3 ms·

Your car likely gets its picture taken, and probably license plate automatically read, every time you drive through a toll booth, too. No one seems to be outra

by bradfa 8y ago

Your car likely gets its picture taken, and probably license plate automatically read, every time you drive through a toll booth, too. No one seems to be outraged over toll booths doing this, so why should any other public road sign (or private road sign that you, the driver, don't own) be any different? Don't like being tracked by YOUR plate? Find other ways to achieve your transportation goals: ride a bike, take the bus, walk, use a taxi and pay cash, borrow a car, etc. Sure, you could be tracked by facial recognition but that's a lot harder to do currently than reading some very well defined characters from a highly visible license plate and it's much easier to legally change your appearance than to change your plate.

maxerickson 8y ago
The ACLU says Any entity that uses license plate readers should be required to report. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-tracking/you-are-being-tracked https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac... That kind of sounds inclusive of toll booths.
- ectospheno 8y ago
  Their 5 desired behaviors are admirable. The 2nd item, "The government must not store data about innocent people for any lengthy period." is hard to implement given existing police department budgets. The only way for you to know you can delete is to perform an investigation to verify you can delete. Doing that every few months on each plate isn't reasonable. You could speed up the process by having a national database but I imagine they would be even less happy about that. I love the ACLU. I donate monthly. I fear a US without the ACLU far more than I fear a US with the ACLU. But every now and then I don't think they have completely thought out the opposing point of view or the realities of time and money.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    I don't understand your logic. Why can't they just delete any information that isn't part of an active investigation? Because they don't want to take any heat from pro-authoritarians in the case that a later investigation could have used the evidence? In the past police departments have been happy enough to just ignore rape kits for years and years. I guess people would flip their shit if unprocessed rape kits were destroyed, but that's specific evidence...

by bradfa 8y ago

maxerickson 8y ago

The ACLU says Any entity that uses license plate readers should be required to report. https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-tracking/you-are-being-tracked https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac... That kind of sounds inclusive of toll booths.

ectospheno 8y ago
Their 5 desired behaviors are admirable. The 2nd item, "The government must not store data about innocent people for any lengthy period." is hard to implement given existing police department budgets. The only way for you to know you can delete is to perform an investigation to verify you can delete. Doing that every few months on each plate isn't reasonable. You could speed up the process by having a national database but I imagine they would be even less happy about that. I love the ACLU. I donate monthly. I fear a US without the ACLU far more than I fear a US with the ACLU. But every now and then I don't think they have completely thought out the opposing point of view or the realities of time and money.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  I don't understand your logic. Why can't they just delete any information that isn't part of an active investigation? Because they don't want to take any heat from pro-authoritarians in the case that a later investigation could have used the evidence? In the past police departments have been happy enough to just ignore rape kits for years and years. I guess people would flip their shit if unprocessed rape kits were destroyed, but that's specific evidence...