17 ms·

U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars

393 points by dctoedt 12y ago

randomname2 12y ago
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents. The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter. Officials have publicly said that they track vehicles near the border with Mexico to help fight drug cartels. What hasn’t been previously disclosed is that the DEA has spent years working to expand the database “throughout the United States,’’ according to one email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations, according to people familiar with the program, putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways. The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of government surveillance. The existence of the program and its expansion were described in interviews with current and former government officials, and in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear if any court oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering. A spokesman for Justice Department, which includes the DEA, said the program complies with federal law. “It is not new that the DEA uses the license-plate reader program to arrest criminals and stop the flow of drugs in areas of high trafficking intensity,’’ the spokesman said. Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the government’s use of license-plate readers “raises significant privacy concerns. The fact that this intrusive technology is potentially being used to expand the reach of the government’s asset-forfeiture efforts is of even greater concern.’’ The senator called for “additional accountability’’ and said Americans shouldn’t have to fear ”their locations and movements are constantly being tracked and stored in a massive government database.’’ The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program. The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads to steer police toward suspects. The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls. By 2011, the DEA had about 100 cameras feeding into the database, the documents show. On Interstate 95 in New Jersey, license-plate readers feed data to the DEA—giving law-enforcement personnel around the country the ability to search for a suspect vehicle on one of the country’s busiest highways. One undated internal document shows the program also gathers data from license-plate readers in Florida and Georgia. “Any database that collects detailed location information about Americans not suspected of crimes raises very serious privacy questions,’’ said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “It’s unconscionable that technology with such far-reaching potential would be deployed in such secrecy. People might disagree about exactly how we should use such powerful surveillance technologies, but it should be democratically decided, it shouldn’t be done in secret.’’ License-plate readers are already used in the U.S. by companies to collect debts and repossess vehicles, and by local police departments to solve crimes. In 2010, the DEA said in internal documents that the database aided in the seizure of 98 kilograms of cocaine, 8,336 kilograms of marijuana and the collection of $866,380. It also has been connected to the Amber Alert system, to help authorities find abducted children, according to people familiar with the program. One email written in 2010 said the primary purpose of the program was asset forfeiture—a controversial practice in which law-enforcement agencies seize cars, cash and other valuables from suspected criminals. The practice is increasingly coming under attack because of instances when law-enforcement officers take such assets without evidence of a crime. The document said, “…DEA has designed this program to assist with locating, identifying, and seizing bulk currency, guns, and other illicit contraband moving along the southwest border and throughout the United States. With that said, we want to insure we can collect and manage all the data and IT responsibilities that will come with the work to insure the program meets its goals, of which asset forfeiture is primary.’ A number of lawmakers have been planning to offer legislation to rein in what they call abuses of asset-forfeiture laws. The Justice Department recently announced it was ending its role in one type of asset seizure, known as “adoptions,’’ a process by which local officials take property, then have the assets adopted and sold by the federal government. Often, that allows the local agency to keep a higher percentage of the money from the seizure. The policy change doesn’t affect the bulk of asset seizures in the U.S. The national vehicle database program was launched in 2008 and opened to participating state and local authorities a year later. The initial focus was on tracking cars moving on or near the Southwest border, in order to follow the movements of drugs and drug money, according to officials and documents. Requests to search the database are handled by the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas, which is known as EPIC in law enforcement circles. EPIC is staffed around the clock to both take in and send out information about “hits’’ on requested license plates. The effort began in border states like Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas, but the goal has always been expansion, according to current and former federal officials and documents. Officials wouldn’t say how many other states are now feeding data into the system, citing concerns that disclosing such information could help criminals avoid detection. The federal program hasn’t always been embraced by states. At a 2012 hearing, Utah lawmakers balked when DEA officials sought to have license-plate readers in the state feed into the database—one of the few times the agency has provided even limited facts about the program. That same year, a DEA official made a general reference to the program at a congressional field hearing about the Southwest border, saying it was built to monitor and target vehicles used to transport bulk cash and other contraband. Under questioning from Utah lawmakers, the agency said the program began with an effort to track drug shipments on the Southwest border, and the government wanted to add monitors on major drug-trafficking routes like Utah’s Interstate 15, in order to hunt a wide array of criminals. That alarmed privacy advocates, who noted at the time that the DEA’s map of major drug routes included most of the national highway system. The agency has reduced the time it holds the data from two years to 3 months, according to a Justice Department spokesman. The EPIC database allows any police agency that participates to quickly search records of many states for information about a vehicle. One May 2010 redacted email says: "Anyone can request information from our [license-plate reader] program, federal, state, or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user.…’’ The data are also shared with U.S. border officials, according to an undated memorandum of understanding between the DEA and Customs and Border Protection officials. That document shows the two agencies specifically said that lawmakers might never specifically fund the work, stating: “this in no way implies that Congress will appropriate funds for such expenditures.’’ The disclosure of the DEA’s license-plate reader database comes on the heels of other revelations in recent months about the Justice Department, as well as the agencies it runs, gathering data about innocent Americans as it searches for criminals. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Marshals Service flies planes carrying devices that mimic cellphone towers in order to scan the identifying information of Americans’ phones as it searches for criminal suspects and fugitives. Justice Department officials have said the program is legal. Earlier this month, the DEA filed court documents indicating that for more than a decade it had gathered the phone records of Americans calling foreign countries, without judicial oversight, to sift through that data looking for drug suspects. That program was canceled in 2013.
godgod 12y ago
Damn paywall. NSA, could you please open this up for me. Signed, Your humble tax paying slave.
sehugg 12y ago
FWIW, you can search for the headline on Google News and read the full article from there.
ihsw 12y ago
> The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls. Much to the chagrin of our rent-seeking overlords, whom see speed traps and red-light cameras as a means of revenue generation rather than safety measure.
- girvo 12y ago
  Speed traps I'll grant you, but how are red light cameras not a safety measure?
  - robotkilla 12y ago
    Safety measure or not, red light cameras are a joke. Chicago's red light cam program is a failure. Edit: I have to agree with the other commenter though - red light cams were meant to bring in revenue to the city of Chicago. They bought into the program by outsourcing to a third party company (big shock, most of chicago looks like the poster child for a corporation owned city). They're not making the money they expected on the deal though.
  - davepage 12y ago
    The revenue stream tempts governments to reduce the yellow interval, which then decreases safety: http://www.copradar.com/redlight/ http://www.copradar.com/redlight/
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    The part about how they are a complete scam? http://blog.motorists.org/illinois-red-light-cameras-scam/ http://blog.motorists.org/illinois-red-light-cameras-scam/
  - sroerick 12y ago
    I first learned about automobile tracking from red light cameras here in Montana. A company called RedFlex installed cameras here. They subsidized the installation cost in exchange for a cut of tickets. RedFlex admitted to bribing city officials to get them to install cameras.
antimora 12y ago
Here is a link that avoids the paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fu-s-spies-on-millions-of-cars-1422314779&ei=ENrGVKPPEaTCywO8zYC4CA&usg=AFQjCNEAugi1jX2p0zZSI8CzfsI9hhH4Dg&sig2=TeH4Gl9aROV2wBWb-Dzf4Q&bvm=bv.84349003,d.bGQ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- brudgers 12y ago
  Not for me.
- osconfused 12y ago
  this link is non functional for me on Mac Chrome.
- solocshaw 12y ago
  This does not work for me.
- msoad 12y ago
  This link is safer to say "always works" https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars Basically you can Google the title and click on first result to see it without limitations of a paywall
  - zaroth 12y ago
    Cool, HN is listed as the 2nd "News" result for that query.
- coding4all 12y ago
  You can use ref control to make it look like your the Google news bot https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ .
  - stingraycharles 12y ago
stegosaurus 12y ago
Same deal in the UK with the national ANPR system (Automatic Number Plate Recognition). Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured/untaxed drivers on the roads. Don't want to sit around in databases? Well, here's a nice list of just a few of the things you can't have: Bank account; Car/motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer; Credit/debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few years) Unless of course you're a criminal, in which case you can handily avoid a lot of this! I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand. We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone. If blanket video coverage of public areas is fine, why not blanket audio coverage? Add in facial and audio recognition. Now consider you're running about with a microphone webcam combo in your pocket, the power and battery life of which will only increase. I hate it with every ounce of my being, but I can't see a way out here. I can't see the 'line', any more.
- visarga 12y ago
  > I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand. We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone. True. Network effects negate the advantages of encryption. You can't use TOR to hide when posting to FB, in other words.
- woodman 12y ago
  There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would say the harm is the loss of privacy, but I disagree. I believe the harm is further consolidation of power by those with the means to abuse it. So I would advocate for a democratization of all these spy programs. If the DEA can spy on us, we should be able to spy on the DEA. Any funding request for government programs should include a documented method of direct public access (not FOIA, operator level). It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government possessed. The memory of tyrannical governance was fresh. Information is no different, if the government posses this information - so should the citizens.
jakeogh 12y ago
How long until the propaganda about "e-plates" starts?
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
So the mailman remembers everyone you've ever sent or received mail with. The DOJ remembers every time your car pulls in front of a police vehicle with a LPR. The NSA is tracking what people you call, when, how long, and where you are when you call them. For the life of me I do not understand why both major parties aren't having conniption fits right now. Are these the same parties that, on a bipartisan basis, told Nixon to get lost? Shut down some of the intelligence community's overreach in the 70s? Impeached a U.S. President for lying under oath? Both parties over the previous 50 years have taken strong stands -- both separately and together -- in regards to strong oversight of privacy and freedom. Would Reagan have put up with this? Carter? Ike? JFK? It's inconceivable. During those times, yes, there was plenty of illegal mucking around -- but wholesale bulldozing of citizen's privacy? It's something from a dystopian sci-fi novel of just 15 years ago. Surely this has to come up there somewhere near as important as all those other political scandals. Surely it would be a popular measure. But instead, what I'm seeing is somebody trying to introduce a bill to nibble around the edges, then others adding amendments so that the bill to reduce NSA spying actually increases it. It's like they're being incentivized to go in exactly the wrong direction. It just doesn't make sense to me. There is some missing piece to this puzzle. When I see guys like Hayden, with his cocky attitude; there's something he knows that I don't know, and it's not that AQ is some kind of clear and present danger. It's something else. (Sorry to sound so mysterious. I'm truly at a loss.)
- stainednapkin 12y ago
  I think it's a phenomenon worth examining. There isn't a simple answer. Part of it must be changes in American culture. What those changes are is debatable.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  The "problem" is that it is increasingly easy to assemble these databases and to update them in real time. If a government agency isn't doing it, a corporation could be (and some are, for certain pieces of data), and soon (if not now) an individual or loose collection of individuals could achieve nearly the same results. We might need to embrace it, make everything transparent and collaborative, and figure out how to make use of the information to create a state that is better than what currently exists.
javajosh 12y ago
The USA is automatically photographing millions of cars and putting the data in a giant database used by all law-enforcement. It reads like the premise of a dystopian science fiction novel. I can't help but guess that the reaction is going to be a big shoulder shrug, because, to but it bluntly, things aren't that bad for most people. If you are white, have a good job, follow the law, and make sure to richly kiss ass if and when you come in contact with the police, life in the USA is rich, full; it's like heaven. If I have heaven, am I going to risk it just because of some law enforcement techniques which are only questionable in the abstract?
- DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  You may be on to something there. I wonder, however, how people are going to reconcile what the government is doing now with all of those previous works of fiction? It's going to have to add up to something -- a narrative must be formed. Were those just the halcyon days of yore? And now we've somehow "grown up" to face the realities of a scary world? Even more troubling, people are people, and when this is seriously abused -- and my money says it'll happen within the next 20 years -- how are people going to explain it all away? I am left with the troubling thought that we are creating for ourselves a dystopian society never dreamed of even by sci-fi writers. Rome had nothing on this, nor does North Korea. The attention a known dissident would receive in former East Germany is a cakewalk compared to the kind of surveillance we're giving each citizen who's guilty of nothing. The only thing we're waiting for is the logical and natural corruption of large systems of people to take place.
  - jkaunisv1 12y ago
    Um, I really don't think it's at East German Stasi-levels. Known dissidents were gaslighted, had objects in their homes moved around, and had informants reporting on them in their apartment buildings/family/workplace. It's bad, it's dystopian, but it doesn't seem to be THAT bad yet.
    - DanielBMarkham 12y ago
      My comment was limited to data collection only. Apologies if I appear to have one overstated my case. My hair caught on fire for a minute there.
treelovinhippie 12y ago
It's happening in Australia too. I spoke to a CEO of a company here a few years ago which provides software and services to the government and RTA/RMS. There are cameras setup under overpasses which automatically take photos of each individual car and it's passengers. In this particular incident their company was tasked with processing all of those photos to identify/track a guy who had murdered his wife and was on the run. Sure enough the system had snapped a pic of him driving, with his dead wife in the passenger seat. A good use of the tech in that scenario, but I'm sure it's being used for mass surveillance as well.
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  Which murder case was this in particular? Do you have a link to the news article?
  - treelovinhippie 12y ago
    No idea sorry. I was just chatting with this CEO at a networking event back sometime in 2011-2012. I'd been playing with the face.com api for facial recognition and he was interested in using it to automatically blur faces in these photos of car passengers. Being told that those cameras under overpasses were taking and storing photos of every car that passes by really stuck with me.
- Sevrene 12y ago
  A few years ago NSW Police had several cars fitted with Automatic number plate recognition and after a year of use they already had read more license plates than people living in that state. I don't necessarily mind police using this for their benefit, but not long ago we didn't have all this technology and information so easily available. So there must be oversights and appropriate usage, or we are just giving them unfettered access. Warrants should have to be obtained to get this sort of information, I think.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can change your plates but how often do you change your tires? [1] http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880 http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880
- IvyMike 12y ago
  I dunno if I'm gonna change my tires but I imagine if I didn't want to be tracked it would be not too difficult to smash/electrocute/burn the tags into nonfunctionality.
  - delbel 12y ago
    Its extremely unfortunate that if you were to use an arc welder near your tires, the RFID tag may no longer work properly.
    - xenophonf 12y ago
      There's a good chance the tire will no longer work properly, too!
  - zevyoura 12y ago
    How do you do that if they're embedded in the rubber material?
    - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g
- ryan-allen 12y ago
  Tyres have RFID tags in them??! What an unusual thing to put RFID tags in. I wonder what other common items could have tags in them that people are generally unaware of. I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.
kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
I've been mulling ideas to defeat ANPR without breaking state laws. The simplest may be to use a tilted/warped surrounding frame that interferes with the skew correction of the captured plate. Another thought is to project bright infrared patterns to disrupt unfiltered B&W cameras.
- stegosaurus 12y ago
  In the UK, some police cars have the technology integrated so that officers can pursue uninsured drivers. I suspect if your plate failed to read you may well end up being pulled over - not sure on the punishment. The obvious solution of using another car's plate is defeated by noticing that a car appears to be driving on opposite ends of the country simultaneously :D
- SkyMarshal 12y ago
  Another way is travel by other means, eg taxi, bus, subway, train, bike, etc.
  - stegosaurus 12y ago
    UK perspective again, though may be useful for a possible glimpse into the future: In London, cash is no longer accepted on the bus. Same deal for subways. The smart card (Oyster) is purchasable without ID but not disposable without showing ID and a deposit is charged. Paper travelcards are available at much higher cost per journey. Smaller towns have cash bus tickets :) Taxi may be viable but it's a matter of chaffing; are you hailing, or calling a private hire company/using Uber? The former is far more expensive here and also not really viable in many cities. The train is also drastically more expensive unless you buy advance tickets online (on the day tickets can be obscene, hundreds of pounds for a 200 mile journey). Bicycle is viable, for now. Basically, most methods are trackable, there just might be levels of indirection. Buying a ticket online or using a bank card is just an algorithm away from entering the 'log where you are' zone. But then, we're all carrying cellphones right? :D
- josaka 12y ago
  Custom plates: 8BB8 8BB8.
oaf357 12y ago
Because DMV databases weren't enough? No... We need to know where all those cars are. Come on.
morgante 12y ago
I kind of assumed this technology had always existed. Nearly every crime movie I've ever watched included a scene where they mentioned picking up the criminal's plates on the highway.
iamdanfox 12y ago
I had thought that ALPR data would be quite a very tool for detectives, but a related article [1] is quite disparaging about their use in Vermont. Apparently in 2013, for a ~$1m investment, 106 queries were made resulting in just 3 cases of useful information. I think combining each states' databases as described in the WSJ will actually improve this number and is actually a prudent decision. 1: http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-privacy-concerns-do-they-help-police http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-pri...
marknutter 12y ago
What about motorcycles?
harry8 12y ago
Theory: This is actual news, people are shocked. So we haven't got apologists because they'll just look ridiculous. The follow up stories will be full of apologists once that shock wears off. It's just sad to watch the utterly relentless trashing of the constitution and the rule of law. Get out and vote! (for either another Clinton v another Bush?)
dnm 12y ago
I first encountered these checkpoints in New Mexico and Texas this summer. They're really kind of interesting. It looks like a truck weigh station, except the interstate lanes are closed and everyone is forced to exit. They stop everyone at the checkpoint. They have some kind of terminal under a hood, but the officer (C&BP) looked at the terminal, asked me what country I'm from (USA) and sent me on my way (I'm white, and so were all of my passengers). The license reader cameras were obvious and about 4 car lengths from the terminal/stop sign. There's a separate line for trucks and busses. I was stunned the first time I saw one driving from Albuquerque to Las Cruces south on I-25/US-85. It was only on the northbound side, about 40 miles north of Las Cruces. It was obvious what it was. I encountered others on US-70 and I-10 in TX. Same drill at every one. I was never stopped by the officer for more than 15 seconds.
- desdiv 12y ago
  What you encountered was probably a C&BP interior checkpoint[0]. Whenever DHS apologists use the "air travel is a privilege, not a right" line, this is what I point them to. Between random C&BP highway checkpoints and TSA patrols on Amtrak, harassment-free travel of any form seems to be a privilege nowadays. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_int...
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    Basically anything you couldn't do in 1700s is a priveledge. Driving -- privelage, flying -- priveledge, getting on Amtrak -- they have TSA there too now. "Arms" are hunting shotguns, pistols. Can't own fully automatic ones, or rocket launchers or fighter planes. Drones will be illegal soon as well probably. Basically you can get on your horse and start traveling through the country roads and woods, besides that you need to have "papers".
  - javert 12y ago
    In your case I'm preaching to the choir, but this might help: There is only one fundamental right, and it is to not have force initiated against you. (Why? Simply because that is in the self-interest of each rational adult human.) Ergo, the government cannot properly stop you from air travel, moving about freely in the country, etc.
deadfall 12y ago
Just last night I watched an older episode of Jay Leno's Garage and they brought in a few of California Highway Patrol (CHP) cars to show off. The officer explains that new cars are equipped with a license plate scanner find wanted people.
- whoopdedo 12y ago
  Something I've learned from listening to police scanners is the majority of warrants are for unpaid traffic tickets and guys behind on alimony.
pokstad 12y ago
Get rid of license plates. They can also be used by private parties to track car movements. They aren't safe anymore in this time and age. Once someone builds a proof of concept of a real time car tracker using crowd sourced license plate trackers, we'll realize that.
- jessriedel 12y ago
  That really only buys you a couple of years, if any. If they can do face recognition, they can do car recognition. Just determine the make/model/year/color/trim, and then look for some individually identifiable marks, scratches, color imperfections, tire type, etc.
  - fru2013 12y ago
    It doesn't stop there. How about high-def video feeds of the entire planet via satellite? With heat tracking/infrared? Combine that with smart tracking software and NSA-level eavesdropping and there would be no escape. Personally, I think we'll have the technological capability to do this within a couple decades.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    Just buy a silver camry. Let them try to track them all.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  So long as cars are uniquely identifiable, car movements can be tracked. Cars will never be allowed to not be uniquely identifiable, for hopefully-obvious reasons that have nothing to do with Big Brother.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    They don't have to be uniquely identifiable to everyone. A better system would be an rfid tag that recorded each access, thus allowing the owner to know when they were tracked.
nl 12y ago
This can cut both ways. Back in the early 2000's, plane spotters identified CIA planes used for extraordinary rendition by recoding registration numbers and locations. Maybe David Brin was right after all[2]. Automatic license plate scanning is trivial now. It would be pretty easy for anyone to build a node of a system like this. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1 http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
- elihu 12y ago
  The weird thing about license plate scanning is that basically anyone could do it, and there's no obvious way to stop it. Any group of ordinary citizens (including private businesses) could create a distributed network of license plate scanners by installing devices in their cars and around their houses/buildings. It would be an interesting act of protest to track the movements of powerful people, so as to compel them to take privacy more seriously.
  - nl 12y ago
    Precisely. We see the start of this with dash cams. Sure, they don't do the recognition thing, but they do decentralise surveillance. I think it's worth considering possibilities in this area as a supplement to outrage and protest.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
wahsd 12y ago
Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselves on the wrong site of the inner circle.
- crimsonalucard 12y ago
  I think it's also naive to think of the government as the "bad guy" as well. Classifying the government as bad or good is basically trying to assign a singular attribute to the aggregate actions of thousands of people in politics and government agencies. The truth is neither black or white, and extremely complicated.
  - riter 12y ago
    +bump
  - NhanH 12y ago
    It depends on whether you're classifying based on intentions or on results. When you're using the word "bad guy", it implied the intentions to be bad/evil. However, it's easy to see that a complex system can't (normally) be assigned an intention. But even if every actors within the system is acting in good faith, the emergent behaviour can still have bad result. In the case of government, it's definitely not complicated to classify the aggregate behaviour as unqualified bad (in term of result), regardless of the intention of the individuals working within the systems.
  - wickedlogic 12y ago
    Can we all agree that a minimum, they are intentionally misleading their citizens?
    - visarga 12y ago
      Not just that, but they are conducting online propaganda by fake commenting, fake news and manipulation of ranking and news feeds. And not just USA - they do it on an even larger scale in China. (here's a wiki source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party) Search keyword: "wumao" which means paid internet commentator or "public opinion molder".
knorby 12y ago
I'd rather have tracking of cars than most things. As a frequent pedestrian, cars scare me. Few common things can cause as much damage to humans and property. Would these efforts be more palatable if the goal was Vision Zero rather than the various low-output anti-terrorism efforts?
znowi 12y ago
Can we please not post links behind a paywall or that require registration?
r109 12y ago
This doesn't surprise me, use to live in Bellingham WA. There are "DOT" cameras that go from south Bellingham all the way to the Canadian border on both sides of i5. I forget how often there are, perhaps 2-5 miles? I understand that some are used for DoT cams, but I always theorized that if the lenses are good enough they could zoom in and potentially read plates. The camera's look like regular light poles, you have to be paying attention to actually see them.
awjr 12y ago
In the UK, there is something called the 'ring of steel' around Birmingham. In effect all UK motorways and most main routes have ANPR on them. I would expect as costs decline, eventually most street light systems will be 'upgraded' to have ANPR. I am surprised that a consumer ANPR solution isn't on the market.
bunkydoo 12y ago
It goes deeper than even what this article describes - a ford exec admitted last year that they put GPS in all vehicles (post 2004 i think) but they "don't release the data" not sure how much I trust that statement in today's world...
- bunkydoo 12y ago
  and thats a hidden GPS - I own a 2004 ford that apparently has this and there is no navigation interface in the vehicle.
forthefuture 12y ago
I've lived my entire life thinking that anything I do or say anywhere could be picked up by phones or cameras or gps. I can't express enough how liberating it is to accept that and move on. The idea that you should be doing anything ever that you couldn't explain to anyone watching is a fantasy to me; something so far from reality you might as well be wearing a tin foil hat.
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Congratulations on your privileged life.
  - forthefuture 12y ago
    I'd be living a lot more privileged life if I thought the government owed me privacy.
    - spacemanmatt 12y ago
      If I understand your statement correctly, you assert that on one will ever be falsely accused of a crime.
      - forthefuture 12y ago
        Funnily enough, if the entire world was recorded every second of every day it would literally be impossible to be falsely accused of a crime. This is why many states are passing laws for cops to have cameras on their glasses: it's impossible to lie if there's an uninterrupted live stream of the truth.
        scott_karana 12y ago
        > Funnily enough, if the entire world was recorded every second of every day it would literally be impossible to be falsely accused of a crime That's only true if everybody has equitable access to the recordings! Putting the keys to the castle in the hands of the people running it leads to doom.
known 12y ago
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." --Winston Churchill
stillsut 12y ago
Who would EVER approve this? Didn't the majority of the country agree this summer that police should wear cameras at all times. And the police protested this development. (Remember police brutality debate?) I'm against the license plate system, but people on this site often don't seem to appreciate there is democratic support for many of these programs.
claypoolb 12y ago
We've been hacked! According to an article in the Washington Post, we've been misled since 1961. We really do not need all those cars - its just a love affair with the "american dream". "This “love affair” was coined, in fact, during a 1961 episode of a weekly hour-long television program called the DuPont Show of the Week (sponsored, incidentally, by DuPont, which owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors at the time). The program, titled “Merrily We Roll Along,” was promoted by DuPont as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.” The show aired at a time when cars were facing steep criticism, as plans for the new interstate system threatened to destroy or disrupt neighborhoods in many U.S. cities. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/debunking-the-myth-of-the-american-love-affair-with-cars/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/d...

393 points by dctoedt 12y ago

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents. The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter. Officials have publicly said that they track vehicles near the border with Mexico to help fight drug cartels. What hasn’t been previously disclosed is that the DEA has spent years working to expand the database “throughout the United States,’’ according to one email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations, according to people familiar with the program, putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways. The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of government surveillance. The existence of the program and its expansion were described in interviews with current and former government officials, and in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear if any court oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering. A spokesman for Justice Department, which includes the DEA, said the program complies with federal law. “It is not new that the DEA uses the license-plate reader program to arrest criminals and stop the flow of drugs in areas of high trafficking intensity,’’ the spokesman said. Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the government’s use of license-plate readers “raises significant privacy concerns. The fact that this intrusive technology is potentially being used to expand the reach of the government’s asset-forfeiture efforts is of even greater concern.’’ The senator called for “additional accountability’’ and said Americans shouldn’t have to fear ”their locations and movements are constantly being tracked and stored in a massive government database.’’ The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program. The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads to steer police toward suspects. The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls. By 2011, the DEA had about 100 cameras feeding into the database, the documents show. On Interstate 95 in New Jersey, license-plate readers feed data to the DEA—giving law-enforcement personnel around the country the ability to search for a suspect vehicle on one of the country’s busiest highways. One undated internal document shows the program also gathers data from license-plate readers in Florida and Georgia. “Any database that collects detailed location information about Americans not suspected of crimes raises very serious privacy questions,’’ said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “It’s unconscionable that technology with such far-reaching potential would be deployed in such secrecy. People might disagree about exactly how we should use such powerful surveillance technologies, but it should be democratically decided, it shouldn’t be done in secret.’’ License-plate readers are already used in the U.S. by companies to collect debts and repossess vehicles, and by local police departments to solve crimes. In 2010, the DEA said in internal documents that the database aided in the seizure of 98 kilograms of cocaine, 8,336 kilograms of marijuana and the collection of $866,380. It also has been connected to the Amber Alert system, to help authorities find abducted children, according to people familiar with the program. One email written in 2010 said the primary purpose of the program was asset forfeiture—a controversial practice in which law-enforcement agencies seize cars, cash and other valuables from suspected criminals. The practice is increasingly coming under attack because of instances when law-enforcement officers take such assets without evidence of a crime. The document said, “…DEA has designed this program to assist with locating, identifying, and seizing bulk currency, guns, and other illicit contraband moving along the southwest border and throughout the United States. With that said, we want to insure we can collect and manage all the data and IT responsibilities that will come with the work to insure the program meets its goals, of which asset forfeiture is primary.’ A number of lawmakers have been planning to offer legislation to rein in what they call abuses of asset-forfeiture laws. The Justice Department recently announced it was ending its role in one type of asset seizure, known as “adoptions,’’ a process by which local officials take property, then have the assets adopted and sold by the federal government. Often, that allows the local agency to keep a higher percentage of the money from the seizure. The policy change doesn’t affect the bulk of asset seizures in the U.S. The national vehicle database program was launched in 2008 and opened to participating state and local authorities a year later. The initial focus was on tracking cars moving on or near the Southwest border, in order to follow the movements of drugs and drug money, according to officials and documents. Requests to search the database are handled by the El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas, which is known as EPIC in law enforcement circles. EPIC is staffed around the clock to both take in and send out information about “hits’’ on requested license plates. The effort began in border states like Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas, but the goal has always been expansion, according to current and former federal officials and documents. Officials wouldn’t say how many other states are now feeding data into the system, citing concerns that disclosing such information could help criminals avoid detection. The federal program hasn’t always been embraced by states. At a 2012 hearing, Utah lawmakers balked when DEA officials sought to have license-plate readers in the state feed into the database—one of the few times the agency has provided even limited facts about the program. That same year, a DEA official made a general reference to the program at a congressional field hearing about the Southwest border, saying it was built to monitor and target vehicles used to transport bulk cash and other contraband. Under questioning from Utah lawmakers, the agency said the program began with an effort to track drug shipments on the Southwest border, and the government wanted to add monitors on major drug-trafficking routes like Utah’s Interstate 15, in order to hunt a wide array of criminals. That alarmed privacy advocates, who noted at the time that the DEA’s map of major drug routes included most of the national highway system. The agency has reduced the time it holds the data from two years to 3 months, according to a Justice Department spokesman. The EPIC database allows any police agency that participates to quickly search records of many states for information about a vehicle. One May 2010 redacted email says: "Anyone can request information from our [license-plate reader] program, federal, state, or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user.…’’ The data are also shared with U.S. border officials, according to an undated memorandum of understanding between the DEA and Customs and Border Protection officials. That document shows the two agencies specifically said that lawmakers might never specifically fund the work, stating: “this in no way implies that Congress will appropriate funds for such expenditures.’’ The disclosure of the DEA’s license-plate reader database comes on the heels of other revelations in recent months about the Justice Department, as well as the agencies it runs, gathering data about innocent Americans as it searches for criminals. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Marshals Service flies planes carrying devices that mimic cellphone towers in order to scan the identifying information of Americans’ phones as it searches for criminal suspects and fugitives. Justice Department officials have said the program is legal. Earlier this month, the DEA filed court documents indicating that for more than a decade it had gathered the phone records of Americans calling foreign countries, without judicial oversight, to sift through that data looking for drug suspects. That program was canceled in 2013.

godgod 12y ago

Damn paywall. NSA, could you please open this up for me. Signed, Your humble tax paying slave.

sehugg 12y ago

FWIW, you can search for the headline on Google News and read the full article from there.

ihsw 12y ago

> The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls. Much to the chagrin of our rent-seeking overlords, whom see speed traps and red-light cameras as a means of revenue generation rather than safety measure.

girvo 12y ago
Speed traps I'll grant you, but how are red light cameras not a safety measure?
- robotkilla 12y ago
  Safety measure or not, red light cameras are a joke. Chicago's red light cam program is a failure. Edit: I have to agree with the other commenter though - red light cams were meant to bring in revenue to the city of Chicago. They bought into the program by outsourcing to a third party company (big shock, most of chicago looks like the poster child for a corporation owned city). They're not making the money they expected on the deal though.
- davepage 12y ago
  The revenue stream tempts governments to reduce the yellow interval, which then decreases safety: http://www.copradar.com/redlight/ http://www.copradar.com/redlight/
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  The part about how they are a complete scam? http://blog.motorists.org/illinois-red-light-cameras-scam/ http://blog.motorists.org/illinois-red-light-cameras-scam/
- sroerick 12y ago
  I first learned about automobile tracking from red light cameras here in Montana. A company called RedFlex installed cameras here. They subsidized the installation cost in exchange for a cut of tickets. RedFlex admitted to bribing city officials to get them to install cameras.

antimora 12y ago

Here is a link that avoids the paywall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fu-s-spies-on-millions-of-cars-1422314779&ei=ENrGVKPPEaTCywO8zYC4CA&usg=AFQjCNEAugi1jX2p0zZSI8CzfsI9hhH4Dg&sig2=TeH4Gl9aROV2wBWb-Dzf4Q&bvm=bv.84349003,d.bGQ https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

brudgers 12y ago
Not for me.
osconfused 12y ago
this link is non functional for me on Mac Chrome.
solocshaw 12y ago
This does not work for me.
msoad 12y ago
This link is safer to say "always works" https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars Basically you can Google the title and click on first result to see it without limitations of a paywall
- zaroth 12y ago
  Cool, HN is listed as the 2nd "News" result for that query.
coding4all 12y ago
You can use ref control to make it look like your the Google news bot https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refcontrol/ .
- stingraycharles 12y ago

stegosaurus 12y ago

Same deal in the UK with the national ANPR system (Automatic Number Plate Recognition). Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured/untaxed drivers on the roads. Don't want to sit around in databases? Well, here's a nice list of just a few of the things you can't have: Bank account; Car/motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer; Credit/debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few years) Unless of course you're a criminal, in which case you can handily avoid a lot of this! I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand. We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone. If blanket video coverage of public areas is fine, why not blanket audio coverage? Add in facial and audio recognition. Now consider you're running about with a microphone webcam combo in your pocket, the power and battery life of which will only increase. I hate it with every ounce of my being, but I can't see a way out here. I can't see the 'line', any more.

visarga 12y ago
> I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand. We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone. True. Network effects negate the advantages of encryption. You can't use TOR to hide when posting to FB, in other words.
woodman 12y ago
There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the harm that we would reduce? Most would say the harm is the loss of privacy, but I disagree. I believe the harm is further consolidation of power by those with the means to abuse it. So I would advocate for a democratization of all these spy programs. If the DEA can spy on us, we should be able to spy on the DEA. Any funding request for government programs should include a documented method of direct public access (not FOIA, operator level). It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government possessed. The memory of tyrannical governance was fresh. Information is no different, if the government posses this information - so should the citizens.

jakeogh 12y ago

How long until the propaganda about "e-plates" starts?

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

So the mailman remembers everyone you've ever sent or received mail with. The DOJ remembers every time your car pulls in front of a police vehicle with a LPR. The NSA is tracking what people you call, when, how long, and where you are when you call them. For the life of me I do not understand why both major parties aren't having conniption fits right now. Are these the same parties that, on a bipartisan basis, told Nixon to get lost? Shut down some of the intelligence community's overreach in the 70s? Impeached a U.S. President for lying under oath? Both parties over the previous 50 years have taken strong stands -- both separately and together -- in regards to strong oversight of privacy and freedom. Would Reagan have put up with this? Carter? Ike? JFK? It's inconceivable. During those times, yes, there was plenty of illegal mucking around -- but wholesale bulldozing of citizen's privacy? It's something from a dystopian sci-fi novel of just 15 years ago. Surely this has to come up there somewhere near as important as all those other political scandals. Surely it would be a popular measure. But instead, what I'm seeing is somebody trying to introduce a bill to nibble around the edges, then others adding amendments so that the bill to reduce NSA spying actually increases it. It's like they're being incentivized to go in exactly the wrong direction. It just doesn't make sense to me. There is some missing piece to this puzzle. When I see guys like Hayden, with his cocky attitude; there's something he knows that I don't know, and it's not that AQ is some kind of clear and present danger. It's something else. (Sorry to sound so mysterious. I'm truly at a loss.)

stainednapkin 12y ago
I think it's a phenomenon worth examining. There isn't a simple answer. Part of it must be changes in American culture. What those changes are is debatable.
deleted 12y ago
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jsprogrammer 12y ago
The "problem" is that it is increasingly easy to assemble these databases and to update them in real time. If a government agency isn't doing it, a corporation could be (and some are, for certain pieces of data), and soon (if not now) an individual or loose collection of individuals could achieve nearly the same results. We might need to embrace it, make everything transparent and collaborative, and figure out how to make use of the information to create a state that is better than what currently exists.

javajosh 12y ago

The USA is automatically photographing millions of cars and putting the data in a giant database used by all law-enforcement. It reads like the premise of a dystopian science fiction novel. I can't help but guess that the reaction is going to be a big shoulder shrug, because, to but it bluntly, things aren't that bad for most people. If you are white, have a good job, follow the law, and make sure to richly kiss ass if and when you come in contact with the police, life in the USA is rich, full; it's like heaven. If I have heaven, am I going to risk it just because of some law enforcement techniques which are only questionable in the abstract?

DanielBMarkham 12y ago
You may be on to something there. I wonder, however, how people are going to reconcile what the government is doing now with all of those previous works of fiction? It's going to have to add up to something -- a narrative must be formed. Were those just the halcyon days of yore? And now we've somehow "grown up" to face the realities of a scary world? Even more troubling, people are people, and when this is seriously abused -- and my money says it'll happen within the next 20 years -- how are people going to explain it all away? I am left with the troubling thought that we are creating for ourselves a dystopian society never dreamed of even by sci-fi writers. Rome had nothing on this, nor does North Korea. The attention a known dissident would receive in former East Germany is a cakewalk compared to the kind of surveillance we're giving each citizen who's guilty of nothing. The only thing we're waiting for is the logical and natural corruption of large systems of people to take place.
- jkaunisv1 12y ago
  Um, I really don't think it's at East German Stasi-levels. Known dissidents were gaslighted, had objects in their homes moved around, and had informants reporting on them in their apartment buildings/family/workplace. It's bad, it's dystopian, but it doesn't seem to be THAT bad yet.
  - DanielBMarkham 12y ago
    My comment was limited to data collection only. Apologies if I appear to have one overstated my case. My hair caught on fire for a minute there.

treelovinhippie 12y ago

It's happening in Australia too. I spoke to a CEO of a company here a few years ago which provides software and services to the government and RTA/RMS. There are cameras setup under overpasses which automatically take photos of each individual car and it's passengers. In this particular incident their company was tasked with processing all of those photos to identify/track a guy who had murdered his wife and was on the run. Sure enough the system had snapped a pic of him driving, with his dead wife in the passenger seat. A good use of the tech in that scenario, but I'm sure it's being used for mass surveillance as well.

ryan-allen 12y ago
Which murder case was this in particular? Do you have a link to the news article?
- treelovinhippie 12y ago
  No idea sorry. I was just chatting with this CEO at a networking event back sometime in 2011-2012. I'd been playing with the face.com api for facial recognition and he was interested in using it to automatically blur faces in these photos of car passengers. Being told that those cameras under overpasses were taking and storing photos of every car that passes by really stuck with me.
Sevrene 12y ago
A few years ago NSW Police had several cars fitted with Automatic number plate recognition and after a year of use they already had read more license plates than people living in that state. I don't necessarily mind police using this for their benefit, but not long ago we didn't have all this technology and information so easily available. So there must be oversights and appropriate usage, or we are just giving them unfettered access. Warrants should have to be obtained to get this sort of information, I think.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can change your plates but how often do you change your tires? [1] http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880 http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880

IvyMike 12y ago
I dunno if I'm gonna change my tires but I imagine if I didn't want to be tracked it would be not too difficult to smash/electrocute/burn the tags into nonfunctionality.
- delbel 12y ago
  Its extremely unfortunate that if you were to use an arc welder near your tires, the RFID tag may no longer work properly.
  - xenophonf 12y ago
    There's a good chance the tire will no longer work properly, too!
- zevyoura 12y ago
  How do you do that if they're embedded in the rubber material?
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91xkISmp2g
ryan-allen 12y ago
Tyres have RFID tags in them??! What an unusual thing to put RFID tags in. I wonder what other common items could have tags in them that people are generally unaware of. I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

I've been mulling ideas to defeat ANPR without breaking state laws. The simplest may be to use a tilted/warped surrounding frame that interferes with the skew correction of the captured plate. Another thought is to project bright infrared patterns to disrupt unfiltered B&W cameras.

stegosaurus 12y ago
In the UK, some police cars have the technology integrated so that officers can pursue uninsured drivers. I suspect if your plate failed to read you may well end up being pulled over - not sure on the punishment. The obvious solution of using another car's plate is defeated by noticing that a car appears to be driving on opposite ends of the country simultaneously :D
SkyMarshal 12y ago
Another way is travel by other means, eg taxi, bus, subway, train, bike, etc.
- stegosaurus 12y ago
  UK perspective again, though may be useful for a possible glimpse into the future: In London, cash is no longer accepted on the bus. Same deal for subways. The smart card (Oyster) is purchasable without ID but not disposable without showing ID and a deposit is charged. Paper travelcards are available at much higher cost per journey. Smaller towns have cash bus tickets :) Taxi may be viable but it's a matter of chaffing; are you hailing, or calling a private hire company/using Uber? The former is far more expensive here and also not really viable in many cities. The train is also drastically more expensive unless you buy advance tickets online (on the day tickets can be obscene, hundreds of pounds for a 200 mile journey). Bicycle is viable, for now. Basically, most methods are trackable, there just might be levels of indirection. Buying a ticket online or using a bank card is just an algorithm away from entering the 'log where you are' zone. But then, we're all carrying cellphones right? :D
josaka 12y ago
Custom plates: 8BB8 8BB8.

oaf357 12y ago

Because DMV databases weren't enough? No... We need to know where all those cars are. Come on.

morgante 12y ago

I kind of assumed this technology had always existed. Nearly every crime movie I've ever watched included a scene where they mentioned picking up the criminal's plates on the highway.

iamdanfox 12y ago

I had thought that ALPR data would be quite a very tool for detectives, but a related article [1] is quite disparaging about their use in Vermont. Apparently in 2013, for a ~$1m investment, 106 queries were made resulting in just 3 cases of useful information. I think combining each states' databases as described in the WSJ will actually improve this number and is actually a prudent decision. 1: http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-privacy-concerns-do-they-help-police http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-pri...

marknutter 12y ago

What about motorcycles?

harry8 12y ago

Theory: This is actual news, people are shocked. So we haven't got apologists because they'll just look ridiculous. The follow up stories will be full of apologists once that shock wears off. It's just sad to watch the utterly relentless trashing of the constitution and the rule of law. Get out and vote! (for either another Clinton v another Bush?)

dnm 12y ago

I first encountered these checkpoints in New Mexico and Texas this summer. They're really kind of interesting. It looks like a truck weigh station, except the interstate lanes are closed and everyone is forced to exit. They stop everyone at the checkpoint. They have some kind of terminal under a hood, but the officer (C&BP) looked at the terminal, asked me what country I'm from (USA) and sent me on my way (I'm white, and so were all of my passengers). The license reader cameras were obvious and about 4 car lengths from the terminal/stop sign. There's a separate line for trucks and busses. I was stunned the first time I saw one driving from Albuquerque to Las Cruces south on I-25/US-85. It was only on the northbound side, about 40 miles north of Las Cruces. It was obvious what it was. I encountered others on US-70 and I-10 in TX. Same drill at every one. I was never stopped by the officer for more than 15 seconds.

desdiv 12y ago
What you encountered was probably a C&BP interior checkpoint[0]. Whenever DHS apologists use the "air travel is a privilege, not a right" line, this is what I point them to. Between random C&BP highway checkpoints and TSA patrols on Amtrak, harassment-free travel of any form seems to be a privilege nowadays. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_int...
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Basically anything you couldn't do in 1700s is a priveledge. Driving -- privelage, flying -- priveledge, getting on Amtrak -- they have TSA there too now. "Arms" are hunting shotguns, pistols. Can't own fully automatic ones, or rocket launchers or fighter planes. Drones will be illegal soon as well probably. Basically you can get on your horse and start traveling through the country roads and woods, besides that you need to have "papers".
- javert 12y ago
  In your case I'm preaching to the choir, but this might help: There is only one fundamental right, and it is to not have force initiated against you. (Why? Simply because that is in the self-interest of each rational adult human.) Ergo, the government cannot properly stop you from air travel, moving about freely in the country, etc.

deadfall 12y ago

Just last night I watched an older episode of Jay Leno's Garage and they brought in a few of California Highway Patrol (CHP) cars to show off. The officer explains that new cars are equipped with a license plate scanner find wanted people.

whoopdedo 12y ago
Something I've learned from listening to police scanners is the majority of warrants are for unpaid traffic tickets and guys behind on alimony.

pokstad 12y ago

Get rid of license plates. They can also be used by private parties to track car movements. They aren't safe anymore in this time and age. Once someone builds a proof of concept of a real time car tracker using crowd sourced license plate trackers, we'll realize that.

jessriedel 12y ago
That really only buys you a couple of years, if any. If they can do face recognition, they can do car recognition. Just determine the make/model/year/color/trim, and then look for some individually identifiable marks, scratches, color imperfections, tire type, etc.
- fru2013 12y ago
  It doesn't stop there. How about high-def video feeds of the entire planet via satellite? With heat tracking/infrared? Combine that with smart tracking software and NSA-level eavesdropping and there would be no escape. Personally, I think we'll have the technological capability to do this within a couple decades.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Just buy a silver camry. Let them try to track them all.
sliverstorm 12y ago
So long as cars are uniquely identifiable, car movements can be tracked. Cars will never be allowed to not be uniquely identifiable, for hopefully-obvious reasons that have nothing to do with Big Brother.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  They don't have to be uniquely identifiable to everyone. A better system would be an rfid tag that recorded each access, thus allowing the owner to know when they were tracked.

nl 12y ago

This can cut both ways. Back in the early 2000's, plane spotters identified CIA planes used for extraordinary rendition by recoding registration numbers and locations. Maybe David Brin was right after all[2]. Automatic license plate scanning is trivial now. It would be pretty easy for anyone to build a node of a system like this. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1 http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

elihu 12y ago
The weird thing about license plate scanning is that basically anyone could do it, and there's no obvious way to stop it. Any group of ordinary citizens (including private businesses) could create a distributed network of license plate scanners by installing devices in their cars and around their houses/buildings. It would be an interesting act of protest to track the movements of powerful people, so as to compel them to take privacy more seriously.
- nl 12y ago
  Precisely. We see the start of this with dash cams. Sure, they don't do the recognition thing, but they do decentralise surveillance. I think it's worth considering possibilities in this area as a supplement to outrage and protest.

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wahsd 12y ago

Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all, or at least those who will find themselves on the wrong site of the inner circle.

crimsonalucard 12y ago
I think it's also naive to think of the government as the "bad guy" as well. Classifying the government as bad or good is basically trying to assign a singular attribute to the aggregate actions of thousands of people in politics and government agencies. The truth is neither black or white, and extremely complicated.
- riter 12y ago
  +bump
- NhanH 12y ago
  It depends on whether you're classifying based on intentions or on results. When you're using the word "bad guy", it implied the intentions to be bad/evil. However, it's easy to see that a complex system can't (normally) be assigned an intention. But even if every actors within the system is acting in good faith, the emergent behaviour can still have bad result. In the case of government, it's definitely not complicated to classify the aggregate behaviour as unqualified bad (in term of result), regardless of the intention of the individuals working within the systems.
- wickedlogic 12y ago
  Can we all agree that a minimum, they are intentionally misleading their citizens?
  - visarga 12y ago
    Not just that, but they are conducting online propaganda by fake commenting, fake news and manipulation of ranking and news feeds. And not just USA - they do it on an even larger scale in China. (here's a wiki source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party) Search keyword: "wumao" which means paid internet commentator or "public opinion molder".

knorby 12y ago

I'd rather have tracking of cars than most things. As a frequent pedestrian, cars scare me. Few common things can cause as much damage to humans and property. Would these efforts be more palatable if the goal was Vision Zero rather than the various low-output anti-terrorism efforts?

znowi 12y ago

Can we please not post links behind a paywall or that require registration?

r109 12y ago

This doesn't surprise me, use to live in Bellingham WA. There are "DOT" cameras that go from south Bellingham all the way to the Canadian border on both sides of i5. I forget how often there are, perhaps 2-5 miles? I understand that some are used for DoT cams, but I always theorized that if the lenses are good enough they could zoom in and potentially read plates. The camera's look like regular light poles, you have to be paying attention to actually see them.

awjr 12y ago

In the UK, there is something called the 'ring of steel' around Birmingham. In effect all UK motorways and most main routes have ANPR on them. I would expect as costs decline, eventually most street light systems will be 'upgraded' to have ANPR. I am surprised that a consumer ANPR solution isn't on the market.

bunkydoo 12y ago

It goes deeper than even what this article describes - a ford exec admitted last year that they put GPS in all vehicles (post 2004 i think) but they "don't release the data" not sure how much I trust that statement in today's world...

bunkydoo 12y ago
and thats a hidden GPS - I own a 2004 ford that apparently has this and there is no navigation interface in the vehicle.

forthefuture 12y ago

I've lived my entire life thinking that anything I do or say anywhere could be picked up by phones or cameras or gps. I can't express enough how liberating it is to accept that and move on. The idea that you should be doing anything ever that you couldn't explain to anyone watching is a fantasy to me; something so far from reality you might as well be wearing a tin foil hat.

spacemanmatt 12y ago
Congratulations on your privileged life.
- forthefuture 12y ago
  I'd be living a lot more privileged life if I thought the government owed me privacy.
  - spacemanmatt 12y ago
    If I understand your statement correctly, you assert that on one will ever be falsely accused of a crime.
    - forthefuture 12y ago
      Funnily enough, if the entire world was recorded every second of every day it would literally be impossible to be falsely accused of a crime. This is why many states are passing laws for cops to have cameras on their glasses: it's impossible to lie if there's an uninterrupted live stream of the truth.
      - scott_karana 12y ago
        > Funnily enough, if the entire world was recorded every second of every day it would literally be impossible to be falsely accused of a crime That's only true if everybody has equitable access to the recordings! Putting the keys to the castle in the hands of the people running it leads to doom.

known 12y ago

"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." --Winston Churchill

stillsut 12y ago

Who would EVER approve this? Didn't the majority of the country agree this summer that police should wear cameras at all times. And the police protested this development. (Remember police brutality debate?) I'm against the license plate system, but people on this site often don't seem to appreciate there is democratic support for many of these programs.

claypoolb 12y ago

We've been hacked! According to an article in the Washington Post, we've been misled since 1961. We really do not need all those cars - its just a love affair with the "american dream". "This “love affair” was coined, in fact, during a 1961 episode of a weekly hour-long television program called the DuPont Show of the Week (sponsored, incidentally, by DuPont, which owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors at the time). The program, titled “Merrily We Roll Along,” was promoted by DuPont as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.” The show aired at a time when cars were facing steep criticism, as plans for the new interstate system threatened to destroy or disrupt neighborhoods in many U.S. cities. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/debunking-the-myth-of-the-american-love-affair-with-cars/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/d...