City Council to install 20 cameras as automated license-plate recognition system

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2023/04/03/palo-alto-leans-on-license-plate-readers-to-dent-property-crime

by luu • 3 years ago

92 217 3 years ago

hw-guy3• 3 years ago

What do they do about cars without license plates? I seem to recall that new cars in California are sold with NO plates, not even paper temporary tags.

bredren• 3 years ago

I built and sold a parking enforcement product that uses ALPR from a mobile app.

In my customers experience, cars missing “normal” license plates (those without special characters or sports themes) are few enough to not make an impact on broad goals.

New cars missing plates completely would be a similarly low portion of consideration. Enforcement of cars missing plates illegally is the duty of patrolling PD.

Which is to say, drive around without plates long enough you’ll get pulled over.

bluedino• 3 years ago

It seems like since Covid closed the DMV, even though they've re-opened, law enforcement has been pretty lax on enforcing license plate laws

hw-guy3• 3 years ago

What happens if you don't pull over? In cities like Philadelphia now (and I'd be surprised if this is not also the case in many CA cities), the police are not allowed to chase cars. So if you want to commit a crime, remove the plate and if the cop tries to pull you over, just drive away! We had a neighborhood meeting with a local police captain in Philly who admitted as much.

inconceivable2• 3 years ago

new cars in california are sold with temp tags now. they look the same as the ones in other states.

rconti3• 3 years ago

More or less. For some reason they all have totally different fonts and layouts, but it's a step up from the wild west it used to be.

drewda4• 3 years ago

California has required dealers to put temporary license plates with unique IDs on all cars that don't already have license plates.

The change took effect January 1, 2019: https://us.dealertrack.com/content/dealertrack/en/landing-pa...

hw-guy3• 3 years ago

What was the rationale for not requiring plates? California is also the only state I've driven in where the freeways don't have mile markers. How are people supposed to report the location of an accident or breakdown?

gumby5• 3 years ago

They changed the law a little while back and now new cars come with a paper number plate. The bridges were complaining that too many people didn’t pay tolls.

Steve Jobs used to get a new Mercedes S class every three months so he wouldn’t have to have a plate.

TaylorAlexander4• 3 years ago

When I got my car (used) in 2017 I just left the dealer plates on it for about a year, always keeping it washed.

jjtheblunt2• 3 years ago

That's hearsay regarding rationale and frequency, and it was an SL not S, and it displayed its barcode and regularly parked in front of IL-1. I'd walk or park near it all the time.

fortran77• 3 years ago

Now Palo Alto can catch people from Mountain View who try to sneak into their parks with more efficiency!

AnotherGoodName2• 3 years ago

Context: https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/01/25/palo-alto-banned-...

Basically ever since segregation was banned Palo Alto had laws that only 'local residents' could use certain parks.

The law was pretty obvious in its intent and the law was struck surprisingly recently.

gumby5• 3 years ago

Read my parallel comment — that wasn’t the reason for excluding non-residents from that one park. It was about the selfish argument made by Los Altos city council.

The segregation argument was a good one, but not for the reason you cite. Because of prior segregation, the population of PA is still lopsided, and that meant a resident-only park had an unfair bias.

After a bit of a rush when the restriction was dropped, it settled back to its normal quiet state. In reality there was de facto no restriction: the entry gate was rarely staffed and you could always enter through Arastradero Park which, like all the other parks in Palo Alto, has no restrictions at all.

marcell2• 3 years ago

Do you have any basis for saying this law was racist or had segregationist goals?

It’s not like the neighboring cities (Mt View and Menlo Park) have many black people.

My understanding is that the local resident restrictions were based on some local politics around purchasing the park a long time ago, and then transformed into a Palo Alto NIMBY policy. In 2008 Los Altos Hills tried to buy access to Foothill Park.

gumby5• 3 years ago

Mountain View blocks non-residents from some parks? Palo Alto was sued because only residents could use Foothills Park. Hmm..

(When Palo Alto got the right to buy the property that became foothill park, PA asked the towns adjacent to the property if they wanted to split the bill. They declined, figuring they could use it anyway if they didn’t help pay for it. So PA locked them out, and spent 50 years paying off the bond they raised for the purchase.)

rconti3• 3 years ago

Thankfully my bicycle doesn't have license plates so I can still get away from the crime of entering Foothills Park (where bicycles are allowed) from Arastradero Preserve (where bicycles are ALSO allowed) by crossing through Gate D (an imaginary place in the world through which bicycles Definitely May Not Travel).

Best to just ride up Page Mill Road, I'm sure that annoys nobody at all.

chaostheory13• 3 years ago

As we wind down police forces, due to both the political climate and the ever shrinking pool of recruits; mass surveillance is the inevitable stop gap.

barbazoo• 3 years ago

As we wind down police forces

Any sources to back this up?

chaostheory13• 3 years ago

It’s an old problem. Keep in mind that this article is from before Floyd. There are more sources

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co...

passwordoops• 3 years ago

Here's one example [0]. I'm not sure what, if any, dent this makes relative to historical budget levels in US police forces, or if it truly counts as "winding down". But there are headlines

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-de...

nawgz• 3 years ago

Kind of a weird comment; haven't both police force sizes and budgets grown as the mass surveillance state has also come into reality?

chaostheory13• 3 years ago

No. Police forces have had shortages since the mid 2000s. It’s gotten worse since then. It’s been a regular news feature since about 2010. It’s old news

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/07/19/us/police-staffing-shorta...

tptacek10• 3 years ago

Nobody is winding down police forces. It's difficult right now to hire, but part of the reason for that is that there's lots of demand.

chaostheory13• 3 years ago

The results are mixed at best, but the defund movement exists

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/08/13/at-leas...

https://theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund...

kevingadd6• 3 years ago

Palo Alto's police budget is much higher than it was in the past. Is the PA police department being "wound down"? Do you have sources for this?

chaostheory13• 3 years ago

You’re in the SF Bay Area and you’ve never heard of people with this ideology?

https://theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund...

I’m not arguing its merit. I’m just point out that it exists

thebigman433• 3 years ago

Nobody is "winding down" their departments. At the absolute most, departments arent getting the same level of funding increases that theyre used to getting. Plus virtually all of the top national leaders, and all of the state/city level leaders are still pushing for overall increases in police funding.

autoexec3• 3 years ago

Most people have no intention of "winding down" police forces. In fact, a lot of "defund the police" proposals would free up police resources that can then go toward catching criminals by not using them for things we don't need police involved in.

renewiltord2• 3 years ago

You can get these plastic license plate covers. I don't know of anyone who has gotten caught using them and I see them everywhere. The red light cameras can't catch you and you can risk t-boning people at will.

kvetching• 3 years ago

wow....

rconti3• 3 years ago

I very, very rarely see the license plate obscuring plastic covers. They're pretty obvious when you see them. Other covers (tinted, clear, whatever) are only used for aesthetic purposes, and they might somewhat reduce the success rate of ANPRs, but that's not the main goal.

renewiltord2• 3 years ago

The red light camera on Bryant won't catch you with it on. If PA is using what SF is, it should be safe. My impression with these cameras is that they're like the US Postal Police. On the Internet, everyone describes them as unflinching bulldogs of the law. In reality, they're more like Scrappy Doo.

loeg4• 3 years ago

I don't know where you live but I see plate-obscuring covers all the time in Seattle. We have several local toll highways, which is probably related.

jollyllama• 3 years ago

It's not much of a solution because these types of things open you up to selective enforcement.

reaperducer• 3 years ago

According to a friend who works in administration at a big city police department, most of them don't work.

javajosh• 3 years ago

So, a local government going after a small subset of positional data. Good heavens, doesn't Ring already do facial recognition and license plates and give well-heeled clients access to that feed?

prpl4• 3 years ago

disclaimer: I live close to east oakland

As mentioned, everybody is supposed to have a license plate - even a temporary one. In reality, it’s rarely to never enforced, cars and/or license plates are frequently stolen (especially Hyundai/Kia), all manner e-ink plates even stickers plates are allowed. Frankly this has really enabled a cottage industry of thieves and criminals.

I’m generally against a surveillance state, but the utter lack of enforcement on this issue enables and possibly encourages a range crimes

pound• 3 years ago

e-ink plates, as well as sticker plates are parts of dmv pilot program. it's not some overlooked violation.

michaelt2• 3 years ago

Perhaps I don't fully understand the situation in America (in my country a vehicle will generally have a license plate when it rolls off the dealer's lot, which stays on the vehicle throughout its entire life) but what would anyone need an e-ink plate for?

77pt775• 3 years ago

Why all these references to Kia being stolen?

arwineap• 3 years ago

Kia's and hyundais recently had a simple flaw allowing theft of the vehicle

https://www.thedrive.com/news/hyundai-kia-say-theyll-fix-mil...

thewebcount• 3 years ago

I get why some residents want this, but won't the result be that criminals will do one of the following:

- Remove their plates before committing a crime

- Use stolen plates

- Make fake plates and put them on other vehicles and have friends drive them around far away places at the same time so they can say, "Your readers must be broken!"

- Make note of where the readers are (since they're fixed) and avoid using those streets during their crimes?

- Other stuff I'm probably not thinking of

The amount of abuse by the police that this opens the citizens up to is just ridiculous.

selectodude2• 3 years ago

I can't speak for Palo Alto, but here in Chicago, the cars are almost always stolen. So the LPRs are pretty darn helpful. Nobody is removing plates from a stolen vehicle (no time, gotta get away), and after the victim calls police, they can flag the plate.

wintogreen743• 3 years ago

Except (at least where I live) the cars are stolen and used in crimes immediately, well before they're reported stolen and entered into the database. The rightful owner is more likely to be shot in their own home by some trigger-happy cop coming to arrest them, than actually catching a criminal through this mass data collection joke.

prpl4• 3 years ago

yeah it’s frankly trivial to steal a kia and fake plates (out of state/temp/e-ink) is the next frontier

brunoTbear• 3 years ago

One opportunity with this kind of technology is to identify when a plate is mismatched with the car. If you assume that stolen plates and stolen cars are a problem, which I think is a good assumption, you can make the adversary's life harder by forcing them to match plate to car make/model/color/year by deploying an ALPR that alerts on mismatches.

There's a good story here about flipping the current economics for criminals--it's trivially cheap to steal plates and cars--towards a world where they have the harder problem of matching plate to car.

tclancy• 3 years ago

What happened to stealing plates from a car in the movie theater during a show?

77pt775• 3 years ago

Why Kia specifically?

yowzadave• 3 years ago

Certainly any effort to deter crime should be seen as a component of a broad effort, rather than a strategy that will be foolproof in isolation.

- Make note of where the readers are (since they're fixed) and avoid using those streets during their crimes?

Sounds like a good way to make your neighborhood safer. Maybe more and more streets will adopt them?

kypro• 3 years ago

We have this in the UK and my understanding is if a car removes their plates or uses a plate which is invalid it will be flagged up and they will be inviting police attention.

Although, I think where this comes into play most is that in the UK our police cars are also fitted with the same technology so if a car has a valid plate which doesn't match their vehicle or simply has an fake plate they will be immediately pulled over, so you'd be kinda stupid if you were driving around frequently committing crimes with fake plates on.

loeg4• 3 years ago

The US has largely been failing to enforce license plate laws since Covid began. Yglesias has written some about the problem here: https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-cant-tolerate-fake-expired-a...

You are totally correct that our failure to enforce these laws enables quite a lot of other crime.

rahimnathwani2• 3 years ago

I lived in the UK for 10x the time I've lived in San Francisco, but here in SF I've witnessed many more instances of cars driving with obscured plates or no plates at all.

hahajk• 3 years ago

I know that California's doesn't match plates to car make/model, at least the toll and red light cameras. Someone faked my friend's license plate on their car and he's been getting all their tickets. Their cars aren't even the same color.

cjrp• 3 years ago

I don't think the camera system is picking up that the plate doesn't match the car; more if the vehicle has been reported stolen, or doesn't have tax/MOT/insurance.

tptacek10• 3 years ago

It's not just plates. A big part of the point of Flock is that it does historical make/model searches, so if a beat-up black minivan is (say) used to carjack someone, you can track the minivan across the municipality, find out where else it had been in the previous days/weeks, and spot it if it comes back.

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

You're asking a lot of criminals that they dot all their i's and cross all their t's before committing a criminal act.

Criminals in general are not the Professor Moriarty type.

kneebonian• 3 years ago

You know I agree with you in general but I think people underestimate the amount of organized crime that goes on. A lot of criminals may not be the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but especially when it comes to theft often things are organized, planned coordinated and run a bit better than random crimes of opportunity.

gumby5• 3 years ago

Criminals in general are not the Professor Moriarty type.

"Criminals who get caught in general are not the Professor Moriarty type."

Who knows about the ones who don't?

In general crime doesn't seem like a great way to make a living but perhaps that just means I am not a Professor Moriarty type.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

Once the word is out that something simple will break a system, yes they do it. It isn't Moriarty to think "if I take off my plates they can't see my plates".

I got my car broken into and several laptops stolen from the back of the car, in daylight at a restaurant parking lot. The restaurant had footage. The car didn't have plates. The cop took my info down so I could tell insurance I reported the problem - the cops had no intention of doing anything.

And I guarantee I can drive a five mile stretch of highway right now and I'll see paper plates or no plates on a shitty car.

megablast3• 3 years ago

So it makes it harder. Like almost all laws.

Laws can’t stop you doing something. They make it harder and provide punishment.

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

Poorly written laws make things harder for everyone, so that most of the burden falls on law-abiding people. Utilitarian policy prescriptions are often based on a misplaced sense of omniscience and a disregard for negative externalities.

gr33nq• 3 years ago

Or even easier, simply drive in the middle lane while adjacent to another vehicle to block the camera's view of your plate. Flock's cameras mount in the center median or sidewalk and are only capable of reading plates from the two nearest lanes of traffic. There are better solutions out there which mount onto traffic signal poles and monitor each lane from above, making it much more difficult to circumvent (intentionally or by happenstance).

Of course this isn't much of a concern when installed onto a two-lane residential street for targeted enforcement. Though I know most municipalities opt to only place cameras at points of egress/ingress on their borders with other cities, and those roads tend to be more than just two lanes.

jrpt2• 3 years ago

Did you not read the article? It says if they notice a car with reported stolen plates or no plates drive up to the Stanford Shopping Center, they can dispatch police to deal with it right then and there. If they get there quickly enough they would hopefully stop the theft before it occurs or stop them from getting away.

Stanford Shopping Center has an Apple Store which has had problems with theft in the past.

They could avoid the readers, true, but they might not even realize they need to. It’ll definitely help some percent of the time.

LazyMans2• 3 years ago

This system doesn't work on just plates, it also makes a "fingerprint" of the vehicle. It's specifically designed to handle people trying to fool an ALPR system.

Keep in mind, most criminals are stupid.

bnastic• 3 years ago

UK: hold my beer while I show you our ANPR that's literally everywhere

wjdp• 3 years ago

This is very much something I've not thought much about. There's doesn't seem to be publicised cases where this is abused and having a system where any stolen vehicle can be pinged on major roads is a rather useful thing to have.

bearmode• 3 years ago

There are also sane plate laws in the UK, and plates are tied to a specific vehicle make/model, and the plates are larger, more visible, and far easier for automated systems to read.

robopsychology3• 3 years ago

There's been several armed robberies in Palo Alto Midtown recently - I personally don't mind increased security if it reduces those.

wintogreen743• 3 years ago

You're in the bullseye of the law enforcement pitch then. There are lots of ways to address armed robberies without mass surveillance. They'll pitch this as "one more tool to fight crime <x>" but you wait, it will actually be "THE tool for preventing a wide range of behaviors, some maybe even illegal!"

loeg4• 3 years ago

You've totally failed to respond to GP's comment. Do you think this will be ineffective at its stated goals?

squokko2• 3 years ago

There are many of us who just don’t care about mass surveillance.

nradov2• 3 years ago

Back in 1968 the NYPD had an effective way to address armed robberies. Stake-out squad members would hide inside targeted businesses and then just shoot the robbers. However, this approach has fallen out of favor in modern law enforcement.

https://qualitypolicing.com/the-stake-out-squad/

robopsychology3• 3 years ago

I agree mass surveillance is bad however is some surveillance good? Coming from London the fact there is basically no surveillance such that the police need to ask people if they were doing their own surveillance to help with a case strikes me as crazy. Each piece of surveillance should be rigorously questioned but I don't think the answer to a safe society is none.

kevingadd6• 3 years ago

Why would license plate cameras deter armed robberies? Aren't there other things that would be more effective? PA's police department doesn't seem to be lacking for funding, its budget has increased over time instead of being cut. Have the police been responding to callers with "sorry, we can't come take a report for your armed robbery because we're manually writing down license plate numbers"?

At best license plate cameras seem like they might deter bad driving if they make it easier to issue citations to bad drivers. I cannot imagine how they would meaningfully impact armed robberies or other violent crime. It's just more surveillance that in practice probably increases police dept income (via tickets). Maybe it slightly reduces the time police officers spend in courtrooms or writing up tickets, leaving them more time to respond to calls?

Don't let yourself get tricked into rubber stamping warrantless surveillance just because you want to be safer in some other area.

nradov2• 3 years ago

The primary effect of ALPRs in other cities has been to identify stolen cars as well as those registered to owners with open warrants. They aren't typically used for traffic enforcement.

robopsychology3• 3 years ago

Because most of the recent crimes where the robbers were caught drove into PA from Oakland or EPA or wherever and some of those were caught by license plate cameras just further afield. I wonder if one of the reasons Midtown is picked is because it's close to the 101 and because of the lack of security cameras. If people wanted to target wealthy people they'd be better suited looking towards Atherton or Woodside or something.

wintogreen743• 3 years ago

> Mark Shull, a Palo Alto resident since 1983 ... Until last year, he had never experienced property theft ... "Palo Alto has a serious and growing property theft problem," Shull said.

I wish I lived in a city where 2 converter thefts every 4 decades was the bar for "serious theft problem". The idea that this will "deter criminals" is a joke. That's as likely as hidden photo radar slowing down drivers.

The police chief with statements like "Oh we won't deploy this to residential areas, unless it's on a temporary basis for a specific crime spree" - does 2 thefts in a week, after 40 years count as a spree?

targeting "areas where we're seeing the most amount of crimes we think these would solve." - why not deploy actual police officers to these areas?

Look, I'm a law-abiding citizen, property owner, and as fed up with the light treatment of property crime as these people, but giving carte blanche to private companies to sell tools of mass surveillance and only go on the word of politicians and law enforcement to "trust us"? No thanks.

bushbaba• 3 years ago

even with video evidence thats not enough to charge. this is equivalent to security system...deter criminals and encourage crimes be done in an easier area.

megablast3• 3 years ago

That's as likely as hidden photo radar slowing down drivers.

Of course it does. What a silly comment.

mikestew• 3 years ago

“Hidden”? What am I, a driver, slowing down for exactly? The camera I can’t see?

annoyingnoob2• 3 years ago

There are a few of these cameras in my neighborhood. I often think about having a Cool Hand Luke moment and cutting them all down. Silly string, a pipe cutter, and a couple of minutes...

brokenmachine• 3 years ago

Why do you need silly string?

CaptainNegative• 3 years ago

I wish I lived in a city where 2 converter thefts every 4 decades was the bar for "serious theft problem".

I don't think this is fair at all.

If a couple pre-teens get third degree burns because an arsonist burned their (parents') house down, would you wish you lived in a place where one's home being an average of .02 degrees warmer over your lifetime was the bar for a serious arsony problem?

His complaint isn't about the Palo Alto of 1990, it's about the Palo Alto of today. What did or did not happen in 1990 is immaterial. Same as the pre-teens in the years leading up to the fire.

Dylan168073• 3 years ago

The problem in your analogy is obviously that you turned discrete events into something else entirely. The person you're replying to didn't do that.

WillPostForFood2• 3 years ago

I wish I lived in a city where 2 converter thefts every 4 decades was the bar for "serious theft problem"

There are about 100 cars stolen a year, so probably more than 2 converter thefts every 4 decades. If you don't want surveillance, don't diminish and ignore crime.

gnicholas2• 3 years ago

You've conveniently excerpted the article to avoid showing that it wasn't two thefts randomly scattered across four decades, but four decades without theft and then two thefts that have just happened. Here's the full quote:

Mark Shull, a Palo Alto resident since 1983, also supported the use of license-plate readers. Until last year, he had never experienced property theft, Shull told the council. That's when thieves stole catalytic converters from two different cars in his household.

In recent years, there were hundreds of catalytic converter thefts in Palo Alto. Some residents have had their converters stolen multiple times, costing thousands of dollars. This includes residents who have paid several hundreds more to have converter shields installed, in a vain attempt to prevent subsequent theft. [1] Due to supply chain shortages, some people had to wait several months to get new converters, which left them unable to drive their cars. This is not an infrequent issue in Palo Alto, and it is not trivial for those who are victimized.

I'm not saying this one issue is sufficient to have ALPRs installed, but comments like yours distort the facts and mislead commenters who didn't read TFA.

1: https://paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/10/21/will-new-laws-sto...

felipelemos• 3 years ago

You've conveniently excerpted the article to avoid showing that it wasn't two thefts randomly scattered across four decades, but four decades without theft and then two thefts that have just happened.

But the parent said just that in the third paragraph:

does 2 thefts in a week, after 40 years count as a spree?

salawat2• 3 years ago

Sounds like a California overly strict emissions regulation problem created through the production of a leverage point (presence of Catalytic Converter = effectively able to participate in society through realizable freedom of movement) which is an undesirable side effect of the regulation.

Who'da thunk it?

squokko2• 3 years ago

A tiny shitbox house in Palo Alto costs $3 million. Residents’ standard for quality of life is extremely high, like how clean you’d expect a $1000/night hotel room to be.

tptacek10• 3 years ago

Presumably because of the title, people are making this a thread about license plates. But Flock (a YC company!) does a whole bunch of ML image classification stuff; think of it as something closer to a Google search for cars that have traversed your municipality in the last week, searchable not just by plate but by make, model, and distinguishing characteristics; you can even track cars by bumper sticker.

We went through this exercise last year in Oak Park, with our local PD requesting 20+ cameras --- a tactical misstep, because they'd been piloting a small number of cameras, and the larger request drove their acquisition costs across the threshold of needing board approval, which they were surprised to discover was contentious.

Because the board was split on the prospect of giving OPPD a Village-wide "Google for all movements of any car everywhere" capability, we were able to extract concessions. We got board approval for a much-reduced deployment (I think we have 8 cameras), contingent on recommendations from our citizen police oversight and IT commissions (I'm on one of those).

In the end, we got a General Order issued from OPPD limiting the use of cameras to violent crime, all uses traceable to case numbers reviewable by our police oversight commission, no usage from personal machines by OPPD staff but rather only OPPD-issued equipment, mandatory 2FA, and some other things I forget.

We were much less successful at regulating data sharing. This is a huge feature of Flock, and part of its viral customer acquisition strategy. OPPD found out about Flock by getting access to data from neighboring municipalities; many police departments run "transparency portals" to show you who they're sharing with, and it's often "every law enforcement agency in the region". Which makes sense, if you look at it from the perspective of the police department! But it makes it much harder to regulate how cameras are used, because our PD can't issue General Orders for other PDs, and Flock doesn't appear to provide any tools to enforce limits on data sharing.

The obvious thing to ask for in a pilot deployment is "turn all the sharing off", but that's hard when Flock's foot in the door was sharing from some other department.

I'd have been happier if we'd ended up with zero Flock cameras, but I'm not sure how political realistic that would have been, and I'm surprised we were able to extract as many concessions as we did.

Probably the most important thing we got was a commitment to a review of the effectiveness of the cameras after a year; presumably, if OPPD can't tie the cameras to solving specific violent crimes, we'll stop paying for the cameras.

The Village Board didn't enjoy being blindsided by a random acquisition request, and demanded a process be put in place for future surveillance tech requests. So one happy side effect of this is that we teed up ACLU CCOPS†, which I expect to see passed in the next couple months. CCOPS theoretically prevents municipal agencies from deploying surveillance tech without board approval, even if the cost is below purchasing thresholds.

Get involved in this stuff. You'd be surprised how little engagement there is at the local level, which is where a lot of the most important governing decisions are made.

† https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/community-control-over-p...

kevingadd6• 3 years ago

It'll be fascinating to hear whether the data shows that the cameras helped with solving violent crimes.

SoftTalker4• 3 years ago

They have helped, in at least some cases. I have not heard or seen whether they make a statistical difference. Of course then we get back to "if it only saves one victim" arguments.

drewda4• 3 years ago

Los Altos Hills also recently installed Flock ALPRs. It's amusing how they allow residents to fill out a form on the town website to opt-out: https://www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/455/Automatic-License-Plate...

In other words, you can opt-out of having your comings and goings monitored... as long as you own at least 1 acre of land (LAH's minimum lot size) in one of the top 10 wealthiest ZIP codes in the country.

jackson1442• 3 years ago

It seems like you can rent as well. I’m from Texas but my car is registered to my apartment’s address which seems like all they require.

Would love to see better privacy legislation that would require an opt out for everyone though.

zbrozek3• 3 years ago

The town installed it on a one-year trial basis. The cameras didn't break any cases and cost the town a huge amount of money to pay for police overtime to review all the footage.

The city council voted unanimously to make them permanent, even in the face of clear evidence that they were useless. Why? To be seen to be doing something. They even said so in the resolution.

Check out the staff report on page 335 of the agenda packet PDF. https://losaltoshillsca.portal.civicclerk.com/event/2742/fil...

The final paragraphs before hitting boilerplate were especially galling:

Even though residential burglaries are at an all-time high since the system was installed and no direct correlation can be made between the system and a reduction in residential burglaries, the cameras remain a tool that the Sheriff’s Office can use to help solve ongoing crime in Town and have been successful in solving other types of crimes.

It is impossible to tell whether the presence of the cameras themselves could have deterred additional burglaries from happening, but in all, the cameras remain a reminder to the citizens of Los Altos Hills that the Town cares about their safety and that the Council is actively trying to reduce crime from occurring in Town.

WillPostForFood2• 3 years ago

The cameras didn't break any cases

That's not true, the page right before the one you quoted:

During this evaluation period, a total of four suspects were arrested in two separate and ongoing investigations. Two were arrested for an armed robbery and carjacking that occurred in Cupertino and two were arrested while driving a stolen vehicle and committing various thefts in Town.

exabrial• 3 years ago

Illegal search. Why is this still a thing?

dhbanes2• 3 years ago

How is this any more illegal than a cop calling in a license plate number of any random vehicle they see on the road (which is not at all illegal)?

mixmastamyk4• 3 years ago

Automation changes the character of the policy and enforcement. This has been recognized before.

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

Nope, far from it.

thot_experiment• 3 years ago

This would be fine if all the data was public, that is the only way to make public surveillance systems do more harm than good.

JKCalhoun2• 3 years ago

Maybe someone should assemble and open-source a license plate reader we can all carry — crowd-source pushing packets to a web site where cars + licenses are displayed on a map.

It would more or less make the data egalitarian, make some kind of point maybe?

I'm actually not averse to license plate readers. I'm not a privacy absolutist. I lean toward the privacy where you have the "expectation of privacy" but I could be convinced license plate readers cross that line.

egberts13• 3 years ago

The best license plate readers are the ones that not only optically lift those alphanumeric symbols off of either license plate but also does:

1. identify your car stereo bluetooth ID

2. any bluetooth devices on your vehicle

3. has direct access to national registry of stolen plates

4. and a mobile modem in which to send alerts with.

5. HD webcam auto-zooming to the driver's side of the vehicle.

6. lift On-Star ID

Hey, what do I know? I'm just spitballing out there.

kevingadd6• 3 years ago

Make sure to also identify all the passengers and any wireless devices they're carrying. You might catch a big crime network of people who hang out in their cars and talk about driving 7 mph over the limit on the highway while not wearing a seatbelt. You could build a big network of connections, maybe it would turn out that speeding is a social contagion and sending the worst speeders to a forced re-education program would deter the rest from speeding!

egberts13• 3 years ago

Like I said, this is just a spitball attempt to raise awareness of "license-plater readers" and something something about individual freedom.

tutorialmanager2• 3 years ago

Don't forget to identify any political bumper stickers.

egberts13• 3 years ago

Wouldnt work in America, ya know, free speech and all.

But the rest of the world, quite likely, even got support of GPRS or whatever it's called nowadays.

kyleblarson• 3 years ago

This is all moot until activist prosecutors and judges stop coddling criminals and start enforcing the rule of law.

electriclove• 3 years ago

Why the downvotes? Shouldn’t those committing armed robbery and property theft be punished?

megablast3• 3 years ago

Good. Every car should be tracked. They are far too dangerous. Crazy we have so many rules for guns, but not cars. Guns have to be locked up, but not cars??

jfghi• 3 years ago

If these criminals are caught for thefts, should the wealthier jurisdictions also pay for their justice via taxes?

dhbanes2• 3 years ago

Wealthier jurisdictions already do pay in the form of police expenditures. The vast majority of crime committed in wealthier jurisdictions is by people who do not live or pay taxes within the jurisdiction.

stevesearer• 3 years ago

We have ALPR in Santa Barbara at the city parking lots.

These have 72-hour data retention and 30-day data retention at the airport and waterfront.

While SB’s are not placed around the city to track all license plates like the ones in Palo Alto, Reifschneider’s statement of Palo Alto’s retention limits being “the shortest in the state” is not fully accurate.

PDF: https://santabarbaraca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-06/Final...

musicale• 3 years ago

Wow, this is sinister and really needs to stop.

jrockway• 3 years ago

"We need to deter criminals from finding Palo Alto to be a nice, easy target," Burke said during Monday's hearing. "That needs to stop."

This is like peak 2023. You create a little bubble where the cost to commit a crime increases slightly, so some percentage of criminals just go somewhere else, maybe even the next neighborhood over, where the risk is lower. Meanwhile, nobody is willing to fund the support services necessary to actually reduce the incentive to commit a crime, so crime numbers stay the same or go up, but they happen to someone else instead of you. Great stuff. If they install some spikes on their park benches homelessness will be solved too! And all with just a few dollars and a 1 hour board meeting. Incredible.

Eventually everyone decides to play the arms race (but mom they have cameras the next town over) and we get the surveillance dystopia that nobody really wanted. Anyone who tries to fix it now has to face "but now randos are stealing muh catalytic converters" as an argument against taking down the cameras. And meanwhile, people still don't have food, shelter, medical care, or a support network. But we spent all that money. It just blows my mind and no I'm not going to run for office to fix it. Sorry.

voz_• 3 years ago

Eventually everyone decides to play the arms race

If everyone plays the arms race, and its hard to commit crime anywhere, we win? This is fundamentally a good thing. "We" here being the hard working members of society that don't turn to crime, and would rather not be victims to it.

It is very fashionable and woke to wax poetically about services, and yea, we have serious gaps there, but if someone is going to commit a crime, they should face the consequences.

balls1872• 3 years ago

Catching criminals is a game of cat and mouse.

I agree-face consequences.

But, it just seems as though the public is tacitly trading in freedoms for security theater, with little real benefit to society.

KerrAvon2• 3 years ago

It. doesn’t. make. crime. harder. It doesn’t _work_, dude. That’s the point. This is bullshit theater, they’re not even pretending this increases security.

autoexec3• 3 years ago

"We" here being the hard working members of society that don't turn to crime, and would rather not be victims to it.

It's not worth signing up to be victims of a police state either. I get that you think guilty people should suffer, but why should the innocent have their every moment tracked and their personal data handed over to third parties, the local police, and the state? We'd solve a lot more crime by putting cameras in people's homes too, but maybe let's not.

Jochim2• 3 years ago

No one wins. You end up living in a police state and when you do experience crime, it'll likely be more severe.

The root of systemic criminality is in the failure of society to justify why it's rules should be respected. That doesn't mean that people should "get away" with crime but it does mean that if you actually want to reduce crime, not just punish criminals, society must convince those people that lawful society is something worth participating in.

jrpt2• 3 years ago

Most criminals in the US aren’t desperately poor or anything. This isn’t like they’re steal bread to feed their hungry children. They mostly just do it because they enjoy it (thrill seeking) or think it’s a way to make more money faster and easier than a real job.

I was burglarized in Palo Alto a few years ago and the suspects were caught on neighboring cameras. They were apparently just high schoolers doing it for fun. I never got my stuff back. And I wasn’t living in a fancy house or anything. It was cheap apartments and they stole my kitchen supplies and old clothing and non-expensive stuff like that.

cogitoergofutuo• 3 years ago

Most criminals in the US aren’t desperately poor or anything (…)They mostly just do it because they enjoy it (thrill seeking)…

and

…or think it’s a way to make more money faster and easier than a real job.

Are contradictory statements.

It is fascinating how easy it is to casually say “Criminals don’t need money, they do crime for the thrill! Or the money!” as if thrills and money are the same thing since they were said in the same breath.

The person you’re responding to pointed out several factors that could influence someone to need to get money as quickly as possible.

It isn’t a rebuttal to say “Those criminals don’t do crime to get money for reasons involving shelter, healthcare, or other things that could be addressed by a stronger safety net! They’re do crime to get money for… other, mysterious reasons! Perhaps the ill-gotten loot is itself seductive far beyond pedestrian causes like ‘rent’”

I have met quite a few criminals in my life and none of them would fit the characterization of “A cross between Evil Knievel and the hordweard dragon Smaug”

autoexec3• 3 years ago

Most criminals in the US aren’t desperately poor or anything. They mostly just do it because they enjoy it

You got a source that most criminals aren't poor?

Nifty3929• 3 years ago

I got a lot of pushback on a comment that I left regarding surveillance in another thread yesterday, but I feel especially vindicated by this so I'll repost it here:

---

The main problem I see is that people are completely distracted by privacy from corporations - when what we really need to be worried about is privacy from our own governments. So much ink is spilled talking about cookies, ads tracking, etc. But really what's the worst a corporation is going to do? Try to sell you something?

Meanwhile, we continue to allow our governments to regulate and legislate ever more intrusive invasions of our privacy. And they can put us in jail, or worse.

This also gets blurry as governments take increasing control of companies, to the point that some are just about arms of the government, surveilling us in ways that the government can't (yet) do on their own - and being forced to pass that data to the government under penalty of law themselves.

---

A lot of the pushback I got is that corporations can do bad things with your data, which of course is true. We should strive for privacy in the general sense, from corporations and our government. I just think, especially outside HN, that the the conversation is far too heavily weighted toward corporations when the far greater harm comes from our governments - and almost no time in general public media is given to this.

I got some pushback as well that if corporations surveil you, they give your data to the government anyway, so it's important to have privacy from corporations. Which is ironic, since that's much like what I said in my last paragraph.

We need privacy generally, but I see law after law and article after article talking about privacy from corporations, while our governments are gaining more and more ground into surveilling us - often with the help of corporations. But let's keep the focus on exactly how our governments are spying on us and try to address that.

Ad-targeting is a small problem compared to the bigger issue of government surveillance - often via corporations (even if I agree that corporate spying is also a problem).

Let's focus on some laws that take away the governments ability to demand our data from Google, FB, etc. Let's stop allowing our governments to put cameras all over the place. Let's demand that our intelligence agencies stop spying on us with wide nets. Let's stop allowing our police forces to buy sophisticated tracking software and phone break-in software.

LazyMans2• 3 years ago

This may not have worked well for this specific PD for whatever reason, but Flock is already solving 5% of all US crime today. That’s pretty amazing.

City Council to install 20 cameras as automated license-plate recognition system

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