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Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in LA Are Under Investigation
- Houshalter 13y agoI don't see how a license plate camera is any different than a regular surveillance camera. It's even less invasive since it only records license plates and presumably deletes the rest of the recording.
- kaeluka 13y agoIt reads the number and allows to construct a much larger story about what people are doing. Your "less invasive" point is wrong, even if what you 'presume' is correct.
- res0nat0r 13y agoDriving around in public with a big id number associated directly with you has never been considered private.
- yardie 13y agoThere is a private and there is privacy. Walking around outside is not considered private. Following someone in public is considered stalking and is illegal. You can do things in public and still claim some semblance of privacy.
- vonmoltke 13y ago> Following someone in public is considered stalking and is illegal. Actually, simply following someone around in public is not stalking and not illegal in itself. Private investigators, process servers, and repo men do this all the time.[1] Stalking requires some sort of contact, direct or indirect (e.g., making your presence known). [1] Regardless of your opinion of those trades and the people who ply them, their activities are legal.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yardie 13y agoAll of those professions are licensed and bonded so they are supposed to know where that legal cliff occurs and avoid going over it. Your average layman most likely doesn't know the boundary between completely public and public privacy.
- talmand 13y agoSo, let's say I picked a random person on the street, followed them around all day in public, do not intrude on their space or enter premises where I'm not allowed. I'm not licensed nor bonded in any way of any profession. What am I to be charged with exactly?
- HarryHirsch 13y agoI wish there were something that you could be charged with. If someone is charged with something that's society's verdict that something pushes the boundaries of what's acceptable and a judge needs to look at it. Seriously, following around a random human all day, what does that do for him except push boundaries? Also: collecting data on a human by a human does not scale. Large-scale automated data collection on the other hand takes on a wholly different character. Let's say someone became your political adversary fifteen years from now and you don't know it today because he is in college. You needed to dig up dirt on him, and you find out that while in college he was a prolific consumer of "My Little Pony" porn. Automation makes such a scenario possible. Without it you would have to send staffers through archives, and that's only worth it for the biggest targets.
- talmand 13y agoI'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just trying to point that, in most cases, it is legal to follow someone around regardless of whether you have a form of license provided by the government.
- slavak 13y agoYou would be right if most regular surveillance cameras were continuously running face-recognition software and had access to a vast database linking faces to identities. And the day this happens might not be that far off. As it stands for now, the privacy implications of regular surveillance cameras are limited by storage and the computing & manpower needed to analyze every frame. It's pretty certain your local police department isn't storing every frame recorded by area highway cameras for several years back; they are doing that for license plate readers, though.
- Houshalter 13y agoTrue but that's just a matter of technology to search the data. The data itself is fine. So if you forced police to manually go through the list of license plates every camera recorded, and find the one they want, that would be ok? But if they made a script to do the exact same thing automatically, it's illegal?
- StavrosK 13y agoYes.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- UweSchmidt 13y agoAutomation is the game changer. Long term data storage, new algorithms, combining databases, new algorithms that find out stuff etc. lead to huge changes that must be taken into account when designing systems. Leave the house with the zipper down on Monday. Have a silly argument with a neighbor on Friday. Isolated incidents that will end up in the "Worst of Houshalter" - file, either available for everyone, or just a group of decisionmakers. Am I seeing this right, or am I exaggerating?
- Houshalter 13y agoMy point is it's the same thing, just faster/cheaper. Perhaps it should be banned or controlled. But calling it unconstitutional is a stretch I think. If that's the case, regular "dumb" surveillance cameras should be too.
- Shivetya 13y agoI don't see it as different than a cop. It is doing exactly what an officer can do, from the position of a government vehicle, and therefor should be treated as an extension of the agency or as an officer. If its legal for an officer to run every plate he sees then let the computer do it. Otherwise stop it, a computer is no different a tool than a dog.
- scintill76 13y agoI have been thinking about this lately. I see your point and it's hard to argue with, but I think there is a line somewhere where the nature of the surveillance changes because of the scale. We've got a lot of legislation and jurisprudence that is probably implicitly based on the assumption that not every corner has a cop sitting there watching everyone 24/7, and that constrains the potential for abuse a bit. Crank it up to virtual, unsleeping cops everywhere, always, collecting and storing all information without regard to active cases, and it gets out of hand. Maybe we should re-examine the analogy -- are computers with perfect vision, that never look away, and perfectly record any observation they are able to make, really comparable to cops? Are the resulting huge bodies of data that can be retroactively searched, really comparable to anything that existed before? This is a half-developed thought admittedly; I'm not sure it's a good argument, or what should be done.
- danielweber 13y agoWhile this sounds silly to the layman, what does this mean to lawyers? Is "under investigation" a term of art?
- ipsin 13y agoI can't speak to the legal phrasing, but I have filed a FOIA act request to LA County Sheriffs myself, and one code they site is CA 6254(f), which exempts "(f) Records of complaints to, or investigations conducted by, records of intelligence information or security procedures of [cops]" "intelligence information" is essentially things like files on suspected gang members. The contention seems to be that this is intelligence information on all drivers, and to that extent, all drivers are under suspicion of "everything".
- omh 13y agoThe London Congestion Charging scheme is an interesting example of this. There is a network of number plate recognition cameras to enforce the congestion charge. But there were initially assurances that this wouldn't lead to a blanket database for policing, they can just request particular images. Pretty rapidly there was an exception for "national security" purposes, and more recently the mayor has proposed giving the police full access to the camera network[1]. [1] http://www.london.gov.uk/media/mayor-press-releases/2014/02/mayor-to-use-road-cameras-to-deliver-crime-fighting-boost-for http://www.london.gov.uk/media/mayor-press-releases/2014/02/...
- Silhouette 13y agoI've picked up on this theme in my reply to another post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435043
- sdoering 13y agoSame goes here in Germany, where the trucks have to pay a highway toll. When this system was installed, every politician promised that the data would only be used for collecting the toll. Nowadays every license-plate is scanned and police in most federal states have access.
- chopin 13y agoDo you have a citation for this? I'm genuinely interested as last year the police cleared a case where they had to install their own scanners as they weren't allowed to use toll collect data.
- sentenza 13y agoAnother data point: Toll Collect in Germany. A fee is collected from Trucks for using the Autobahn, with compliance being monitored via plate-scanning cameras on all Autobahnen. We were assured that the data for cars would not be used for policing, even though it exists (the system scans all plates and only later finds out whether or not the plate belongs to a truck). The data in the system is legally protected and cannot be used by the police. In the ten years that have passed, "security politicians" have been relentlessly hammering this restriction in the hope that it will fall[1]. So far they haven't been successful, but who knows what the future brings. You can be certain they won't stop to try. [1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLKW-Maut_in_Deutschland%23.C3.9Cberwachung_des_Autobahnverkehrs http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...
- mixmastamyk 13y agoA shame I won't be in LA this month to support the petition.
- megablast 13y agoI believe that people have the right to privacy, but I don't believe that cars have that right. Cars are too dangerous to not be tracked.
- MrUnknown 13y agoGood things those cars don't have passengers that rarely change. It's an invasion of the privacy of the occupants of the car, not the car itself.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- oftenwrong 13y agoPolice cars should be tracked too. The police often drive recklessly in my area even when not responding to an emergency. If their cars were tracked, it might put an end to that behaviour.
- atom-morgan 13y agoAgreed. They're on their cell phone/laptop. Or they just randomly turn on their siren, burn down the road real fast, and shut it off for no apparent reason. I've seen this many times.
- jessaustin 13y agoIdeally a database might be maintained of every time the lights/sirens are operated. Then different officers could be compared, location or time trends could be noticed, operation could be associated with incident reports, etc.
- Silhouette 13y agoCars are too dangerous to not be tracked. I used to think a lot of things were justified, because on balance they would help to protect innocent people against relatively minor illegal activities, and while they could theoretically be used for major abuses by governments no democratically elected administration would ever get away with doing it. Many of those had to do with balancing everyone being accountable under the law with anonymity and privacy. Unlike some people, I prefer to learn the lessons of history and change my views when the evidence warrants, and I am increasingly of the view that the democratic accountability of our governments is far too weak and the price of trusting governments with the power afforded by a surveillance state is far too high to pay for some modest benefits. A case in point: 'omh mentioned the London Congestion Charge in another post to this discussion, linking to news that (contrary to clear assurances given when the cameras were rolled out) the London mayor now wants to give police direct access to the cameras. Now, to be fair, this isn't an absurd idea: no doubt these cameras do help to catch some people who are trying to escape justice after breaking the law (they are careful to cite examples of this) and reportedly this was in the Mayor's manifesto at the last election so it does have some degree of democratic mandate. Of course, there have also been stories where the system has gone horribly wrong and incorrectly fined people[1], or just not been understood and penalised people who were trying to behave reasonably and do the right thing[2]. Given that the way our court system works means that it can be prohibitively expensive to challenge automated penalty notices issued by such systems if you live a long way away and were just visiting (assuming you really were ever there in the first place) I have significant reservations about how easy this kind of "enforcement" becomes under a surveillance state, and whether even the genuine benefits of better enforcement against minor offenders are enough to justify such schemes, which makes me even less trusting of the long-term motivations of those involved. [1] I can't immediately find a link, but the one I most remember was an elderly gentlemen who lived in the north of England and rarely if ever visited London any more, yet who wound up getting many fines sent to him, presumably because someone cloned his plates. [2] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/23/congestion-charge-wrong-way http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/23/congesti...
- hippoman 13y agoAny private person can collect license plate data with a computer too. Surely that's not illegal? Imagine thousands of hobbyists doing this and building a database of when and where cars are moving around the city. If this data collection is only allowed on "small scales" but when people combine or publish their records it becomes illegal for the group (but not the individual members?), that would become a pretty hairy legal gray area. Also cars are a massive cause of death and heavily used in violent crimes so it can actually be useful to track them, unlike trying to catch near-non-existant terrorists.
- Shivetya 13y agoWe already have people doing this. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/private-firms-argue-first-amendment-right-to-collect-license-plate-data/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/private-firms-arg...
- hippoman 13y agoWherever this is legal for private companies (seemingly in a state of flux now) it has to be legal for the government too.
- coldpie 13y agoEr, no. We don't allow the government to censor speech, but Youtube sure as hell can silence me for being a dick. This is because we give the government an exclusive license on force.
- jasomill 13y agoYouTube sure as hell can't silence you, other than by refusing to host your content on its servers, and federal, state, and local governments can exercise similar control over content hosted on government servers.
- fluidcruft 13y agoCongress has much more freedom/power to pass laws limiting the operation of the Executive than it has over private activities. This is part of the reason all sorts of government surveillance is structured as private companies that curate data with the goal of providing it to the Government. Companies are much more free to generate whatever databases they like, however they want. Government use then falls under the vague category of accessing "business records" which Congress ultimately doesn't seem to regulate much (except perhaps for medical records and wiretapping).
- mattmanser 13y agoThis is the erosion of privacy by public anonymity. Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest? Having a barcode on all our cars is turning out to be very bad for civil liberties now there's all this auto-recognition software coming in to play. Similar to another discussion[1], the problem has arisen because it is now possible to collate this information to make up detailed map of a person's life whenever a malicious actor wants. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7427562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7427562
- Silhouette 13y agoIs it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest? Judging by the number of people who go screaming past me when I'm driving near London, and how they set off speed cameras all over the place with no apparent concern, I am assuming that plenty of people already did remove their own number plates and install clones of someone else's, though possibly not for quite such ethical purposes as you mentioned.
- Crito 13y agoDo camera tickets count against your license in any way in London, or is the punishment limited to only monetary fines? It may be the case that the cameras, if limited to only giving fines and not "points" (or the equivalent) on your license, do little more than create a two-tiered system: poor people who cannot speed, and rich people who are free to speed if they are willing to pay a token 'speeding tax'.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rbanffy 13y agoMaybe the best solution is to create a rule that mandates publishing of all data police has access to. If that were the case, police and politicians could be tracked by any concerned citizen, their behavior analyzed and publicly debated, every action publicly questioned.
- SCdF 13y agoYour solution to your concern that some people (the police) have access to data that tracks your whereabouts it to give everyone access to track your whereabouts?
- freehunter 13y agoThere would hopefully be a huge backlash against this collection once people are acutely aware of what the police are seeing.
- pigeons 13y agoexcept there never is. no one ever cares.
- rbanffy 13y agoI propose ending asymmetry. If everyone has access to everything (as well as access to logs of who accesses what) everyone has exactly the same problem and feels exactly the same pains.
- maxerickson 13y agoMiddle ground is possible. Allow anyone access to the records the police are keeping on them. Make exceptions under the supervision of a judge (i.e., still allow adversarial investigations...). The idea would be that this still creates a lot of opportunity for people to notice they don't like what the police are up to.
- rbanffy 13y ago
- njharman 13y agoI'd not be against this if the data was 100% free and public and had no exceptions for cops, judged, politicians or any other privileged class. But, of course that would never happen. Cops, judges, politicians want protection from retaliation and etc. Well so fucking do the rest of us.
- throwaway7767 13y agoUgh. So you're willing to give up your privacy as long as others do so as well? Sounds like the "utopia" described by David Brin et al. Count me out of that future society. My desire for privacy is not affected by others desire for same. EDIT: I also think public servants, including cops and judges, absolutely deserve privacy. It's just that privacy does not apply to actions taken on the job or in the capacity of a public servant.
- nitrogen 13y agoI think the parent comment's idea is that a bad law that affects powerful people will get repealed.
- throwaway7767 13y agoThat was not my reading based on the first line. But if so, I agree with the sentiment. But this idea that all this surveillance-state stuff would actually be great if only we could all have access to the data is quite common in the tech community and here on HN. Books have been written on the subject. I vehemently disagree with this outlook, hence my comment.
- Blackavar 13y agoI don't personally think it's a great outcome - in fact I think it's a pretty bad one. However, I do think that that the outcome of universal access to surveillance is the best one that has any slim likelihood at all of coming to pass - all of the other actually possible outcomes are worse.
- BrownBuffalo 13y agoI'm wondering if covering your plate to obscure it from view to protect your privacy is now a defense tactic that might play out in court to unleverage this program. What's interesting is here in NYS the Cuomo has instituted revokation of driving rights for tax / toll evasion. Intersting tactic, although unrelated. It bands together the parts of the state government in certain ways to give rights to some but take away rights to another. shrug - neat article either way.
- joezydeco 13y agopukingmonkey's presentation at DEFCON 21 did a nice bit about what you can and can't do to obscure your plate information from ALPRs. The entire presentation is a great read and everyone checking out this thread should at least scan it: https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/Pukingmonkey/DEFCON-21-Pukingmonkey-The-Road-Less-Surreptitiously-Traveled-Updated.pdf https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/... His little ALPR detectors are fun as well.
- harrystone 13y agoI try to avoid using the words 'always' and 'never.' I agree with the EFF but the government is never going to give up that kind of power.
- izzydata 13y agoGuess I'll have to start doing all my organized crime on bicycles. They will never see it coming.
- talmand 13y agoThen they'll require plates for bicycles. You'll start using skateboards. They'll require plates for skateboards. You'll start doing it on foot. They'll require us to wear hats with our number printed front and back. I would prefer you use fake plates while committing your organized crime so that we don't slip further down that slope.
- batoure 13y agoSegway... Thy time has come!!
- lotsofmangos 13y agoLondon already has this.
- tmp123444 13y agoSomeday we will get speeding tickets for being flashed in two different places based on the time it took us to travel the distance.
- danans 13y agoI think this used to happen a long time ago on the Ohio turnpike. They'd look at the time printed on your ticket when you entered compared to the time you got off, along with the distance between the two points. Either that or it was a tall tale spun by my uncle to teach me how to calculate average velocity.
- sscalia 13y agoThis is already deployed in Europe, and the UK.
- dragonwriter 13y agoAnd, in any case, isn't much different than automated radar + photo tickets that have been implemented in some places in the US.
- codfrantic 13y agoTrue, some highways in the Netherlands already use a system like this. Worst part is, in a stretch of road with for instance 15 camera's . they won't take the average speed between camera 0 and 14, they'll fine you for the most expensive one. So: if you average 100 Km/h from 0-14, and average 115 Km/h from 0-5, and average 117 Km/h from 8-9. You get a fine for the 117 km/h
- nickmccann 13y agoAnyone familiar with license plate rules in California? I haven't put a license plate on my car for 10 years. I've been given a "fix it" ticket, but nothing worse. Am I just getting nice officers or is that the full extent of what the officers can do? (The car is always registered with insurance)
- koenigdavidmj 13y agoSome departments treat that as a presumption that you stole the car you're driving, so there is a chance that you will be greeted by the business end of a twitchy officer's Glock.
- jessaustin 13y agoThe whole 2.5 years I lived in California, I left my (eventually expired) old state's plates on my car. I didn't drive more than once a week (to go snowboarding or something else unbikeable), but I never got pulled over.
- sscalia 13y agoThe answer is simple: keep a late model car, don't put on your license plates, and leave the dealer "paper" plate in the frame, and the "happy sticker" Temp DMV reg in the window. Keep your car clean. I haven't had a license plate on my car in 4 years. I'll never have one.
- evo_9 13y agoI'm wondering if it's legal to obscure your license plate to prevent them from tracking you, similar to how people wear masks that look like your face is blurred out to prevent facial recognition? I'm sure cops wouldn't like it if they happened to be behind you; in an ideal world it would be something you could control with a flip of a switch. Edit: I worded this poorly - surely it's illegal, I was more wondering how much fun it would be to f with the man like that, but I forget that people these days lack the 'fuck with the man' gene that was so prevalent in the 60's. I think people need to take more LSD or something.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> I'm wondering if it's legal to obscure your license plate No, not only can you not act to conceal them, you have a positive obligation to actively keep them readable. See, California Vehicle Code Section 5201(a): "License plates [...] shall be maintained in a condition so as to be clearly legible. [...]"
- aestra 13y agoRight. Not so relevant in California, but when it snows you have an obligation to clean the snow off your license plate!!
- aestra 13y agoAbsolutely not!!! This should be pretty obvious, but here's the law: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d03/vc5201.htm https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d03/vc5201.htm 5201. (a) License plates shall at all times be securely fastened to the vehicle for which they are issued so as to prevent the plates from swinging, shall be mounted in a position so as to be clearly visible, and so that the characters are upright and display from left to right, and shall be maintained in a condition so as to be clearly legible. The rear license plate shall be mounted not less than 12 inches nor more than 60 inches from the ground, and the front license plate shall be mounted not more than 60 inches from the ground... and (c) A casing, shield, frame, border, product, or other device that obstructs or impairs the reading or recognition of a license plate by an electronic device operated by state or local law enforcement, an electronic device operated in connection with a toll road, high-occupancy toll lane, toll bridge, or other toll facility, or a remote emission sensing device, as specified in Sections 44081 and 44081.6 of the Health and Safety Code, shall not be installed on, or affixed to, a vehicle.
- jefurii 13y agoTime for "exploits of a car". http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes-to-foil-euro-traffic-cameras http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-plate-hopes... https://xkcd.com/327/ https://xkcd.com/327/
- anigbrowl 13y agoThis is a bullshit headline, which is rather unworthy of the EFF. The EFF isn't seeking data on the operation of the Automatic License Plate Reader (like LAPD internal documents on how the system should be configured or the protocols for handling data), it's seeking a week's worth of output from the information gathering system - presumably with a view to pointing out how many vehicles have had their license plates recorded. The LAPD most certainly did not argue that all cars are under investigation. Rather they argued that: a) such bulk data release would include information pertaining to criminal investigations, which is privileged from release; and b) that such bulk data contains so much personally identifying information that it should not, by law, be made public. Yes, that means the LAPD has access to it and the general public doesn't; the the LAPD has institutional responsibilities and is subject to institutional oversight in a way that private actors are not. finally, c) the EFF has already been given abundant data on how the system operates in accordance with CA public records request policies. Asking for the output of the system is superfluous. This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are some indicia of criminal activity. Well, you know what they say about assumptions...our Constititution says that no warrants will issue without specific indicia. The EFF is basically arguing that the police must be blind until such time as a crime is reported; by this standard it would be illegal for an LAPD officer to observe or act on events in the street unless and until s/he had been dispatched to investigate a specific crime. In fact, police officers are entitled to observe public comings and going in search of patterns, or even to follow people on a hunch as long as they don't interfere with a person improperly, eg by searching without some probable cause. Observations are not the same thing as a search, nor do they by themselves comprise an investigation. Such observations don't interfere with Constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly; it's a long-established principle that people do not have any expectation of privacy for their movements and behavior in public, but the EFF's position appears to be that government should be forbidden from storing any data about such movements. I get that the EFF is saying that the LAPD shouldn't be able to engage in such bulk data gathering. But to claim that the LAPD considers itself to be investigating all cars in LA is twisting the department's argument into a pretzel. The EFF says: Taken to an extreme, the agencies’ arguments would allow law enforcement to conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime at some previously undetermined date in the future. If the court accepts their arguments, the agencies would then be able to hide all this data from the public. Well, no it wouldn't, but let's accept the similar premise that law enforcement would be able to conduct round-the-clock surveillance of every aspect of our public lives. The LAPD might keep that data confidential from the public, but they wouldn't be able to hide its use in a criminal case, which would be a violation of someone's civil rights.
- cratermoon 13y agoSolution: take mass transit. Oh wait, this is LA we're talking about.
- contingencies 13y agoLA's much rejected public transportation system is actually pretty good, at least in some areas. I lived in LA for a year and pretty much only used a bicycle or taxis. But the buses let you put your bike on front, and the subway system isn't bad. Not sure about that scary looking south central raised train system though... never game to try that one!
- runaway 13y agoIt's really great along a few narrowly defined routes, i.e. if you want to get from Universal to Staples Center or Downtown to Culver City. But so many shorter routes that are still extremely common (like going from Sherman Oaks to the west side) are still inexplicably difficult... EDIT: Ok maybe it can be explained. I just don't like it.