can claim no justification for running a plate other than "the car was on the road". Being present in a public place does not constitute probable cause for the state to retrieve and examine personal information.
A lot of people seem to believe that law abiding citizens have no need of "privacy". Privacy is the term that has been assigned to citizens being "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". Privacy is there to protect law abiding citizens from the government. The entire Constitution and Bill of Rights are written not to punish the guilty, but to protect the innocent.
I am not a fan of the ACLU. I usually disagree with the stances they take. I'm with them on this one.
Exactly, we are loosing our freedoms so we can be "safer" and protected against whatever.
This device should only have the list of bad plates to match against, not store every plate and location / time for people who have done nothing wrong. Its just another way of tracking people.
Are you ok with cameras mounted on every street corner which can recognize your face and track your movements? If you have nothing to hide its ok right?
theDreamer
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You still do not see the point, it is a public place.
A cop can drive by me, type in or write down my number and go back to the station and add it to this same exact type of system. Or maybe if he is reallying feeling up to it he can take a digital camera and sit on the road and snap shop a bunch of cards & add them. There is no difference in this, it just adds automation to it which does not need human reliance.
Only reason a human would need to know anything off of this, or allowed to, would be if they have a warrant. If they have one they are allowed to log in/on and check information against their warrant.
This system is perfectly fine with your "free" rights. All of you scared about your information leaking then you are being a bit paranoid. What information is stored on your plates? Home address, age, height...general information that can be found on the internet if searched properly.
The main idea of the separation of church and state wasn't to keep religion out of politics, but to keep the government out of religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ."
As for reading license plates, many cities use cameras at traffic lights to catch 'red light runners' and most toll roads now have cameras to catch people that try and get out of paying the toll... this is just a short step beyond those ideas already being done.
I do agree though that any data, collected on people that weren't deemed criminals, should only be kept for a very short time (maybe 72 hours) before being destroyed. This would allow someone time to call in a stolen car or for police to identify a particular vehicle with a 'crime in progress'.
jaegertech
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Technically, I believe they are checking on the car, not the driver, so Constitutional rights never come into play. You would have to challenge (and win, good luck) the state's right to register motor vehicles for use. Basically, you would have to have license plates banned.
The word "unreasonable" appears in the 4th amendment by no accident. And the Supreme Court has ruled time and again that "Plain view" is not unreasonable. You don't have to drive, therefore you don't have to have a license plate. However if you choose to drive on public streets, you must have a license plate. Doing so puts you in plain view, meaning that any observation and recording of that plate by law enforcement is not unreasonable. Having re-read the article, it's clear that the ACLU is only offering a comment, they don't appear to be working on an actual legal challenge to this, probably because even they know such a challenge would fail.
I respectfully disagree.
Do you watch television? Five years ago, the phrase "God dammit" was allowed on all channels. "Shit" wasn't. Now flip on TBS, a very family-centric network (surpassed only by Disney and ABC-Family, IMO), and they no longer censor/mute "shit/bullshit/etc." On the other hand, "God dammit" now has the first part muted without fail. It's not government per se, but it is regulated by the FCC.
My apologies for using several curses, but they were necessary for clarification. I hope I didn't offend anyone.*
*Okay, I'm full of it- I loved every minute of it, and anyone who was offended can piss off!
Besides that, I don't believe that the 4th amendment has anything to do with "privacy", not as it relates to this subject. The amendment was intended to prevent police abuses for seizing your stuff indiscriminately. Your license plate (which isn't technically yours anyway, you only rent it for as long as you pay your tax or own that automobile) isn't being "seized". There's nothing "unreasonable" about speeding up the process of LOOKING at a plate and calling it in. I know people get a little loud about the whole "well, what have you got to hide?" argument, but this is getting a little silly, IMHO. Everyone loves to stretch the constitution until they can hide under it.
And to anyone who doesn't believe that driving is a privilege, well, see how far that argument goes in court. You certainly have no "right", God-given or otherwise, to simply driving.
I think most people here are fine with the concept of photographing the plates as they go by. Thats really no big deal.
I think the problem most people see is in the fact that they are warehousing this data in order to create a driving pattern or profile for each car. If they were simply checking all plates as people drive by, no biggie. Its no different than having an officer sitting on the side of the road doing the same. But when you start tying this data to location and time you get a pretty decent profile of the drivers.
Take out the tracking features and I agree that this is a neat system that will save plenty of man hours and help find vehicles, but you don't need to compile driving profiles to do that. You just check each plate scanned against a list of stolen plates and boom, you find stolen cars.
How does knowing that I drive down Highway 17 every morning at 7:50 AM help the police catch "the bad guys"? I just don't see the need to sacrifice my privacy for this "benefit".
I think the problem most people see is in the fact that they are warehousing this data in order to create a driving pattern or profile for each car. If they were simply checking all plates as people drive by, no biggie. Its no different than having an officer sitting on the side of the road doing the same. But when you start tying this data to location and time you get a pretty decent profile of the drivers.
Take out the tracking features and I agree that this is a neat system that will save plenty of man hours and help find vehicles, but you don't need to compile driving profiles to do that. You just check each plate scanned against a list of stolen plates and boom, you find stolen cars.
How does knowing that I drive down Highway 17 every morning at 7:50 AM help the police catch "the bad guys"? I just don't see the need to sacrifice my privacy for this "benefit".
You aren't sacrificing anything. The fact that you are driving on Hwy 17 puts you in a public place. You may feel like you have a sense of anonymity, but simply being there in a public place has nothing to do with your privacy. Yes, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy inside your car, the police can't stop you and search your vehicle for no reason, that would be a violation of your right to privacy. But simply documenting that you were in a public location on a particular day and time is not an intrusion of your privacy at all. You choose to go into public, so you choose to put yourself in an observable position.
If I take a picture of my son playing at the beach, and in the background I happen to also photograph 50 other people, is that a violation of their privacy, because I have documented their location at a specific time? Of course not, it's a public place, and the courts have ruled time and again that there is no such thing as a reasonable right to privacy in a public place. If you put yourself in plain view, you also forfeit your expectation of privacy.
Before we even talk about this subject let's ask if license plates are even necessary? What right does our government have to require us to use plates? Think about it, imagine having to wear visible "Sneaker plates" any time we walked on public property.
License plates gave power to the government - period. What did the people get in return? More security?
Like the other guy said above, originally the government wanted our names on the plates and as a compromise with people who respected liberty, freedom, and privacy they used codes. Technology has eliminated that compromise. it is time to change our laws in accordance with the technological edge that the government uses to exploit these laws.
In the meantime, if and when my cars starts getting tracked I will first move out of that city and/or state and if all else fails I will start using plates like the one below to try to thwarts the OCR in the license plate reading software...
http://www.munsey.net/temp/texplate.jpg
License plates gave power to the government - period. What did the people get in return? More security?
Like the other guy said above, originally the government wanted our names on the plates and as a compromise with people who respected liberty, freedom, and privacy they used codes. Technology has eliminated that compromise. it is time to change our laws in accordance with the technological edge that the government uses to exploit these laws.
In the meantime, if and when my cars starts getting tracked I will first move out of that city and/or state and if all else fails I will start using plates like the one below to try to thwarts the OCR in the license plate reading software...
http://www.munsey.net/temp/texplate.jpg
sporocyst and raz-0 have a point. The government doesn't need to store the plate #, location, observed time, etc... for an indefinite period of time if they're looking for vehicles associated with a crime. Storage long enough for the query is sufficient. Besides, the longer the information is stored the the higher it's associated cost will be.
We have a program like this in Seattle. There was a news article describing the program when it first started a few months ago. Unfortunately I don't recall if the scanned information is stored longer than the query and I can no longer find the article. Admittedly I'm being lazy today.
Is there a justifiable reason for storing longer than the time necessary for the query?
On a side note, everyone's DNA is publicly available. Would it be wrong of the government to collect and store this information along with where it was collected and time?
Finally I have an exercise. Certainly it's more intrusive than anything mentioned here. Try following a police cruiser/bicyclist/foot for 30+ minutes. For added benefit film them but make sure to not record audio as this is illegal with out proper notification.
We have a program like this in Seattle. There was a news article describing the program when it first started a few months ago. Unfortunately I don't recall if the scanned information is stored longer than the query and I can no longer find the article. Admittedly I'm being lazy today.
Is there a justifiable reason for storing longer than the time necessary for the query?
On a side note, everyone's DNA is publicly available. Would it be wrong of the government to collect and store this information along with where it was collected and time?
Finally I have an exercise. Certainly it's more intrusive than anything mentioned here. Try following a police cruiser/bicyclist/foot for 30+ minutes. For added benefit film them but make sure to not record audio as this is illegal with out proper notification.
Just my $0.02... Although Privacy is not "explicitly stated" as a right in the constitution, I'm sure our founding fathers never imagined being surveyed by cameras all over the place and companies/governments tracking you driving, spending, web-browsing, calling, and eating habits. Given the Government's (and Companies) track record at keeping personal information secure, and it's jusicious use of surveilance technology (or restraint), personally, this scares the hell out of me. I have no problem with the technology, just the use (or misuse) of it (*mostly the indefinate storage of the data).
If they DID have the concept of cameras, I'd be amazed. There is no expectation of privacy given by the Constitution. There is only a expectation of there being a reason required for you to be SEARCHED, not OBSERVED. The police are not searching your car, home, belongings, or anything else of yours. It's not even illegal for ME to sit on the side of the road and write down what plates go by my house.
Not that I'm necessarily against this thing, but using your logic, we should all let the police search your house whenever they want? If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear (let's assume they'll put everything back like they found it).
Personally, my main concern is that they're storing these plates and where they were seen in perpetuity. That can be used to keep track of people who've done nothing wrong.
I don't want the government tracking where I"m going, even though I've done nothing wrong.
OTOH, if they use these to quickly determine if the car is owned by someone with an outstanding warrant, I have no problem with that.
You mean other than the fact that they could eventually have an idea of where you are at any given time? This information is kept forever, and is easily tied to a name/address, which means that even if you change cars, they'll be able to track you.
Picking up a thief is good. Warehousing data on innocent citizens for any use they choose (probably make it easier for a dirty cop to frame you) is not.
theDreamer
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What about the citizen who all of a sudden breaks the law? Say a guy goes and gets upset and starts shooting, and if they had this info they have the headstart on how to track him/her.
Ockie, if they were only scanning for plates owned by people with warrants, or used in a crime or that were known to be stolen (plates themselves or the car), that'd be fine, but in this case, that's the the case. They're also going to track the evil Ockie, because he happens to drive a car. What, you didnt' commit a crime and your care wasn't stolen? Well they'll just hold on to it, just in case. That's about as big brother as you get.
It's safe to say that alot of the people here don't mind the device reading licence plates to catch criminals. What alot of people do mind is the fact that the police intend to store all this infomation into a database of some sort forever. I do not beleive this is feasable given the extream cost assoicated with storing all that data.
A single car equiped with this system can scan 900 plates an hour. Over an 8 hour day thats 7,200 plates and locations. Assuming a 5 day work week thats 36,000 scanned a week. Lets assume this single car is on the road only 40 out of the 52 weeks of the year. Thats 1,440,000 scanned plates a year for a single car. Now if hundreds of cars all across the US were equiped with this system and all that information stored into a single database...
Well depending on the amount of data stored I guess it would be doable. If fact I'm confident it could be. Please nevemind my entire post becuase I just realized that far bigger databases exist and operate efficently.
A single car equiped with this system can scan 900 plates an hour. Over an 8 hour day thats 7,200 plates and locations. Assuming a 5 day work week thats 36,000 scanned a week. Lets assume this single car is on the road only 40 out of the 52 weeks of the year. Thats 1,440,000 scanned plates a year for a single car. Now if hundreds of cars all across the US were equiped with this system and all that information stored into a single database...
Well depending on the amount of data stored I guess it would be doable. If fact I'm confident it could be. Please nevemind my entire post becuase I just realized that far bigger databases exist and operate efficently.
Nemesis999
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Your logic is faulty. They're not searching the car. They're observing the outside of the car.
The police can, and do, observe the outside of houses all the time. 100% legally.
Nemesis999
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You are 100% wrong. The machine does not search anything. It mearly observes what is in plain sight. By your logic it would illegal for a cop to look at you because that would be an illegal search.
As much as I agree, I also disagree.
Personally, I dont like the idea of my driving patterns being recorded. But at the same time, If this can be put to good use to capture a murder, or a kidnapper or a terrorist then by all means lets implement it. I know that as a law abiding citizen, I have nothing to worry about, but all criminals start out as law abiding citizens.
What Im worried about is this kind of technology getting into the hands of the everyday average joe. There are people out there that have grudges against another for whatever reason, be it a wife that left an abusive husband or organized crime.
Then you're a fool. Anytime a store insists on my drivers license with a credit card purchase, I insist they call up the credit card company immiediately. They have absolutely NO right to ask for ID with most credit cards. I know that VIsa/MC explicity say it's not required (thus the huge advertising campaign in the last few years). As I recall, AMEX doesn't have that, but it says that you can't put any requirements on their card that are not applied to other charge cards, which means if they accept Visa, for example, they can't do it.
The same is true when a merchant says there's a minimum purchase on the credit card. Their merchant agreement forbids it.
actually I think tracking pedofiles as we currently do it is wrong. It's not that I don't htink they're dangerous, but as we do it now, if you're 18 and have sex with your GF who's 16 (in some states 17), you can be charged and convicted of a sex crime and you'll have to register as a sexual predator forever. Hell there's a case in Georgia where a kid who was 17 was tossed in jail for having sex with a minor....and HE IS A MINOR.
The Speeder did get off on a technicality. OJ didn't. The jury didn't think the prosecution proved it's case. You and I may disagree (and rightfully so, IMO), but he still didn't get off on some technicality.
What drug lords? We don't put drug lords in jail. We put street dealers in jail. And FYI, the drug problem hasn't improved one IOTA in 25 years fighting of this war. Casual use goes up and downs on a generational basis and habitual users has remained the same for longer than you and I have been alive.
On the plus side, we now spend billions of dollars to incarcerate people for selling drugs that should probably be legal. Ever wonder why it took a constitutional amendment to make alcohol illegal (and then legal again), but the feds have somehow made other drugs illegal with no amendment?
True. Little known fact: every day, thousands of germans die because most of the autobahn has no speedlimit </sarcasm>.
To paraphrase Ben Franklin, anyone who would give up liberties for security deserve neither.
Where do you live? I haven't taken any form of a driving test since I first got a drivers license.
Then, I suggest that we pass a law that requires all people to register where they go and their route as part of being a good honest citizen. If you go to the movie theater, you should present your state ID to be scanned so that the police can no when you went, where you went and perhaps what movie you went to see.
This information will help police track you down if you commit a crime some day, as they'll know your patterns.
Only criminals and potential criminals have anything to fear from teh government
License plate numbers aren't private. Courts have long held that a cop can run your plate number through the computer without any probable cause.
Boo hoo aclu.
Again, then wouldn't allowing police to search any house they please at any time help catch criminals, terrorists and so on?
{NcsO}ReichstaG
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Damn that ALCU, civil liberty hippies. The USA would be a significantly better place without them. The license plate hunter is a great idea as it will aid police in retrieving stolen cars and catching criminals. Every time I see an ALCU supporter in Berkeley, CA I want to punch them in the face.
theDreamer
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Then, I suggest that we pass a law that requires all people to register where they go and their route as part of being a good honest citizen. If you go to the movie theater, you should present your state ID to be scanned so that the police can no when you went, where you went and perhaps what movie you went to see.
This information will help police track you down if you commit a crime some day, as they'll know your patterns.
Only criminals and potential criminals have anything to fear from teh government
Exactly, so why does it matter if they mark your car on where it was on a "public" street? It does not matter, especially seeing as most likely they will never ever acquire that data again or bring it up.
You already do register with the state, it is called a drivers licenses, and it has your address on it. Oh no, now they know here you live in a government computer.
If people have huge bay windows in their house that they leave open all the time, and people on the sidewalk can see that they have marijuana growing in the living room, they will be arrested.
Same principle here. What you knowingly expose to the public has no privacy interest. There is no privacy interest in your license plate number. That's settled law, all the way to the US supreme court.
What the ACLU (fine people who perform a very necessary function in our society) is actually objecting to here is the efficiency of the means to check the status of the license plates, not the checking. And that's where they fail.
I also don't have much trouble with an automated license plate reader. Just with indefinitely storing records and GPS coordinates indefinitely for everyone, not just criminals.
The entire notion of this being okay because it's a license plate is a red herring. What about face recognition cameras set up everywhere also recording your every move even if you walk, and storing that information indefinitely? As someone else said, what about DNA collectors picking up your stray skin cells from the street? What about cameras set up (on public property) pointed at every front door so the police can observe who came and went and at what time? What about pointed in your windows (better keep those drapes drawn)? How about infrared heat detectors that can see your thermal signature as you walk around your house? Are these really any different? Where is the line drawn? Even those poo-pooing the notion of privacy get uncomfortable about that level of observation, even though the government is not invading your property to track you, and so according to their notion of the Fourth Amendment are doing nothing unconstitutional.
And the notion of "choosing" to be out in public is also a red herring. You can't live in modern society without going out in public. Well, you can choose to stay in your house and starve. So it's not much of a choice at all.
And of course we trust the government completely, because they would never abuse that trust. Why is that the police that want to photograph you have a fit if you try to photograph them? Using their own logic, if they are not committing criminal acts why should they fear the camera?
People say that if you are not a criminal then you have nothing to fear. Well, if I'm not a criminal then why do you need to track me?
The entire notion of this being okay because it's a license plate is a red herring. What about face recognition cameras set up everywhere also recording your every move even if you walk, and storing that information indefinitely? As someone else said, what about DNA collectors picking up your stray skin cells from the street? What about cameras set up (on public property) pointed at every front door so the police can observe who came and went and at what time? What about pointed in your windows (better keep those drapes drawn)? How about infrared heat detectors that can see your thermal signature as you walk around your house? Are these really any different? Where is the line drawn? Even those poo-pooing the notion of privacy get uncomfortable about that level of observation, even though the government is not invading your property to track you, and so according to their notion of the Fourth Amendment are doing nothing unconstitutional.
And the notion of "choosing" to be out in public is also a red herring. You can't live in modern society without going out in public. Well, you can choose to stay in your house and starve. So it's not much of a choice at all.
And of course we trust the government completely, because they would never abuse that trust. Why is that the police that want to photograph you have a fit if you try to photograph them? Using their own logic, if they are not committing criminal acts why should they fear the camera?
People say that if you are not a criminal then you have nothing to fear. Well, if I'm not a criminal then why do you need to track me?
theDreamer
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It is called prevention, most police forces are reactive to a situation, but with modern technology if we can STOP a crime would that be better than letting a few people hurt or maybe die then stop them?
jaegertech
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And if it was as difficult to get a license in the US as it is in Germany, I'd agree with revocation of speed limits in many places. However, in the US, a pulse is good enough to get you a license (a requirement they seem to waive down here in Florida) and most people are way too stupid to cope with high speeds. A society that, by and large, can't acknowledge something as simple as that the left lane is for PASSING, simply isn't ready for unregulated roads. It sucks, but what can you do?
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