
Los Angeles Cops Argue All Cars in LA Are Under Investigation - csense
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/03/los-angeles-cops-argue-all-cars-la-are-under-investigation
======
omh
The London Congestion Charging scheme is an interesting example of this.

There is a network of number plate recognition cameras to enforce the
congestion charge. But there were initially assurances that this wouldn't lead
to a blanket database for policing, they can just request particular images.

Pretty rapidly there was an exception for "national security" purposes, and
more recently the mayor has proposed giving the police full access to the
camera network[1].

[1] [http://www.london.gov.uk/media/mayor-press-
releases/2014/02/...](http://www.london.gov.uk/media/mayor-press-
releases/2014/02/mayor-to-use-road-cameras-to-deliver-crime-fighting-boost-
for)

~~~
sentenza
Another data point: Toll Collect in Germany. A fee is collected from Trucks
for using the Autobahn, with compliance being monitored via plate-scanning
cameras on all Autobahnen. We were assured that the data for cars would not be
used for policing, even though it exists (the system scans all plates and only
later finds out whether or not the plate belongs to a truck).

The data in the system is legally protected and cannot be used by the police.
In the ten years that have passed, "security politicians" have been
relentlessly hammering this restriction in the hope that it will fall[1].

So far they haven't been successful, but who knows what the future brings. You
can be certain they won't stop to try.

[1]
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLKW-
Maut_in_Deutschland%23.C3.9Cberwachung_des_Autobahnverkehrs)

~~~
digitalengineer
Greetings from your next-door-neighbour. in the Netherlands we scan everything
that crosses the border from Germany/Belgium. All highways have camera's as
well but that's not the worst: we also track your unique bluetooth signal all
across the big cities and when you park in one of those big parking towers
they will sell your licenceplate data to everybody inclusing the tax man...
Yes this is the same country that also sells TomTom traffic/speed data to the
police so they know just where to photograph you for maximum profit... (Not
maximum safery).

------
rbanffy
Maybe the best solution is to create a rule that mandates publishing of _all_
data police has access to. If that were the case, police and politicians could
be tracked by any concerned citizen, their behavior analyzed and publicly
debated, every action publicly questioned.

~~~
SCdF
Your solution to your concern that some people (the police) have access to
data that tracks your whereabouts it to give everyone access to track your
whereabouts?

~~~
rbanffy
I propose ending asymmetry. If everyone has access to everything (as well as
access to logs of who accesses what) everyone has exactly the same problem and
feels exactly the same pains.

~~~
maxerickson
Middle ground is possible. Allow anyone access to the records the police are
keeping on them. Make exceptions under the supervision of a judge (i.e., still
allow adversarial investigations...).

The idea would be that this still creates a lot of opportunity for people to
notice they don't like what the police are up to.

~~~
rbanffy
Middle ground is still asymmetric. You know what they know about you, but you
still know nothing about them. Your privacy is invaded, but theirs remains
intact.

~~~
maxerickson
Yeah. I'm looking at it from a perspective of just making progress towards
some sort of useful transparency. I would anticipate a lot less objections to
what I proposed.

------
mattmanser
This is the erosion of privacy by public anonymity.

Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large
numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest?

Having a barcode on all our cars is turning out to be very bad for civil
liberties now there's all this auto-recognition software coming in to play.

Similar to another discussion[1], the problem has arisen because it is now
possible to collate this information to make up detailed map of a person's
life whenever a malicious actor wants.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7427562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7427562)

~~~
mullingitover
> Is it time to start talking about civil disobedience and removing large
> numbers of number plates from cars in an organised protest?

People already do this very frequently in LA, you'd have to convince the
entire city to do it for the cops to notice. A friend of mine took off her
license plate to avoid the red light cameras, and has been driving around
without plates for two years. Never been pulled over for it. I see at least
one car without plates every day on my drive to work, and it's a ten minute
drive.

~~~
slapshot
For those outside California, new California registrations are issued in small
paper packets that are affixed inside the front windshield. There are no
"temporary tags" like in many other states, so it's perfectly normal and legal
for a new car to pull off Tesla's lot without any license plates.

------
njharman
I'd not be against this if the data was 100% free and public and had no
exceptions for cops, judged, politicians or any other privileged class.

But, of course that would never happen. Cops, judges, politicians want
protection from retaliation and etc. Well so fucking do the rest of us.

~~~
throwaway7767
Ugh. So you're willing to give up your privacy as long as others do so as
well?

Sounds like the "utopia" described by David Brin et al. Count me out of that
future society. My desire for privacy is not affected by others desire for
same.

EDIT: I also think public servants, including cops and judges, absolutely
deserve privacy. It's just that privacy does not apply to actions taken on the
job or in the capacity of a public servant.

~~~
nitrogen
I think the parent comment's idea is that a bad law that affects powerful
people will get repealed.

~~~
throwaway7767
That was not my reading based on the first line. But if so, I agree with the
sentiment.

But this idea that all this surveillance-state stuff would actually be great
if only we could all have access to the data is quite common in the tech
community and here on HN. Books have been written on the subject. I vehemently
disagree with this outlook, hence my comment.

~~~
Blackavar
I don't personally think it's a great outcome - in fact I think it's a pretty
bad one.

However, I do think that that the outcome of universal access to surveillance
is the best one that has any slim likelihood at all of coming to pass - all of
the other actually possible outcomes are worse.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
I disagree with you.

The likely outcome of this kind of openness law is that powerful and wealthy
people use a car service, making them untrackable, while poor people are stuck
being tracked not only by the currently powerful, but anyone that feels like
attempting to gain power over them.

You've simply widened the market for who can exploit the data without causing
any damage to the people who initially did so - something I think is strictly
worse than the current state of affairs.

~~~
Blackavar
If you disagree, can you provide a desired end point that you believe actually
protects privacy, and a roadmap to get to this point?

I personally don't see a path to an end point where there is no collection and
aggregation of personal data, be it by state actors, corporations, or private
citizens.

The actual most likely outcome that I see is official regulation of personal
data collection and aggregation by corporations and private citizens as in the
EU. Those laws explicitly allow state actors to actively collect and aggregate
tracking data.

However, nothing technical actually prevents corporate and private actors from
doing so, at the cost of a fine if they are caught. The actions that might
have some effect on data collection (like obscuring license plates) are
prohibited by laws that ease the collection of data by state actors.

This will continue to be exploited, although additional resources available to
certain groups - the wealthy, those associated with corporations and state
actors, and (to some extent) the technically skilled that put much of their
available skills and resources toward staying private - will enable concealing
of some private data.

This is already essentially the current state of affairs, though. Anyone with
the required resources can use either legal, quasi-legal, or illegal means to
do this sort of thing. Note the recent discussion of the system for intel
available to repo operators.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
I believe that we'll see a prohibition on government non-targeted surveillance
in the United States, and a rise in ZipCar and Car2Go style services
(effectively, short term rentals) by people who are concerned by this kind of
tracking (or investment in and use of public transport). I expect that garage
parking (and other enclosed vehicle storage) will increase, and work its way
down through the socioeconomic ladder, as well as simple techniques such as
automated plate covers.

I expect that we won't see any kind of effective prohibition on corporate or
private behavior, at least in the United States, but contend that various
measures mentioned above are reasonably effective at curbing this as well.
(This could be aided by amending laws to say that plates must only be visible
while the vehicle is actively driving on the road.)

Ideally, privacy preserving laws, which recognize the fundamental role of
anonymity in society would be enacted, but I find this unlikely to actually
happen in the US.

Ultimately, there are limits on what people care about, and anonymity is one
of the things that requires cover traffic and statistical noise to be
effective. However, I do think there are things that concerned people can do
to raise the bar on collecting information about individual - ie, use ZipCar,
start services which bulk order things off Amazon and ship to a locker/mailbox
facility, etc. These won't necessarily stop someone looking in to what you're
doing, in particular, from tracking you, but they increase the difficulty
sufficiently to make bulk tracking difficult (assuming wide enough adoption).

The fundamental problem, just like it is online, is that anonymity and signal
mixing needs to be built in to the system, and that's just kind of
inconvenient. So it requires people to proactively do it, even when they're
not hiding, and tends to just not get done (often enough).

------
hippoman
Any private person can collect license plate data with a computer too. Surely
that's not illegal? Imagine thousands of hobbyists doing this and building a
database of when and where cars are moving around the city. If this data
collection is only allowed on "small scales" but when people combine or
publish their records it becomes illegal for the group (but not the individual
members?), that would become a pretty hairy legal gray area.

Also cars are a massive cause of death and heavily used in violent crimes so
it can actually be useful to track them, unlike trying to catch near-non-
existant terrorists.

~~~
tobehonest
Plane watches already do this. They have even outed CIA operations.

I wonder how the Government would like it if many hobbyists sat in front of
the NSA car park and started writing down every license plate and put them on
a searchable database.

Now this is a project I would fund. Kickstarter anyone?

~~~
midas007
Interesting. Got a reference to that CIA incident?

~~~
markvdb
There's quite a pile of information on CIA rendition flights. They seem to
have used EU member states air space [1][2].

The Washington Post suggests there was at least some journalistic field work
plane spotting in the US [3].

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/23/usa.eu](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jan/23/usa.eu)

[2] [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-
room/content/2012...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-
room/content/20120709IPR48490/html/CIA-flights-EU-states-must-investigate-
secret-detention-sites-in-Europe)

[3] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ten-
ye...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ten-years-later-
cia-rendition-program-still-divides-nc-town/2012/01/23/gIQAwrAU2Q_story.html)

~~~
midas007
Nice. Thanks.

I'm wondering if anyone is working on an app like Metadata for CIA renditions.
Basically to to track when someone just disappears, because it's not like they
got a day in court before they were tortured and/or murdered.

------
Houshalter
I don't see how a license plate camera is any different than a regular
surveillance camera. It's even less invasive since it only records license
plates and presumably deletes the rest of the recording.

~~~
slavak
You would be right if most regular surveillance cameras were continuously
running face-recognition software and had access to a vast database linking
faces to identities. And the day this happens might not be that far off.

As it stands for now, the privacy implications of regular surveillance cameras
are limited by storage and the computing & manpower needed to analyze every
frame. It's pretty certain your local police department isn't storing every
frame recorded by area highway cameras for several years back; they _are_
doing that for license plate readers, though.

~~~
Houshalter
True but that's just a matter of technology to search the data. The data
itself is fine.

So if you forced police to manually go through the list of license plates
every camera recorded, and find the one they want, that would be ok? But if
they made a script to do the exact same thing automatically, it's illegal?

~~~
UweSchmidt
Automation is the game changer. Long term data storage, new algorithms,
combining databases, new algorithms that find out stuff etc. lead to huge
changes that must be taken into account when designing systems.

Leave the house with the zipper down on Monday. Have a silly argument with a
neighbor on Friday. Isolated incidents that will end up in the "Worst of
Houshalter" \- file, either available for everyone, or just a group of
decisionmakers.

Am I seeing this right, or am I exaggerating?

~~~
Houshalter
My point is it's the same thing, just faster/cheaper. Perhaps it should be
banned or controlled. But calling it unconstitutional is a stretch I think. If
that's the case, regular "dumb" surveillance cameras should be too.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Good point, but what's a regular, "dumb" surveillance camera? Does such a
thing even exist any more? I imagine that as old systems are replaced by newer
ones, they automatically get more digital, intelligent, connected and store
data in a more compatible and accessible format.

I see warning signs all over the place, that this train/building/place etc. is
under video surveillance.

Cool story bro. Details? Who's looking at the data? How long will it be
stored? How is that data protected?

I tried out SimpleCV recently, and was fascinated how much already works out
of the box. Face recognition from a video is basically the "Hello World"
program.

The phrase "Wake up sheeple" has been discredited as wannabe-enlightened, but
in this case I feel like opening my window and shouting it out loud. Sigh.

~~~
Houshalter
On the other hand there is tremendous potential for such technology. Stores
will be able to significantly reduce their losses to shoplifting. A ton of
jobs will be open to automation - including things that were previously too
expensive to do with humans. Robotics will significantly advance. And we can
virtually eliminate crime.

These privacy laws could be really damaging to progress. In some cases it
basically makes it illegal to make a machine do the same thing as a human.

~~~
jodrellblank
_These privacy laws could be really damaging to progress. In some cases it
basically makes it illegal to make a machine do the same thing as a human._

I don't automatically have a problem with that. Progress at any cost isn't
something I take as "obviously good" and machines don't have rights to
employment.

That's ignoring the fact that you want the machine to do it because it's _not_
doing "the same thing", it's doing something slightly different.

~~~
Houshalter
I take objection to that. _Far_ more harm is done by being conservative and
resisting new technologies, than is caused by just embracing them. Every
generation thinks the present is just fine and that the future is scary.

------
izzydata
Guess I'll have to start doing all my organized crime on bicycles. They will
never see it coming.

~~~
talmand
Then they'll require plates for bicycles.

You'll start using skateboards. They'll require plates for skateboards.

You'll start doing it on foot. They'll require us to wear hats with our number
printed front and back.

I would prefer you use fake plates while committing your organized crime so
that we don't slip further down that slope.

------
evo_9
I'm wondering if it's legal to obscure your license plate to prevent them from
tracking you, similar to how people wear masks that look like your face is
blurred out to prevent facial recognition?

I'm sure cops wouldn't like it if they happened to be behind you; in an ideal
world it would be something you could control with a flip of a switch.

Edit: I worded this poorly - surely it's illegal, I was more wondering how
much fun it would be to f with the man like that, but I forget that people
these days lack the 'fuck with the man' gene that was so prevalent in the
60's. I think people need to take more LSD or something.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'm wondering if it's legal to obscure your license plate

No, not only can you not act to conceal them, you have a positive obligation
to _actively_ keep them readable. See, California Vehicle Code Section
5201(a): "License plates [...] shall be maintained in a condition so as to be
clearly legible. [...]"

~~~
aestra
Right. Not so relevant in California, but when it snows you have an obligation
to clean the snow off your license plate!!

------
danielweber
While this sounds silly to the layman, what does this mean to lawyers? Is
"under investigation" a term of art?

~~~
ipsin
I can't speak to the legal phrasing, but I have filed a FOIA act request to LA
County Sheriffs myself, and one code they site is CA 6254(f), which exempts

"(f) Records of complaints to, or investigations conducted by, records of
intelligence information or security procedures of [cops]"

"intelligence information" is essentially things like files on suspected gang
members. The contention seems to be that this is intelligence information on
all drivers, and to that extent, all drivers are under suspicion of
"everything".

------
nickmccann
Anyone familiar with license plate rules in California? I haven't put a
license plate on my car for 10 years. I've been given a "fix it" ticket, but
nothing worse. Am I just getting nice officers or is that the full extent of
what the officers can do? (The car is always registered with insurance)

~~~
koenigdavidmj
Some departments treat that as a presumption that you stole the car you're
driving, so there is a chance that you will be greeted by the business end of
a twitchy officer's Glock.

------
BrownBuffalo
I'm wondering if covering your plate to obscure it from view to protect your
privacy is now a defense tactic that might play out in court to unleverage
this program. What's interesting is here in NYS the Cuomo has instituted
revokation of driving rights for tax / toll evasion. Intersting tactic,
although unrelated. It bands together the parts of the state government in
certain ways to give rights to some but take away rights to another. _shrug_
\- neat article either way.

~~~
joezydeco
pukingmonkey's presentation at DEFCON 21 did a nice bit about what you can and
can't do to obscure your plate information from ALPRs.

The entire presentation is a great read and everyone checking out this thread
should at least scan it:

[https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/...](https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/Pukingmonkey/DEFCON-21-Pukingmonkey-
The-Road-Less-Surreptitiously-Traveled-Updated.pdf)

His little ALPR detectors are fun as well.

------
harrystone
I try to avoid using the words 'always' and 'never.' I agree with the EFF but
the government is never going to give up that kind of power.

------
contingencies
LA's much rejected public transportation system is actually pretty good, at
least in some areas. I lived in LA for a year and pretty much only used a
bicycle or taxis. But the buses let you put your bike on front, and the subway
system isn't bad. Not sure about that scary looking south central raised train
system though... never game to try that one!

~~~
runaway
It's really great along a few narrowly defined routes, i.e. if you want to get
from Universal to Staples Center or Downtown to Culver City. But so many
shorter routes that are still extremely common (like going from Sherman Oaks
to the west side) are still inexplicably difficult...

EDIT: Ok maybe it can be explained. I just don't like it.

------
jefurii
Time for "exploits of a car". [http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-
license-plate-hopes...](http://gizmodo.com/5498412/sql-injection-license-
plate-hopes-to-foil-euro-traffic-cameras)
[https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/)

------
megablast
I believe that people have the right to privacy, but I don't believe that cars
have that right. Cars are too dangerous to not be tracked.

~~~
Silhouette
_Cars are too dangerous to not be tracked._

I used to think a lot of things were justified, because on balance they would
help to protect innocent people against relatively minor illegal activities,
and while they could theoretically be used for major abuses by governments no
democratically elected administration would ever get away with doing it. Many
of those had to do with balancing everyone being accountable under the law
with anonymity and privacy.

Unlike some people, I prefer to learn the lessons of history and change my
views when the evidence warrants, and I am increasingly of the view that the
democratic accountability of our governments is far too weak and the price of
trusting governments with the power afforded by a surveillance state is far
too high to pay for some modest benefits.

A case in point: 'omh mentioned the London Congestion Charge in another post
to this discussion, linking to news that (contrary to clear assurances given
when the cameras were rolled out) the London mayor now wants to give police
direct access to the cameras. Now, to be fair, this isn't an absurd idea: no
doubt these cameras do help to catch some people who are trying to escape
justice after breaking the law (they are careful to cite examples of this) and
reportedly this was in the Mayor's manifesto at the last election so it does
have some degree of democratic mandate.

Of course, there have also been stories where the system has gone horribly
wrong and incorrectly fined people[1], or just not been understood and
penalised people who were trying to behave reasonably and do the right
thing[2]. Given that the way our court system works means that it can be
prohibitively expensive to challenge automated penalty notices issued by such
systems if you live a long way away and were just visiting (assuming you
really were ever there in the first place) I have significant reservations
about how easy this kind of "enforcement" becomes under a surveillance state,
and whether even the genuine benefits of better enforcement against minor
offenders are enough to justify such schemes, which makes me even less
trusting of the long-term motivations of those involved.

[1] I can't immediately find a link, but the one I most remember was an
elderly gentlemen who lived in the north of England and rarely if ever visited
London any more, yet who wound up getting many fines sent to him, presumably
because someone cloned his plates.

[2]
[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/23/congesti...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/23/congestion-
charge-wrong-way)

~~~
rbanffy
> major abuses by governments no democratically elected administration would
> ever get away with doing it

Far too many abusers were elected in democratic elections. The key is not only
have democratic elections (and legal mechanisms to remove abusers when needed
- to prevent coups), but actual checks and balances that can, effectively,
prevent abuses and punish and remove abusers.

~~~
Silhouette
Indeed. I think coming to similar conclusions over the years is the main thing
that has changed my view. The absence of either a formal written constitution
or any power of recall over our elected representatives in my country,
combined with a lot of "arm's length" parts of government where people with
real power aren't directly accountable to the electorate anyway, do not tend
to promote effective checks and balances.

~~~
rbanffy
> The absence of either a formal written constitution or any power of recall
> over our elected representatives in my country

Would you like to disclose this information?

~~~
Silhouette
_Would you like to disclose this information?_

Sorry, which information? If you mean which country am I in, the answer is
England.

~~~
rbanffy
Wow! Isn't there a way to remove the Prime Minister if he or she messes up
real bad?

~~~
Silhouette
Not by the general electorate, no.

There are probably some arcane Parliamentary mechanisms where some sort of no
confidence vote might trigger that result, but we don't directly elect the
leader of our government, who by convention is the leader of the dominant
political party in the House of Commons[1], nor the various ministers of state
who will have executive authority (who are appointed by the PM[2]). This is
probably the most significant of the "arm's length" mechanisms I mentioned
before.

This can lead to obvious abuses of the system like Gordon Brown becoming Prime
Minister in the final years of the New Labour administration, even though the
electorate were promised repeatedly and explicitly at the last general
election before that happened that anyone voting for New Labour was voting for
Tony Blair to serve a full third term and would not get Gordon Brown as PM.

In fact, that situation is a textbook example of why I think a power of recall
is long overdue. Whatever your political views or your opinion of the
individual politicians involved, the facts are clear, the people exercised
their right to vote on the one chance they were given, and then they got
something they had explicitly been told they wouldn't get and had no recourse.

[1] Slightly different things may happen in a coalition where no party has an
outright majority, as we discovered recently, but the position is still
determined by the make-up of Parliament rather than a direct vote by the
general population.

[2] Technically speaking, a lot of this is probably up to Her Majesty, but I
suspect any refusal by the monarch to follow convention in this respect would
start the countdown to our becoming a republic, so I consider this a
formality.

------
tmp123444
Someday we will get speeding tickets for being flashed in two different places
based on the time it took us to travel the distance.

~~~
sscalia
This is already deployed in Europe, and the UK.

~~~
codfrantic
True, some highways in the Netherlands already use a system like this.

Worst part is, in a stretch of road with for instance 15 camera's . they won't
take the average speed between camera 0 and 14, they'll fine you for the most
expensive one.

So:

if you average 100 Km/h from 0-14,

and average 115 Km/h from 0-5,

and average 117 Km/h from 8-9.

You get a fine for the 117 km/h

------
anigbrowl
This is a bullshit headline, which is rather unworthy of the EFF.

The EFF isn't seeking data on the operation of the Automatic License Plate
Reader (like LAPD internal documents on how the system should be configured or
the protocols for handling data), it's seeking a week's worth of _output_ from
the information gathering system - presumably with a view to pointing out how
many vehicles have had their license plates recorded.

The LAPD most certainly did _not_ argue that all cars are under investigation.
Rather they argued that:

a) such bulk data release would _include_ information pertaining to criminal
investigations, which is privileged from release; and

b) that such bulk data contains so much personally identifying information
that it should not, by law, be made public. Yes, that means the LAPD has
access to it and the general public doesn't; the the LAPD has institutional
responsibilities and is subject to institutional oversight in a way that
private actors are not. finally,

c) the EFF has already been given abundant data on how the system operates in
accordance with CA public records request policies. Asking for the output of
the system is superfluous.

 _This argument is completely counter to our criminal justice system, in which
we assume law enforcement will not conduct an investigation unless there are
some indicia of criminal activity._

Well, you know what they say about assumptions...our Constititution says that
no _warrants_ will issue without specific indicia. The EFF is basically
arguing that the police must be blind until such time as a crime is reported;
by this standard it would be illegal for an LAPD officer to observe or act on
events in the street unless and until s/he had been dispatched to investigate
a specific crime. In fact, police officers are entitled to observe public
comings and going in search of patterns, or even to follow people on a hunch
as long as they don't interfere with a person improperly, eg by searching
without some probable cause. Observations are not the same thing as a search,
nor do they by themselves comprise an investigation. Such observations don't
interfere with Constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly; it's a long-
established principle that people do not have any expectation of privacy for
their movements and behavior in public, but the EFF's position appears to be
that government should be forbidden from storing any data about such
movements.

I get that the EFF is saying that the LAPD shouldn't be able to engage in such
bulk data gathering. But to claim that the LAPD considers itself to be
investigating all cars in LA is twisting the department's argument into a
pretzel. The EFF says:

 _Taken to an extreme, the agencies’ arguments would allow law enforcement to
conduct around-the-clock surveillance on every aspect of our lives and store
those records indefinitely on the off-chance they may aid in solving a crime
at some previously undetermined date in the future. If the court accepts their
arguments, the agencies would then be able to hide all this data from the
public._

Well, no it wouldn't, but let's accept the similar premise that law
enforcement would be able to conduct round-the-clock surveillance of every
aspect of our public lives. The LAPD might keep that data confidential from
the public, but they wouldn't be able to hide its use in a criminal case,
which _would_ be a violation of someone's civil rights.

~~~
sehugg
_such bulk data release would include information pertaining to criminal
investigations, which is privileged from release; and_

They also make the argument that the license plate reader data is
"investigatory" even if it is not connected to a particular criminal activity,
and also claims that these records do not have to result in a "concrete and
definite" prospect for enforcement action.

Sounds like the headline is pretty close to me.

[1]
[https://s.eff.org/files/2014/03/17/20140224lapd_p_as_in_opp_...](https://s.eff.org/files/2014/03/17/20140224lapd_p_as_in_opp_to_petition_.pdf)

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cratermoon
Solution: take mass transit. Oh wait, this is LA we're talking about.

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mixmastamyk
A shame I won't be in LA this month to support the petition.

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sscalia
The answer is simple: keep a late model car, don't put on your license plates,
and leave the dealer "paper" plate in the frame, and the "happy sticker" Temp
DMV reg in the window.

Keep your car clean.

I haven't had a license plate on my car in 4 years. I'll never have one.

