A Bipartisan Amendment Would End Police License Plate Tracking Nationwide (wired.com) 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: US lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment Thursday at a House committee markup hearing that would prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling -- a sweeping restriction that, if adopted, would bring an immediate end to state and local ALPR programs across the United States. The amendment, obtained first by WIRED, is sponsored by Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and Freedom Caucus member, and Representative Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, an Illinois progressive whose state has become a flash point in the national fight over ALPR misuse.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill -- a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs -- at 10 am ET on Thursday. The amendment runs a single sentence: "A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling." The amendment is brief, but its reach would be vast. Title 23 funds roughly a quarter of all public road mileage in the US, including most state and county arteries and many city streets where ALPR cameras are becoming ubiquitous. Conditioning that funding on a ban of the technology would, in practical effect, force any state, county, or municipality that takes federal highway money (essentially all of them) to either remove the cameras or restructure their use around tolling alone.
The amendment's cosponsors, Perry and Garcia, represent opposite ends of the House's ideological spectrum but converge on a surveillance concern that has gathered momentum in legislatures and city halls across the US as ALPR networks have quietly become a pervasive layer of American road infrastructure. ALPR cameras -- mounted on poles, overpasses, traffic signals, and police cruisers -- photograph every passing license plate, log times and locations, and feed data into searchable databases shared across agencies and jurisdictions. [...] Privacy advocates have long warned that the aggregation of license plate data amounts to a de facto warrantless tracking system. New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice has documented the integration of ALPR feeds into police data-fusion systems that combine plate data with surveillance and social media monitoring. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, has documented a range of police misuse, including the past targeting of mosques and the disproportionate deployment of the technology in low-income neighborhoods. Earlier this week, 404 Media reviewed FBI procurement records that reveal the agency is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to ALPR data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill -- a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs -- at 10 am ET on Thursday. The amendment runs a single sentence: "A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling." The amendment is brief, but its reach would be vast. Title 23 funds roughly a quarter of all public road mileage in the US, including most state and county arteries and many city streets where ALPR cameras are becoming ubiquitous. Conditioning that funding on a ban of the technology would, in practical effect, force any state, county, or municipality that takes federal highway money (essentially all of them) to either remove the cameras or restructure their use around tolling alone.
The amendment's cosponsors, Perry and Garcia, represent opposite ends of the House's ideological spectrum but converge on a surveillance concern that has gathered momentum in legislatures and city halls across the US as ALPR networks have quietly become a pervasive layer of American road infrastructure. ALPR cameras -- mounted on poles, overpasses, traffic signals, and police cruisers -- photograph every passing license plate, log times and locations, and feed data into searchable databases shared across agencies and jurisdictions. [...] Privacy advocates have long warned that the aggregation of license plate data amounts to a de facto warrantless tracking system. New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice has documented the integration of ALPR feeds into police data-fusion systems that combine plate data with surveillance and social media monitoring. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit, has documented a range of police misuse, including the past targeting of mosques and the disproportionate deployment of the technology in low-income neighborhoods. Earlier this week, 404 Media reviewed FBI procurement records that reveal the agency is seeking up to $36 million for nationwide access to ALPR data, which could let it query vehicle movements across the U.S. and its territories through a commercial database.
Re: Thank you (Score:3)
We have caught kidnappers before we had license plate readers. In my state my cellphone buzzes whenever the cops want to crowd source human powered license plate readers.
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It isn't a binary equation. Yes, police work was done before the modern surveillance state existed, but was not, ever, 100% efficient.
There are two questions here, that none of the political hacks will ask, much less answer:
Is police work more efficient with limited resources? In other words, is a criminal who would have gotten away with it without license plate scanners more likely to be caught with them?
And how easy and how likely is it that the technology will be abused?
The answer to the first question i
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Efficient police work should never be the priority in our society. Liberty, human rights, principles of democracy, due process, and more are all higher priority in our society. (or at least ought to be if we aren't aiming to become serfs)
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I totally agree with this statement. Anyone who thinks that prioritizing LPR's over privacy can move to an authoritarian. LPR surveillance is unconstitutional. If they want to use LPR information, then make it a warranting process. There have been so many abuses of the system with local government because the data isn't controlled.
It's the potential for abuse, stupid? (Score:2, Insightful)
About 1/3 of the discussion spanned by that vacuous Subject that you were the first to propagate. However from your comment it isn't clear to me what Subject might have accurately represented your intention. Also unthanks for nudging me to look at AC in search of a contextual hint as to your intention. (No, I could not care less about AC's intention or existence.)
My concern is with the potential for abuse by the police. The usual edge case involves a bad apple in blue, but the law as described in the summar
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I just got an Amber Alert for a kidnapped child in Los Angeles less than 24 hours ago. You'd think that if these license plate cameras were any good at what we keep being told we need them for, they would have caught the guy before needing to send that out.
Or "crime prevention" is complete bullshit, and this is just a convenient excuse to get more warrant-less surveillance on everyone.
Re:Thank you (Score:4, Interesting)
Nice to know I can make a clear shot across state lines with no interference.
Oh piss off with your "think of the children" nonsense. If you're so worried about your daughter there are countless ways to help keep her safe that don't involve the government warrantlessly tracking the entire population. Teaching her how to properly knee someone in the groin is far more effective anyway.
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This is why I think all US citizens and any travelers to the US must be embedded with a in-body real time tracking device and body camera.
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>"This is why I think all US citizens and any travelers to the US must be embedded with a in-body real time tracking device"
That already exists. Not inside your body, but near/on your body at nearly all times now. It is called your mobile/cell phone.
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Real investigations rely on probable cause, warrants, witness tips, and focused detective work. Not a nationwide dragnet that scans every license plate, logging billions of innocent movements for later scrutiny. And if some cases can't be solved, or solved as quickly, that's an absolutely necessary sacrif
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Re: Thank you (Score:2)
The "white slavery" scenario you suggest with American girls being kidnapped and being trafficked to Mexico is so rare as to be essentially non-existent. It's straight up fiction.
The international trafficking that does exist goes almost entirely in the opposite direction, and, frankly, most law enforcement doesn't give a damn about what happens to the women trafficked in those scenarios. To the extent that this has changed in the current political climate, it stems entirely from
Loopholes? (Score:3)
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Another loophole is to outsource to private contractors. The state/city/municipality still gets their sweet delicious federal funding, and their private contractor does the dirty work of running the license plate readers.
Another loophole is to feign ignorance. Most states and cities operate under the protocol of "if we're not caught, then it's not illegal" (of course, this only applies to THEM not to YOU). So they can keep doing surveillance, but clandestine. And just never use it as admissible evidence
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So they can keep doing surveillance, but clandestine.
Solar-powered LPR cameras ain't exactly inconspicuous.
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Are they assuming most law enforcement and civic jurisdictions doing this are receiving federal funds? The ban would have to extend to prohibiting contracting with third parties who don't themselves receive federal funding.
True. Title 23, United States Code,only applies to funding sources for Transportation, mainly highways. many ALPR cameras are local street ranged viewing, like retail areas, of which funding can legally be gotten from other taxing receiving agencies. It's insidious.
This would be amazing, and therefore cannot stand (Score:5, Insightful)
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I want to believe!
I think I know how this came to be (Score:2)
I can imagine that Representative Perry and Representative Chuy were both approached by FBI agents for their cars being parked outside a hotel that was a known spot for escorts to meet their Johns...
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In Perry's case, he was involved in the January 6th insurrection and was in contact with Trump's DOJ. He tried to have votes thrown out, spread the usual conspiracy lies about the election, and tried to block certification of the vote in Pennsylvania.
Enema of the State (Score:2)
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More like Dune's Heart Plug
Mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
We've had a marked increase of these fixed license plate readers popping up all over my community (~30,000 pop) supposedly for the purpose of catching kidnappers. I know of at least 4 between my house and my office (7 miles).
That is absolutely a noble cause and according to grok there are roughly 2000 per year in my state. However it also notes that less than 4% of those "not family disputes" related, and the stereotypical abduction is only several hundred a year country-wide.
Which means that's a rather large expense (liberty, and dollars) for an extremely rare event. Which also means that can't possibly be the real reason for these fixed plate readers that are popping up all over South Western Virginia.
20 years ago when it required a human in the loop watching traffic camera feeds looking for a specific vehicle/plate it seemed reasonable limit of the technology that kept the privacy aspect somewhat in check.
But now with AI vision, each plate can be detected a location/time stamped and stored for decades. Given police historical access to every vehicle that ever passed one of these readers for all of time; Someone robs a 7-Eleven and only knows the guy was in a red truck... now every red truck that was ever picked up by a reader in town within 30 minutes of said robbery is a person of interest.
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There is a crowd sourced map showing Flock cameras. https://deflock.org/ [deflock.org]
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All access to the software is logged, and every access has to be reported and attached to investigations.
I personally do not want a surveillance state, but it seems silly to ignore technology that improves law enforcement and saves money at the same time. As long as strict controls
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As long as strict controls are in place, which do not allow abuse, and it remains within the strict uses outlined by law, why not?
Because we don't trust that those predicates will be met, and we know the security will be insufficient to the task. The correct way to protect this data is for it to not exist.
Personally, I'd be more likely to support this if those pushing it were honest and fully embraced the capabilities from the start. It's not that I desire a surveillance state, but if we're going to allow all this data to be captured (and that's ALREADY happening), I'd rather we be open about it than for it to be abused for the worst
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Even if it harms [thehill.com] a few [theguardian.com] innocent people [theatlantic.com]?
And they were lucky that SWAT didn't come after them. That can get a person killed for doing nothing wrong.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." --William Blackstone
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They have proved very useful and have improved the departments efficiency tremendously.
Well, there's the problem. We need less efficiency, not more. A cop on every street corner. Who will be available to hassle the POC in the "wrong" neighborhood and conduct stop and frisks when things get a bit slow.
People need to do what our local miscreants do when they don't want to be surveilled: take the bus. There are far too many people driving anyway. Think of the environment!
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It seems there was a missed opportunity to define regulations around surveillance cameras utilized by the government. The Feds or others (EFF I'm looking at you) could describe measures that have to be in place in such devices.
Some ideas to spit-ball might include
-The images are only captured to the device and are immediately, hard-deleted once the license plate number is resolved.
-Things like vehicle color and possibly any other printed words like model, bumper stickers, brand icons can likewise be stored
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Because false positives are a thing and cops who stop, attack, kill, arrest, detain, lay hands on, attempt to interrogate, approach, or otherwise darken the days of the innocent are not, themselves, terminated, charged with assault and kidnapping, and locked away never again to breathe free air or to look upon the sun or sky without bars interposed. Nor are DAs who charge (lie) the innocent or judges who go along and allow these shenanigans.
See to it that the police, DAs, and judges are all properly punish
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I don't know if you noticed, but you're just as likely to BE kidnapped through the use of these systems than be saved from a kidnapping. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people give power to fascists under the guise of law enforcement. There can't possibly be a better tool for a fascist regime to quash dissent than the ability to identify and track individuals nationwide. Hope you never turn out for a protest, or even be in the wrong place at the wrong time to but Uncle Sam reason to think it's worth
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BusinessInsider, DailyJournal are both paywalls.
AmericanPartisan's article was because the software wasn't setup right. That happens with OCR software... it's called heuristics.
Not enough information about the screwup covered by ColoradoSun.
Remember this part? "Privacy? We all handed that over on a silver plate wearing butler gloves when we signed the service contract for your internet and your cell phone"... you did the same thing when you got your cell phone and/or internet (even burner phones have servi
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> Remember this part? "Privacy? ...
I do. In fact I even quoted it in my message, which you clearly didn't read.
"They can already track you, so we might as well make it easier for them" is not the persuasive argument you think it is. Just so you know, historically, you can lick that boot until you can see your own reflection in it and it's still gonna stomp on you. Literally any resistance is better than the rolling over you are clearly so eager to do.
=Smidge=
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But now with AI vision, each plate can be detected a location/time stamped and stored for decades.
AI? Bollocks! You've been able to implement ALPR with OpenCV and 50 lines of commented Python code for years before AI became a marketing buzzword. This stuff can run on hardware not more sophisticated than an RP2040 with a webcam attached.
The Tao of Abundance vs the Law (Score:2)
We may need to tinker with individual laws -- but the bigger picture is as in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
The results from whatever the laws will likely remain problematical as long as we have a political mythology built around scarcity while we also have super-powerful computers which could be used for universal surveillance or all sorts of other problematical -- or beneficial -- thin
Home Depot and Lowe's are installing them (Score:3)
I'm estimating that my plate is getting tagged at least a half-dozen times a day.
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Go the the small business hardware stores and lumber yards. They won't have the cameras for a little while until Flock offers to install them for free.
Weird nobody mentioned this (Score:2)
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That is certainly one purpose for them. The stated use-case is to only employ them in case of emergency (general example is a kidnapping.) That's a valid use I suppose. The problem is, there's no feasible safeguard to ensure they are only every used for such noble purposes. And, especially with the rise of AI/ML/visual recognition, they could easily be used for general surveillance of the population before it became public knowledge and or controlled (whether by law enforcement or even outside actors.)
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Are speed cameras a type of license plate tracking? Seems like it to me.
Absolutely yes.
Tangent question: Are speed cameras a type of toll camera? (the one exception they carved out in the law)
Not going to stop commercial use (Score:2)
Banks use these for repoing vehicles. You're being tracked either by the plates on your car, the EZ Pass for toll collection, the cellular connection in newer vehicles, the LoJack for higher risk loans or the phone in your pocket.
We shall see (Score:2)
1) I totally support restricting LPR data collection/sharing
2) This will likely never pass, at least not without tons of "exceptions"
3) I am not in favor of this type of mechanism- Federal government using funding blackmail to strip States of their rightful powers (see the 10th Amendment).
4) Regardless of the law, I have no doubt the 3-letter agencies will STILL have secret access to the data. It might stop localities or States from access, though.
Really, I don't even oppose having LPR collection for speci
I have my doubts (Score:2)
"Prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding ..." is not the same as "prevent any recipient of federal highway funding ...".
I predict that the people who salivate over this kind of data will find ways to collect it in spite of the prohibitions. It's just the nature of the beast.
Tolling is a pretty big loophole. (Score:2)
What if the federal government scrapped the gasoline tax and instead tracked you with ALPR's (Automatic License Plate Readers) to determine how much you use the roads. They would know where you went on every trip. They would charge you the segment cost as the crow flies between each ALPR.
I think this is where they are going with this.
You might even be double or triple charged. Once by the feds, and again by the state, and maybe even the city or county you live in.
Folks, It's going to get very expensive to
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This.
Our state (Washington) is pursuing road usage charges based on GPS data in place of gas taxes. Capturing EV usage as well. Don't have a GPS? Just report your annual odometer readings. Didn't drive all those miles within the state? You should have bought a reporting GPS receiver. We already have a "GoodToGo" system for bridge tolls, express lanes and the like. But we have far more readers along our roads than is necessary to collect charges. Effectively, a giant tracking network.
And then there's urban
Minority report (Score:2)
I have zero issue with popo knowing where I've been, and if there is a need to prove I was in another state when someone accuses me of committing a crime elsewhere, I will subpoena every record I have that shows I was somewhere else. This includes cell phone tower records.
There have been cases of cameras exonerating people falsely/wongly accused. One case I'm trying to find aga