Posted on 12/20/2015 6:17:43 AM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
There is a new kind of technology out there -- the automatic plate reader. Installed in a police car, it can currently auto-scan an average of 700 license plates-per-hour. That will continue to improve. And it red-flags every dirty plate in sight. Ohio already uses it, but Ohio [for example] customized its system to ignore petty crimes.
That is how powerful it is -- APR must be programmed to ignore the 'small stuff'.
Even if a criminal switches plates, technology could easily fix that problem, such as a scanning bar and ID tag on the dashboard. They would need to destroy the windshield or break into the car for the switched plate to match the dashboard ID. [Or just put the plates behind the glass to begin with.]
So far illegal immigration is something APR tech is not programmed to notice.
Why?
Politics.
Auto-plate readers could decimate our illegal immigration culture. They would need someone with a clean plate to haul them around, and vehicles crammed with passengers are easier to notice. The illegal immigrant culture would collapse, and that is intolerable to the Establishment.
So now the ACLU and the Establishment and Governor Mc-Awful of Virginia hope to trick the anti-establishment into helping oppose APR tech. And it's easy to do. For example:
"... This kind of Orwellian technology allows patrol officers to use mined personal data about 'all' residents, including law-abiding ones, to fight street crime. For example, the Memphis patrolman no longer has to type a license number into a computer console in his car, All he has to do now is drive around and let the 'automatic plate reader' capture the plate numbers on every nearby vehicle. If the reader alerts to a problem, the officer no longer has to wait 20 minutes for someone back at the department to manually check the suspect's records. He is equipped with a 'hand-held device' that brings up the suspect's mug shot, Social Security number, the status of his license, and whether he has any outstanding warrants..." -- johntfloyd.com
[How 'spooky'.]
Link and tips-for-research coming up ...
Kind of missed my point - too much power in any entity tends to end up being abused and our Freedoms get compromised even with the most benign "efficiencies" of "law enforcement".
Doesn't matter who "runs their own APR - the technology is also available to the Feds and they have no compunction on using it to gather data on Joe Public to start building databases of "threats" from data being collected. That's why we keep hearing about how Right-Wing, Christians who believe in the Constitution pose an even greater threat than the real terrorists.
Look what the IRS did. Heck, look at how nearly all of us commit several Federal Felonies each day without ever being aware of it - if they set their sights on you for any reason they have the "full force of law" to crush you underfoot. The question is when they start using it in a systematic, methodical way to finish the Constitution off.
This might help some:
The link in post 2 focuses on Ohio. And in the Ohio APR system ...
‘It doesn’t care about expired plates,’ Walczak says.
I think that’s the key weakness. Most illegal immigrants practice identity theft, and using expired plates is an old trick for identity thieves and other criminals.
But if all current plates are on the data base, then expired plates get ‘outed’. While I don’t believe in much federal power, I do think that a national database of all current license plates should be created. Then states would nab them in one fell swoop.
“Kind of missed my point - too much power in any entity tends to end up being abused ...”
A tyrannical state can only go so far unlike central power.
License plates have no privacy rights. In fact, police have had the power to actually search any car since I was a kid. So I mean, making the plate check more efficient only makes sense unless you like modern police to be fumbling, bumbling keystone cops.
Big Rock Candy Mountain: [in jails] where the bars are made of tin.
Sarcasm! ? I am serious and have dashed off a note with that idea to my good buddy in DC - I can’t mention names here, but you could guess whom that might be?
If you guess wrong however ... well, best keep that to yourself - the walls have ears as they say.
> “Also, what privacy rights does a license plate have?”
The plate reader links to a database full of information about the plate registrant. That is warrantless search.
Your logic is twisted backwards. You support warrantless search in the hopes that violations are found. You’re supporting the enabling of fishing expeditions. The criteria for ‘hit’ is subjective or political. The result is harassment.
There are many scenarios where ordinary persons who are not subject to a standing warrant can be harassed and disrupted.
I am noting to cross Ohio off my travel list. The people there appear per your description to be control-freaks with twisted ideas of enforcement.
There are much better ways of controlling illegal aliens that are more in the American way of justice.
Before you get all incensed to respond with a sanctimonious rant, consider the fact that a good portion of law enforcement officers are idiots with barely a high school education. Don’t ignore this fact. It is true and because it’s true the idiots you empower will cause good people a lot of grief.
For examples, call any experienced criminal lawyer who represents people who have had charges dismissed for lack of evidence but who had their lives turned upside down because of some idiot cowboy police jerk who was itching to take somebody in.
Watch this, all of it and then come back to share.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
Well, I’m just saying that the supreme court routinely orders states to cut the numbers out of prisons, give prisoners entertainment rights, etc. I think our society would not tolerate another Devil’s Island, so let’s tell SCOTUS to butt out of states’ humane treatment standards.
In practice it is overwhelmingly used to raise revenue from the most honest in society and those least able to defend themselves from a corrupt state.
Fact: law enforcement and the politically connected are immune to APR records access, and will remain so.
“The plate reader links to a database full of information about the plate registrant. That is warrantless search.”
If a police officer knows something about a plate registrant, he is allowed to act on it. Always has been. The ‘warrantless search’ business — that’s twisted backwards. If you don’t want police checking plates, then ban license plates. One or the other.
“You support warrantless search in the hopes that violations are found.”
Looking at a plate and reading related data is not a warrantless search. You would turn the legal system on its head with that interpretation.
“You’re supporting the enabling of fishing expeditions.”
If a cop had a photographic memory and reads files before driving, would you want him banned for being too efficient?
I support finding people going around with outdated license plates, people with false IDs that don’t match the plate’s official data.
“The result is harassment.”
That term ‘harassment’ is overworked, big-time.
“There are many scenarios where ordinary persons who are not subject to a standing warrant can be harassed and disrupted.”
Do you realize how harrassed honest, peace-loving citizens are because the police don’t have enough technology? And I wonder how many are killed? I want dangerous drivers off the road. That’s just one example.
“There are much better ways of controlling illegal aliens that are more in the American way of justice.”
I doubt you will find more efficient ways to catch the ones here in the US than through automated systems.
“Before you get all incensed to respond with a sanctimonious rant, consider the fact that a good portion of law enforcement officers are idiots with barely a high school education.”
And a computer can up his game. Yes, there will be glitches in any new system, but computers are really good at helping someone poorly trained keep up.
“... some idiot cowboy police jerk who was itching to take somebody in.”
And Ohio proved there is a political will to program the system to ignore minor crimes. Too willing when it comes to outdated license plates.
It’s not technology we should fear, it is the Establishment.
“... overwhelmingly used to raise revenue from the most honest in society and those least able to defend themselves from a corrupt state.”
But when we take power — that same tech will be used to help America.
You are mistaken - those are not prisons - they are training camps for the disadvantaged ...
Giving up freedom is different than making police more efficient.
On the other hand it is now a no win situation either way, whether we use it or not. If you don’t have citizens guided by high moral standards we are lost................
I agree.
Ohio is a democrat state. IMO, Kasich is packaged as a republican, but inside that package... is a liberal democrat! Every time he says how we need to work together, I just about puke. NO, I don’t want to work with anyone (dems) that want to change/destroy the character, moral values, laws, by flooding our country with people that aren’t like us.
I believe Ohio likes things exactly how they are.
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Only if I'm in charge.
Anyone here spent time riding with police? My husband has...police spend most of time with fingers on computer entering license plate numbers...this was a couple years ago...they may have the readers now...
Well said. Why I conclude that we should fear the Establishment, not technology.
“... police spend most of time with fingers on computer entering license plate numbers ...”
That was about what I expected. And before that they memorized mug shots and printouts. Painstaking effort at memorization.
conclude that we should fear the Establishment, not technology.
My general observation is that we have substituted technology for good management (decision making)
Technology is only dangerous in a totalitarian regime or an anarchy.
Here’s the rub — LACK of technology is even more dangerous in a totalitarian regime or an anarchy. Lack of guns for example. And it was photocopiers that helped underground papers circulate in the USSR.
This nation suffers from both totalitarian aspects and anarchial aspects. And I am very glad we have so much technology that they have failed to overwhelm us — yet.
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