What's The Problem?
When used in a narrow and carefully regulated way, ALPRs can help police recover stolen cars and arrest people with outstanding warrants.
Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies are increasingly moving towards a keep everything, share widely formula concerning ALPR data. The biggest problem with ALPR systems is the creation of databases with location information on every motorist who encounters the system, not just those whom the government suspects of criminal activity. Police departments nationwide are using ALPR to quietly accumulate millions of plate records, storing them in backend databases. While we don't know the full extent of this problem, we know that responsible deletion of data is the exception, not the norm. Only two states have passed legislation barring the retention of 'non-hit' plate data for extended periods. On the other hand, we know for certain that some departments are eagerly engaging in this surreptitious data collection.
“Obamacare Funded big IRS Data - By October 2010, the Internal Revenue Service had the capability to sift through emailing patterns associated with millions of individual internet addresses and have already established 32,000 categories of metadata and 1 million unique “attributes.” The IRS continues to collect tax data, but they also are now acquiring huge volumes of personal information on taxpayers’ digital activities, from eBay auctions to Facebook posts and, for the first time ever, credit card and e-payment transaction records. Dean Silverman, who led the IBM zEnterprise™ 196 systems upgrade bragged: “Private industry would be envious if they knew what our models are.” “
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is seeking proposals for "a massive online data repository system" that could allow agents to make faster connections between suspects' names, social security numbers, telephone numbers and utility bills, according to a request issued last month."
Several years ago one of my coworkers was murdered. He was running an “entertainment” business on the side which featured underage hookers, among other things. One of the underage hookers texted the murderers from inside his house that he was unarmed. They burst in and shot him nine times.
Thing is, that text led to the murderers and their convictions and the cops had it within hours of finding the body. Since there was no other connection, how did the cops do that? (BTW, I’m okay with catching the murderers. But how much data is too much data?)
Civil rights: Should the people track and store police dept. employees` private cars license plates and home addresses and their families` whereabouts?
Civil rights: Should the police track and store your whereabouts?
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Not without probable cause and a search warrant.
The cops will find all kind of uses for the data.
For instance: What people from the good part of town are parked in the bad part of town on Friday night? Those people get red flagged automatically in some software because they are now suspected (by the computer) of possible drug purchases or whore mongering.
They could monitor bar patrons for frequency and time duration. And then target them for ‘traffic safety stops’ when they are actually trolling for some money making DUIs. You might think that is OK because drinkers shouldn’t drive but this is just an example.
The possibilities are endless, and if the municipalities get on the bandwagon the software developers would be happy to provide the Orwell Code.
Isn’t everyone a suspect now?