We know where you’ve been: Ars acquires 4.6M license plate scans

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/we-know-where-youve-been-ars-acquires-4-6m-license-plate-scans-from-the-cops/

by jchrisa • 11 years ago

305 130 11 years ago

arstechnica.com

lotsofmangos• 11 years ago

“If anyone can get this information, that’s getting into Big Brother,” he told Ars. “If I was trying to look at what my spouse is doing, [I could]. To me, that is something that is kind of scary. Why do they allow people to release this without a law enforcement reason? Searching it or accessing the information should require a warrant.”

The state collecting this info in the first place is a parallel with Big Brother. The state handing out the data to anyone that asks is not.

EGreg2• 11 years ago

Agree. Data is going to be collected anyway. If it's going to help anyone, perhaps it should help everyone. To level the playing field.

I am all for more transparency when it comes to altercations with cops for instance. Body camera footage!!

ProAm• 11 years ago

People should have a reasonable expectation of privacy in society and this seems to go directly against the grain of that belief.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

Since cars do not have rights, nor do the plates, the reasoning is they are not violating your personal privacy. Courts and Police have so twisted the law as to deprive our rights by stripping our association with our property. Sadly they can simply initiate forfeiture against property still protected by the law.

There hasn't been sufficient push back to stop this erosion. Worse there isn't sufficient push back against government agencies holding back information which they are bound by law to surrender.

PythonicAlpha• 11 years ago

It is interesting, that you mention forfeiture. In my opinion it is one of the biggest examples, how governments twist basic personal rights that are normally protected by the constitution.

Recently, I also learnt that even in the Magna Carta (1215 BC) the property of a "free person" was protected against the grasp of the potentate.

When modern governments now disable this basic right by legal trickery, than we in essence loose our freedom.

pc86• 11 years ago

Since cars do not have rights, nor do the plates, the reasoning is they are not violating your personal privacy.

Is that really the justification, though? The only justification I've heard is that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy when driving down a public road. It has nothing to do with you v. your property or the fact that your license plate does not have constitutional rights.

The courts have agreed that you can't mindlessly swap out a police officer for a computer, save all the data and keep going as you were, but that doesn't change the fact that you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in public.

innguest• 11 years ago

- people vote for cops to track license plates "for security", "for the children", "don't complain if you have nothing to hide"

- libertarians complain "you don't know who will be in power tomorrow and (mis)use this data or allow for its misuse"

- some company comes along and buys the data off the cops because those in power let them. Maybe those in power when the law for collecting this data passed promised that this data wouldn't ever be shared, but now it's someone else or they changed their mind because fuck the people.

rikkus2• 11 years ago

We'll never get clear statistics on this, but at some point it will be possible to start making judgements on whether keeping this data (and making it available to the public) is a net negative or positive.

My gut tells me that it's a negative, but my head tells me there is, or will be, no real way to stop it being collected, even if it's not public bodies doing the collection.

picks_at_nits• 11 years ago

even if it's not public bodies doing the collection

There already are private companies that drive around scanning license plates and selling access to the data. One of their “use cases” is selling the data to “repo men.”

Lawtonfogle• 11 years ago

Back when homosexuality was considered really bad, imagine if all this tech had existed. How would history for LGBT rights have been different if we could find and imprison all homosexuals instead of them being able to hide, organize, and fight for their rights?

Zigurd• 11 years ago

You assume we have representative, legitimate government that can control programs that hide behind "national security."

jacquesm3• 11 years ago

libertarians complain "you don't know who will be in power tomorrow and (mis)use this data or allow for its misuse"

That complaint is definitely not limited to libertarians.

joshuapants2• 11 years ago

Maybe not to capital-L Libertarians, card carrying members of the party who buy into an ideology, but I interpreted that statement to mean "civil libertarians." That is to say, people who are concerned with all manner of personal rights but not necessarily members of a specific ideology.

EGreg2• 11 years ago

http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169

midnightclubbed• 11 years ago

The only good thing to come out of this story is that Ars was able to do a public records request and get access to the data. Having the data available to anyone who wants it opens up enough privacy concerns and potential abuse outside of the 'good guys' that hopefully someone in the city realises it should stop spying on it's citizens.

Unfortunately the fix will likely be to continue the surveillance and to bar public access to the data.

EA• 11 years ago

Been flying a drone over landfills for a year now. I'm taking high resolution photographs of all the address labels I can find. Wrote a script to do OCR on the photographs and then export that into an Access Database. Been mailing out flyers to positives asking folks to do better recycling.

JTon• 11 years ago

Whoa. Cool. What motivated you to start doing this? Got a write up about it?

akerl_• 11 years ago

Do you check for your own flyers in landfills?

avn2109• 11 years ago

too... meta... does not compute

hamburglar• 11 years ago

Ooh, and he can send another one that says "second notice" (or third, etc) without actually needing to store data on each recipient. :P

avalaunch• 11 years ago

So you're mailing a bunch of flyers to people you know don't recycle? The project is cool but that struck me as particularly ironic, assuming your intention is to help minimize waste.

omgitstom• 11 years ago

Maybe his flyers are biodegradable made from plant cellulose. You never know!

stfu• 11 years ago

... I, on the other hand, see there an excellent opportunity for lead generation in the document shredder business.

hayksaakian• 11 years ago

AHHH but now you need a commercial pilots license since your drone footage is used for commercial purposes.

alimoeeny• 11 years ago

You must need a very high res camera. Very very high res indeed.

clarkmoody• 11 years ago

Or just fly low and slow :-)

leviathant• 11 years ago

Playing along - my trash goes into bags, but my recycling goes unbagged into a bin. If the recycling company my municipality runs or uses actually just dumps my recycling into a landfill, you've been mailing flyers to the wrong address.

dantillberg• 11 years ago

Or, on the other hand, perhaps you'd appreciate being informed that your "recycling" service is a scam.

Afforess3• 11 years ago

Yeah. This is why I shred any document with my name on it. If it's junk mail and has my name, it's shredded. If it's anything, and it's got my name on it anywhere, it's shredded. You can't be too paranoid.

joshuapants2• 11 years ago

Is it difficult to break into all the homes in your neighborhood and shred the phone books?

blackbagboys• 11 years ago

You realize that if you are getting junk mail with your name on it, your name and address are almost certainly in a commercially available database that is accessible to anyone with a credit card? I think what you are doing is equivalent to locking the barn's skylight after the horse has bolted.

MichaelApproved• 11 years ago

Has anyone replied to your mail? What has the response been like?

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

- Plenty of packages can't be recycled

- Plenty of recycling is diverted to garbage because somebody put garbage in the recycling stream

- Plenty of recycling facilities are at capacity and cannot process all of the recyclables, and divert them to garbage

danso• 11 years ago

This is great that the Oakland PD acquiesced to the request...it appears old Excel spreadsheets is a common way for the camera-tech contractors to store and disseminate the information. A couple years ago, MuckRock made a request for Boston PD's records, and received one spreadsheet (in error) that had 65,536 records: https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2013/dec/15/boston-po...

cmsmith• 11 years ago

It seems to me that we need the legal system to recognize computer-processed 'big data' as what it is, which is a totally new kind of information that doesn't fit neatly into our existing privacy framework. I think it's good that this technology exists (especially if my car were to be stolen), but I don't see how it would be harmful to the public interest to require police to get a warrant before looking me up.

Of course there are edge cases, where it's hard to draw the line between automated and semi-automated data collection, but that's why we have judges. However, it is troubling that this new technology is hitting its stride during a time which is not great for privacy rights in general.

iak8god• 11 years ago

I think it's good that this technology exists (especially if my car were to be stolen), but I don't see how it would be harmful to the public interest to require police to get a warrant before looking me up.

The most justified uses for this seem to be those where your car is stolen, or suspected to be involved in a crime, or otherwise of interest for an ongoing investigation. Since there's no reason to store this data indefinitely for any of those uses, it seems like erasing non-matches within 24 hours or so would be a good way to address many of the privacy concerns. On the other hand, if the goal is now to collect as much data as possible about everyone just in case it turns out to be useful later, then things seem to be going according to plan.

ScottBurson• 11 years ago

Agreed -- non-matches must not be stored indefinitely. 24 hours might be a bit on the short side; I could see letting them keep them for 30 days, but no more than that.

kbenson3• 11 years ago

Some crimes aren't even discovered for weeks or months afterwards. For example, a dumped body. There's definitely a trade-off, 24 hours seems too low to me, multiple months too long. 15 to 30 days sounds about right.

jessriedel• 11 years ago

Right now the expense means that it require government spending and coordination, which you can regulate, but this stuff is going to be so cheap in a couple of decades that it won't matter. Anyone will be able to dump a bunch of sensors around a city that take this data and phone home, and it only takes one of those people to make it publicly accessible. What then?

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

We really ought to figure out fast homomorphic encryption or something similar to it.

happyscrappy2• 11 years ago

For license plates?

ajb• 11 years ago

There was an item just recently about someone claiming to have it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9233718 None of the experts commented, so I have no idea if it works.

rhino369• 11 years ago

We may just be better off just regulating what government and people are allowed to do with the data. Because, at least in my mind, the data is neutral. I don't personally care if the government has a bunch of records of where I go, as long as they aren't going to use it to do something bad.

I think a lot of netizens value anonymity and tend to conflate it with privacy. I don't think anonymity is necessary for liberty or freedom. Small town folk don't have anonymity.

We should just ban uses that do restrict liberty. For example, the data shouldn't be used for prior restraint reasons. The government shouldn't block you from buying cold medicine because you go to X neighborhood that has 20% higher meth production. It shouldn't be used to troll for ticky tac violations.

Maybe the rule should be no active analysis of collected data in real time unless you are looking for a fleeing suspect or an emergency.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

I'm with you. Not only is the data neutral, but it's damn hard to get that cat back in the bag- which is a glaring hole in the plans for solving the problem with crypto.

mytochar2• 11 years ago

May I recommend LoJack? It works better than pictures

http://www.lojack.com/

nly• 11 years ago

"you should support restrictions on how long law enforcement agents can store this data, and who can access it, and under what circumstances."

Or better yet, start opposing its collection... if you're under the speed limit no authority has a good reason to keep track of where you're going and when.

ZanyProgrammer• 11 years ago

Did the article ever mention if Ars is making this data public? I couldn't find a reference to it.

tomswartz07• 11 years ago

If you're curious, like I was- this is what the License Plate Readers look like: http://police-praetorian.netdna-ssl.com/VigilantVid-PR-Feb.j...

I have seem them before but I originally thought these devices were some sort of radar speedometer or something.

danielharan• 11 years ago

An ideal tool for stalkers.

I am sympathetic that this data could be useful for law enforcement - however this data must not be released wholesale to the public and there should be limits to how long it is stored.

mytochar2• 11 years ago

This was /exactly/ the situation that I was going to write a thought about, though I replaced stalkers with abusive ex-relationship partners for a more visible display of concern (and admittedly an appeal to more extreme possibility)

will_brown• 11 years ago

I am all for privacy, but...it is not a reasonable expectation of privacy that your car and/or license plate will not be photographed while on the road (at least according to US law).

There is an entire body of law regarding reasonable expectation of privacy vis-a-vis 4th Amendment search and seizure. If nothing else, even if one does not personally agree with the jurisprudence, then they might find it informative to know what the police may or may not search/seize without a warrant, probable cause and/or reasonable suspicion.

donutdan4114• 11 years ago

Privacy isn't a one-size-fits-all type of thing. I think there is an inherit difference between reading license plates that are publicly visible on the roadway versus tracking license plates over time and storing that data for a long enough period that someone can deduce even more personal information from it.

If you were to say "is it okay to read license plates and check a stolen vehicle registry" I don't think many people would complain. But if you were to ask, "Is it okay that i know where you live and work and hang out on a regular basis by just reading your license plate," that's a different story.

If they just erased the data after a few days that would take care of most privacy concerns that people have.

a3n• 11 years ago

It's a different thing entirely when the government has data, particularly when that data traces your life.

The guy standing on the corner waving a "We buy gold" sign seeing my car/plate is unlikely to be able to do anything with that data. But the government recording my whereabouts can draw me into any sort of investigation they like, based on correlated but not necessarily cause-related data. It's very different.

At the least, the government is our servant, not our adversary, and we're supposed to be able to limit and direct what they do. Just because the can do something does not automatically give them the right, particularly if we've told them they can't.

Unfortunately they do see themselves as our adversary, and so the question of whether we actually have given them the right to do something is often arguable.

fragmede• 11 years ago

(at least according to US law).

Have a citation?

There's a difference between a human police officer who is, well, human, and a robot who has eyes in the back of their head, and remembers every single license plate they've ever seen in the past two years.

The Supreme court agreed, in United States v. Jones, that technology has changed things, and GPS trackers or license plate readers are fundamentally different than having a law enforcement officer do it the 'old fashioned way', especially because data storage is so cheap these days.

New Hampshire has completely banned automated license plate readers, and Maine, New Jersy and Virginia have already put limits on the license plate readers.

hyperliner• 11 years ago

And this, my friends, is where our liberty died:

“Doesn’t bother me personally,” said Jon Kaufman, an Oakland resident. “I have nothing to hide.”

gregors2• 11 years ago

instruction manual for Pagis/Boss https://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/delaware/alprpra_n...

eck2• 11 years ago

1. Alice installs app on smartphone. Alice puts smartphone in cradle on dashboard. Smartphone captures license plates Alice drives by on way to work. Alice drives by Bob.

2. Carol goes to website. Carol enters Bob's license plate number. Website says, "25 hits found. Enter credit card number to see times and locations". Carol enters credit card. Carol finds Bob.

3. Alice gets some of Carol's money, since she took the photos.

Why is that not a thing yet? License plate reading, unlike, say, tapping undersea fiber, is not something you need either a government's resources or a government's ability to skirt the law to do. This is easy stuff.

fixermark• 11 years ago

That will end up becoming an interesting court case, followed by a set of laws, followed by a court case, until such a thing is almost certainly illegal (in the United States), by pressure of societal desire alone.

One could do something similar with facial recognition software, but if someone tried to make a large business out of it, I'm sure there would be significant friction.

redstripe• 11 years ago

Which is why it should be done in the most outrageous fashion by someone who cares about privacy.

Maybe that's what is needed to get people to realize just what the next decade or two have in store.

balabaster• 11 years ago

there may be significant friction and even laws against it, but the government, behind closed doors would pay you a significant sum for your company to continue doing it and I would wager would lobby the government to pass bills to not only make it legal, but protect its legality.

joering2• 11 years ago

It's already been done. PIs, LE and insurance companies utilizes data of a few companies that have scanners all around US; it's just not a social thing at the moment because when most drive they either text or check email or browse net or listen to the music. Dashcams are still not popular here but the services like you mention could be a huge hit in Russia when dashcams are extremely popular.

Here only few would actually go into lengths to set it up on their dashboard and be capturing licenses with the hope to make a dollar.

Good start to read more: http://consumerist.com/2014/03/05/the-repo-man-might-be-scan...

Kronopath• 11 years ago

Exactly right. This isn't a hypothetical. This is already being done by repo companies.

Here's another link: http://www.betaboston.com/news/2014/03/05/a-vast-hidden-surv...

elevensies• 11 years ago

I'm sure there are various tracking networks that track browsing across websites, it is sort of a logical extension. UPS or Fedex could easily build out a big tracking network.

emidln• 11 years ago

This is trivial to do for a number of feedback/analytics/cdn/socialnetwork companies. Basically, the people who have JS living on large swaths of the web. There are some names you sorta expect (Facebook, Google, Twitter) and other names like Mixpanel, Foresee, Opinionlab, Survey Monkey that might not be as obvious.

It would be pretty easy for a Foresee to deliver a customer profile aligned on verticals in near real-time to clients based on data their network captures from major websites around the world.

orik• 11 years ago

The value proposition for the user is very weak - too weak to get people to spy on each other.

What are the odds that I'm going to get a payout? That someone out there is interested and willing to pay for one of the license plates I've seen? Probably very low. Do I really want to waste my smartphone battery doing this? I'd rather have maps and music on.

beamatronic2• 11 years ago

That's why you would pay the drivers to run this app. Then via the Long Tail, they could get royalties every time the data they collected is re-sold.

eck2• 11 years ago

What are the odds that I'm going to get a payout?

The expected value of slot machines is negative too. Humans have a psychological weakness for "Just one more, I haven't won in a while, I'm due." In this case though it wouldn't even cost money to play.

33W• 11 years ago

I think the value is when the local police pay for the query as well.

happyscrappy2• 11 years ago

The value proposition for the user is very weak

The value prop for the average user is also very weak for encrypting data. I am more likely to lose all my data than prevent some theoretical malfeasance, never mind the extra time and effort. I am not a secret agent.

mc32• 11 years ago

Tie it in to law enforcement, get paid for detecting someone driving a vehicle with a warrant against their number plates.

jwcrux• 11 years ago

Generally, a system like this might work by handling queries via two ways:

* A "point" system - spend "points" (or credits) to find a user by license plate. * You can buy credits with money directly, or you can earn them by contributing information

That way, if you're a data contributor, you have access to the information without having to pay. That's how data.com works.

baddox2• 11 years ago

They don't seem very popular in the US, but always-on dashboard cameras already have obvious value. Maybe a dashboard cam cloud storage company could offer a discount on their services if you allowed license plate data to be gleaned from the footage you upload. Or maybe they would just throw a line in their ToS and do it.

greggman• 11 years ago

I would be happy to submit free videos to the police if they'd issue citations. When people break the traffic laws they are almost always putting other people's lives at risk. I'm happy to pay some of my time (pushing a button that uploads a 20-30second video of the violation) in exchange for safer roads.

josu• 11 years ago

I believe that in many European countries the data protection laws offer a certain degree of protection against this.

Torgo3• 11 years ago

Alice installs app on smartphone. Alice puts smartphone in cradle on dashboard.

I tried this, but camera phones are (currently) too terrible. I would be curious if anybody more skilled than me (I'm just tinkering) could make it work.

ChuckMcM2• 11 years ago

Not all cameras in all phones are too terrible, that said having done the experiment, I found it is much easier to do license plate extraction from a video rather than from some sort of stills. Using an off the shelf "GoPro equivalent" on the dash of my car, post processing the video for plates was relatively straight forward with OCV[1] and now that I think of it, would make for an excellent tutorial on the technology. Were I to do it again I would provide a copy of GPS co-ordinates on the screen to make it a bit easier to tie the two together.

For me the interesting bit I was trying to figure out was this technique (car mounted) gave you license plate 'segments' which is to say the car in front of you may have been there for two blocks and then turned right giving you a segment that was two blocks long with a right turn at the end. If you had multiple subscribers, then you could match that segment up with a segment from another vehicle and then interpolate the path of any observed plate through an urban area. Since the general color and shape of the car is trackable, you can actually create a number of segments for different cars if you've captured their plate at any time, and if you manage 'untagged' segments (cars seen but you have yet to see a plate for) then you can add those as well. Needless to say, the taller vehicles are a "win" here for more complete surveillance.

[1] http://opencv.org/

ctdonath• 11 years ago

Mistake is #2. Don't make people search for the info, give it to them without friction. "Pay" them by providing more info. Real money would be in paid data mining.

Add ability to comment on other drivers. "Idiot cut me off!!!" turns into automatic notification when any instance of the app sees that plate ("Warning: 8 reports of risky behavior for vehicle"). Include automatic marking of "seen before" ("augmented familiarity").

karambahh2• 11 years ago

I think you actually have a fundable idea there.

You've also accidentally found a very interesting side business model for Mapillary.

(except that afaik they've done considerable amount of work on actually detecting and blurring license plates, so I guess Peter would rather sink Mapillary than entering this business ;-) )

downandout• 11 years ago

Maybe tie the the back end into repossession company databases. Have the user turn it on when in parking lots and they get a commission when found. A local repo service is instantly alerted with GPS coordinates whenever there is a hit. The app could even alert them to stop and observe until the repo company gets there.

Certainly not a mass consumer thing, just like most people won't become Uber drivers, but some people would do it and there is potential for making decent money.

onewaystreet• 11 years ago

This is already being done by companies and police forces using their own vehicles. It's more efficient than outsourcing it through an app because cameras mounted on the roof of a vehicle can scan license plates in 360 degrees.

basseq• 11 years ago

This is very common with towing, repossession, or "recovery" companies, who can drive around with automated cameras looking for "hits": cars with repo orders. Companies (ex: Digital Recognition Network [DRN]) sell cameras, provide a database of "wanted" vehicles, and collect the incoming scans—which they also turn around and sell.

DRN "claims to collect plate scans of 40 percent of all US vehicles annually."

You don't need to crowdsource because there's already a critical mass of users willing to pay YOU for the privilege of collecting information.

jhayward• 11 years ago

There are a lot of business models in crowdsourced image data. For instance, Google could give away high resolution dashboard cameras in return for the right to use the video for ground truth data. With sufficient intelligence onboard higher-level information like signage, license plates, or even faces could be uploaded on demand. You'd probably even be able to bundle an insurance premium discount in.

GoodIntentions• 11 years ago

Why is that not a thing yet?

Seems sort of like crowd-sourcing data that would be used to infringe on the freedoms and happiness of people without restraint beyond "did the payment clear?"

Count me out, thanks.

possibilistic• 11 years ago

Sadly, I do not think your willing participation would a requirement. This seems like the sort of thing that would be imposed upon you by the sheer force of adoption.

rmc• 11 years ago

In the EU, that's illegal under the Data Privacy Directive.

xai3luGi2• 11 years ago

Is it illegal to put infrared LEDs around your license plate to obscure it to these cameras?

warmwaffles• 11 years ago

Yes. It can be considered tampering with evidence in an "ongoing" operation. I too have thought of this for radar guns and laser speed guns. But most of these sensors know when they are being jammed and can actually result in the FCC finding you and fining you.

bmohlenhoff• 11 years ago

Radar guns are regulated by the FCC because they are RF sources. They aren't going to come after you for mounting extra lightbulbs on your car.

Infrared bulbs are more similar to polarized plastic covers that obscure the plate when viewed from certain directions. Not sure if they are illegal or not but they are definitely outside the purview of the FCC.

15155• 11 years ago

That's incorrect, at least in the United States.

Nowhere in the United States of America are 'citations' sent by - usually private - speed/red light cameras considered criminal offenses.

Know why? They barely stand the requirements for civil infractions in most areas. Typically these 'tickets' are implemented as backwards preconditions-to-vehicle-registration.

----

Actively jamming radar is a crime and could possibly net you trouble. Light? IR? No such 'unlawful interference' law exists at the federal level. You might be violating a state statute, but that's the extent of it.

Interfering with a civilly-implemented speed/red light camera via use of plate-obscuring equipment on your vehicle might be a state-level offense but it wouldn't be for long if challenged.

eli• 11 years ago

I'm sure it depends where you live, but probably not. Maybe this is of interest: http://www.photoblocker.com/photoshield-cover.html

dublinben• 11 years ago

It would depend on your local jurisdiction. It's unlikely to work though.[0][1]

[0]http://blog.workingsi.com/2011/05/ir-led-speedred-light-phot...

[1]http://blog.workingsi.com/2011/06/improved-high-power-ir-led...

Torgo3• 11 years ago

If you want to foil them, you would put clear, IR-reflective decals next to your license plate with additional letters and numbers so that your license plate no longer scans as a license plate. You might even try to SQL-inject their ALPR ;-)

gregors2• 11 years ago

Oakland PD ALPR data interactive map https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1dEEIyx...

raw data https://www.eff.org/files/2015/01/20/oakland_pd_alpr.csv

found here http://beforeitsnews.com/libertarian/2015/01/what-you-can-le...

mschuster91• 11 years ago

It's bad enough the state collects and retains this data.

It's even worse that this kind of data can legally be obtained by FOIA. I'm all for transparency, but not where it touches the privacy of individuals.

btw, I have no particular problem with plate scanners as long as no-hits are not stored for longer than 7 days and any searches on the data heap are authorized by a judge (e.g. to gather data in a murder case).

zaroth2• 11 years ago

I think the best part of the story is that they could do the FOIA. The data is not somehow magically safe from misuse because the press can't see it. In fact, quite the opposite.

zaroth2• 11 years ago

Collecting this data on the general public should not be legal. If you are a suspect in an active investigation it is completely different, but you must be actively identified, you shouldn't be able to do what LA did and simply say "everyone is a suspect".

I think you have to take these technologies to their logical conclusion, because Moore's law will ultimately take it there. A camera recording every plate, everywhere it goes, stored for all time. That's not a database any people should allow their government to keep, warrant or not.

I'm glad they quoted the 2012 USA v Jones GPS tracking case, because this is exactly the same thing with an even lower cost per vehicle tracked. Ultimately I want Congress to pass a law putting limits on the data retention, but obviously that's not going to happen any time soon.

jumby• 11 years ago

Simply stated:

Plate != Person

To get to "Person" you need to have a permissible purpose that is already protected under the DPPA (a federal law)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...]

We know where you’ve been: Ars acquires 4.6M license plate scans

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