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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Been going on here for years... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 that they only interpreted the sound they heard as destruction of evidence because they thought they had the right address was not relevant.
So in the States, I doubt that the system falsely flagging your car would be grounds to throw out evidence. At least in states where the law doesn't dismiss evidence that is considered "poisonous fruit". To summarize: in some states, if the police collect evidence due to a mistake, the evidence is thrown out. But if the mistake leads to probable cause (not evidence per se) and the probable cause then leads to evidence, then the evidence is acceptable in court (again, in some states only).
BUT
This hardly matters anyway.
The reason the police need probable cause and warrants is not to help criminals escape. That would be silly.
The reason they need probable cause and warrants is to protect the innocent: being investigated or having your vehicle/home searched is very annoying and frustrating. I don't care that I don't have anything illegal in my car. I just don't want it to be searched.
I once had my home searched (for the record I was innocent and the search did not turn up what they were looking for) and believe me, it was very disturbing. Having the police enter my home and look through it made me feel violated. For 6 months I couldn't take a shower or go #2 on the toilet until late at night, as I was afraid the cops might return. I slept in my clothes in case they came back early in the morning (didn't want to be caught in my pajamas).
They did not even look through my drawers, they just visited the rooms (they were looking for a person actually) but it was still a pretty distressful experience. Also, they didn't have a warrant: after they questioned me on my door step, I willingly let them in - I thought the experience would not be that bad, I didn't realize how I'd feel afterwards.
I did feel coerced to let them in, though: they repeated several times that if I was innocent I had no reason to refuse them entry (yes, I know refusing entry is not evidence of guilt but the accusation still made me feel uncomfortable). After they left and I ran the whole thing back through my head, I felt like I didn't really want them to search my home, I felt that I gave in because the alternative was most likely being investigated (i.e. I chose the best of two harms)... I felt that the whole time, even though they were not looking for me, they treated me like a suspect, with hostility and suspicion.
I admit I'm a bit introverted and not really at ease in public. My home is not just a roof over my head, it's a shelter where I feel protected from the outside world. I can interact socially as much as everyone else but I don't feel as comfortable doing it.
For months I didn't think of my home as a shelter, instead I felt like it was a place that made it easy for the outside world to come and find me. I wanted to be anywhere else but my home, even a crowded public area. So perhaps I'm not the average person and most people would deal better than me with the police searching their home (then again all people I spoke to who had their home searched were disturbed by the experience to some degree, although not necessarily as much as I was).
But even though I'm a bit abnormal (and I insist on "a bit" - on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being normal and 1 a complete deviant, I'm at least an 8), I still have the right to be the way I am, I have the right to be less comfortable than other people about social situations, and the law is supposed to protect me from