Have you ever heard of an LPR?

[Stinky The Clown]

The letters mean License Plate Reader. They come in several flavors - fixed, as on a traffic sign or light pole, and mobile, usually on a cop car dashboard.

This is a mobile unit



They read license plates and put the number into a database. The database tells the cop, very fast, if the car is dirty or not.

Yesterday one of them was instrumental in stopping some drug runner. The ensuing chase resulted in a Big Deal brouhaha.

Amazing technology that seems useful . . . . until you learn more. It seems to cops want to store all that data on every car they track. Including yours, read while you were off to the grocery store. Or to meet your own Paula Broadwell. Or to watch your kid's soccer game. Or to rob the Last National Bank. So far, the issue of storing the data is unresolved. The ACLU is involved here locally.

No point. Just a report. These things are in virtually every police force in the country.

[bluedigger]

1. They use them to find fine scofflaws and put the Denver boot on them.

Typically in unmarked vans. Real pain in the ass if you have a rental car...

[RB TexLa]

2. Nothing to stop them or anyone from writing down your tag info and storing it.

Doesn't seem to be any reason to prevent them from using this. If you ban this because it makes it easier to do, do you then say they can't use pens to write the letters and numbers down they have to use crayons because pens make it too easy?

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. All the data, all the time.

Them, and cameras which take pictures of ALL cars going thru intersection, not just red light runners, and the
pics taken at toll booths, and.....
We are being heavily surveillanced.

[flamingdem]

4. Today in the LA times there's an article about FaceFirst

and their technology that quickly reads faces and will make it easy to identify terrorists and shoplifters, the problem is that it will also identify big spenders who will then be targeted for advertising.. great world we've got going forward..

[doc03]

5. I have heard of them but didn't know they were used

everywhere. In Florida they eliminated toll booths on the toll roads and I have heard they send a bill to the address of the license plate owner. If you are in a rental car they read a bar-code on the car windshield and it bills your credit card.

[excringency]

6. They are used

on the campus where I work instead of hang-tags or bumper stickers. The campus police continually cruise around and write tickets when the units alerts them to an unauthorized car parking where it shouldn't.

[loli phabay]

7. usually they are mounted one on each side of the trunk facing forward, amazing the tech