14 ms·

How License-Plate Scanners Are Eroding Our Privacy

80 points by jamesbritt 13y ago

eliteraspberrie 13y ago
There is very little which is less private than a license plate. They are explicitly designed to be as public as possible, as they should be.
- Amadou 13y ago
  They are explicitly designed to be as public as possible, as they should be. They were designed in an age in which pervasive video-cameras and back-end databases that never forget were pure science fiction at best. In effect, the terms of the public's contract with the state regarding license plates have changed. It's time we re-negotiate that contract in light of the new circumstances.
- greenyoda 13y ago
  I think that's totally missing the point of the article. The license plates are being used to track where every person goes over a long period of time, which can uncover some very private information about people, like whether the person is cheating on their spouse, or sees a psychiatrist on a weekly basis. And yes, you can find this out just by physically following someone wherever they go, but since that's impractical to do on a mass scale, it's not likely to be done for people who aren't targets of specific criminal investigations. License plate scanning collects this personal information indiscriminately about totally innocent people. And this information is likely to be abused by people in positions of power, just like existing records about people are. I can't count how many times have I've heard about cops getting in trouble for running unauthorized database searches on ex-girlfriends, etc. Detailed data about a person's every movement would be even more tempting to abuse.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    well, it is called intelligence fusion centers and license plates is just a minor piece. Pretty spotty. Face recognition info from surveilance cams pretty spotty as well. Credit card transactions - similar. Cell phone position is much better... Once taken together ("fused" dare i say :) - works like a charm i guess. Guys from Palantir would know better i guess what Suspicious Activity Reports are cooked there: http://www.palantir.com/_ptwp_live_ect0/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/PCL_FusionCenters.pdf http://www.palantir.com/_ptwp_live_ect0/wp-content/uploads/2... "...many Fusion Centers have gradually shifted to a broader mission of providing general criminal intelligence and all-crimes, all-hazards analysis support for constituent agencies."
    - Amadou 13y ago
      "...many Fusion Centers have gradually shifted to a broader mission of providing general criminal intelligence and all-crimes, all-hazards analysis support for constituent agencies." Inevitable given that terrorism is effectively non-existent in the US. When you have a great big expensive hammer, you just have use it on something.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    You're taking actions in public, of course it's not private. Where do we get this idea that, not only do we have a right to privacy, but we have a right to privacy everywhere, all the time? As for potential for abuse, guns can be abused too - that doesn't mean guns aren't allowed at all. Or if your country does ban guns, think of something else that might be abused but is allowed anyway. Just because something could be abused doesn't mean that's a valid reason for not doing that thing.
    - pfraze 13y ago
      The implication of license plates changed from individual tracking (recording the plate during a crime) to mass tracking (recording all plates all the time). That's very different. Also, misusing a gun is different than misusing information.
    - angersock 13y ago
      When one is in public, out of eyesight of any non-friendlies, one does indeed expect privacy. When one is moving across several disparate geographical locations, there is indeed an expectation of privacy. The simple "hurf durf you're in public ergo no privacy ever" argument is horseshit, to put it bluntly.
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        Not really. Where are these exceptions above you mention defined in the law?
        nitrogen 13y ago
        As one example, you are not legally allowed to record a conversation to which you are not a party, and in some states, you need all participants' consent.
        res0nat0r 13y ago
        But driving down the street and having your unique identifier on the back of your captured via camera isn't against the law.
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  It's one thing to be identifiable in the here and now; it's quite another to have your movements recorded and kept on file for an unspecified period of time. That creates the same privacy problems that collection and analysis of telephone and email "metadata" create. http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metada...
- schoen 13y ago
  If license plates were meant to be as public as possible, it would be possible for the public to find out who the registered owner of each car was! In my understanding, license plates were created for two reasons: * To enforce registration requirements for cars and drivers in order to enforce training standards (for drivers) and safety standards (for the construction and inspection of cars) * To allow the easier identification of the party responsible for an accident (and maybe for certain other infractions, like speeding, parking violations, or abandoning a vehicle) That means that other uses to which license plates have been put are a kind of mission creep. Where they harm motorists' privacy, we can reasonably see them as a failure in the design and implementation of the license plate system. If we had a license plate system that let people responsible for accidents and traffic infractions be identified and that ensured cars were safe without also making it easy to figure out individual people's travel patterns, I'd view that as a strict improvement over the status quo -- and more legitimate, because it wouldn't impose unrelated burdens on motorists. Right now we're creating and deploying lots of other systems that assign unique identifiers to people and their possessions. Those systems are meant for specific purposes, which their users may see as legitimate, but designing them in the simplest, most obvious way will cause collateral damage to privacy by allowing often invisible kinds of tracking and profiling of people's activities, whereabouts, and relationships. If those uses are not the intended purpose, we should demand more careful designs that end up enabling them.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    You forgot the primary reason: the fees.
- mehmehshoe 13y ago
  Oh the cameras are public too! Well not just the cameras but the default passwords that secure them. Vid of the Defcon talk titled "Drinking from the firehose known as Shodan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhNWwFu1Qjs&list=PLCDA5DF85AD6B4ABD&index=35 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhNWwFu1Qjs&list=PLCDA5DF85AD...
alpeb 13y ago
This reminded me of this pic, trying to sql-inject a license plate system: http://landofthefreeish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sql-injection-plate.jpg http://landofthefreeish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sql-i...
- user24 13y ago
  That's more specific SQL than a simple gag would require... story?
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes-to-foil-euro-traffic-cameras http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes...
- Nicholas_C 13y ago
  What is the legality of something like this? If this worked or if it didn't and someone gave a damn it seems like this could fall under attempted destruction of property or something like that. I'm definitely not a lawyer though.
brndnmtthws 13y ago
Bicycle. Problem solved.
- user24 13y ago
  Bicycle. New problem created.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  The perfect vehicle for someone who has a 60 mile commute in New England during storm weather.
  - jodrellblank 13y ago
    The "Some people can't use it in some situations, therefore it's worthless" internet retort.
    - diminoten 13y ago
      More like, "Many people can't use it in most situations, therefore it's worthless."
      - nilved 13y ago
        Not really. I would be very surprised if the majority of commuters were motorists.
        nitrogen 13y ago
        The majority of commuters in what location? The majority of commuters in my metro area are most definitely motorists, with no safe bicycle paths to a lot of destinations.
        maxerickson 13y ago
        I bet it comes close when you limit it to regions where license place logging is common.
cjaredrun 13y ago
What about having some sort of UV LED light that would shine above or below your plates so as to obscure any cameras?
- moron4hire 13y ago
  they have been illegal for years. stop light and speeding cameras.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  http://petapixel.com/2012/10/16/nophoto-license-plate-frame-flashes-to-foil-traffic-enforcement-cameras/ http://petapixel.com/2012/10/16/nophoto-license-plate-frame-... "The trick is that that the frame is basically a optically-triggered slave-mode flash unit that’s placed right up to the subject (the license place). A sensor at the top of the frame detects when a flash is fired, which in turn instantly triggers two xenon flashes built into the sides. The powerful flash will turn your license plate into a rectangle of blown-out highlights."
- grecy 13y ago
  You can spray your plate with hair spray or clear gloss paint too - the camera flash reflects and the photo is not usable. It's illegal, of course. I much prefer the idea of getting a custom plate that's something like 00000O0000 or 1111l11111 etc. depending on the font.
  - lotharbot 13y ago
    http://xkcd.com/1105/ http://xkcd.com/1105/
  - Amadou 13y ago
    You can spray your plate with hair spray or clear gloss paint too - the camera flash reflects and the photo is not usable. It doesn't work. Mythbusters tried it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broker-offers-new-service-showing-where-they-have-spotted-your-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke...
auctiontheory 13y ago
Here's what the police in my town are doing: http://www.almanacnews.com/news/2013/06/04/the-unfiring-of-a-menlo-park-police-officer http://www.almanacnews.com/news/2013/06/04/the-unfiring-of-a...
- jorgem 13y ago
  incredible.
- yid 13y ago
  From TFA: "...said the Menlo Park police department violated his client's rights during the internal affairs investigation" I actually support his getting his job back, because it seems to have been found that the police department overstepped their boundaries in their investigation of him. If that is indeed true, then it's imperative that any illegal evidence against him should be discarded.
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    At some level, if you have enough defense lawyers, it becomes literally impossible to conduct a detailed investigation without forgetting to dot an i or cross a t somewhere. I don't know whether they violated his rights or not, but it's pretty clear from the reporting (all of which I've read, since he makes $150K as my neighborhood cop) that he's guilty in the pure sense of "he did it." And they originally discovered him in some other context - not while illegally pursuing him. (While "they" continue to illegally tap your phone, and your emails, and mine.)
    - bmelton 13y ago
      There's legal theory around this, and it's fairly well established, though often somewhat murky. The concept is "inevitable discovery". The defense attorney can bring up claims that the evidence was ill-gotten, and if the claim is upheld, then the judge can throw out everything gained afterward, unless they can prove that it would have been discovered unrelated to the ill-gotten loot. For example, if a police officer searches your home without a warrant and finds the murder weapon, that murder weapon ceases to exist, legally, and the suspect will likely get away scot free. However, if a different officer pulls him over for a DUI a week later, not as a result of information provided by the unlawful search, and finds blood in the back seat of the car, which leads to an arrest, prosecution could claim that they would have obtained a warrant to his home that would then have likely surfaced the murder weapon. Edit, all that was fairly random rambling, re-reading it in context, but what I meant to say was that I agree, and that his confession ought to be enough grounds to keep his termination permanent.
jrockway 13y ago
You already gave up your rights when you agreed to "implied consent". This one isn't even in the Constitution.
Houshalter 13y ago
License plate scanners are pretty cool technology-wise. It's amazing machine vision has advanced that much. I was under the impression these were being used to search for specific license plates though. Like a stolen car or the car of a fugitive. I didn't realize they were storing every single license plate recorded into a giant database. That is more concerning.
- Amadou 13y ago
  I didn't realize they were storing every single license plate recorded into a giant database. That is more concerning. The police aren't the only ones doing it. Data brokers have hooked up with repomen who put scanners on their dashboards and upload every plate they scan to the data broker's databases: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broker-offers-new-service-showing-where-they-have-spotted-your-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke... US Customs has been handing over plate scan data to insurance companies: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/21/documents-show-u-s-customs-tracking-millions-of-license-plates-and-sharing-data-with-insurance-firms/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/21/documen...
- adolph 13y ago
  It would be an impressive feat of syncing for each license plate monitoring node to receive a constantly updated list of license plates of interest.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    Not really they already have some kind of computer with database access in every cop car I believe. And the worst case is you just update it daily or manually enter wanted plates in if it's urgent.
ghshephard 13y ago
This certainly puts Steve Jobs tradition of leasing a new car every 6 months to avoid having to put a license plate on his car in a new light. [1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/27/steve_jobs_stayed_tag_less_by_leasing_a_new_car_every_six_months http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/27/steve_jobs_stayed_...
psc 13y ago
What this article doesn't mention is that this data isn't only for cops, anyone should be able to see license plate records. Milage may vary, but since this is government data, something along the lines of a FOIA request should get you huge files with license plates, coordinates, and times. Some police departments may be more stubborn, but under current laws this data should pretty much be public. For example here's data from Minneapolis (with anonymized license plates): https://github.com/johnschrom/Minneapolis-ALPR-Data https://github.com/johnschrom/Minneapolis-ALPR-Data Privacy concerns aside, there's definitely something really cool about so much data.
MikeTLive 13y ago
historically the use of license plates were fought because of the potential to track the coming and going of american citizens. however, it was decided that it was not possible to do such tracking so they were allowed. the error is that provisions were not made that when such fears were realized the use of such plates should be revoked.
jgoodwin 13y ago
I think there is a mathematical theory here people should become acquainted with -- differential privacy. So far it has found use in the context of a large data set, e.g. search engine query logs, to try to determine how invasive a statistical summary or release of only partly obfuscated data would be. Like calculus, it has a sort of epsilon/delta construct -- given a differential privacy concern epsilon, under what circumstances (how tight a bound on delta) do I need to prevent that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy Perhaps this theory could quantify the intuition that while it's ok to snap my license plate now and then (very little differential privacy loss on my part), enough times and it becomes invasive, and dreadfully so. This puts some teeth into the vague talk about a mosaic theory. The key idea is whether the aggregate information in the data set can triangulate you, to within say 10000 persons (not much privacy invation), or 100 (quite a bit). There seems to be a tipping point around clusters of 100-1000 persons or so, that is the typical size of small organizations or groups of people, such as churches and schools. Now, as an application: license plates are nearly unique identifiers and the attacker has a database of who's who for all intents and purposes, so it is little different from asking everyone for their ID just because they are on the street. That's illegal by the way, even for the police. The argument that was formerly deployed here is that using a vehicle on public roadways was a privilege that cost you natural expectation of privacy (non-intrusion) in public places. The real crux of the issue here is that the public-private tradeoff was once predicated on the individual (the individual atom has protection, because data collection is sparse, so tagging the individual but not the path was meaningful). Now the data collection is dense, and even single particle tracks become visible. If you think in terms of fluid mechanics, there's a sort of Euler view / Lagrange view here (as there is with tagged dollar particles and tagged wallets or accounts). That is, tracking individuals and tracking their paths become duals of each other, if the data collection is dense enough. It doesn't matter whether the item tracked is the tagged individual, or the flows and transactions -- either way, complete reconstruction of the system becomes possible. With any data set, there is a sort of 'phase transition' in its size, where you suddenly can see the underlying trajectories of all the tagged particles. Things that made perfect sense when data collection was sparse, just as allowing the police to jot down you license number and chase you with a bicycle, turn into totalitarian surveillance when the observations become dense enough -- in a way we can quantify in terms of a sudden jump in information gain that goes from nearly complete ignorance of where people are and what they are doing (the former phase), to near complete knowledge of everything. Very much like percolation theory.
A1kmm 13y ago
The crux of the argument which comes up from the 'apologists' for this type of thing extends from a different understanding of the axioms of privacy to everyone else. Let p(x) be a proposition that means that doing x is a violation of someone's expectation of privacy. Some people seem to assume that (not p(x)) and (not p(y)) implies that not p(x union y). In other words, the assumption is that if x is not a violation of someone's expectation of privacy, and doing y is not a violation of someone's expectation of privacy, then doing both x and y is also not a violation of someone's expectation of privacy. However, the 'mosaic theory' suggests that the above assumption is not valid - doing x and y individually might be perfectly reasonable, but doing both could be a violation of someone's expectation of privacy.

80 points by jamesbritt 13y ago

There is very little which is less private than a license plate. They are explicitly designed to be as public as possible, as they should be.

Amadou 13y ago
They are explicitly designed to be as public as possible, as they should be. They were designed in an age in which pervasive video-cameras and back-end databases that never forget were pure science fiction at best. In effect, the terms of the public's contract with the state regarding license plates have changed. It's time we re-negotiate that contract in light of the new circumstances.
greenyoda 13y ago
I think that's totally missing the point of the article. The license plates are being used to track where every person goes over a long period of time, which can uncover some very private information about people, like whether the person is cheating on their spouse, or sees a psychiatrist on a weekly basis. And yes, you can find this out just by physically following someone wherever they go, but since that's impractical to do on a mass scale, it's not likely to be done for people who aren't targets of specific criminal investigations. License plate scanning collects this personal information indiscriminately about totally innocent people. And this information is likely to be abused by people in positions of power, just like existing records about people are. I can't count how many times have I've heard about cops getting in trouble for running unauthorized database searches on ex-girlfriends, etc. Detailed data about a person's every movement would be even more tempting to abuse.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  well, it is called intelligence fusion centers and license plates is just a minor piece. Pretty spotty. Face recognition info from surveilance cams pretty spotty as well. Credit card transactions - similar. Cell phone position is much better... Once taken together ("fused" dare i say :) - works like a charm i guess. Guys from Palantir would know better i guess what Suspicious Activity Reports are cooked there: http://www.palantir.com/_ptwp_live_ect0/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/PCL_FusionCenters.pdf http://www.palantir.com/_ptwp_live_ect0/wp-content/uploads/2... "...many Fusion Centers have gradually shifted to a broader mission of providing general criminal intelligence and all-crimes, all-hazards analysis support for constituent agencies."
  - Amadou 13y ago
    "...many Fusion Centers have gradually shifted to a broader mission of providing general criminal intelligence and all-crimes, all-hazards analysis support for constituent agencies." Inevitable given that terrorism is effectively non-existent in the US. When you have a great big expensive hammer, you just have use it on something.
- diminoten 13y ago
  You're taking actions in public, of course it's not private. Where do we get this idea that, not only do we have a right to privacy, but we have a right to privacy everywhere, all the time? As for potential for abuse, guns can be abused too - that doesn't mean guns aren't allowed at all. Or if your country does ban guns, think of something else that might be abused but is allowed anyway. Just because something could be abused doesn't mean that's a valid reason for not doing that thing.
  - pfraze 13y ago
    The implication of license plates changed from individual tracking (recording the plate during a crime) to mass tracking (recording all plates all the time). That's very different. Also, misusing a gun is different than misusing information.
  - angersock 13y ago
    When one is in public, out of eyesight of any non-friendlies, one does indeed expect privacy. When one is moving across several disparate geographical locations, there is indeed an expectation of privacy. The simple "hurf durf you're in public ergo no privacy ever" argument is horseshit, to put it bluntly.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      Not really. Where are these exceptions above you mention defined in the law?
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        As one example, you are not legally allowed to record a conversation to which you are not a party, and in some states, you need all participants' consent.
        res0nat0r 13y ago
        But driving down the street and having your unique identifier on the back of your captured via camera isn't against the law.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
It's one thing to be identifiable in the here and now; it's quite another to have your movements recorded and kept on file for an unspecified period of time. That creates the same privacy problems that collection and analysis of telephone and email "metadata" create. http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/ http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metada...
schoen 13y ago
If license plates were meant to be as public as possible, it would be possible for the public to find out who the registered owner of each car was! In my understanding, license plates were created for two reasons: * To enforce registration requirements for cars and drivers in order to enforce training standards (for drivers) and safety standards (for the construction and inspection of cars) * To allow the easier identification of the party responsible for an accident (and maybe for certain other infractions, like speeding, parking violations, or abandoning a vehicle) That means that other uses to which license plates have been put are a kind of mission creep. Where they harm motorists' privacy, we can reasonably see them as a failure in the design and implementation of the license plate system. If we had a license plate system that let people responsible for accidents and traffic infractions be identified and that ensured cars were safe without also making it easy to figure out individual people's travel patterns, I'd view that as a strict improvement over the status quo -- and more legitimate, because it wouldn't impose unrelated burdens on motorists. Right now we're creating and deploying lots of other systems that assign unique identifiers to people and their possessions. Those systems are meant for specific purposes, which their users may see as legitimate, but designing them in the simplest, most obvious way will cause collateral damage to privacy by allowing often invisible kinds of tracking and profiling of people's activities, whereabouts, and relationships. If those uses are not the intended purpose, we should demand more careful designs that end up enabling them.
- ams6110 13y ago
  You forgot the primary reason: the fees.
mehmehshoe 13y ago
Oh the cameras are public too! Well not just the cameras but the default passwords that secure them. Vid of the Defcon talk titled "Drinking from the firehose known as Shodan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhNWwFu1Qjs&list=PLCDA5DF85AD6B4ABD&index=35 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhNWwFu1Qjs&list=PLCDA5DF85AD...

alpeb 13y ago

This reminded me of this pic, trying to sql-inject a license plate system: http://landofthefreeish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sql-injection-plate.jpg http://landofthefreeish.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/sql-i...

user24 13y ago
That's more specific SQL than a simple gag would require... story?
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes-to-foil-euro-traffic-cameras http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes...
Nicholas_C 13y ago
What is the legality of something like this? If this worked or if it didn't and someone gave a damn it seems like this could fall under attempted destruction of property or something like that. I'm definitely not a lawyer though.

brndnmtthws 13y ago

Bicycle. Problem solved.

user24 13y ago
Bicycle. New problem created.
pavel_lishin 13y ago
The perfect vehicle for someone who has a 60 mile commute in New England during storm weather.
- jodrellblank 13y ago
  The "Some people can't use it in some situations, therefore it's worthless" internet retort.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    More like, "Many people can't use it in most situations, therefore it's worthless."
    - nilved 13y ago
      Not really. I would be very surprised if the majority of commuters were motorists.
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        The majority of commuters in what location? The majority of commuters in my metro area are most definitely motorists, with no safe bicycle paths to a lot of destinations.
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        I bet it comes close when you limit it to regions where license place logging is common.

cjaredrun 13y ago

What about having some sort of UV LED light that would shine above or below your plates so as to obscure any cameras?

moron4hire 13y ago
they have been illegal for years. stop light and speeding cameras.
toomuchtodo 13y ago
http://petapixel.com/2012/10/16/nophoto-license-plate-frame-flashes-to-foil-traffic-enforcement-cameras/ http://petapixel.com/2012/10/16/nophoto-license-plate-frame-... "The trick is that that the frame is basically a optically-triggered slave-mode flash unit that’s placed right up to the subject (the license place). A sensor at the top of the frame detects when a flash is fired, which in turn instantly triggers two xenon flashes built into the sides. The powerful flash will turn your license plate into a rectangle of blown-out highlights."
grecy 13y ago
You can spray your plate with hair spray or clear gloss paint too - the camera flash reflects and the photo is not usable. It's illegal, of course. I much prefer the idea of getting a custom plate that's something like 00000O0000 or 1111l11111 etc. depending on the font.
- lotharbot 13y ago
  http://xkcd.com/1105/ http://xkcd.com/1105/
- Amadou 13y ago
  You can spray your plate with hair spray or clear gloss paint too - the camera flash reflects and the photo is not usable. It doesn't work. Mythbusters tried it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broker-offers-new-service-showing-where-they-have-spotted-your-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke...

auctiontheory 13y ago

Here's what the police in my town are doing: http://www.almanacnews.com/news/2013/06/04/the-unfiring-of-a-menlo-park-police-officer http://www.almanacnews.com/news/2013/06/04/the-unfiring-of-a...

jorgem 13y ago
incredible.
yid 13y ago
From TFA: "...said the Menlo Park police department violated his client's rights during the internal affairs investigation" I actually support his getting his job back, because it seems to have been found that the police department overstepped their boundaries in their investigation of him. If that is indeed true, then it's imperative that any illegal evidence against him should be discarded.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  At some level, if you have enough defense lawyers, it becomes literally impossible to conduct a detailed investigation without forgetting to dot an i or cross a t somewhere. I don't know whether they violated his rights or not, but it's pretty clear from the reporting (all of which I've read, since he makes $150K as my neighborhood cop) that he's guilty in the pure sense of "he did it." And they originally discovered him in some other context - not while illegally pursuing him. (While "they" continue to illegally tap your phone, and your emails, and mine.)
  - bmelton 13y ago
    There's legal theory around this, and it's fairly well established, though often somewhat murky. The concept is "inevitable discovery". The defense attorney can bring up claims that the evidence was ill-gotten, and if the claim is upheld, then the judge can throw out everything gained afterward, unless they can prove that it would have been discovered unrelated to the ill-gotten loot. For example, if a police officer searches your home without a warrant and finds the murder weapon, that murder weapon ceases to exist, legally, and the suspect will likely get away scot free. However, if a different officer pulls him over for a DUI a week later, not as a result of information provided by the unlawful search, and finds blood in the back seat of the car, which leads to an arrest, prosecution could claim that they would have obtained a warrant to his home that would then have likely surfaced the murder weapon. Edit, all that was fairly random rambling, re-reading it in context, but what I meant to say was that I agree, and that his confession ought to be enough grounds to keep his termination permanent.

jrockway 13y ago

You already gave up your rights when you agreed to "implied consent". This one isn't even in the Constitution.

Houshalter 13y ago

License plate scanners are pretty cool technology-wise. It's amazing machine vision has advanced that much. I was under the impression these were being used to search for specific license plates though. Like a stolen car or the car of a fugitive. I didn't realize they were storing every single license plate recorded into a giant database. That is more concerning.

Amadou 13y ago
I didn't realize they were storing every single license plate recorded into a giant database. That is more concerning. The police aren't the only ones doing it. Data brokers have hooked up with repomen who put scanners on their dashboards and upload every plate they scan to the data broker's databases: http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broker-offers-new-service-showing-where-they-have-spotted-your-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamtanner/2013/07/10/data-broke... US Customs has been handing over plate scan data to insurance companies: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/21/documents-show-u-s-customs-tracking-millions-of-license-plates-and-sharing-data-with-insurance-firms/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/08/21/documen...
adolph 13y ago
It would be an impressive feat of syncing for each license plate monitoring node to receive a constantly updated list of license plates of interest.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  Not really they already have some kind of computer with database access in every cop car I believe. And the worst case is you just update it daily or manually enter wanted plates in if it's urgent.

ghshephard 13y ago

This certainly puts Steve Jobs tradition of leasing a new car every 6 months to avoid having to put a license plate on his car in a new light. [1] http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/27/steve_jobs_stayed_tag_less_by_leasing_a_new_car_every_six_months http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/27/steve_jobs_stayed_...

psc 13y ago

What this article doesn't mention is that this data isn't only for cops, anyone should be able to see license plate records. Milage may vary, but since this is government data, something along the lines of a FOIA request should get you huge files with license plates, coordinates, and times. Some police departments may be more stubborn, but under current laws this data should pretty much be public. For example here's data from Minneapolis (with anonymized license plates): https://github.com/johnschrom/Minneapolis-ALPR-Data https://github.com/johnschrom/Minneapolis-ALPR-Data Privacy concerns aside, there's definitely something really cool about so much data.

MikeTLive 13y ago

historically the use of license plates were fought because of the potential to track the coming and going of american citizens. however, it was decided that it was not possible to do such tracking so they were allowed. the error is that provisions were not made that when such fears were realized the use of such plates should be revoked.

jgoodwin 13y ago

I think there is a mathematical theory here people should become acquainted with -- differential privacy. So far it has found use in the context of a large data set, e.g. search engine query logs, to try to determine how invasive a statistical summary or release of only partly obfuscated data would be. Like calculus, it has a sort of epsilon/delta construct -- given a differential privacy concern epsilon, under what circumstances (how tight a bound on delta) do I need to prevent that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy Perhaps this theory could quantify the intuition that while it's ok to snap my license plate now and then (very little differential privacy loss on my part), enough times and it becomes invasive, and dreadfully so. This puts some teeth into the vague talk about a mosaic theory. The key idea is whether the aggregate information in the data set can triangulate you, to within say 10000 persons (not much privacy invation), or 100 (quite a bit). There seems to be a tipping point around clusters of 100-1000 persons or so, that is the typical size of small organizations or groups of people, such as churches and schools. Now, as an application: license plates are nearly unique identifiers and the attacker has a database of who's who for all intents and purposes, so it is little different from asking everyone for their ID just because they are on the street. That's illegal by the way, even for the police. The argument that was formerly deployed here is that using a vehicle on public roadways was a privilege that cost you natural expectation of privacy (non-intrusion) in public places. The real crux of the issue here is that the public-private tradeoff was once predicated on the individual (the individual atom has protection, because data collection is sparse, so tagging the individual but not the path was meaningful). Now the data collection is dense, and even single particle tracks become visible. If you think in terms of fluid mechanics, there's a sort of Euler view / Lagrange view here (as there is with tagged dollar particles and tagged wallets or accounts). That is, tracking individuals and tracking their paths become duals of each other, if the data collection is dense enough. It doesn't matter whether the item tracked is the tagged individual, or the flows and transactions -- either way, complete reconstruction of the system becomes possible. With any data set, there is a sort of 'phase transition' in its size, where you suddenly can see the underlying trajectories of all the tagged particles. Things that made perfect sense when data collection was sparse, just as allowing the police to jot down you license number and chase you with a bicycle, turn into totalitarian surveillance when the observations become dense enough -- in a way we can quantify in terms of a sudden jump in information gain that goes from nearly complete ignorance of where people are and what they are doing (the former phase), to near complete knowledge of everything. Very much like percolation theory.

A1kmm 13y ago

The crux of the argument which comes up from the 'apologists' for this type of thing extends from a different understanding of the axioms of privacy to everyone else. Let p(x) be a proposition that means that doing x is a violation of someone's expectation of privacy. Some people seem to assume that (not p(x)) and (not p(y)) implies that not p(x union y). In other words, the assumption is that if x is not a violation of someone's expectation of privacy, and doing y is not a violation of someone's expectation of privacy, then doing both x and y is also not a violation of someone's expectation of privacy. However, the 'mosaic theory' suggests that the above assumption is not valid - doing x and y individually might be perfectly reasonable, but doing both could be a violation of someone's expectation of privacy.