
U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars - dctoedt
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-spies-on-millions-of-cars-1422314779
======
stegosaurus
Same deal in the UK with the national ANPR system (Automatic Number Plate
Recognition).

Ostensibly to reduce the amount of uninsured/untaxed drivers on the roads.

Don't want to sit around in databases? Well, here's a nice list of just a few
of the things you can't have:

Bank account; Car/motorcycle; Mobile telephone; Internet-connected computer;
Credit/debit card; Visible face (oh, we might be safe there, for a few years)

Unless of course you're a criminal, in which case you can handily avoid a lot
of this!

I used to think we could escape surveillance using technology. Fool's errand.
We'd need an entire culture change. It's gone.

If blanket video coverage of public areas is fine, why not blanket audio
coverage? Add in facial and audio recognition. Now consider you're running
about with a microphone webcam combo in your pocket, the power and battery
life of which will only increase.

I hate it with every ounce of my being, but I can't see a way out here. I
can't see the 'line', any more.

~~~
woodman
There is no way to reverse this. Trying to cage this with paperwork will just
lead to more of the same creative interpretations à la NSA. So the rulers
don't feel the rules apply to them, big surprise. With that in mind, the
futility of fighting the tide, what is the next step? As the ideal solution of
reversal is unavailable, we need to go with harm reduction - but what is the
harm that we would reduce? Most would say the harm is the loss of privacy, but
I disagree. I believe the harm is further consolidation of power by those with
the means to abuse it. So I would advocate for a democratization of all these
spy programs. If the DEA can spy on us, we should be able to spy on the DEA.
Any funding request for government programs should include a documented method
of direct public access (not FOIA, operator level).

It is no mystery why the Constitution included the provision allowing citizens
to arm themselves with the same class of weapons that the government
possessed. The memory of tyrannical governance was fresh. Information is no
different, if the government posses this information - so should the citizens.

~~~
orbifold
This kind of defeatism is not helpful. Through history people were able to
eventually overthrow much more brutal oppressors. The kind coercion used in
western societies might appear to be more effective, but there is no reason to
think that direct political action could not work. When it happens, like in
the case of the occupy movement, you can see by the media reaction, how
uncomfortable it is for the powerful.

Your suggestion of a democratization of spy programs is actually one of the
premises of "The Circle", the book is meant to paint a dystopian future.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Through history people were able to eventually overthrow much more brutal
> oppressors._

They were more brutal because they substituted brutality in lieu of these
sorts of technological innovations. They couldn't spy on everyone, so they had
to crucify the few opponents they could definitively catch (or some
sacrificial lambs, when they couldn't.)

Not to mention, it's much easier to overthrow a brutal dictator. Your
government is killing your friends, drafting your family into the military,
and sending your coworkers to work camps? Hell yeah, we won't stand for that!
But if your government is just quietly watching, while your family is sitting
at home, with food in their fridge - will you pick up a weapon to fight
against that regime? Will your friends, family, neighbors?

~~~
orbifold
Well the good thing about not living in a dictatorship is that you have
freedom of expression and freedom of association. So there really isn't any
need to resort to violence, at least in principle.

You are right to point out that the majority of people are just comfortable
enough, struggling to pay for debts they incurred in one way or another and
generally have no incentive to fight totalitarian overreach of the state.

Unfortunately the institutions for the indoctrination of the young are set up
in a way by now, that they are very good at producing hyper-focused well-
working replaceable cogs for industry, together with their Ayn Rand reading,
libertarian overlords in one nice package. They do all that, while setting you
up for a life of indebted servitude, if you don't happen to choose a
profession that requires you to be highly compliant with the current system to
be successful.

So I guess if there is one thing to fix it would be education, a properly
educated general public would hopefully be less apathetic and compliant than
it is today. Technology has the potential to make education much more widely
available and independent of having to assemble in one place and be subjected
to abuse and brainwashing of authority figures.

~~~
woodman
> ... libertarian overlords ...

Ok, go ahead and square that with the operation of the government today. I'm
pretty confident you will find it impossible to construct a convincing
argument.

~~~
orbifold
That was a stupid choice of words... What I meant to say was neo-liberal, I
guess. Since the whole comment is mostly hyperbole anyways, I will let it
stand as is.

~~~
woodman
Well thanks for not doubling down. FYI, "Ayn Rand" and "neo-liberal" doesn't
really belong in the same breath either - I'm guessing you've never actually
read anything she has written. This might be a moment where you consider the
body of knowledge that your opinions rest on, and the phrase "garbage in,
garbage out".

------
DanielBMarkham
So the mailman remembers everyone you've ever sent or received mail with. The
DOJ remembers every time your car pulls in front of a police vehicle with a
LPR. The NSA is tracking what people you call, when, how long, and where you
are when you call them.

For the life of me I do not understand why both major parties aren't having
conniption fits right now. Are these the same parties that, on a bipartisan
basis, told Nixon to get lost? Shut down some of the intelligence community's
overreach in the 70s? Impeached a U.S. President for lying under oath?

Both parties over the previous 50 years have taken strong stands -- both
separately and together -- in regards to strong oversight of privacy and
freedom. Would Reagan have put up with this? Carter? Ike? JFK? It's
inconceivable. During those times, yes, there was plenty of illegal mucking
around -- but wholesale bulldozing of citizen's privacy? It's something from a
dystopian sci-fi novel of just 15 years ago.

Surely this has to come up there somewhere near as important as all those
other political scandals. Surely it would be a popular measure. But instead,
what I'm seeing is somebody trying to introduce a bill to nibble around the
edges, then others adding amendments so that the bill to reduce NSA spying
actually increases it. It's like they're being incentivized to go in exactly
the wrong direction.

It just doesn't make sense to me. There is some missing piece to this puzzle.
When I see guys like Hayden, with his cocky attitude; there's something he
knows that I don't know, and it's not that AQ is some kind of clear and
present danger. It's something else. (Sorry to sound so mysterious. I'm truly
at a loss.)

~~~
jsprogrammer
The "problem" is that it is increasingly easy to assemble these databases and
to update them in real time. If a government agency isn't doing it, a
corporation could be (and some are, for certain pieces of data), and soon (if
not now) an individual or loose collection of individuals could achieve nearly
the same results.

We might need to embrace it, make everything transparent and collaborative,
and figure out how to make use of the information to create a state that is
better than what currently exists.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Thank you. Just to clarify, even though I'm a libertarian, this isn't a "Big
Gummit" problem. If DOJ wasn't doing this, Yellow Cab would. Or Uber. Or the
guys who build traffic lights. The data is simply too valuable to ignore.

This is a tech problem. We created this, all while saying something like
"Yeah, but all that ethical and philosophy stuff isn't really anything I need
to worry about. What I need are eyeballs"

The government takes the blame in many cases because they hold all the trump
cards -- they can take the data from anybody that's collecting it. They can
also send you to jail, which commercial providers cannot directly do (yet).
But the problem is with the tech. We have met the enemy and he is us.

------
wahsd
Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore? We
have to realize that the authoritarian demons have the battering ram at the
door and I really don't want to find out what happens when the USA turns into
an authoritarian militaristic regime. We're way more than half way there
already and people support it. Our very own government is a threat to us all,
or at least those who will find themselves on the wrong site of the inner
circle.

~~~
superuser2
Do you read the news? Because here are some things that other states are up to
that we aren't (at least, not in this decade):

\- Systematic execution for the crime of belonging to a particular ethnic
group or religion

\- Open and openly arbitrary disappearing, detention, and torture of
intellectuals for the crime of writing articles critical of state-sponsored
religious and political doctrine

\- Use of force against people who commit such crimes as selecting their own
sexual partners, disobeying their parents, being seen in public with members
of the opposite sex, texting members of the opposite sex, being homosexual,
etc. Or, more commonly in the "developed" world, failure to investigate or
pursue family-based vigilante "justice" against same.

\- Failure to acknowledge women as people and rape as a crime

\- Committing violence against, or being complicit in violence against,
children who dared to go to school

\- Corruption to a degree that renders the public health infrastructure so
dysfunctional that tens of thousands of people die needlessly

\- Outright censorship of any reporting that paints the state in a negative
light

\---

"Knowing things about citizens" is _dangerous_ because it enables the state to
be _far_ more effective in pursuing policies like the above. We ought to limit
the government's knowledge of the lives of its citizens because that makes it
much harder to effectively implement policies like these.

HOWEVER, HN sounds downright ridiculous when it declares that being listed in
a database is comparable to being summarily executed for criticizing state
religion.

~~~
flycaliguy
Can somebody good with their logical fallacies let me know if this falls under
"Fallacy of relative privation"?

This definition [1] even uses this very argument as an example:

"The counter to the relative privation argument when applied, for example, to
compare America with other more tyrannous countries is to note that the proper
comparison to make should not be between America and other tyrannies but
between America and the ideal of freedom."

I find it a scary way to look at the world and to me it always comes off as
less an honest argument and more like somebody who understands fallacy using
it to persuade the reader for their own benefit.

Like the sort of thing they'll tell you as they are locking up your cage.
"Hey, you're lucky it's dry unlike the cages the bad guys use!" the voice
under the helmet said.

[1]
[http://www.hevanet.com/kort/KING6.HTM](http://www.hevanet.com/kort/KING6.HTM)

~~~
superuser2
This is specifically in response to the question:

> Can we please stop acting like the USA is somehow a "good guy" anymore?

I am arguing the specific assertion that surveillance makes America morally
equivalent to or less than the countries we oppose. That does not seem to be
true. Apologies if that's not what parent meant.

Of course this doesn't make America "good" or even okay, but it is entirely
possible to have severe problems while still being a "good guy" relative to
the likes of Iran.

~~~
fit2rule
Its not just surveillance. Its also the mass murder of millions of people in
the middle east as a result of American-led aggression. Just because its done
with death robots from the sky doesn't make it morally justifiable.

~~~
sroerick
Great, now I'm writing a tune called Death Robots From the Sky, to the tune of
Ghost Riders In the Sky.

------
antimora
Here is a link that avoids the paywall:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fu-
s-spies-on-millions-of-
cars-1422314779&ei=ENrGVKPPEaTCywO8zYC4CA&usg=AFQjCNEAugi1jX2p0zZSI8CzfsI9hhH4Dg&sig2=TeH4Gl9aROV2wBWb-
Dzf4Q&bvm=bv.84349003,d.bGQ)

~~~
msoad
This link is safer to say "always works"

[https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars](https://www.google.com/#q=U.S.+Spies+on+Millions+of+Cars)

Basically you can Google the title and click on first result to see it without
limitations of a paywall

~~~
zaroth
Cool, HN is listed as the 2nd "News" result for that query.

------
ChuckMcM
I always found it much more interesting to consider that smart stop light
sensors could read the RFID tags that are required for tires [1]. You can
change your plates but how often do you change your tires?

[1]
[http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880](http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10880)

~~~
ryan-allen
Tyres have RFID tags in them??! What an unusual thing to put RFID tags in. I
wonder what other common items could have tags in them that people are
generally unaware of.

I'm quite in to cars and I had NO IDEA this was a thing.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yup, embedded right into the rubber. There are a couple of reasons for this,
one is to provide serial numbers which allows you to 'age' the tire. Older
tires are less reliable than fresh tires and there are laws in states like
California that disallow selling "old" tires as new. You can read the tag and
see when the tire was made. The sensors are _not_ used to indicate inflation
as far as I know that is a completely separate system. When they were first
proposed, some folks showed they could be read from side of the road although
that was unreliable. Reading them from the roadbed itself however was quite
reliable as you ended up, worst case, with the tag being one wheel diameter
away from the reader, and they were spec'd to be readable like that as folks
doing inventory on a stack of tires did not want to rotate the tires in the
stack. The last set of tires I 'read' (to show this off to a disbelieving
friend) had a 18 digit serial number and a 6 digit date code. I'm sure there
is some IEEE standard now for what your tire should report.

~~~
abruzzi
In the us all tires have a number stamped in the rubber that indicates the
year and week of manufacture. This has been there for a very long time. I'm
sure the idea was efficient inventory management more than anything (easier to
read without unstacking tires.). Pressure (TPMS) is a very different active
device. They're battery powered and the batteries need to be replaced after
some time.

------
treelovinhippie
It's happening in Australia too. I spoke to a CEO of a company here a few
years ago which provides software and services to the government and RTA/RMS.
There are cameras setup under overpasses which automatically take photos of
each individual car and it's passengers.

In this particular incident their company was tasked with processing all of
those photos to identify/track a guy who had murdered his wife and was on the
run. Sure enough the system had snapped a pic of him driving, with his dead
wife in the passenger seat.

A good use of the tech in that scenario, but I'm sure it's being used for mass
surveillance as well.

~~~
ryan-allen
Which murder case was this in particular? Do you have a link to the news
article?

~~~
treelovinhippie
No idea sorry. I was just chatting with this CEO at a networking event back
sometime in 2011-2012. I'd been playing with the face.com api for facial
recognition and he was interested in using it to automatically blur faces in
these photos of car passengers. Being told that those cameras under overpasses
were taking and storing photos of every car that passes by really stuck with
me.

------
dnm
I first encountered these checkpoints in New Mexico and Texas this summer.
They're really kind of interesting. It looks like a truck weigh station,
except the interstate lanes are closed and everyone is forced to exit. They
stop everyone at the checkpoint. They have some kind of terminal under a hood,
but the officer (C&BP) looked at the terminal, asked me what country I'm from
(USA) and sent me on my way (I'm white, and so were all of my passengers). The
license reader cameras were obvious and about 4 car lengths from the
terminal/stop sign. There's a separate line for trucks and busses. I was
stunned the first time I saw one driving from Albuquerque to Las Cruces south
on I-25/US-85. It was only on the northbound side, about 40 miles north of Las
Cruces. It was obvious what it was. I encountered others on US-70 and I-10 in
TX. Same drill at every one. I was never stopped by the officer for more than
15 seconds.

~~~
desdiv
What you encountered was probably a C&BP interior checkpoint[0].

Whenever DHS apologists use the "air travel is a privilege, not a right" line,
this is what I point them to. Between random C&BP highway checkpoints and TSA
patrols on Amtrak, harassment-free travel _of any form_ seems to be a
privilege nowadays.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_int...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints)

~~~
rdtsc
Basically anything you couldn't do in 1700s is a priveledge. Driving --
privelage, flying -- priveledge, getting on Amtrak -- they have TSA there too
now.

"Arms" are hunting shotguns, pistols. Can't own fully automatic ones, or
rocket launchers or fighter planes.

Drones will be illegal soon as well probably.

Basically you can get on your horse and start traveling through the country
roads and woods, besides that you need to have "papers".

------
javajosh
_The USA is automatically photographing millions of cars and putting the data
in a giant database used by all law-enforcement._

It reads like the premise of a dystopian science fiction novel.

I can't help but guess that the reaction is going to be a big shoulder shrug,
because, to but it bluntly, things aren't that bad for most people. If you are
white, have a good job, follow the law, and make sure to richly kiss ass if
and when you come in contact with the police, life in the USA is rich, full;
it's like heaven.

If I have heaven, am I going to risk it just because of some law enforcement
techniques which are only questionable in the abstract?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You may be on to something there. I wonder, however, how people are going to
reconcile what the government is doing now with all of those previous works of
fiction? It's going to have to add up to something -- a narrative must be
formed. Were those just the halcyon days of yore? And now we've somehow "grown
up" to face the realities of a scary world?

Even more troubling, people are people, and when this is seriously abused --
and my money says it'll happen within the next 20 years -- how are people
going to explain it all away?

I am left with the troubling thought that we are creating for ourselves a
dystopian society never dreamed of even by sci-fi writers. Rome had nothing on
this, nor does North Korea. The attention a known dissident would receive in
former East Germany is a cakewalk compared to the kind of surveillance we're
giving each citizen who's guilty of nothing. The only thing we're waiting for
is the logical and natural corruption of large systems of people to take
place.

~~~
jkaunisv1
Um, I really don't think it's at East German Stasi-levels. Known dissidents
were gaslighted, had objects in their homes moved around, and had informants
reporting on them in their apartment buildings/family/workplace.

It's bad, it's dystopian, but it doesn't seem to be THAT bad yet.

~~~
pdkl95
While there are good examples in the past (FeeTinesAMady already mentioned
Martin Luther King), remember the JTRIG documents about breaking up groups
with social wedge issues and other and other divide-and-conquer tactics. If
you can drive people apart by attacking potential leader[1] or separating key
groups of people _before_ those groups gain any momentum, you can probably
skip the expensive and risky "Stasi-style-tactics" completely.

There's a similarity between the attack against Dr. King and the method
described in the JTRIG documents: "COINTELPRO". Instead of being stopped by
the Church Committee, the program probably got a renaming and reorg[2] to move
away from the "failed branding". Regardless of the name, the tactics are being
used (it's just modern marketing tricks).

It is easy to see the enemy that is loud and disruptive, and a lot harder to
notice who is responsible for these newer, more subtle attacks that -
especially when the attacker understands P.R. and branding

[1] and identifying relationship graphs ix _exactly_ what you get from simple
logs of _telephone metadata_. Throw a few JOIN clauses into your query, and
you can do the COTRAVELER trick of extending those relationship graphs into
many other areas.

[2] similar to how "Total Information Awareness" got renamed and moved around

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Meta note: Every news organization that issued a "TIA is dead" story really
needs to go back and make a retraction.

------
kevin_thibedeau
I've been mulling ideas to defeat ANPR without breaking state laws. The
simplest may be to use a tilted/warped surrounding frame that interferes with
the skew correction of the captured plate. Another thought is to project
bright infrared patterns to disrupt unfiltered B&W cameras.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Another way is travel by other means, eg taxi, bus, subway, train, bike, etc.

~~~
stegosaurus
UK perspective again, though may be useful for a possible glimpse into the
future:

In London, cash is no longer accepted on the bus. Same deal for subways. The
smart card (Oyster) is purchasable without ID but not disposable without
showing ID and a deposit is charged. Paper travelcards are available at much
higher cost per journey.

Smaller towns have cash bus tickets :)

Taxi may be viable but it's a matter of chaffing; are you hailing, or calling
a private hire company/using Uber? The former is far more expensive here and
also not really viable in many cities.

The train is also drastically more expensive unless you buy advance tickets
online (on the day tickets can be obscene, hundreds of pounds for a 200 mile
journey).

Bicycle is viable, for now.

Basically, most methods are trackable, there just might be levels of
indirection. Buying a ticket online or using a bank card is just an algorithm
away from entering the 'log where you are' zone.

But then, we're all carrying cellphones right? :D

------
harry8
Theory: This is actual news, people are shocked. So we haven't got apologists
because they'll just look ridiculous. The follow up stories will be full of
apologists once that shock wears off. It's just sad to watch the utterly
relentless trashing of the constitution and the rule of law. Get out and vote!
(for either another Clinton v another Bush?)

------
nl
This can cut both ways.

Back in the early 2000's, plane spotters identified CIA planes used for
extraordinary rendition by recoding registration numbers and locations.

Maybe David Brin was right after all[2]. Automatic license plate scanning is
trivial now. It would be pretty easy for _anyone_ to build a node of a system
like this.

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/10/usa.terrorism1)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society)

~~~
elihu
The weird thing about license plate scanning is that basically anyone could do
it, and there's no obvious way to stop it. Any group of ordinary citizens
(including private businesses) could create a distributed network of license
plate scanners by installing devices in their cars and around their
houses/buildings.

It would be an interesting act of protest to track the movements of powerful
people, so as to compel them to take privacy more seriously.

~~~
nl
Precisely.

We see the start of this with dash cams. Sure, they don't do the recognition
thing, but they do decentralise surveillance.

I think it's worth considering possibilities in this area as a supplement to
outrage and protest.

------
iamdanfox
I had thought that ALPR data would be quite a very tool for detectives, but a
related article [1] is quite disparaging about their use in Vermont.
Apparently in 2013, for a ~$1m investment, 106 queries were made resulting in
just 3 cases of useful information.

I think combining each states' databases as described in the WSJ will actually
improve this number and is actually a prudent decision.

1: [http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-
pri...](http://digital.vpr.net/post/license-plate-scanners-raise-privacy-
concerns-do-they-help-police)

------
sehugg
FWIW, you can search for the headline on Google News and read the full article
from there.

------
claypoolb
We've been hacked! According to an article in the Washington Post, we've been
misled since 1961. We really do not need all those cars - its just a love
affair with the "american dream".

"This “love affair” was coined, in fact, during a 1961 episode of a weekly
hour-long television program called the DuPont Show of the Week (sponsored,
incidentally, by DuPont, which owned a 23 percent stake in General Motors at
the time). The program, titled “Merrily We Roll Along,” was promoted by DuPont
as “the story of America’s love affair with the automobile.”

The show aired at a time when cars were facing steep criticism, as plans for
the new interstate system threatened to destroy or disrupt neighborhoods in
many U.S. cities.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/d...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/debunking-
the-myth-of-the-american-love-affair-with-cars/)

------
pokstad
Get rid of license plates. They can also be used by private parties to track
car movements. They aren't safe anymore in this time and age. Once someone
builds a proof of concept of a real time car tracker using crowd sourced
license plate trackers, we'll realize that.

~~~
jessriedel
That really only buys you a couple of years, if any. If they can do face
recognition, they can do car recognition. Just determine the
make/model/year/color/trim, and then look for some individually identifiable
marks, scratches, color imperfections, tire type, etc.

~~~
fru2013
It doesn't stop there. How about high-def video feeds of the entire planet via
satellite? With heat tracking/infrared? Combine that with smart tracking
software and NSA-level eavesdropping and there would be no escape.

Personally, I think we'll have the technological capability to do this within
a couple decades.

------
deadfall
Just last night I watched an older episode of Jay Leno's Garage and they
brought in a few of California Highway Patrol (CHP) cars to show off. The
officer explains that new cars are equipped with a license plate scanner find
wanted people.

~~~
whoopdedo
Something I've learned from listening to police scanners is the majority of
warrants are for unpaid traffic tickets and guys behind on alimony.

------
r109
This doesn't surprise me, use to live in Bellingham WA. There are "DOT"
cameras that go from south Bellingham all the way to the Canadian border on
both sides of i5. I forget how often there are, perhaps 2-5 miles? I
understand that some are used for DoT cams, but I always theorized that if the
lenses are good enough they could zoom in and potentially read plates. The
camera's look like regular light poles, you have to be paying attention to
actually see them.

------
forthefuture
I've lived my entire life thinking that anything I do or say anywhere could be
picked up by phones or cameras or gps. I can't express enough how liberating
it is to accept that and move on. The idea that you should be doing anything
ever that you couldn't explain to anyone watching is a fantasy to me;
something so far from reality you might as well be wearing a tin foil hat.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Congratulations on your privileged life.

~~~
forthefuture
I'd be living a lot more privileged life if I thought the government owed me
privacy.

~~~
spacemanmatt
If I understand your statement correctly, you assert that on one will ever be
falsely accused of a crime.

~~~
forthefuture
Funnily enough, if the entire world was recorded every second of every day it
would literally be impossible to be falsely accused of a crime. This is why
many states are passing laws for cops to have cameras on their glasses: it's
impossible to lie if there's an uninterrupted live stream of the truth.

~~~
scott_karana
> Funnily enough, if the entire world was recorded every second of every day
> it would literally be impossible to be falsely accused of a crime

That's only true _if everybody has equitable access to the recordings_!
Putting the keys to the castle in the hands of the people running it leads to
doom.

~~~
forthefuture
>Putting the keys to the castle in the hands of the people running it leads to
doom.

I just think about the future much more positively. You have to believe in
justice for it to ever be real.

------
stillsut
Who would EVER approve this?

Didn't the majority of the country agree this summer that police should wear
cameras at all times. And the police protested this development. (Remember
police brutality debate?)

I'm against the license plate system, but people on this site often don't seem
to appreciate there is democratic support for many of these programs.

------
awjr
In the UK, there is something called the 'ring of steel' around Birmingham. In
effect all UK motorways and most main routes have ANPR on them. I would expect
as costs decline, eventually most street light systems will be 'upgraded' to
have ANPR.

I am surprised that a consumer ANPR solution isn't on the market.

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knorby
I'd rather have tracking of cars than most things. As a frequent pedestrian,
cars scare me. Few common things can cause as much damage to humans and
property. Would these efforts be more palatable if the goal was Vision Zero
rather than the various low-output anti-terrorism efforts?

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bunkydoo
It goes deeper than even what this article describes - a ford exec admitted
last year that they put GPS in all vehicles (post 2004 i think) but they
"don't release the data" not sure how much I trust that statement in today's
world...

~~~
bunkydoo
and thats a hidden GPS - I own a 2004 ford that apparently has this and there
is no navigation interface in the vehicle.

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ihsw
> The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls.

Much to the chagrin of our rent-seeking overlords, whom see speed traps and
red-light cameras as a means of revenue generation rather than safety measure.

~~~
girvo
Speed traps I'll grant you, but how are red light cameras not a safety
measure?

~~~
davepage
The revenue stream tempts governments to reduce the yellow interval, which
then decreases safety:
[http://www.copradar.com/redlight/](http://www.copradar.com/redlight/)

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morgante
I kind of assumed this technology had always existed. Nearly every crime movie
I've ever watched included a scene where they mentioned picking up the
criminal's plates on the highway.

------
known
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried
everything else." \--Winston Churchill

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znowi
Can we please not post links behind a paywall or that require registration?

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jakeogh
How long until the propaganda about "e-plates" starts?

------
randomname2
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has been building a national database to
track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic
intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of
records about motorists, according to current and former officials and
government documents.

The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug
Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat
drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use
has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential
crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar
with the matter.

Officials have publicly said that they track vehicles near the border with
Mexico to help fight drug cartels. What hasn’t been previously disclosed is
that the DEA has spent years working to expand the database “throughout the
United States,’’ according to one email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a
variety of investigations, according to people familiar with the program,
putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track
vehicles in real time on major roadways.

The database raises new questions about privacy and the scope of government
surveillance. The existence of the program and its expansion were described in
interviews with current and former government officials, and in documents
obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of
Information Act request and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear
if any court oversees or approves the intelligence-gathering.

A spokesman for Justice Department, which includes the DEA, said the program
complies with federal law. “It is not new that the DEA uses the license-plate
reader program to arrest criminals and stop the flow of drugs in areas of high
trafficking intensity,’’ the spokesman said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said
the government’s use of license-plate readers “raises significant privacy
concerns. The fact that this intrusive technology is potentially being used to
expand the reach of the government’s asset-forfeiture efforts is of even
greater concern.’’

The senator called for “additional accountability’’ and said Americans
shouldn’t have to fear ”their locations and movements are constantly being
tracked and stored in a massive government database.’’

The DEA program collects data about vehicle movements, including time,
direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major
highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers,
which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities,
according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program.

The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by
state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network
and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes
scanning traffic on the roads to steer police toward suspects.

The law-enforcement scanners are different from those used to collect tolls.

By 2011, the DEA had about 100 cameras feeding into the database, the
documents show. On Interstate 95 in New Jersey, license-plate readers feed
data to the DEA—giving law-enforcement personnel around the country the
ability to search for a suspect vehicle on one of the country’s busiest
highways. One undated internal document shows the program also gathers data
from license-plate readers in Florida and Georgia.

“Any database that collects detailed location information about Americans not
suspected of crimes raises very serious privacy questions,’’ said Jay Stanley,
a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “It’s unconscionable that technology with
such far-reaching potential would be deployed in such secrecy. People might
disagree about exactly how we should use such powerful surveillance
technologies, but it should be democratically decided, it shouldn’t be done in
secret.’’

License-plate readers are already used in the U.S. by companies to collect
debts and repossess vehicles, and by local police departments to solve crimes.

In 2010, the DEA said in internal documents that the database aided in the
seizure of 98 kilograms of cocaine, 8,336 kilograms of marijuana and the
collection of $866,380. It also has been connected to the Amber Alert system,
to help authorities find abducted children, according to people familiar with
the program.

One email written in 2010 said the primary purpose of the program was asset
forfeiture—a controversial practice in which law-enforcement agencies seize
cars, cash and other valuables from suspected criminals. The practice is
increasingly coming under attack because of instances when law-enforcement
officers take such assets without evidence of a crime.

The document said, “…DEA has designed this program to assist with locating,
identifying, and seizing bulk currency, guns, and other illicit contraband
moving along the southwest border and throughout the United States. With that
said, we want to insure we can collect and manage all the data and IT
responsibilities that will come with the work to insure the program meets its
goals, of which asset forfeiture is primary.’

A number of lawmakers have been planning to offer legislation to rein in what
they call abuses of asset-forfeiture laws. The Justice Department recently
announced it was ending its role in one type of asset seizure, known as
“adoptions,’’ a process by which local officials take property, then have the
assets adopted and sold by the federal government. Often, that allows the
local agency to keep a higher percentage of the money from the seizure. The
policy change doesn’t affect the bulk of asset seizures in the U.S.

The national vehicle database program was launched in 2008 and opened to
participating state and local authorities a year later. The initial focus was
on tracking cars moving on or near the Southwest border, in order to follow
the movements of drugs and drug money, according to officials and documents.
Requests to search the database are handled by the El Paso Intelligence Center
in Texas, which is known as EPIC in law enforcement circles. EPIC is staffed
around the clock to both take in and send out information about “hits’’ on
requested license plates.

The effort began in border states like Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico
and Texas, but the goal has always been expansion, according to current and
former federal officials and documents. Officials wouldn’t say how many other
states are now feeding data into the system, citing concerns that disclosing
such information could help criminals avoid detection.

The federal program hasn’t always been embraced by states. At a 2012 hearing,
Utah lawmakers balked when DEA officials sought to have license-plate readers
in the state feed into the database—one of the few times the agency has
provided even limited facts about the program. That same year, a DEA official
made a general reference to the program at a congressional field hearing about
the Southwest border, saying it was built to monitor and target vehicles used
to transport bulk cash and other contraband.

Under questioning from Utah lawmakers, the agency said the program began with
an effort to track drug shipments on the Southwest border, and the government
wanted to add monitors on major drug-trafficking routes like Utah’s Interstate
15, in order to hunt a wide array of criminals. That alarmed privacy
advocates, who noted at the time that the DEA’s map of major drug routes
included most of the national highway system.

The agency has reduced the time it holds the data from two years to 3 months,
according to a Justice Department spokesman.

The EPIC database allows any police agency that participates to quickly search
records of many states for information about a vehicle. One May 2010 redacted
email says: "Anyone can request information from our [license-plate reader]
program, federal, state, or local, just need to be a vetted EPIC user.…’’

The data are also shared with U.S. border officials, according to an undated
memorandum of understanding between the DEA and Customs and Border Protection
officials. That document shows the two agencies specifically said that
lawmakers might never specifically fund the work, stating: “this in no way
implies that Congress will appropriate funds for such expenditures.’’

The disclosure of the DEA’s license-plate reader database comes on the heels
of other revelations in recent months about the Justice Department, as well as
the agencies it runs, gathering data about innocent Americans as it searches
for criminals.

In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Marshals Service
flies planes carrying devices that mimic cellphone towers in order to scan the
identifying information of Americans’ phones as it searches for criminal
suspects and fugitives. Justice Department officials have said the program is
legal.

Earlier this month, the DEA filed court documents indicating that for more
than a decade it had gathered the phone records of Americans calling foreign
countries, without judicial oversight, to sift through that data looking for
drug suspects. That program was canceled in 2013.

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marknutter
What about motorcycles?

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oaf357
Because DMV databases weren't enough? No... We need to know where all those
cars are. Come on.

