Massachusetts Plans To Keep Track of Where Your Car Has Been 521
Attila Dimedici writes "Massachusetts wants to establish a database with the information gathered by license plate scanners installed in police cars. The scanners will scan license plates of every car the police vehicle passes and transmit that information (along with the location) to a database that will be made available to various government agencies. The data wil be kept indefinitely."
Re:I've been waiting for this. (Score:4, Informative)
May be, but IMOHO, because of how poor the education system has become in the US (largely thanks to the no child left behind movement), the majority of people don't understand the extreme importance of every amendment contained within the Bill Of Rights. People are literally happy to relinquish their rights, usually because they are too uneducated or afraid of ignorant and completely unjustified fear mongering.
Accordingly, the majority of states have extremely unconstitutional state laws; frequently which specifically target the second amendment rights. Furthermore, most people are too ignorant and/or stupid to know and/or acknowledge the second amendment is not only what empowers the first amendment, but only as recently as WWII, is the primary reason the continental US was not invaded.
Even recently I have been told that the tyranny of McCarthyism should be once again embraced, in the name of terror prevention, and that failing to do so makes you anti-government. And the really sad part was, this was from TWO people, whereby they absolutely were not trolling, and at least one had a four year technical degree. This was on a technical forum.
Without a doubt, stupidity is alive a well and the stupid masses are working overtime to dis-empower, if not out right destroy the protections afforded by the US Constitution.
Already in California (Score:2, Informative)
Already in practice here. Patrol cars are being outfitted with 4-6 camera systems facing different directions. Reading is done via IR and works in the dark. The CHP, county sheriffs, and now local PDs are getting them. The system records: the IR image of the plate, the OCR reading of the plate, a visual picture of the plate, a visual picture of the car, GPS coordinates, geo-located address from the coordinates, and a timestamp. Additionally, there are stand alone plate readers being installed along busy roads and intersections that slurp in this data. Also, plate readers hit everyone crossing the border.
All this is placed in a database searchable state wide and with the Feds. I've long thought people are gonna freak when they truly understand how widespread this is. In a good single 10 hour shift I can read 5,000+ plates.
For what its worth, I've personally solved crimes with this. We are talking from kidnappings to robberies to homicides. It's widely used and the extent of its usefulness can't be overstated.
Is it legal? It certainly doesn't violate the letter of the law, but arguably violates the spirit.
IAAC (I am a cop).