In case you were looking for the necessary plea "for the children!" it was here:
"God forbid if the day came that a child is abducted from that mall," he says. "We would have that tool available to us, to look at that data and see if we can't find a possible suspect vehicle."
> Despite these huge numbers, very few children are victims of the kinds of crimes that so-often lead local and national news reports. According to NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently."
My mom is absolutely freaked out about our wife and I living in the city, because someone might kidnap our daughter. Because a crowded apartment building where hundreds of people can hear a child cry for help is so much less safe than an out-of-the-way suburban house when it comes to a crime that never happens.
"We would have that tool available to us, to look at that data and see if we can't find a possible suspect vehicle."
The concept of collecting and storing all sorts of data and information on everyone just in case someone bad does something is a flawed one.
The government is collecting all phone call information, numbers, location, duration, along with SMS, email, and who knows what else on everybody in order to have that data "just in case" a terrorist attack happens, so they can (possibly) track down the perpetrators.
Now we have police collecting license plate data, along with GPS coordinates, video and still cameras mounted all over cities that can easily allow for facial recognition, combined with the tracking of your phone as mentioned above. It's not a stretch to assume that if the government (NSA/CIA/FBI) wants to know where you are at any given moment, they know.
All this "just in case" one of the infinitesimally unlikely events such as a terrorist attack or kidnapping occurs. For the children. And because terrorism.
The potential for abuse is huge and the cost/benefit is not even close to worth it—unless the stated purpose for collecting the data is not the real one.
Of course. And fast forward 100 years from now when public is smart enough to call this BS and after spending trillions of tax payers dollars on programs like this one, the last resort would be something like this:
"God forbids all those reports of people being abducted by aliens were real, we would have a tool to analyze the data from an alien abduction and like 44th President said once hundred years ago: if it saves one life, then it was worth it!"
It is uncomfortable, but you shouldn't ever have had an expectation of privacy when driving around in public with a licensed, regulated and marked vehicle.
Just because it can be done without much manual effort today vs. 50 years ago having people sit around town logging every car they see drive by doesn't mean really the privacy expectation has changed. Just because it is "scary" doesn't mean it is "illegal".
There is a significant difference between the expectation of privacy as a platonic ideal and the real life expectation of privacy.
For the former, you're of course right: not much has changed! The local police could have posted someone on every street corner to record every license plate that passed -- probably multiple people to account for traffic!
That's no different than cameras, in theory. You have no less privacy with cameras! But in practice, the police didn't do that (to that scale).
So, given that my expectations of privacy are not about logical possibilities, but rather about actual realities, they certainly have changed.
I do not mind people collecting data about me. I do think that we need to have a restriction that if you collect data about me, you have to share it with me. All of it. In a accessible manner, at least as accessible as you do in your reports.
Every day that you fail/delay to provide me those reports, you will pay me $100k in damages.
I see these cars all over where I live. It really is no different than the meta data that the NSA is collecting and most likely we will see defense of the gathering using similar rebuttals, namely YOU have a right, the license plate/car/phone/database does not.
Apparently they want to use indirect collection or collection by private groups as somehow not falling under the 4th because of how it was assembled. I guess they could take all of a grocery stores purchase records and do the same, after all they aren't look at you directly under the guise of fixing health issues.
Eventually data, wherever it may exist, will have to land at the Supremes to declare how abstract it has to be before it is not subject to the Constitution. Based on past cases it may not bode well for us.
> It really is no different than the meta data that the NSA is collecting and most likely we will see defense of the gathering using similar rebuttals, namely YOU have a right, the license plate/car/phone/database does not.
You're mis-characterizing the rebuttal in both cases.
1) With metadata the rebuttal is that the Constitution refers to the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." There is a legitimate argument that AT&T's records about when you used their network is not your papers or effects. You didn't create the record, AT&T did. You don't usually even have access to the information, AT&T does. It's not something silly like "the phone doesn't have a 4th amendment right."
2) The rebuttal for gathering information from cameras is that the 4th amendment has never extended to what the government can observe about you in a public place.
The 4th amendment doesn't mean "I have a right to have the government not track or monitor me without a warrant." It says exactly what it means: the police can't search your person or your house, your papers or effects, without a search warrant supported by probable cause. The farther you get from that plain language, the more tenuous your argument becomes.
Vis-a-vis the Supremes, at least Sotomayor has questioned whether it might be necessary to rethink at least the third party doctrine, which is the basis for (1): http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_data_question.... I don't think anyone any time soon would think about revisiting the rule for plainly visible activity in public spaces, which is the basis of (2).
It's the indefinite retaining the data which concerns me.
I don't believe in everything in black and whites. Perhaps you collect data and save it for a fortnight and within that fortnight presumably any crimes which may have occurred within a certain area will be known and one might start looking for cars which were within the area. After a fortnight if nothing comes to pass, then presumably you really don't need the data from that locale. And the case might even be made for up to 6 months or a year since sometimes criminal investigations do take some time. Perhaps you make the case that within a fortnight an area needs to be declared a crime scene in order for the license plate collection data to be maintain for up to a year.
But then you save the data for the foreseeable future and who knows what happens with it. Sheriff Arpaio or some gung ho type like that decides computer programmers needed to be monitored and bam, every where I've been for years on end shows up on a map? That seems a little iffy even if the scenario seems far fetched right now (really far fetched since I don't have a license much less a car at this point in my life, but asides aside).
It says the police cars can tag the location of 7K plates during a normal shift without burdening the officers at all. Doesn't sound like too much, but multiply that by about 10,000 (Chicagoland) and two shifts and it adds up fast.
Also here in Chicago, they have an "Open Road Tolling" system that grabs your plate # on the fly at 80 mph.
Then they mail you a ticket if the plate # doesn't match with a valid iPass (wireless box in most everyone's car).
The thing is, there's no way to tell which car in a group has the iPass - so they must have to run every plate thru their database and match it up with valid iPasses.
That means the Illinois tollway is grabbing and analyzing say 20 million plates and timestamps every day.
It seems to be a new scandal brewing. Surprises me how long it took. I recall in 2009 in Clearwater Florida when a Sherrif car had a gun-type looking devices pointing all 4 sides of the car. I asked what it was and he told me when he drives this thing picks up license plates and raises two alerts (if any): 1) if the tag is expired, OR if the owner of the car has a DL suspended/etc. If #2 then the picture of driver pops up and he visually checks if gender/look matches... if not, then he ignores the alert.
I expect that applies equally well to the UK with gantries of ANPR cameras over major motorways as well as portable ones in laybys, like the one I saw this morning on the A1 leaving Edinburgh. It wasn't a police car, though, but a dedicated "road tax enforcement" vehicle running it.
I was reminded by a colleague today of a quote attributed to Roger Needham, something along the lines of "privacy is a transient condition in between people realising there isn't an omniscient god, and government realising there was a vacancy" (quoting second hand from memory)
I don't think the police will have any empathy towards regular every day people (in regards to license plate databases) until private individuals start tracking the whereabouts of police 24/7 (and potentially posting the data online for everyone to see). Not only that but think about it this way: It doesn't cost that much for organized crime to put up cameras all over town for their own benefit.
BTW: Heaven forbid if one of these license plate databases ever gets leaked! It's not like the government will re-issue everyone new plates for free.
My nephew is a detective who just worked an Abduction/Murder case. The suspect was located (and later convicted) largely in part because of the license plate scanners. One thing you cannot argue, they are incredibly effective.
My problem is the infinite retention of that data and the fact that many agencies use a private third party for the system.
I think eliminating the scanners is a bad thing, but I would like to see some basic rules that would have to be followed.
Yeah well knowing where EVERYONE is, ALL the time probably helps them know a lot of things, who is dating who, where you shop, where you work, etc. You okay with all that to "save the children" ?
If they were allowed to use xray scanners to scan every car on every street in a city to see who and what is inside - you okay with that escalation? Because they are doing it "near" borders (backscatter on vehicles) and who knows where they will take it next.
[+] [-] hvs|12 years ago|reply
"God forbid if the day came that a child is abducted from that mall," he says. "We would have that tool available to us, to look at that data and see if we can't find a possible suspect vehicle."
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
Thank you Anderson Cooper (http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/200...).
> Despite these huge numbers, very few children are victims of the kinds of crimes that so-often lead local and national news reports. According to NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently."
My mom is absolutely freaked out about our wife and I living in the city, because someone might kidnap our daughter. Because a crowded apartment building where hundreds of people can hear a child cry for help is so much less safe than an out-of-the-way suburban house when it comes to a crime that never happens.
[+] [-] bradbatt|12 years ago|reply
The concept of collecting and storing all sorts of data and information on everyone just in case someone bad does something is a flawed one.
The government is collecting all phone call information, numbers, location, duration, along with SMS, email, and who knows what else on everybody in order to have that data "just in case" a terrorist attack happens, so they can (possibly) track down the perpetrators.
Now we have police collecting license plate data, along with GPS coordinates, video and still cameras mounted all over cities that can easily allow for facial recognition, combined with the tracking of your phone as mentioned above. It's not a stretch to assume that if the government (NSA/CIA/FBI) wants to know where you are at any given moment, they know.
All this "just in case" one of the infinitesimally unlikely events such as a terrorist attack or kidnapping occurs. For the children. And because terrorism.
The potential for abuse is huge and the cost/benefit is not even close to worth it—unless the stated purpose for collecting the data is not the real one.
[+] [-] joering2|12 years ago|reply
"God forbids all those reports of people being abducted by aliens were real, we would have a tool to analyze the data from an alien abduction and like 44th President said once hundred years ago: if it saves one life, then it was worth it!"
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] res0nat0r|12 years ago|reply
Just because it can be done without much manual effort today vs. 50 years ago having people sit around town logging every car they see drive by doesn't mean really the privacy expectation has changed. Just because it is "scary" doesn't mean it is "illegal".
[+] [-] ianterrell|12 years ago|reply
For the former, you're of course right: not much has changed! The local police could have posted someone on every street corner to record every license plate that passed -- probably multiple people to account for traffic!
That's no different than cameras, in theory. You have no less privacy with cameras! But in practice, the police didn't do that (to that scale).
So, given that my expectations of privacy are not about logical possibilities, but rather about actual realities, they certainly have changed.
[+] [-] 3825|12 years ago|reply
Every day that you fail/delay to provide me those reports, you will pay me $100k in damages.
[+] [-] imgabe|12 years ago|reply
Right??
[+] [-] ihsw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corresation|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shivetya|12 years ago|reply
Apparently they want to use indirect collection or collection by private groups as somehow not falling under the 4th because of how it was assembled. I guess they could take all of a grocery stores purchase records and do the same, after all they aren't look at you directly under the guise of fixing health issues.
Eventually data, wherever it may exist, will have to land at the Supremes to declare how abstract it has to be before it is not subject to the Constitution. Based on past cases it may not bode well for us.
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
You're mis-characterizing the rebuttal in both cases.
1) With metadata the rebuttal is that the Constitution refers to the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..." There is a legitimate argument that AT&T's records about when you used their network is not your papers or effects. You didn't create the record, AT&T did. You don't usually even have access to the information, AT&T does. It's not something silly like "the phone doesn't have a 4th amendment right."
2) The rebuttal for gathering information from cameras is that the 4th amendment has never extended to what the government can observe about you in a public place.
The 4th amendment doesn't mean "I have a right to have the government not track or monitor me without a warrant." It says exactly what it means: the police can't search your person or your house, your papers or effects, without a search warrant supported by probable cause. The farther you get from that plain language, the more tenuous your argument becomes.
Vis-a-vis the Supremes, at least Sotomayor has questioned whether it might be necessary to rethink at least the third party doctrine, which is the basis for (1): http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_data_question.... I don't think anyone any time soon would think about revisiting the rule for plainly visible activity in public spaces, which is the basis of (2).
[+] [-] codyb|12 years ago|reply
I don't believe in everything in black and whites. Perhaps you collect data and save it for a fortnight and within that fortnight presumably any crimes which may have occurred within a certain area will be known and one might start looking for cars which were within the area. After a fortnight if nothing comes to pass, then presumably you really don't need the data from that locale. And the case might even be made for up to 6 months or a year since sometimes criminal investigations do take some time. Perhaps you make the case that within a fortnight an area needs to be declared a crime scene in order for the license plate collection data to be maintain for up to a year.
But then you save the data for the foreseeable future and who knows what happens with it. Sheriff Arpaio or some gung ho type like that decides computer programmers needed to be monitored and bam, every where I've been for years on end shows up on a map? That seems a little iffy even if the scenario seems far fetched right now (really far fetched since I don't have a license much less a car at this point in my life, but asides aside).
[+] [-] swamp40|12 years ago|reply
It says the police cars can tag the location of 7K plates during a normal shift without burdening the officers at all. Doesn't sound like too much, but multiply that by about 10,000 (Chicagoland) and two shifts and it adds up fast.
Also here in Chicago, they have an "Open Road Tolling" system that grabs your plate # on the fly at 80 mph.
Then they mail you a ticket if the plate # doesn't match with a valid iPass (wireless box in most everyone's car).
The thing is, there's no way to tell which car in a group has the iPass - so they must have to run every plate thru their database and match it up with valid iPasses.
That means the Illinois tollway is grabbing and analyzing say 20 million plates and timestamps every day.
If all that data is stored indefinitely - wow.
[+] [-] joering2|12 years ago|reply
It seems to be a new scandal brewing. Surprises me how long it took. I recall in 2009 in Clearwater Florida when a Sherrif car had a gun-type looking devices pointing all 4 sides of the car. I asked what it was and he told me when he drives this thing picks up license plates and raises two alerts (if any): 1) if the tag is expired, OR if the owner of the car has a DL suspended/etc. If #2 then the picture of driver pops up and he visually checks if gender/look matches... if not, then he ignores the alert.
[+] [-] jrabone|12 years ago|reply
I was reminded by a colleague today of a quote attributed to Roger Needham, something along the lines of "privacy is a transient condition in between people realising there isn't an omniscient god, and government realising there was a vacancy" (quoting second hand from memory)
[+] [-] riskable|12 years ago|reply
BTW: Heaven forbid if one of these license plate databases ever gets leaked! It's not like the government will re-issue everyone new plates for free.
[+] [-] speedyrev|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|12 years ago|reply
If they were allowed to use xray scanners to scan every car on every street in a city to see who and what is inside - you okay with that escalation? Because they are doing it "near" borders (backscatter on vehicles) and who knows where they will take it next.
[+] [-] HPLovecraft|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] president|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evan_|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bionsuba|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imgabe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodata|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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