6 ms·

A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide

254 points by cdrnsf 5mo ago

cucumber3732842 5mo ago
I like this proposed policy and I'll happily take the win if it passes but I see two subtexts here and neither is good: First is that local and state governments have been deploying 1984 for enforcement of petty matters for which dispensing "real" enforcement labor can't be justified economically politically a or both. The feds are fine with this because they can get at that data. What they're not fine with is that it's pissing people off. The feds are worried that this could turn into court and legislative precedents that make things harder for them. For example the DEA doesn't want their flagship I95 surveillance corridor to get nerfed because NYC went too far with it's own pet project and laws got made in response. They'll happily tell the states "no you can't do this thing we do" in order to preserve their own ability to do the thing. Second is that the feds don't like that the public is becoming soured on the regulatory hackjobs of the 1970s that were hailed as great successes at the time. As the country becomes more divided people are realizing that the current "have the feds grand fund everything at least in part" paradigm results in strings that nobody wants being attached to everything. So doing one little thing that everyone agrees on is seen as a way to say "look we can do good with this power we really shouldn't have in the first place".
zulux 5mo ago
If a single car manufacturer decides to capture license plate data from their customers ' cars' cameras, then we're back where we started.
- ortusdux 5mo ago
  Many states already ban the private collection of license plate data.
  - xbar 5mo ago
    I did not know that. I do wish I lived in one.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    Which states are those? I'd like to read the statutes.
    - EvanAnderson 5mo ago
      There's a nice list here with references to statutes: https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-license-plate-readers-state-statutes https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-...
      - tptacek 5mo ago
        Just so we're clear, across all these statutes, the term "private" means "for private use". State and local governments can engage private firms to collect data in all of them.
        EvanAnderson 5mo ago
        I wonder how this figures in with states that don't permit any ALPR use by non-law enforcement. Presumably in those localities private entities can't collect ALPR data on behalf of law enforcement. This page has some more background (and the most amusing map legend I've seen in awhile): https://repo.buzz/lpr/alpr-legality-for-all-50-states/ https://repo.buzz/lpr/alpr-legality-for-all-50-states/
    - ortusdux 5mo ago
      https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-license-plate-readers-state-statutes https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-... A friend entertained the idea of a startup focused on a social dashcam site, where users can upload clips of bad drivers tagged with their license plate number, and smart dashcams can alert to bad drivers in real time. They got as far as asking a lawyer before it fell apart.
      - chankstein38 5mo ago
        I'm glad they did the research on this lol I thought about this a decade ago when I was doing a lot of driving and always thought it'd be something I'd explore. Good to know it's against the law
  - tokai 5mo ago
    One just needs to store personal data on license plates then. Handy.
- jrm4 5mo ago
  Not at all, even if the data collection is exactly the same. "Where the authority comes from" matters a lot, probably much more than the actual collection itself.
  - IAmBroom 5mo ago
    Strongly disagree. The existence of such a collection is a loaded gun for police abuse. It doesn't even require mission creep; simply sifting through the ream of data under an actual warrant "coincidentally" looking for a different POI is going to happen.
jakelazaroff 5mo ago
This would be terrible — as written, the bill would also ban red light and speeding cameras. These are some of our most effective tools for traffic law enforcement; for instance, speeding cameras in NYC resulted in a 94% (!!!) reduction in speeding where they're installed [1]. I want to see Flock banned as much as the next person, but we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. [1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2025/nyc-dot-speed-cameras.shtml https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2025/nyc-dot-speed-camer...
- tptacek 5mo ago
  There is zero chance this happens. Chuy Garcia is already out the door; this is his last term. This is purely performative; the only reason it's surviving on the front page (where "proposed legislation" is by longstanding precedent off-topic) is because Wired wrote a whole clickbait story about it. Garcia's own municipality, with a progressive mayor, vehemently disagrees with this proposed amendment. So does the blue state he represents.
- qwerpy 5mo ago
  Funny, I have exactly the opposite point of view. I hate the red light and speeding cameras because they catch normal people who don’t bother hiding their license plates (or have license plates at all). And I don’t mind Flock and its ilk for catching more serious criminals. Basically I’m optimizing for the 90% case. Law abiding drivers who make the occasional mistake when driving.
  - Braxton1980 5mo ago
    [dead]
  - water-data-dude 5mo ago
    The problem is that a private company holds onto the data forever. Then the government can ask the private company for that data without a warrant. With the number of Flock cameras (I'm upset at how many have popped up near me), it's turning into a record of all of your movements. And that record lasts forever and can be queries at any time. You mentioned "more serious crimes", but what about the case where LEOs in Texas track women who go to get an abortion in another state? Or police officers who stalk their exes? Or an oppressive government that wants to know who went to a protest? Once the tool exists you can't assume it's only going to be used in a way you like.
saltyoldman 5mo ago
All those cameras you see on top of intersections? Yeah those - are going to be used for this instead of flock in a few years. They're letting flock take the public hit, it's all going to move.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  Those cameras are used to detect the presence of a vehicle so the signaling software controlling that intersection knows whether to e.g. enable or skip the left-turn arrow on the next cycle. They likely do not have the resolution to read a license plate, nor any storage capacity or ability to transmit images. All that could be changed/upgraded of course.
unethical_ban 5mo ago
If we accept that ALPR have a place in society, the data needs the same level of narrow scope and judicial process that other personal tracking data has. I don't care what the precedent is for regular cameras: AI-enabled facial/ALPR tracking is highly invasive action by the government and should be regulated as such. You want to search a database? Go to a judge, give your probable cause, get approval. No exceptions and no automated aggregation of tracking across jurisdictions.
- ghthor 5mo ago
  That’s all well and good, but making that dataset also means it will be leaked
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
sixothree 5mo ago
The question is not how you go about banning the use of this particular tracking. The only question to ask is how you can weaponize this tracking for your own political gain.
repiret 5mo ago
This feels like too far the other direction. I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable, and I think most people would agree with me: * Toll enforcement (the only thing allowed by the law) * Speeding enforcement * Parking enforcement * Real-time alerting for vehicles that could be pulled over if you knew nothing other than the vehicle's identity. Stolen, unregistered, uninsured, amber-alert, etc. [1] I think the following are all unreasonable, and I think most people would agree with me: * Selling the data for any commercial purposes (perhaps with the exception of aggregated statistical data) * Mining the data "suspicious patterns of activity". I think the following is reasonable, but some people may disagree: * Retaining the data for a limited time, so that if a crime is reported involving a specific vehicle, you can look back for sightings of the vehicle contemporaneous with the crime to help catch the bad guys. Given my thoughts on what is and is not reasonable, I think the ideal policy is one that focuses on limiting retention, limiting sharing, and limiting the types of queries that can be performed on the data. Something like: * Can retain the data for 90 days. Data that is evidence of a specific crime can be kept longer with the evidence file for that crime, and destroyed when the investigation is done. * Can use the data where knowing a series of (time, place) pairs for a vehicle is probable cause of an infraction (or toll due). This covers speeding and parking and tools and red lights and registration/etc, but doesn't allow looking for suspicious patterns of activity. * Can query the data for sightings of a specific vehicle with reasonable suspicion that the vehicle was involved in a crime. Need to keep records of these queries to identify abuse. Maybe need to notify owner when such a query is made. * Can not disclose the data to third parties, except in the case when they agree to follow all these same rules (so you can share with other departments or law enforcement service providers, but that doesn't enable an end-run around the rules) [1]: And I think it's important here that if data about a vehicle be eligible to be pulled over knowing nothing but it's license plate is out of date or otherwise wrong, then someone gets in serious trouble. Otherwise nobody is incentivized to keep their database up to date.
- fusslo 5mo ago
  I disagree with you
- fitblipper 5mo ago
  Just this morning I listened to an EFF podcast episode (Effector) about how license plate readers tend to suffer from mission creep. They might be deployed for one of the "reasonable" purposes you list but when the tool is available to lawenforcement it almost always becomes used for more and more purposes, like the example given in the article about tracking a woman who had an abortion. The problem with these types of tools are that they provide a foothold into absolute enforcement, not just for current laws you find reasonable, but for all future laws from all future administrations which may not be reasonable. Why should these cameras used for speeding enforcement today be used to track down protesters the admin decides to label as terrorists or legal immigrants who attended a pro Palestine rally tomorrow? They shouldn't. What would stop that from happening? Nothing.
w10-1 5mo ago
When reasonable restrictions are needed, I particularly dislike unreasonable ones that make a show but wouldn't pass. > A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling. Sponsors from both parties, but the effect is anti-Democratic. Currently per rough search: - 9 states prohibit speed and red-light cameras - 8 Republican (and Maine) - 5 states expressly permit speed cameras - 4 Democrat (and Tennessee) (CA permitting red-light) Obviously this reduces revenues (in democratic cities) and also drives police/traffic employment. Perhaps ICE abuse and union employment motivates the Democratic sponsor (Jesus "Chuy" García - parents are Teamsters, himself in a retail union). I would have encourage him to permit the use for tolling AND traffic enforcement.
- JohnMakin 5mo ago
  > This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling. How did traffic enforcement work before these systems?
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    Worse and more racistly.
    - IAmBroom 5mo ago
      If "worse" means "far less frequently", yes. It required salary hours devoted to watching a single traffic light, or running a particular speed trap. A city parking lot near me just switched to license-plate readers, and operates far later than local on-street parking - meaning they'll catch almost all parking violations there, and lure in unsuspecting people who think it isn't taking tolls that late.
      - tptacek 5mo ago
tptacek 5mo ago
This is pretty deceptive. A legislative action is "bipartisan" when it has significant, material support from both parties. This is a performative throwaway amendment by a single Democrat who's retiring in a few months and a single fringe-y Republican iconoclast. The districts of both representatives (Chicago for Garcia, and Harrisburg for Perry) flatly oppose it, as do their state governments. In reading this piece at Wired, would you reach that conclusion? Or would you think instead that there is a real chance the federal government might stick a thumb in the eye of every law enforcement agency in the country by blanket-banning ALPRs? If you really want to end ALPRs where you live, organize and pass an ordinance. It is extremely doable.
- shevis 5mo ago
  > The districts of both representatives (Chicago for Garcia, and Harrisburg for Perry) flatly oppose it, as do their state governments. You’ll have to cite your sources there, friend. As a constituent of one of those districts myself, I certainly do not oppose it! All my homies hate ALPRs.
  - tptacek 5mo ago
    Your alderman supports Chicago's deployment of them and is doing nothing to stop that. Nobody would ever claim everybody in any district supports ALPRs. Apologies to your homies.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
baggy_trough 5mo ago
What an appalling development. I rely on these for safety in my neighborhood.
- titaniumtown 5mo ago
  As Ben Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." You are giving up your right to privacy for some modicum of security that they train AI on and gets added to a national database.
  - polski-g 5mo ago
    Yes, I want bad drivers added to a national AI-powered database. There are 44,000 car-related deaths per year. Those people should be: in prison for vehicular manslaughter, paying much higher insurance premiums, and/or be banned entirely from driving.
  - baggy_trough 5mo ago
    The liberty is not essential and the safety is not little or temporary.
    - chankstein38 5mo ago
      lol wow yours must have weapons mounted to them or some sort of portal they take the bad folks in or something. It's crazy "liberty is not essential" but then to someone suggest that the safety is permanent because people :O would be ON CAMERA doing something! Pretty wild to see someone so empty headed on HN.
      - baggy_trough 5mo ago
        Are you aware that police use these cameras to track and arrest criminals?
        5mo ago
imglorp 5mo ago
IMO, it's too focused. Because of the global jurisdictions involved, and because of the immense, pressures against this from the governments and their private owners, we need an international information bill of rights. It needs to be adopted by every country that values humanity, privacy, and freedom. Its scope would encompass things like ALPRs. No, I don't think it will be possible in the current climate.
- IAmBroom 5mo ago
  Or ever. Even "freedom of speech" is a fairly understandable, and more basic, right, and it is definitely a non-starter internationally.
josefritzishere 5mo ago
I would prohibit even more but it's a start. Mass surveillance needs to end. America is supposed to be the land of the free.
softboyled 5mo ago
Is this actually only one sentence? "...may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling." So if an agency uses readers for tolling, does that disallow the use of the data for other things? Splitting hairs, but...
jcomp 5mo ago
Constitutionality aside, are they actually solving crimes with these? It seems like they'd publicize cases solved to turn an increasingly negative PR situation around, but I can't recall ever hearing of a Flock camera being used to solve anything worthwhile. Makes me wonder if they're afraid to test the precedent and instead just do a little parallel construction once identified via Flock.
- iAmAPencilYo 5mo ago
  n=1, I was on a jury about a hit and run with a gun where flock cameras across the area were used as supporting evidence that the shooter was the acused. It painted a picture of his flight after the accident in his car. Lots of other evidence was provided along it too. The defendant also left his phone on which was more damning, but it definitely helped us, as jurors, arrive to the "without reasonable doubt" conclusion
csmythejourn 5mo ago
This amendment has been killed in committee (quietly). Also, Flock has a lobbyist that used to be a staff member for one of the amendment's sponsors. See more in IPVM's article here: https://ipvm.com/reports/bipartisan-alpr-amendment-killed https://ipvm.com/reports/bipartisan-alpr-amendment-killed

254 points by cdrnsf 5mo ago

I like this proposed policy and I'll happily take the win if it passes but I see two subtexts here and neither is good: First is that local and state governments have been deploying 1984 for enforcement of petty matters for which dispensing "real" enforcement labor can't be justified economically politically a or both. The feds are fine with this because they can get at that data. What they're not fine with is that it's pissing people off. The feds are worried that this could turn into court and legislative precedents that make things harder for them. For example the DEA doesn't want their flagship I95 surveillance corridor to get nerfed because NYC went too far with it's own pet project and laws got made in response. They'll happily tell the states "no you can't do this thing we do" in order to preserve their own ability to do the thing. Second is that the feds don't like that the public is becoming soured on the regulatory hackjobs of the 1970s that were hailed as great successes at the time. As the country becomes more divided people are realizing that the current "have the feds grand fund everything at least in part" paradigm results in strings that nobody wants being attached to everything. So doing one little thing that everyone agrees on is seen as a way to say "look we can do good with this power we really shouldn't have in the first place".

zulux 5mo ago

If a single car manufacturer decides to capture license plate data from their customers ' cars' cameras, then we're back where we started.

ortusdux 5mo ago
Many states already ban the private collection of license plate data.
- xbar 5mo ago
  I did not know that. I do wish I lived in one.
- tptacek 5mo ago
  Which states are those? I'd like to read the statutes.
  - EvanAnderson 5mo ago
    There's a nice list here with references to statutes: https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-license-plate-readers-state-statutes https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-...
    - tptacek 5mo ago
      Just so we're clear, across all these statutes, the term "private" means "for private use". State and local governments can engage private firms to collect data in all of them.
      - EvanAnderson 5mo ago
        I wonder how this figures in with states that don't permit any ALPR use by non-law enforcement. Presumably in those localities private entities can't collect ALPR data on behalf of law enforcement. This page has some more background (and the most amusing map legend I've seen in awhile): https://repo.buzz/lpr/alpr-legality-for-all-50-states/ https://repo.buzz/lpr/alpr-legality-for-all-50-states/
  - ortusdux 5mo ago
    https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-license-plate-readers-state-statutes https://www.ncsl.org/technology-and-communication/automated-... A friend entertained the idea of a startup focused on a social dashcam site, where users can upload clips of bad drivers tagged with their license plate number, and smart dashcams can alert to bad drivers in real time. They got as far as asking a lawyer before it fell apart.
    - chankstein38 5mo ago
      I'm glad they did the research on this lol I thought about this a decade ago when I was doing a lot of driving and always thought it'd be something I'd explore. Good to know it's against the law
- tokai 5mo ago
  One just needs to store personal data on license plates then. Handy.
jrm4 5mo ago
Not at all, even if the data collection is exactly the same. "Where the authority comes from" matters a lot, probably much more than the actual collection itself.
- IAmBroom 5mo ago
  Strongly disagree. The existence of such a collection is a loaded gun for police abuse. It doesn't even require mission creep; simply sifting through the ream of data under an actual warrant "coincidentally" looking for a different POI is going to happen.

jakelazaroff 5mo ago

This would be terrible — as written, the bill would also ban red light and speeding cameras. These are some of our most effective tools for traffic law enforcement; for instance, speeding cameras in NYC resulted in a 94% (!!!) reduction in speeding where they're installed [1]. I want to see Flock banned as much as the next person, but we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. [1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2025/nyc-dot-speed-cameras.shtml https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/pr2025/nyc-dot-speed-camer...

tptacek 5mo ago
There is zero chance this happens. Chuy Garcia is already out the door; this is his last term. This is purely performative; the only reason it's surviving on the front page (where "proposed legislation" is by longstanding precedent off-topic) is because Wired wrote a whole clickbait story about it. Garcia's own municipality, with a progressive mayor, vehemently disagrees with this proposed amendment. So does the blue state he represents.
qwerpy 5mo ago
Funny, I have exactly the opposite point of view. I hate the red light and speeding cameras because they catch normal people who don’t bother hiding their license plates (or have license plates at all). And I don’t mind Flock and its ilk for catching more serious criminals. Basically I’m optimizing for the 90% case. Law abiding drivers who make the occasional mistake when driving.
- Braxton1980 5mo ago
  [dead]
- water-data-dude 5mo ago
  The problem is that a private company holds onto the data forever. Then the government can ask the private company for that data without a warrant. With the number of Flock cameras (I'm upset at how many have popped up near me), it's turning into a record of all of your movements. And that record lasts forever and can be queries at any time. You mentioned "more serious crimes", but what about the case where LEOs in Texas track women who go to get an abortion in another state? Or police officers who stalk their exes? Or an oppressive government that wants to know who went to a protest? Once the tool exists you can't assume it's only going to be used in a way you like.

saltyoldman 5mo ago

All those cameras you see on top of intersections? Yeah those - are going to be used for this instead of flock in a few years. They're letting flock take the public hit, it's all going to move.

SoftTalker 5mo ago
Those cameras are used to detect the presence of a vehicle so the signaling software controlling that intersection knows whether to e.g. enable or skip the left-turn arrow on the next cycle. They likely do not have the resolution to read a license plate, nor any storage capacity or ability to transmit images. All that could be changed/upgraded of course.

unethical_ban 5mo ago

If we accept that ALPR have a place in society, the data needs the same level of narrow scope and judicial process that other personal tracking data has. I don't care what the precedent is for regular cameras: AI-enabled facial/ALPR tracking is highly invasive action by the government and should be regulated as such. You want to search a database? Go to a judge, give your probable cause, get approval. No exceptions and no automated aggregation of tracking across jurisdictions.

ghthor 5mo ago
That’s all well and good, but making that dataset also means it will be leaked

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

sixothree 5mo ago

The question is not how you go about banning the use of this particular tracking. The only question to ask is how you can weaponize this tracking for your own political gain.

repiret 5mo ago

This feels like too far the other direction. I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable, and I think most people would agree with me: * Toll enforcement (the only thing allowed by the law) * Speeding enforcement * Parking enforcement * Real-time alerting for vehicles that could be pulled over if you knew nothing other than the vehicle's identity. Stolen, unregistered, uninsured, amber-alert, etc. [1] I think the following are all unreasonable, and I think most people would agree with me: * Selling the data for any commercial purposes (perhaps with the exception of aggregated statistical data) * Mining the data "suspicious patterns of activity". I think the following is reasonable, but some people may disagree: * Retaining the data for a limited time, so that if a crime is reported involving a specific vehicle, you can look back for sightings of the vehicle contemporaneous with the crime to help catch the bad guys. Given my thoughts on what is and is not reasonable, I think the ideal policy is one that focuses on limiting retention, limiting sharing, and limiting the types of queries that can be performed on the data. Something like: * Can retain the data for 90 days. Data that is evidence of a specific crime can be kept longer with the evidence file for that crime, and destroyed when the investigation is done. * Can use the data where knowing a series of (time, place) pairs for a vehicle is probable cause of an infraction (or toll due). This covers speeding and parking and tools and red lights and registration/etc, but doesn't allow looking for suspicious patterns of activity. * Can query the data for sightings of a specific vehicle with reasonable suspicion that the vehicle was involved in a crime. Need to keep records of these queries to identify abuse. Maybe need to notify owner when such a query is made. * Can not disclose the data to third parties, except in the case when they agree to follow all these same rules (so you can share with other departments or law enforcement service providers, but that doesn't enable an end-run around the rules) [1]: And I think it's important here that if data about a vehicle be eligible to be pulled over knowing nothing but it's license plate is out of date or otherwise wrong, then someone gets in serious trouble. Otherwise nobody is incentivized to keep their database up to date.

fusslo 5mo ago
I disagree with you
fitblipper 5mo ago
Just this morning I listened to an EFF podcast episode (Effector) about how license plate readers tend to suffer from mission creep. They might be deployed for one of the "reasonable" purposes you list but when the tool is available to lawenforcement it almost always becomes used for more and more purposes, like the example given in the article about tracking a woman who had an abortion. The problem with these types of tools are that they provide a foothold into absolute enforcement, not just for current laws you find reasonable, but for all future laws from all future administrations which may not be reasonable. Why should these cameras used for speeding enforcement today be used to track down protesters the admin decides to label as terrorists or legal immigrants who attended a pro Palestine rally tomorrow? They shouldn't. What would stop that from happening? Nothing.

w10-1 5mo ago

When reasonable restrictions are needed, I particularly dislike unreasonable ones that make a show but wouldn't pass. > A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling. Sponsors from both parties, but the effect is anti-Democratic. Currently per rough search: - 9 states prohibit speed and red-light cameras - 8 Republican (and Maine) - 5 states expressly permit speed cameras - 4 Democrat (and Tennessee) (CA permitting red-light) Obviously this reduces revenues (in democratic cities) and also drives police/traffic employment. Perhaps ICE abuse and union employment motivates the Democratic sponsor (Jesus "Chuy" García - parents are Teamsters, himself in a retail union). I would have encourage him to permit the use for tolling AND traffic enforcement.

JohnMakin 5mo ago
> This one-liner amendment is its own poison pill: it will also outlaw traffic enforcment, cameras used to ticket people who run red lights or speed, since neither are tolling. How did traffic enforcement work before these systems?
- tptacek 5mo ago
  Worse and more racistly.
  - IAmBroom 5mo ago
    If "worse" means "far less frequently", yes. It required salary hours devoted to watching a single traffic light, or running a particular speed trap. A city parking lot near me just switched to license-plate readers, and operates far later than local on-street parking - meaning they'll catch almost all parking violations there, and lure in unsuspecting people who think it isn't taking tolls that late.
    - tptacek 5mo ago

tptacek 5mo ago

This is pretty deceptive. A legislative action is "bipartisan" when it has significant, material support from both parties. This is a performative throwaway amendment by a single Democrat who's retiring in a few months and a single fringe-y Republican iconoclast. The districts of both representatives (Chicago for Garcia, and Harrisburg for Perry) flatly oppose it, as do their state governments. In reading this piece at Wired, would you reach that conclusion? Or would you think instead that there is a real chance the federal government might stick a thumb in the eye of every law enforcement agency in the country by blanket-banning ALPRs? If you really want to end ALPRs where you live, organize and pass an ordinance. It is extremely doable.

shevis 5mo ago
> The districts of both representatives (Chicago for Garcia, and Harrisburg for Perry) flatly oppose it, as do their state governments. You’ll have to cite your sources there, friend. As a constituent of one of those districts myself, I certainly do not oppose it! All my homies hate ALPRs.
- tptacek 5mo ago
  Your alderman supports Chicago's deployment of them and is doing nothing to stop that. Nobody would ever claim everybody in any district supports ALPRs. Apologies to your homies.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]

baggy_trough 5mo ago

What an appalling development. I rely on these for safety in my neighborhood.

titaniumtown 5mo ago
As Ben Franklin said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." You are giving up your right to privacy for some modicum of security that they train AI on and gets added to a national database.
- polski-g 5mo ago
  Yes, I want bad drivers added to a national AI-powered database. There are 44,000 car-related deaths per year. Those people should be: in prison for vehicular manslaughter, paying much higher insurance premiums, and/or be banned entirely from driving.
- baggy_trough 5mo ago
  The liberty is not essential and the safety is not little or temporary.
  - chankstein38 5mo ago
    lol wow yours must have weapons mounted to them or some sort of portal they take the bad folks in or something. It's crazy "liberty is not essential" but then to someone suggest that the safety is permanent because people :O would be ON CAMERA doing something! Pretty wild to see someone so empty headed on HN.
    - baggy_trough 5mo ago
      Are you aware that police use these cameras to track and arrest criminals?
      - 5mo ago

imglorp 5mo ago

IMO, it's too focused. Because of the global jurisdictions involved, and because of the immense, pressures against this from the governments and their private owners, we need an international information bill of rights. It needs to be adopted by every country that values humanity, privacy, and freedom. Its scope would encompass things like ALPRs. No, I don't think it will be possible in the current climate.

IAmBroom 5mo ago
Or ever. Even "freedom of speech" is a fairly understandable, and more basic, right, and it is definitely a non-starter internationally.

josefritzishere 5mo ago

I would prohibit even more but it's a start. Mass surveillance needs to end. America is supposed to be the land of the free.

softboyled 5mo ago

Is this actually only one sentence? "...may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling." So if an agency uses readers for tolling, does that disallow the use of the data for other things? Splitting hairs, but...

jcomp 5mo ago

Constitutionality aside, are they actually solving crimes with these? It seems like they'd publicize cases solved to turn an increasingly negative PR situation around, but I can't recall ever hearing of a Flock camera being used to solve anything worthwhile. Makes me wonder if they're afraid to test the precedent and instead just do a little parallel construction once identified via Flock.

iAmAPencilYo 5mo ago
n=1, I was on a jury about a hit and run with a gun where flock cameras across the area were used as supporting evidence that the shooter was the acused. It painted a picture of his flight after the accident in his car. Lots of other evidence was provided along it too. The defendant also left his phone on which was more damning, but it definitely helped us, as jurors, arrive to the "without reasonable doubt" conclusion

csmythejourn 5mo ago

This amendment has been killed in committee (quietly). Also, Flock has a lobbyist that used to be a staff member for one of the amendment's sponsors. See more in IPVM's article here: https://ipvm.com/reports/bipartisan-alpr-amendment-killed https://ipvm.com/reports/bipartisan-alpr-amendment-killed