Canada's Massive Public Traffic Surveillance System 239
New submitter cqwww writes "A small magazine in Victoria, BC just uncovered a massive public traffic surveillance system deployed in Canada. Here's a quote from the article: 'Normally, area police manually key in plate numbers to check suspicious cars in the databases of the Canadian Police Information Center and ICBC. With [Automatic License Plate Recognition], for $27,000, a police cruiser is mounted with two cameras and software that can read license plates on both passing and stationary cars. According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy. ... In August 2011, VicPD Information and Privacy Manager Debra Taylor called me to explain that, even though VicPD had the ALPR system in one of their cruisers, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] ran the system, and I should contact them for any information. "We actually don’t have a program," Taylor said. "We don’t have any documents per se." ... A month later, Taylor handed over 600 pages. ... [The claim they kept no documents] was apparently only in reference to digital information. VicPD had kept 500 pages of written, hard-copy logs of every ALPR hit they’d ever seen.'"
Wrong Kind of Chilling Out (Score:3)
I'm a smug canuck, been far north and the whole works, and I've just felt a distinctive *chill* for the first time in my 50+ years.
chills,
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Damn. Well. Looks like law enforcement got mrclisdue before he could even sign the comment!
I fear they recognize more than license plates now...
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This is NOT new. More than 5 years ago I read an article in a lower mainland newspaper describing how police had cars with this system, patrolling parking lots looking for stolen vehicles [at least, that's what they claimed they were looking for].
And of course, there was no information as to was retained after each plate was 'checked'.
Now, I wonder who is watching all those camera's that are located at each intersection in the lower mainland...
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Should be a relatively easy thing to do as well since plates are all roughly standard number of characters, type of font etc. Much harder handling an unknown language and character count.
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There's a lot of potential for abuse with this system:
1) They could track your every move. Where you shop, where you get your hair cut, when you go to the doctor, that you visit the hospital often (meaning you're being treated for something), that you eat fast food often, and WHO YOU MEET OR DATE (they could figure out you're gay, which many people prefer to keep secret).
2) They could make you guilty by association. If you have coffee at Starbucks every morning at 8, and so does a criminal, they could easil
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Let me guess you are from the US and are a republican.
Sure the police COULD do that but there are laws against them doing that already. Ie if they were systematically surveying people without cause they would have a problem. A one off (or two off in the case of determining if someone was speeding or not) doesn't go to the same level as storing things and following them around constantly. As long as the system doesn't store information for say longer than a days worth of travel at a time I don't care. If I
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And our penises are larger, don't for get the penises.
Nothing compared to Britain (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone of those can trigger the boys in blue to give you a tug.
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That - along with Coppers trying to fulfill their quota for the month.
Re:Nothing compared to Britain (Score:5, Insightful)
Works for me. I pay MY insurance and don't care for some idiot crashing into me and causing damage he/she/it can't pay for.
Likewise, the more stolen vehicles recovered the better for insurance rates. I don't steal cars, no problem.
The PURPOSE of a license plate is to publicly identify the vehicle.
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They can also apparently pull you if you have a similar in any way plate. try diff make of car and dark blue vs yellow. very embarrassing in a professional situation.
The police in the UK have pulled me whilst i was stationary.
Overzealous special police office.
Do not trust the police they are in the main, like traffic warden.
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Any girls in blue willing to give you a tug?
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So if everything dealing with your vehicle, license and insurance is in order you have nothing to worry about, correct?
Yes, if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide, comrade.
And it's a silly system for the UK as insurance covers drivers, not vehicles. I was insured to drive any vehicle I didn't own as well as the two that I did, hence I could be stopped for driving a vehicle perfectly legally.
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Typically, it's only some commercial insurance where that's not the case afaik.
I'd check your small print if I were you - it's quite common for people to get caught out by this.
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Why should it be the car that is insured, at least in the case of liability? I can see needing property insurance to cover things like theft and fire but for actual "I just hit a dude" insurance it should be the driver that is insured. They don't give you separate drivers test for each car that you drive so presumably they are assuming that you are equally qualified to drive any vehicle in the class you are licensed for. Than it would seem to imply that the risk of an accident is tied to the driver not to t
Uncovered? (Score:5, Interesting)
The system has been in Quebec for several months now. They are using it mostly to find folks who haven't paid their drivers registration. They say they will not use it to find folks with outstanding tickets. The traffic divisions get all the big bucks. It's a real cash cow for the government. It was all over the news here though so there was nothing to really uncover. You can see the equipment and every once in a while I see a provincial car cruising slowly along the shoulder of the road with an array of equipment bolted to the roof scanning. Over here as far as I know though it's not used by local police yet.
cheers
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I think I saw a Gatineau cop with cameras on the roof on Friday. I figure that it was an ANPR system, but thought was weird that the cameras appear to be pointed perpendicular to the road, rather than targetted at licence plates. go figger
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Je pense que vous manquez le *whoosh*
j"appologize si j'ai offensé n'importe lequel de mes compatriotes quebocois.
a la votre,
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Saves them driving around and trying to find people at home to ask them if they are still using that car or calling several times to get them at home. This way the cars come to them and they move half a mile at most to pull the guy over and do their thing. That said can also catch stolen vehicles, cars registered to people wanted on a warrant etc. The guys on the warrant are probably pretty popular since you might not know where they are living but they often will be stupid enough to continue to drive their
I thought this was pretty normal (Score:2)
I thought ANPR was a pretty normal thing to equip a police car with nowadays. Not standard, by any means, but not something really out of the ordinary.
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ANPR is pretty new in most of Canada, the provincal police in Quebec have it or most of them do. The OPP in Ontario will see it in 2020 or 2050 as they still don't have digital terminals in most of their cars, they're still doing stuff by hand and calling dispatch when they do a check. Peel regional police(near Toronto--richest municipality in Ontario, will probably see it if they want it if they don't already have it). But I can't figure out what's secret. The RCMP will get it no question they're the "
Hmph. (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy.
Just a little grumble....
Two thousand an hour at 95-98 percent accuracy gives 40 to 100 wrongly-read plates.
Just like dictation software, where they say "99% accurate!" - a hundred words is pretty easy to clock up and then you seem to be forever correcting it.
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But then only a small number of those wrongly-read plates will read as stolen or whatever, and those will be easy to identify when the police look at the actual plate.
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"Two thousand an hour at 95-98 percent accuracy gives 40 to 100 wrongly-read plates."
Whose status can be confirmed by other means if the vehicle is pulled over.
Now try the same thing with the "Mark 1 human eyeball" then compare error rates.
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According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy.
Just a little grumble.... Two thousand an hour at 95-98 percent accuracy gives 40 to 100 wrongly-read plates.
Just like dictation software, where they say "99% accurate!" - a hundred words is pretty easy to clock up and then you seem to be forever correcting it.
It will also be easy to tell when they see the VW Bug you're driving isn't the stolen GMC Denali that matches the plates the system erroneously reported you as having. These kinds of false positives really aren't that big a deal. The cops aren't going to jump out guns blazing or taze the crap out of you just because the automatic plate reader flagged your car as possibly stolen.
Re:Hmph. (Score:5, Informative)
The cops aren't going to jump out guns blazing or taze the crap out of you just because the automatic plate reader flagged your car as possibly stolen.
Just like they would never pull someone over and end up tazing the crap out of them because their license plate frame was crooked.
Oh... well, er... [abc4.com]
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I'm not grumping about the system as such, just the vendor's claims.
"95% accuracy" sucks when you're scanning "thousands per hour" as you have to deal with at least one or two incorrect plates a minute. If "deal with" in this case means "officer isn't hassled by a beeping machine" it's ok.
I just hate the description of high throughput systems with a "xx%!" accuracy claim. Unless its up there in the 5 x 9's (like site availability), it's pitiful.
And unbunch panties (Score:2)
Your plates are already public information. These systems (the UK has had one for years) just read that information and flag up PlusBad. The argument is really about the likelihood of being caught.
Of course, someone will post about how their sainted grandmother was gunned down by El Federales because Bankrobber Billy cloned her plates on his getaway car and it was picked up by an A?PR system. Bring it.
These YRO stories (Score:2)
Are you trying to turn people into "ban it" luddites?
Oh no, a machine can read a number plate! They'll know where my car was!
Well, no-one cares. It's technology. It happens. It has good parts and bad parts. Stop panicking!
Re:These YRO stories (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Mr/Mrs/Miss tbird81,
Your vehicle has been identified on several occasions frequenting liquor stores. Statistically, we find that drivers who fit this behavior pattern tend to be riskier drivers and poor insurance risks. Consequently, we are raising your liability insurance rates.
Signed, Your friendly insurance company.
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the guy who does not care has been successfully indoctrinated in the new big brother scheme.
he's also desensitized to it.
you and I see the problem here, but he does not.
problem is: you and I are in the minority.
over the next 20 years, you and I (and our kind) will matter less and less and the 'I'm ok with this!' crowd will be fully complacent.
I do not want to live in this future. I'm glad I'm an old guy with most of my life behind me. sigh...
Road Traffic Police State (Score:2)
This type of thing is the inevitable consequence of policing road traffic. But here's the thing about that: road traffic doesn't really need to be policed. The road rules exist to avoid crashes, but no one wants to crash. People try very hard to avoid crashing. If there were no police on the roads, the exact same people would try just as hard to avoid crashing.
But roads are a police state, because you know The Right Way for everyone else to drive. Learn to mind your own business. And tell your neighbo
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Did you see a police officer prevent a car crash in your state? No, you didn't.
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I've seen cops indirectly cause accidents.
seach 'rubbernecking'. each time they pull someone over during rush hour, to enhance their profits^Hrevenue, they cause more problems than they 'solve'.
we would all be better if cops stayed the hell off the roads. yes, I'm 100% serious. they cause more problems for citizens than they 'solve'.
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Not to mention that 80% think they are above average drivers.
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Since the average driver doesn't crash his car every day, how does this matter? Even very bad drivers often go years without crashing.
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With all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost as if all that policing doesn't solve the problem...
Re:Road Traffic Police State (Score:4, Insightful)
"People try very hard to avoid crashing. If there were no police on the roads, the exact same people would try just as hard to avoid crashing."
You assume people Give the Proverbial Fuck without being reminded. Maybe you do, in which case congrats on your virtue but don't expect it to scale.
Drunks don't try hard to avoid crashing and crash often. Many drivers crash but refuse to carry insurance. Many drivers run expired license tags or swap them from other vehicles. Auto theft is common.
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You assume people Give the Proverbial Fuck without being reminded. Maybe you do, in which case congrats on your virtue but don't expect it to scale.
Why can't you just learn to mind your own business? It's none of your business whether anyone else "Gives a Proverbial Fuck" or not. I don't care what "scales" and what doesn't. I want you and the police to stop minding my business. Leave me and everyone else alone. We're trying to live our lives. We don't need you to manage our choices for us. We don't need a government mom or an government overseer.
Drunks don't try hard to avoid crashing and crash often.
So let's start by repealing every other traffic law so the police can focus on the drunks.
Many drivers crash but refuse to carry insurance.
With all th
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I don't care what you do when you are off the road. But once you are on the road, you are a danger to ME.
This is false. I'm not a danger to anyone on the road. Almost no one is.
So if you don't give a fuck about rules, the police hopefully will fuck with you. And I approve.
"Rules" don't prevent crashes. Driving around people instead of into them prevents crashes.
I don't object to rules. My objection is to those who want to rule others. People who want to rule others are evil. They're a danger to everyone. That includes you.
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"This is false. I'm not a danger to anyone on the road. Almost no one is."
And you know this, how? And we should believe you, why? The Lake Wobegon Effect is alive and well -- most people think they are "better than most" drivers. It's also possible that you are ignorant and unaware of it -- the Dunning-Kruger effect [wikipedia.org]. I know, how insulting of me to even raise the issue -- but how can I know which cars contain safe drivers, and which do not?
There's also multiple views of "danger". If you say, no harm, no
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So if you don't give a fuck about rules, the police hopefully will fuck with you. And I approve.
Hopefully. So, just having a huge police force wanking about fucking with people at random is your solution to your feelings of helpless rage at other drivers who MAY fuck with you? In my case the threat of litigation is much more an effective deterrent to smashing about and causing mayhem than anything the police have ever done to me. The only thing that cops have ever done to me/for me/with me is issue me tickets and generally waste my time. All that has done is piss me off and make me want to avoid cops
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The road rules exist to avoid crashes, but no one wants to crash. People try very hard to avoid crashing. If there were no police on the roads, the exact same people would try just as hard to avoid crashing.
One of the local radio stations in my (rather large) city once asked on it's morning for people to call in if they had ever intentionally wrecked into another car. Their phones were ringing off the hook. Whether to get insurance to fix their car, because you cut them off, or they're just having a really bad day, there is a not insignificant number of people out there who will intentionally crash into others.
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Even though it's against the law? And with all the police out there? How can that be? It's almost as if all that policing doesn't solve the problem...
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A nice sentiment, but unrealistic.
Having been in areas with reasonable (and non-excessive) police patrolling the roads and in areas (say Rome or Cairo) where obediance of common-sense traffic laws is essentially non-existent, I much prefer having the police around to keep things flowing smoothly.
In Cairo, traffic laws technically exist but are widely disregarded (mostly because the police aren't anywhere near sufficient in number to enforce them after the revolution last year). Previously one-way streets no
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You are confusing the affects of cultural differences with the affects of policing. Bad drivers are bad drivers, regardless of police. Courtesy and manners don't come from police either. And police don't design roads to prevent gridlock, nor does the presence of police suddenly make a road built for 1000 cars per hour handle 5000 cars.
scan errors could be fatal (Score:3)
Used to have a "hot hatchback", and a local PO mis-entered the license number into his system, just like the ALPR scan errors. The license plate/vehicle mismatch was obviously good grounds for a stop. Problem was that I couldn't see his active roof light bar above the low roof line and the locals don't have dash-mounted lights. All I could see when I parked at the grocery store was that some asshole had pulled up behind me (I'm in a diagonal slot in a shopping mall) and was shining his bright headlights in my mirror. I bounced out, carrying a black wallet; it wouldn't have been unheard-of for anyone other than an old white dude to end up dead.
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I'm tall; an older Integra hatchback (no sunroof) allows me to fit inside, but I'm so close to the inside roof that I cannot see the tops of cars close behind (nor could I in an MGBGT). His light bar is over a foot above my range of vision and he had high beams and a spotlight nearly overwhelming my vision. This wasn't a "follow me for a half mile with the light bar on", this was "pull up behind and THEN turn on the light bar, high beams and spotlight".
Every interaction with an LEO is potentially fatal fo
Been going on here for years... (Score:2)
In a discussion with a peer the other day, she said, "Is seems we are headed for '1984.' When do you think we will g
Re:Been going on here for years... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Anyone who thinks we're in 1984 hasn't read 1984."
I think you're using 1984 as a model of what would actually happen, in the real world data is collected out of view of human beings. Does anyone here think the internet is not a spying machine, really? Google, all those websites you visit? Every time you do something on the net you're leaving a trail for others to determine who you are and what your interests are. There doesn't need to be an overt system in place. How is stuff like foxnews not similar
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and you're purposely ignoring the increasing number of similarities between today and 1984 for reasons I cannot fathom.. we're headed there, step by step. slow cooked.
no one will arrest you for building that room because it's ineffective and cost prohibitive enough that most people don't do it. you might not be arrested for reading political books, but you WILL be put on a watch list (eg no fly) that supersedes due process. your example, if true, disproves the previous statement, ie that you CAN be arrest
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Boston area has cameras at all major intersections (Score:2)
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The cameras are pretty easy to distinguish from traffic signal control receivers [wikipedia.org]. Some fixed cameras are used for vehicle detection in place of inductive loops. They detect vehicles on side streets and schedule a green light just like the old loop systems do. The cameras with pan and azimuth controls are usually only for monitoring conditions by human operators.
Camera systems used for capturing license plates are usually equipped with strobes (sometimes IR) which work in conjunction with plates' retrorefle
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Which means, build a slave strobe that spots the strobe and fires back. http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-now-few-words-from-tourist-standing.html [blogspot.com]
You could do it with LEDs, too. Might mess up the look of the back of your car.
Or, somewhat lower tech, if you have a white car, use some white retroreflective tape to put your own distracting shapes on the car; the strobe will illuminate those, too, and they will confuse its license-plate detector.
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Sure those aren't for detecting oncoming emergency vehicles? Check to see if the "camera" is strobing when an ambulance or fire truck is driving through. It switches the lights to a phase that clears the traffic and lets the emergency vehicle through more quickly.
Looks like a good idea (Score:2)
This stuff can make the work of the police far more efficient leading to the recovery of more stolen cars and the catching of more criminals. If, as the article claims, only the criminals' licence plate gets recorded, there is no privacy invasion.
It isn't just Canada (Score:2)
And I've spotted ALPR here in Providence, RI too. So it's widespread. So either mount a high gamma source near your registration plates, or better yet, paint a clear radium coating over the entire plate.
Canada is far from the worst (Score:3)
Has anybody been to Italy? It seems like every town of more than a hundred people has what they call a ZTL where foreigners cannot drive in. Those zones are bordered by barely legible signs with cameras attached to them. License plates are automatically scanned and fined with what appears to be no doublechecking.
I know that the last time I went there, we were fined for entering the zone when we'd specifically been "cleared out" by the hotel we were staying at. Apparently they send the tickets no matter what and quietly accept payments even if you did no wrong.
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Has anybody been to Italy? It seems like every town of more than a hundred people has what they call a ZTL where foreigners cannot drive in.
I'll be damned... "zona traffic limitato", see for instance here [upperitaly.net] and here [slowtrav.com]. It's a trap designed to "generate revenue streams". Not just the tickets. From the latter website:
It is permissible to drive to a hotel within the restricted areas or to a parking garage, but, it is imperative that the hotel or garage call your license plate number into the police. This will give you safe passage. Do not assume that this call will be made, ask them to make the call and then check later that it was made. To be safe, keep your hotel or garage receipt in the event that you do get a ticket, then you can challenge it.
In addition to the call, entering a plate on the list to allow access will cost €1 euro instead of being free of charge.
I'm safe and here's why: (Score:2)
Ha! I don't have a car!
Re:I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense but I'm sure there are folks with far greater imaginations than yours (in this case) who will come up with many ways this could be used. Many uses of which I'm sure would definitely pertain to your rights, and not necessarily in a positive way.
Re:I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm with the AC on this one. Normally I'm in the tinfoil hat crowd myself, and I detest the "if you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide or to fear" argument... but I honestly can't see how this information could be abused. It's not a violation of any privacy rights -- I'm out in public along with the data on my vehicle. It doesn't deny me any freedom of movement, it doesn't reveal my stash of weed or guns hidden under the seat, it doesn't make them privy to my whispered conversation about plans to rob a bank or blow up the nearest Chuck E. Cheese's. So what constitutional rights are being curtailed or even threatened?
On the other hand, it CAN more quickly locate my car if it is stolen or the gardener who let himself in and abducted my child; it will (as others have pointed out elsewhere in this topic) also make it easier to check for outstanding warrants or unpaid traffic tickets. As someone who has had my own share of speeding tickets, I still can't object to that -- it was my own fault for getting the tickets, and if I don't pay them on time, it's my own fault for making the problem worse when (not if) I get caught.
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So what constitutional rights are being curtailed or even threatened?
None. Until you realize that it enabled them to search your vehicle under 'reasonable suspicion' because the system incorrectly flagged(Honest mistake, really!) your car as stolen...
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As a later post alludes to they already can do that anyways. All they got to do is pull you over for a "random" chat to see if you are impaired and "smell weed'. If a cop is going to go out of their way to abuse your rights they can do it with a notepad and pen just as easy as they can with a computer being the one that reads your licence plate.
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In the States, officers knocked on the wrong door while searching for a drug lab. The guys inside the wrong apartment tried getting rid of weed, the cops said they heard "noise of evidence possibly being destroyed" and broke down the door and confiscated the weed as evidence. The judge agreed that "noise of evidence being destroyed" was probable cause. The fact that they got the wrong address and should not have been in a position to hear the noise in the first place was not considered relevant. The fact th
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Also rate of checks. If an officer has to look at the plate and type it in wait for a response and then act on it they can only look at a very small fraction of the cars that pass them in a day. If they can go about their business and have an alert whenever something interesting comes up it is a much better screening technique. It pisses me off how many drivers pull across crosswalks waiting for an opening for a right hand turn for example. I wish cops fined people more for that as it is insanely dangerous
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Hate to point it out, but you're wrong on several counts. While even I, who am ALWAYS in the tinfoil hat crowd, don't have a serious issue with systems like this scanning for currently wanted vehicles, there is absolutely no reason to retain the information on non-matched vehicles. OK, your car gets stolen and you haven't reported it yet, or your straw-man kidnapped child incident happens and knowing that the car involved passed one of these things 30 minutes ago might possibly be useful in certain edge c
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So what constitutional rights are being curtailed or even threatened?
Innocent until proven guilty when they get a complete list of your traffic history (well, the vehicle's) and pull you over because you had a few previous traffic offences in your record. Either they think they can make a false report stick to you to increase their quota, or they'll just pull you up to have a peep (particularly if those previous records were DUI or similar, so they pull you up for a "random" test in the hope that you might be drunk again).
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1) Resources that are limited and have a larger demand for them than resources exist. How often does a criminal get away because the police have to make a call and say 2 weeks of surveillance is all we can afford for this case before we need to move on?
2) So? Making laws hard to enforce isn't the solution. Changing the laws are. You can argue that making laws easier to enforce is universally good. Good laws should be universally enforced. Bad laws that the police routinely ignore because they are inconvenie
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Search for this city and you'll find teenager girls physically abused in cells (with video), guys on the street assaulted for no purpose during arrest (with video), the list goes on and on. Or take a look at what's been going on with who's running the department.. A trusted PD they are not.
Re:I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:5, Informative)
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Wouldn't this be an end-run around warrantless GPS tracking, which the USA Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/supreme-court-holds-warrantless-gps-tracking-unconstitutional.ars [arstechnica.com]
Who needs GPS tracking if you can put these on every government building, police car, and city vehicle (including buses) to track license numbers? City surveillance cameras could be linked in too.
(I realize this article is about use in Canada, but this technology is starting to get
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Unfortunately, that USA ruling about warrantless tracking was based on the reasoning that the older laws that considered it a search to do a physical trespass were still in effect. The tracking was illegal without a warrant because it involved physically putting the GPS on the car.
That's a very limited ruling that wouldn't make it illegal to track someone by taking thousands of photos, since you don't need to touch the car to do that.
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Not only do you not need to touch the car, hasn't the Supreme Court decided that when in public you have no expectation of privacy? I suspect they would argue that taking the photos of the plates is just reading the data that is publicly available.
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It takes a lot more effort to put a license plate reader on every street corner and use it to pick one car out of every car on the road than to put one GPS device on a car.
Not to mention that driving at night would probably defeat the camera system.
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Except technology improves which means it will likely take less effort and less cost as time goes by. In fact that has already happened. The reason these systems seem to appear out of the blue is that they don't require major capital expenditures and large departments managing them. They can also be retrofitted to existing systems.
You also don't need every street corner. Major roads and areas of interest will give you enough information for most purposes.
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And there's very little up keep for the equipment. So you get a small budget to install the kit one year, then rinse and repeat until your whole city is covered.
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For one car, yes. However, as the number of cars increases you reach a point where it becomes no mor expensive to track every car in the area all the time with the cameras.
The same need to feel 'powerful' that drives police to create paramilitary units with military looking gear wo yel "HUT!" a lot will drive them to want that ability no matter that there's practically no legitimate use for it.
Re:I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, they could sell or give the info to auto insurance companies.
Hell, that's nothing. They can sell the data to credit scoring companies - the kind of companies that are now promoting things like scores for how likely people are to take their prescription medicine. They can sell it to stalkers - directly or through some legiitimizing proxy like a PI - who might like to know all the places their victims have driven in the last year.
Really, the possibilities for how this information can be used to the against perfectly innocent, law-abiding people are endless. If it we
Re:I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:4, Informative)
In BC the car insurance is run by a government monopoly, so I guess it would be easier to pass them data. Having a well run single insurer is actually pretty efficient, as it lowers a lot of advertising and other overhead, but of course there are challenges in a system without competitive pressures to keep things in line, and a poorly run monopoly can be really terrible.
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Not that it matters - since ICBC has the responsibility of ensuring we have safe drivers, both through their issuance of BC Drivers Licenses and vehicle Insurance.
What really gets me is the lack of transparency and due diligence in informing the public of how they are sharing our information and what technology they are using on our public in
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Since they also know where they were when they spotted your tag, they can now follow the movements of EVERYONE all the time with just a few cameras. Not only without a warrant, but without even the annoyance of attaching a GPS tracker bought with other people's money.
Re:Western Washington (Score:4, Informative)
They do occasionally find stolen cars. Mine was found after 3 weeks, sitting on a side street. They called me to come get it, didn't run prints or in any way investigate who might have stolen it, "just get it out of here"
At least they let you come pick it up -- in many cities they'll treat it as an abandoned vehicle and tow it and charge you the tow and impound fees:
http://blog.sfgate.com/cwnevius/2009/11/11/car-stolen-that-will-cost-you-300-part-ii/ [sfgate.com]
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That stuff claims to only work for cameras that use flashes (e.g. red light cameras). ANPR readers don't use flashes.
It also doesn't work [amazon.com].
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Ferengi Laws Of Acquisition:
1. Once you have their money, you never give it back.
I suggest you look up the term "snake oil"
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It's interesting how such an expensive system is thwarted with petroleum distillates and other natural minerals:
Only if you make a Molotov cocktail with them and throw it at the ANPR-equipped police vehicle. Which actually isn't a bad idea if you can avoid getting caught. After a number of patrol cars get torched, they might reconsider how badly they want ANPR systems. Same with these ViPR backscatter-scanner-equipped trucks. After they lose a dozen or so scan-trucks costing hundreds of thousands each, they may rethink that as well. It's to the point now that making it cost them too much in destroyed equipment is pro