[i]Maybe we should just imprison everyone on the off chance they'll do something criminal.[/i]

Uh, please don't write that Amy. Right now there's somebody at the NSA slapping his forehead and exclaiming, "Wow, why didn't we think of that before?!?" ;-)

This is similar and actually worse than the NSA collecting phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls.

With ALPR/ANPR set ups at traffic lights, onramps and offramps, city parking garages, etc., pretty much everyone's travels can be determined almost in real time.

What's scary is that, if I understand it, among the reasons the Supreme Court ruled in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012) that placing a GPS device on Jones' car was illegal was because it was a trespass, but it's likely that if there had been no tresspass, monitoring Jones' car this way would have been a reasonable search.

Well, that's what ALPR networks can do. 24x7 forever watching where you drive.

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

QFMFT.

QFMFT.

???

Never mind. I found out.

And, yeah. Word.

Why not just go a step further and make everyone wear tracking bracelets?

"...among the reasons the Supreme Court ruled in United_States_v._Jones_(2012) that placing a GPS device on Jones' car was illegal was because it was a trespass, but it's likely that if there had been no tresspass, monitoring Jones' car this way would have been a reasonable search."

That's my understanding too. The surveillence itself was not found to be unconstitutional. There's been a huge change in the cost of surveillence which has impacted data collection and creates a danger of government overreach where none existed before. It's always been a legal principle that anything you did in public, that someone could see with their own eyes without snooping or spying, was fair game. That was because back in the day, maintaining surveillence over, say, an automobile was expensive; you had to have agents with binoculars and the like, writing notes on paper. That made it impractical to gather data on a large scale.

Now the technology makes large-scale data collection cheap, and data mining tools can uncover things well after the fact, which gives government powers it didn't have before. So a new ethic concerning surveillence of public activities is required. Right now we're a long way from deciding what that ethic actually needs to be.

large-scale data collection cheap
It's not cheap. Never was.

Maybe we should just imprison everyone on the off chance they'll do something criminal.

Uh, please don't write that Amy.

Ah, but we'd get a secure border fence sooner that way!

Reminds me of an argument I once had with my (now) ex-wife:

Me: But, honey, I never did that!
Her: But you were going to do that!!!
Me (then): My marriage is losing its happiness.
Me (now): My country is losing its freedoms.

oh puh-lease, this is just so much "sky is falling" nonsense from the conspiracy-theory screaming meemies....guess what kids - if ya don't give 'em a REASON to want to access your license plate data, they probably never will! case closed

...guess what kids - if ya don't give 'em a REASON to want to access your license plate data, they probably never will! case closed

And it's exactly this attitude that the powers that be WANT us to have. I don't have to have done anything WRONG to not want the government all up in my PERSONAL business. How about this, government lackeys: READ THE CONSTITUTION, NOT MY EMAILS.

...if ya don't give 'em a REASON to want to access your license plate data, they probably never will! case closed.

Hypthetical:

Camera A and Camera B are X miles apart on a freeway that has a posted 55 mph speed limit.

So, a cash-strapped government simply mines the data to find all license plates that had a time difference that would indicate the driver exceeded the posted speed limit and sends the owners of the identified vehicles a traffic ticket.

This, despite the fact that the average actual speed on that freeway is 70 mph and to do less than than is to invite an accident and/or to earn the undying enmity of one's fellow motorists.

"if ya don't give 'em a REASON:" DJ MA

hahahahah. NEWSFLASH Honus, they make reasons up...

D'ya know what "the heat is on" campaign is about? Go through a sobriety checkpoint? They'll run your plates right there.

you got a CCW permit? What're the odds that eventually that will be cross referenced? Right now your sheriff may be a fine upstanding individual, but that doesn't mean in a few elections that mightn't change. To save moeny and manpower they consolidate databases... und viola!
The first question out of the patrolman's mouth is, are you packin'

Maybe they take a dislike to the color of your car, and decide to do a full search of your car... probable cause being that you are armed.

Don;t be stupid. Each little step seems OK, on it's own, but take you someplace you 'dun want to go.

"So, a cash-strapped government simply mines the data to find all license plates that had a time difference that would indicate the driver exceeded the posted speed limit and sends the owners of the identified vehicles a traffic ticket."

Some years ago Florida did a lower-tech version of this very thing on the Florida Turnpike. The way the Turnpike used to work was, when you entered, you got a punched card showing where you entered and what your toll would be depending on where you exited. The card was also time stamped. At your exit, they looked up your entrance and exit time on a chart, and if the average speed was greater than the speed limit, they passed your license plate number to the Florida state trooper who would then pull you over and write a ticket. The program ended when the Turnpike owners (it is privately owned) quit cooperating with the state troopers, in the wake of a number of scandals involving motor vehicle violations.

Some years ago Florida did a lower-tech version of this very thing on the Florida Turnpike. The way the Turnpike used to work was, when you entered, you got a punched card showing where you entered and what your toll would be depending on where you exited. The card was also time stamped. At your exit, they looked up your entrance and exit time on a chart, -- Cousin Dave at July 8, 2013 1:32 PM

I can't remember if it was Minnesota or Missouri -- back in 80's a friend burned up the turnpike. As she exited she was handed the speeding ticket with her change for the turnpike.

guess what kids - if ya don't give 'em a REASON to want to access your license plate data, they probably never will! case closed -- DJ MichaelAngelo at July 8, 2013 7:35 AM

This is the same discussion of "I have nothing to hide" we had the other day.

Do you want anyone know you're going to a therapist, counselor, AA meeting, to make a secret payment at the jeweler for your wife's gift, your drug dealer, your real pharmacist, your lawyer?

Please say yes. Because when you run for public office and we can show you visited with the mobster or discredited former mayor, I can say "See -- told you so".