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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYour car, tracked: the rapid rise of license plate readers
Tiburon, a small but wealthy town just northeast of the Golden Gate Bridge, has an unusual distinction: it was one of the first towns in the country to mount automated license plate readers (LPRs) at its city bordersthe only two roads going in and out of town. Effectively, that means the cops are keeping an eye on every car coming and going.
A contentious plan? Not in Tiburon, where the city council approved the cameras unanimously back in November 2009.
The scanners can read 60 license plates per second, then match observed plates against a "hot list" of wanted vehicles, stolen cars, or criminal suspects. LPRs have increasingly become a mainstay of law enforcement nationwide; many agencies tout them as a highly effective "force multiplier" for catching bad guys, most notably burglars, car thieves, child molesters, kidnappers, terrorists, andpotentiallyundocumented immigrants.
Today, tens of thousands of LPRs are being used by law enforcement agencies all over the countrypractically every week, local media around the country report on some LPR expansion. But the system's unchecked and largely unmonitored use raises significant privacy concerns. License plates, dates, times, and locations of all cars seen are kept in law enforcement databases for months or even years at a time. In the worst case, the New York State Police keeps all of its LPR data indefinitely. No universal standard governs how long data can or should be retained.
Not surprisingly, the expanded use of LPRs has drawn the ire of privacy watchdogs. In late July 2012, the American Civil Liberties Union and its affiliates sent requests to local police departments and state agencies across 38 states to request information on how LPRs are used.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/your-car-tracked-the-rapid-rise-of-license-plate-readers/
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Go through a toll booth, reach the next one too soon and get a speeding ticket on the spot.
Apparently installed on some UK motorways but current doubts as to whether they are in use yet. System is designed to have a speeding offense notification ready for mail from our main licensing office in c. 20 seconds flat.
DainBramaged
(39,191 posts)and once people figure out what these scanners are, they'll become targets too. The police departments have access to too much money and all they use these cameras for is revenue generation, bullshit on their 'preventing crime' use.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)I have played around with a few here in the US. Plate readers are especially vulnerable since they have to be ground level. Sometimes all it takes is a plastic grocery bag
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)It's more efficient to automate the function than to have the officers manually read plates and query the "be on the lookout for" lists.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/08/high-tech_license_plate_reader.html
They are also in all the EZPass toll booths, so that they charge your licence plate if the transponder isn't read.
They are also good for gated communities, office parks, and other industrial security applications.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)It saves them from calling in the info (or typing it in) and just gives them an alert if they get a hot hit. Welcome to "Minority Report".
Ron Obvious
(6,261 posts)I'm partly immune because my bike rack makes the rear license plate hard to read by scanners. At the Canadian border the customs official had to come out of his booth because the scanner couldn't read the plate last time. Of course scanning the front plate still works.
This kind of bike rack isn't legal in Europe -- you either have to put the bikes on top of the vehicle, or else get an additional license plate for the bike rack, depending on the country.
I wonder how long before that'll be the case here as well.