Posted on 07/30/2012 2:26:55 PM PDT by ExxonPatrolUs
Today the ACLU is launching a nationwide effort to find out more about automatic license plate readers (ALPR). By snapping photographs of each license plate they encounter—up to three thousand per minute—and retaining records of who was where when, license plate readers are fundamentally threatening our freedom on the open road.
You may have seen the recent New York Times op-ed that admonished us to start referring to our mobile devices as “trackers” instead of “phones.” Perhaps as ALPR technology spreads we should start saying “tracker” in place of “car,” too. We need statutory protections to limit the collection, retention, and sharing of our travel information.
Papers please.
I usually try to keep a measure of mud slopped on my license plate. But my whole car is usually dirty (loooong dirt driveway), so it kinda fits.
My first thought, “Where are your papers?”
We have lost so many freedoms without our being aware and there are more plans in the works. There are sinister motives present that scare the hell out of me. The problem is that BOTH parties are “in on it” and approve of these measures. It is time to muddy the plates, leave the trackers at home, deactivate the GPS, and carry cash only.
“Colonel Bat Guano, if that really is your name”
“You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola Company”
My father was a young boy fleeing Stalin and Hitler. He says it was easier to travel back then than it is now. He was only half-joking.
After getting a ticket via mail from the Socialist Peoples Republic of Maryland last summer I began using a photo-deflector cover on my motorcycle license plate. I try to avoid riding in Maryland but sometimes it can not be helped.
It won’t be too long before cash-strapped states start selling license plate tracking data to advertisers, marketers, private detectives, papparazzi, stalkers, etc.
Although I am absolutely opposed to this form of surveillance, I find that this statement smacks of hyperbole. 3000 per minute? Even on the NJ Turnpike where there are 6 lanes in each direction there is no way that 3000 cars are passing one camera every minute. That is over 8 vehicles in each of 6 lanes passing the camera each second. What they are capable of and what is realistic are very different.
I had a special lens on my lic. plate that was supposed to block photos, didn’t work. Even though, you could look at it from an angle and it would blur out the numbers, somehow the toll camera read it.
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