DEA License Plate Tracking Is An Assault On The Liberty Of All Of Us
The government should not be tracking my license plate, as I have done nothing criminal, nor is there any reason to believe I have. Yet, welcome to "mission creep." An LA Times editorial:
The military calls it "mission creep" -- sending troops out for one purpose, then adding to their marching orders over time. This kind of metastasis is innocuous in some contexts, but not so benign when the government is collecting information about innocent people going about their daily lives. A perfect illustration is the Drug Enforcement Administration's expansive license-plate tracking program that privacy advocates brought to light this week. What began as an effort to confiscate guns and cash from drug traffickers heading to Mexico has reportedly expanded into a general purpose surveillance tool for law enforcement agencies that treats millions of ordinary Americans as potential suspects....Defenders of plate-tracking argue that it's not technically an invasion of privacy for the government (or anyone else) to keep an eye peeled on the public streets. And yet the same argument could be used to justify local police filming residents whenever they pull out of their driveways, analyzing and retaining a record of every trip they make. After all, if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, right? Except possibly being asked to explain why you attended a perfectly legal gun show, which the DEA once contemplated using plate-readers to surveil. There doesn't appear to be any limit on how the data may be used, and in the case of private companies' plate-tracking, few if any limits on how the long the information can be retained.
Being out in public should not be a reason for your government to collect information on your behavior. The ability to do it is far too easily translated into doing it, and we need to object to this now -- before there's technology spread and it's just too hard to turn back the clock (or pull down the cameras). It makes it even harder when private companies end up running the cameras, as they have in the situation with red light cameras in Los Angeles.
Some thoughts -
- I will wager that the LP data is abused more often by those who have access to it (checking on wives and husbands, enemies and rivals) than it ever is for any real investigative purpose.
- Why do cars have license plates anymore anyway? It's straight out of the 1930s. There must be a better/more secure solution that addresses the privacy issues as well. Lojack works great at finding stolen cars, much better than a stamped piece of tin held on with two 3¢ screws. The cynic in me suspects that physical license plates = government jobs. Why does MI make you replace your license plate every 10 years, no matter what?
- There's a dot-com CEO in California (can't recall which one) who has no license plate on his personal vehicle as a matter of policy. He figures the risk to his safety and security of having something so identifiable and insecure on his car far outweighs the trivial risk of getting a citation and/or a trivial fine.
llater,
llamas
llamas at June 29, 2015 8:29 AM
DEA? How about LAPD?
https://www.google.com/search?q=lapd+alpr
How about every gov't organization big or small out there?
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy during US v. Jones, I grew tired of Kerr never quite getting that planted GPS surveillance was old and busted.
The real threat WAS ALPR on every lamppost or in every cactus. Now it's no longer threat.
https://www.google.com/search?q=paradise+valley+police+cactus
So DEA tracking us with ALPR? Pfft.
jerry at June 29, 2015 10:30 AM
It has always been the case that anyone had the right to observe anything happening out in public. However, back in the day the practical aspects limited what could be done; you could have someone observe every car entering or leaving a particular place, or track a particular car in its travels. The ability to do large-scale data collection, tracking every car everywhere and then data-mine the collected information, is something that wasn't anticipated. Old standards cannot simply be assumed to apply to the new problem. There has to be some restriction.
Llamas has a point about license plates, but getting rid of them really doesn't solve the problem. A system could build a fairly complete database by tracking cars by make, model, model year, color, options, and condition. If they can put in scanners that can look down through the winsshield and record the VIN (say, at an underpass), so much the better. And: states make a lot of money off of personalized and "affinity" plates.
Cousin Dave at June 29, 2015 10:42 AM
Do you have OnStar?
You're trackable at any time.
If you decide to run, the helpful people at OnStar can limit your top speed, too.
The issue isn't technology!
It is that police have NOTHING IN COMMON WITH YOU if you allow the us-vs-them mindset.
It isn't enough to expect to be left alone in your daily business. At some point, you and your neighbors insisted that police should protect you, and you're going to get protected no matter what now.
Radwaste at June 29, 2015 3:46 PM
There's a reason I don't have on-star. Tho apparently if you simply disconnect the antenna from the on-star module, you remove their ability to find you.
Apropos: http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-30
My question is: what is the data retention policy with respect to ALPR? who has access? and more importantly, what steps are you taking to insure the data is not pilfered?
Imagine, pairing the OPM data with ALPR data and DMV data. Extreme data mining, but with big enough budget one could do things with that.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 30, 2015 6:50 AM
AFAIK, there is no legal bar to a private entity leasing space in (any public place) and hanging ALPR recorders to capture every passing vehicle. Or doing the same on moving vehicles. With enough devices and enough data, I think it's clear that recent advances in AI have made it entirely-possible to link an individual to a license plate with a very high degree of accuracy, and then to create a history of all of that individual's activities, to a remarkable degree of detail.
If a private concern were to do this, the outcry would be immediate and loud. Given the power that the state has over us (far greater than any private entity can possibly have - Amex or the phone company can't send armed men to your house to enforce their will upon you) - why would we accept this degree of uncontrolled intrusion and surveillance of our lives by agents of the state, for any reason?
llater,
llamas
llamas at June 30, 2015 7:00 AM
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