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License-plate recognition has its eyes on you (36 million location scans and counting)
SD city beat ^ | 2/20/13 | Jon Campbell

Posted on 02/25/2013 4:20:03 PM PST by Libloather

Where’s your car? Well, dude, it’s in a huge Orwellian police database.

That might seem like the plot of a bad movie, but since around 2010, police agencies in San Diego County have quietly used a network of sophisticated devices called license-plate readers (LPR) to monitor and record the movements of thousands of everyday drivers. Even as you read this, police cars equipped with LPR are patrolling the streets, automatically scanning and photographing every license plate in sight, tagging each with a GPS coordinate and filing the information away. For years.

With 36 million scans and counting—an average of 14 for every registered vehicle in the county—the database provides a mappable, searchable record of the movements of thousands of individual drivers. It’s sort of like FourSquare for cops, except that it’s involuntary, the data is secret and there aren’t quite as many narcissistic hipsters.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: license; plate; recognition; tracking
Wow.

Vermont Legislature Considers Limiting Use of Automated License Plate Readers

St. Joseph, Mo. - Officers Hope to See Results from License Plate Readers

Minnesota - Lawmakers to weigh in on license plate readers

1 posted on 02/25/2013 4:20:16 PM PST by Libloather
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To: Libloather

If your car is parked in front of a bar for a couple of hours and your license plate gets scanned you might have some splainig to do when your license plate gets scanned again as you are driving down the road.


2 posted on 02/25/2013 4:33:12 PM PST by forgotten man (forgotten man)
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To: Libloather

In Bernalillo County, NM they use this to lurk around parking lots of major employers in order to make people who live outside the county but work inside the county comply with their B.S. emissions test and tax requirements.


3 posted on 02/25/2013 4:33:50 PM PST by elkfersupper ( Member of the Original Defiant Class)
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To: Libloather

What about technologies to obstruct the cameras’ effectiveness or blind them with specific wavelengths? Are those illegal?


4 posted on 02/25/2013 4:41:16 PM PST by montag813
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To: montag813

We just call it Mud in the 4 wheeling community

TT


5 posted on 02/25/2013 4:49:34 PM PST by TexasTransplant (Idiocracy used to just be a Movie... Live every day as your last...one day you will be right)
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To: Libloather

Is there any doubt that the communists takeover of our freedoms are in jeopardy.


6 posted on 02/25/2013 5:20:20 PM PST by Logical me
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To: Libloather

License plate cameras can be mounted on our private properties, too.


7 posted on 02/25/2013 5:45:30 PM PST by familyop (We Baby Boomers are croaking in an avalanche of rotten politics smelled around the planet.)
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To: forgotten man

Saw an unmarked LEO car in Somers Point ,NJ last week with the license scanners. Couldn’t believe it!WTH does a local PD need this for ?


8 posted on 02/25/2013 5:56:01 PM PST by Renegade
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To: Renegade

Taken in 2009 in Charlotte Court House VA. Local cop with plate scanning system on Crown Vic.

http://www7.mediafire.com/convkey/60ae/xlm5i2kdz9zctlifg.jpg

The new toll roads here in NC use plate readers to bill you if you don’t have a transponder. There are no toll booths.


9 posted on 02/25/2013 8:29:41 PM PST by ltc8k6
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To: Libloather

I was out walking my dog and came up on a cop scanning my plate! The United States is becoming a police state! I can’t believe the American people allowed for the TSA to be created, the politicians played on frayed emotions after 9/11. Cameras here a drone there, it’s beyond acceptable, our politicians and the police no longer trust their employers: THE AMERICAN CITIZEN!


10 posted on 02/25/2013 8:34:57 PM PST by IslamE (epiphany)
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To: IslamE

so why are we allowing it?


11 posted on 02/25/2013 8:54:10 PM PST by Chickensoup (200 million unarmed people killed in the 20th century by Leftist Totalitarian Fascists)
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To: montag813

“What about technologies to obstruct the cameras’ effectiveness or blind them with specific wavelengths?”

I was thinking perhaps one could put a couple of numbers on either side of the plate that are of the the same size and style as the plate, near but not attached to the plate. If the numbers were read by the scanner, perhaps it would cause it to misread your plate.

As far as I know, you can still put numbers and stickers on your car as long as you don’t obstruct the plate.

It would be interesting to get hold of one of these units to see what it is capable of and what it can be blinded/fooled by.


12 posted on 02/25/2013 9:19:08 PM PST by Nik Naym (It's not my fault... I have compulsive smartass disorder.)
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To: Chickensoup

I know, it’s frustrating, we have too many chiefs making decisions that affect our basic rights, too few elites, managers, bosses, and politicians are being given powers to limit our freedoms with the stroke of a pen. Subsequent generations are born into this police state, now, they think it’s normal to be frisked before boarding a plane.

It’s a shame the police no longer question their superiors, they just go with the flow, the same with regular employees, maybe they are afraid of loosing their jobs? Even our politicians are getting an ear full from their constituents at town halls, I.e. John McCain on illegals, yet the politicians do the opposite of what their constituents want. Crazy times, it’s as if the United States is being systematically dismantled to form a cage of containment. Every year it seems to get ever more fortified! Now they are putting black boxes in new cars, they always say it’s for P.C. themes like safety or tolerance, those words have forged chains of tyranny, Americans are asleep, the walking dead, maybe it’s similar to how the third reich arose, slowly, surely, methodically ‘till it was too late.


13 posted on 02/25/2013 9:23:17 PM PST by IslamE (epiphany)
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To: Renegade

“Saw an unmarked LEO car in Somers Point ,NJ last week with the license scanners. Couldn’t believe it!WTH does a local PD need this for ?”

The county sheriff cars use these where I live and it is mostly rural.

The local paper had an article about these things a year or two ago. The Sheriff said that the unit is pre-programmed at the start of each shift with all of the wanted plates as well as all expired registrations, plates reported as having no insurance or any other reason they have to flag them as wanted. When the cop is driving around this thing scans every plate on every car it passes and sounds an alarm if it reads one of the aforementioned plates.

Of course Barney denied that a database of plates/locations/times was being compiled.


14 posted on 02/25/2013 9:26:01 PM PST by Nik Naym (It's not my fault... I have compulsive smartass disorder.)
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To: Libloather

The fact that fellow Americans (cops) do this willingly speaks very loudly about what’s coming.


15 posted on 02/25/2013 9:32:04 PM PST by Terry Mross (How long before America is gone?)
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To: Nik Naym

May not be illegal but as soon as a regular cop sees extra numbers by your plate you will be pulled over and it won’t be for praise on your ingenuity.

That goes for all the other things like diffraction gratings over the plate. Why give them a reason to pull you over? They can find something else to cite you on if they look hard enough.


16 posted on 02/25/2013 9:33:01 PM PST by steve86 (Acerbic by Nature, not Nurture™)
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To: steve86

About 4 years ago, daughter in another state sent me a plate rim that lit up purple. Had it maybe 2 years, when exiting the 101 freeway I was pulled over by Highway Patrol.
I REally didn’t know what for - couldn’t imagine.
Was told only 2 acceptable colors permitted, and 1 was NOT purple.
Had to say ‘bye’ to that fun license plate rim.

Some buggy laws pass that police are required to enforce.

And you’re right - they can always find something. We have a peace officer in family - right close by - who told me same many years ago!


17 posted on 02/25/2013 10:13:27 PM PST by USARightSide (S U P P O R T I N G OUR T R O O P S)
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To: Libloather

Not long ago, I spied the meter reader taking a photo of my plate...and he kept crawling along the street in his buggy, taking a photo of everyone’s plate.

It must have been a fishing expedition...and he was ‘running’ these plates through some database, looking for a car with past due tickets or something.

Alot of technology (paid by us) being used against us...without any particular reason or cause.


18 posted on 02/26/2013 6:06:29 AM PST by lacrew (Mr. Soetoro, we regret to inform you that your race card is over the credit limit.)
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