
Police Documents on License Plate Scanners Reveal Mass Tracking - stfu
http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/police-documents-license-plate-scanners-reveal-mass
======
tonywebster
The other problem is that state laws aren't keeping up with law enforcement
technology. FOIA-similar laws in Minnesota meant that every ALPR-captured
license plate was public information, which I requested to prove a point. I
got back 2.1 million license plates (+ timestamp and coordinates) on a USB
stick.

Without strong policies and laws, this data is ripe for abuse -- domestic
abuse victims and stalking where someone eats, visits, and sleeps, or tracking
regular routes of hazmat or cash trucks, etc.

[https://tonywebster.com/2012/12/minneapolis-police-
license-p...](https://tonywebster.com/2012/12/minneapolis-police-license-
plate-data/)

~~~
nullc
Yea, great so you complain about that and then they solve just that narrow
case.

Doing so reduces some fringe harassment risks, but actually makes the power
inversion worse since then only a privileged minority has access to the data.

In practice the stalking/harassment stuff isn't actually happening with any
great frequency: The mentally ill people who would do this are generally not
competent enough to go on a big data data mining exercise. Complaining about
that just creates an excuse to remove access to the public to data they're
paying to create while leaving access to it to authorities and commercial
interests who might use it against them.

~~~
tonywebster
Despite being in public -- and on public streets -- I think anytime the
government is tracking where I go, it should require probable cause and a
judge's signature. I believe ALPR circumvents the judicial system.

I use my cellphone in public, but it's obvious that the government shouldn't
be able to automatically log when and where I placed a call. I use my credit
card in public, but the government shouldn't be able to automatically log
every penny going into or out of my bank account. I use my car in public too,
and I don't think the government should track everywhere I drive.

I don't think there's an acceptable amount of harassment that's tolerable. If
the technology enables it to happen, it's worth challenging.

There are three issues for me with ALPR: (1) limiting the scope of persons who
have access to the data, (2) ensuring that law enforcement agencies have
strong (ab)use and access policies with checks and balances, and (3) ensuring
that logs of where innocent individuals drive is never stored.

I think it's easier to progressively win a fight rather than going guns-
blazing to a large issue that people don't understand. By first building the
notion that 'yeah, this technology is actually somewhat scary' it's much
easier to win a fight arguing that the police shouldn't be storing and
accessing the data either.

In my situation in Minnesota, the public finding out about the police
releasing 2.1 million license plate tracking points to the public was enough
pressure to get the state to make the data non-public and to have police
departments voluntarily create more restrictive policies. It was also enough
to get a fabulous bill passed through the state House that prohibited police
from storing any data on non-hit (non-wanted) vehicles. Unfortunately, it
didn't get to the Senate floor in time before the session ended, but I was
shocked at the number of legislators who spoke out against ALPR data storage.
They weren't necessarily anti-ALPR (and honestly I'm not vehemently anti-ALPR
either), but the prospect of storage is wildly unpopular among non-police
communities.

There's another issue all together, which is privately owned and operated ALPR
systems -- typically used by vehicle repossessors but it was also uncovered
this week that a defense contractor had also been on the receiving end of
Minneapolis Police ALPR data, which is somewhat unnerving.

~~~
chrischen
If you're walking around in public, the government has the right to follow you
around. In fact, everyone has the right to follow you around. Having cameras
and drones around just means they got better at doing it.

~~~
damarquis
Of course anyone can follow you in public, the alternative would be impossible
to enforce.

The problem is that the _cost_ of getting that data could be made unacceptably
low. For example, I think most people would object having their government
uploaded their coordinates to a public website. The interesting question is
what is the right tradeoff between transparency and cost.

------
cortesoft
I have a personal experience with the harm that ubiquitous recording of
location data can bring, even when you don't do anything wrong.

When I was in college, I was called to the police station and accused of
breaking a glass door in the dorms. I knew NOTHING about this. I told the
police I knew nothing about the event, but they continued to press me. They
asked me details about where I was that night (many weeks prior), and I had
difficulty remembering where I had been. To make matters worse, I originally
thought the day in question was another day, so I ended up giving information
about my location that was incorrect. If the police decided they didn't like
me, they could have easily pressed charges for lying, even though I thought I
was telling the truth. Luckily, they eventually believed me and I was let go.

How is this related to license plate readers? Well, the only reason they
suspected I was the person who broke the door was because my ID card had been
swiped at around the same time the door was broken. Simply because I was
present near the time and location of a crime committed weeks prior, I was
accused of a crime and nearly accidentally perjured myself. (Don't worry; I
know now to never talk to the police!)

If we start tracking everyone's movements, this sort of thing will happen more
and more often. You will EVENTUALLY have driven by a place where a crime was
committed. You may be called to account for your being nearby, even weeks or
months later. When the police ask you why you were there, will you remember?
Will your answers satisfy them? Will your general unease at being questioned
make you appear suspicious? Will you fumble, and say things that contradict
yourself, making you appear even more suspicious?

~~~
Daishiman
At the point when they started asking about stuff you didn't know about I
would have invoked my right to a lawyer.

~~~
uptown
...which now means you need to spend money to protect yourself against a
situation where you've done nothing wrong.

~~~
Wingman4l7
A lawyer might be provided pro bono -- but I completely agree with the point
you're trying to make.

~~~
wavefunction
Public defenders are overworked and often unable to mount a sufficient
defense.

~~~
Wingman4l7
Oh, I'm well aware.

------
anigbrowl
From user qz10 (who seems to have been hellbanned absed on IP):

 _It should be no surprise that this is happening. Give anyone unlimited
surveillance power and it will always be abused.

I live in a western EU country and have a friend in law enforcement. Last
year, he brought me to see our city's traffic surveillance 'control room'.
Almost every street corner and traffic junction here has a pole-mounted police
camera transmitting video data back to servers accessible from this room and
elsewhere.

To summarize the demo: He was able to type a vehicle registration plate into
this system, and instantly see every journey the car has taken plotted on a
map, as well as the thousands of raw video clips of this vehicle that were
used to generate the map._

~~~
rayiner
I think as a practical matter, expecting police to stay stuck in the 20th
century is futile. The public will never strongly oppose that kind of
technology when they themselves are wearing google glass everywhere.

The fear of this sort of thing depends on being suspicious and wary of the
police, and people aren't. My wife thinks I'm crazy when I rant about cops,
but as a practical matter she has no reason to be skeptical (as a young white
woman). As long as most voters are either white, old, or female (groups cops
tend to avoid harassing) you won't see the necessary skepticism to oppose this
sort of thing.

Heck, over the last 20 years people happily handed the police enormous amounts
of power via drug laws. The white suburban moms in my school in the 1990's
shrieking about "just say no!" had no reason to be skeptical.

~~~
bigiain
This is why I'm seriously of the opinion that surveillance data should be
regulated somewhat along the lines of HIPPA or PCI rules.

Storing a weeks worth of traffic camera data and allowing to be misused should
result in a demotion, a small fine, and a personal civil liability towards
people who've been affected by the misuse. Signing off on storing years worth
of ALPR/surveillance-camera records and having _that_ misused or exposed
should be a career ending and company destroying event.

Collect that sort of data if you think it's of sufficient "value" \- but make
sure everyone is aware of the risks and the magnitude of the penalties of
being "careless" with other people's personally identifying data.

~~~
anigbrowl
I agree, and think the US suffers from not having this codified in law as it
is in the EU.

------
ics
A few days ago I posted a document regarding NYC's relatively new booting
program for cars which have accumulated too many tickets/fines. In it they
point out that the system is backed by a team of vans which scour the city
doing license plate recognition to find these cars. Obviously the consequence
is that _everyone 's_ license plate gets photographed, but it's up to the NYPD
what to do with that information. The ACLU doc has some stats, but if you want
to see the document I'm talking about I've linked it below.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6049276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6049276)

Though Bloomberg and the NYPD hardly have any trouble pushing these things
through for the last decade, I imagine one impetus behind ramping these
programs way up would be incidents such as the would be Times Square van
bomber from a couple years ago. In that case however, the perpetrator had
actually stolen license plates from another vehicle (which they learned after
finding a VIN that wasn't scratched and the registration didn't match).

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Times_Square_car_bombing_attempt)

------
stfu
I always wondered on the legality of private license plate scanning. With just
a bunch of people cooperating one could pretty much map out all the troop
movement throughout the city.

~~~
jlgreco
Well the argument usually heard for the government doing it is _" they've
always been able to watch where you go in public"_. I suspect that somehow
would not fly if it were reversed.

It's an interesting idea. Thanks to smartphones, the people have more cameras
than their governments. The governments however have more targets.

~~~
mikeyouse
An interesting app idea would be to have a distributed palantir-like system
that specifically targets Ambulances, Police Cars, City vehicles, etc. OCR a
license plate or other identifying tag on it, geo-tag, etc.

Given a decent proportion of people using the app, you could probably map out
the location of most of the active government vehicles in a city. With the
time-series data, you could add some analytics and probably predict where the
cars were going to be at specific times and days. You could even gameify it,
so catching a police car at a donut shop would win the user a little badge.

~~~
bigiain
I wonder how close the russian dash-cam eco-system is to making that come
true?

Inexpensive but ubiquitous and "always on" cameras, with a little bit of
OpenCV smarts built in (or perhaps with a RaspberryPi-grade computer hanging
off them) could probably manage a pretty good implementation of this.

If you could somehow roll this out as part of some innocuous looking project
(off the cuff idea - approach a taxicab company, tell them you want to put
camera's on each cab - so you feed each driver back information about nearby
traffic density/speeds and approximate counts of people standing on sidewalks
correlated with the number of other cabs around. Slip in ALPR without
mentioning it, and a whitelist of marked and unmarked police car licence
plates. Sell access to the real-time police location data to high-speed
courier services, boy-racers, and drug cartels.)

------
whyenot

        CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION
        ARTICLE 1  DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
    
        SECTION 1.  All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable 
        rights.  Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, 
        possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, 
        happiness, and *privacy.*
    

I've often wondered if the right to privacy in California's constitution
actually means anything. I guess it doesn't.

~~~
diminoten
What's private about your public movements?

~~~
eksith
Anonymity != Privacy.

If you're in a crowd, by definition, you're not expected to have privacy,
however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd. If you're in
a cafe, you're naturally not afforded privacy, however you are still anonymous
unless spotted by someone who recognizes you. If you lean over to tell
something to this person, that conversation (despite being in public) is still
private.

Your public information still afforded you anonymity in a sea of data however
since we now know it can conveniently be assembled into a dossier, it's being
used to destroy your anonymity which, believe it or not, used to be taken for
granted.

~~~
diminoten
> however you are allowed anonymity by virtue of being in a crowd.

That's not true at all. Anonymity is the state of personally identifiable
information being unknown. That's _exactly_ what your license plate is, and
it's displayed on the back (and front sometimes) of your car. You have _never_
been anonymous while driving.

~~~
eksith
Completely false.

Your license plate is the equivalent of a online pseudonym linked to a
database. Common users aren't able to browse this database, however if
someone's keeping a tally of the appearances of said license plate (the
equivalent of a search engine), then they can infer a whole lot of information
that goes beyond the scope of the purpose of license plates. _That_ is the
real problem here. You _are_ anonymous in the crowd or should be as far as
other ordinary people are concerned and that's clearly not what's happening.

Incidentally, you should stop using the same username for everything.

~~~
diminoten
Your license plate is a unique identifier for your car, not you. It is not
like an online pseudonym in that cars are often shared by others, whereas a
pseudonym is a false _name_ , generally (with exceptions) reserved for
individuals. To claim they're equivalent is therefore not true. You are _not_
anonymous in a crowd (I can take a picture of you and identify you later, your
identity is tied to your _face_ ), nor _should_ you be (if people where
anonymous all the time, personal responsibility would go out the window -
there is a time and a place for anonymity and privacy, driving around on
public roads is not one of them).

And why should I stop putting my name on things? I'm the one who did them,
after all. Besides, if I were at all concerned that what I was saying would
land me in trouble, I'd create a new face. I'm not against privacy, I just
don't think you have any when you're in public.

------
marshray
[http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/kansas/alprpra_lene...](http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/kansas/alprpra_lenexapd_lenexaka.pdf)
Page 364 mentions "PRISM".

~~~
flyt
PRISM is an acronym used all over the place, and may not be the NSA-specific
program.

[http://waxy.org/2013/06/these_arent_the_prisms_youre_looking...](http://waxy.org/2013/06/these_arent_the_prisms_youre_looking_for/)

~~~
marshray
Yeah, seems like it's more likely to be referring to the US Dept of
Transportation Performance and Registration Information Systems Management
"PRISM" program.

[https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety-
security/prism/prism.aspx](https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/safety-
security/prism/prism.aspx)

------
achillean
In case anybody's interested, these license plate scanners can be publicly
found on the Internet:

[http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=atz+executive](http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=atz+executive)

And this is how the web interface for such a system looks like:

[http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/security/2013/05/01/...](http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/security/2013/05/01/shodan-
most-dangerous-internet-searches/2.html)

~~~
Wingman4l7
That SHODAN search link doesn't return any results...

~~~
achillean
Ah crap, the above search requires you to be logged-in and have the "Telnet"
add-on for your account. Here's a quick alternative that also returns some
results, though they all require login over HTTP:

[http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=title%3A%22PIPS+Technology%...](http://www.shodanhq.com/search?q=title%3A%22PIPS+Technology%22)

------
qz10
It should be no surprise that this is happening. Give anyone unlimited
surveillance power and it will always be abused.

I live in a western EU country and have a friend in law enforcement. Last
year, he brought me to see our city's traffic surveillance 'control room'.
Almost every street corner and traffic junction here has a pole-mounted police
camera transmitting video data back to servers accessible from this room and
elsewhere.

To summarize the demo: He was able to type a vehicle registration plate into
this system, and instantly see every journey the car has taken plotted on a
map, as well as the thousands of raw video clips of this vehicle that were
used to generate the map.

------
lvs
It is fascinating to observe the proliferation of technological misadventures
federally funded in the past decade+ since 9/11\. There needs to be a real
legal movement to place limits on these activities. The argument is already
lost in many other countries (e.g. U.K.), but we have a fundamental legal
doctrine, enshrined in the 4th Amendment, that should apply. That requires
real congressional and judicial action to restrain these law enforcement and
anti-terrorism activities. Unfortunately, since nobody can yet claim tangible
harm from having their privacy invaded, the judicial route seems murky.

~~~
anigbrowl
_we have a fundamental legal doctrine, enshrined in the 4th Amendment_

You need a constitutional amendment specifically for privacy and data
retention. The 4th amendment does not do what you think it does.

Meanwhile, the argument is _not_ lost in countries like the UK, but very much
alive in terms of people invoking EU law via the charter of fundamental
rights.

------
squeed
One of the scariest bits is that most of the operators of these cameras pool
information. The result is an ad-hoc nationwide surveillance system _operated
by a private party_.

If you operate certain brands of cameras, you get access to the database:
[http://nvls-lpr.com/nvls/](http://nvls-lpr.com/nvls/)

------
deutsch
I'm not a cryptography guy, but do you think it would be possible to come up
with a technical solution which has these properties: \- License plate numbers
are immediately encrypted at scan \- A judges possess some sort of encryption
key \- Upon obtaining some sort of warrant, judge grants police specific
encryption key \- Key can only be used to decrypt certain kinds of data - say,
only decrypts license plates in a certain geographical area or around a
certain time

------
coldtea
A little off topic, but it will get to the point:

Remember some of the biggest issues? Exploitation (wars, colonialism,
imperialism, no labour laws), racism (slavery, Jim Crow laws), overeaching
government (McCarthyism, Hoover, bureaucracy, protestors shot at, ,
surveillance, etc), rampant private interests (banana republics, RIAA, patent
law, militias shooting strikers, corporate espionage, buying legislation),
religious nuttery, etc?

Those things are not solved by technology. If you're lucky, you might find
some technology that can nullify one of those issues.

But in general technology is an enabler. It can help those perpatrating those
things to do them 1000 times more efficiently and far scarier. Science too, is
neutral. Nazi germany was choke full or good scientists -- and they are behind
all messed up inventions anyway too, not just the good ones.

This, among other things, is such as case, of technology being an enabler for
bad things. To really effect change you must change how people think about
things -- and then, the laws.

------
D9u
Interestingly, my state Department of Transportation is the agency responsible
for operating the ALPR systems, and according to my county Police Chief his
department doesn't use ALPR technology, so I wonder how readily the various
enforcemnt agencies have access to the the acquired database(s)?

------
diminoten
Can someone explain why your public movements should now be private?

And when someone brings up the "pseudo-anonymity of the crowd", can you
accompany that with a legal precedent for such a claim? Who actually came up
with the "I'm acting privately in public" thing in the first place?

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Yeah. If you don't like the prospect that some random person can know the
intimate details of your <travel|communications|financial transactions>, you
might as well just abstain from the services and institutions that make
anything remotely like a modern standard of living possible. It's a fair
tradeoff.

~~~
diminoten
If you don't like above said prospect, then maybe you should do those things
in private instead of in public.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Ah, why didn't I think of that? We could all just be traveling entirely in
private and this would be a non-issue.

~~~
diminoten
I was speaking more to the "communications/personal finance" bits you
mentioned.

You can't be wholly private. Merely by existing, people will be able to learn
some things about you. Nothing you can do about it.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Sure, and by natural extension there are some people, whom you will never meet
(or even be aware of their doing so), who will get to become intimately
familiar with the aforementioned data, journalized and cross-referenced in
handy tables and graphs. Indefinitely. Nothing you can do about it! Might as
well just accept it. Really, all of this hubbub around privacy concerns is
totally unfounded. It's the way things _have_ to be.

~~~
diminoten
They have to be this way because of how we structured the English language.
When you act in public, you are, definitionally, not acting privately. There
is _literally_ nothing to be done about that short of changing what words we
use.

Your movements in public are in absolutely no way equal to your conversations
in private. You're trying to equate things which aren't equal, and you're
taking an extremist, hard-line stance on what should and shouldn't be private.

It's utterly silly to think that a person can exist in society without anyone
else knowing they exist. Soon you'll claim it's a violation of privacy to even
look at other people.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
> When you act in public, you are, definitionally, not acting privately. There
> is literally nothing to be done about that

It seems that lately we're redefining what "public" is when it comes to the
other privacy issues that are in the media spotlight recently.

> It's utterly silly to think that a person can exist in society without
> anyone else knowing they exist

There's no disagreement there, but do note that in no way did I attempt to
make that equivocation either.

There is a distinct difference between someone _knowing_ you exist or seeing
you drive by, and someone having extensive, journalized, cross-referenced
data, stored potentially indefinitely for perusal at their discretion. You
will never know of this person or the fact they're studying your data.

Right now, there are only 3 states even pretending to place responsible
restrictions on the usage of this particular data. That is the issue. Of
course we will not be getting rid of ALPRs, but we can certainly make sure
they're used for reasonable things. The potential for abuse is huge, and
that's why there's outrage over the issue.

------
coldcode
I feel bad that I am not tracking anyone. It's so popular you see it every day
now.

~~~
otisfunkmeyer
FOMO for 2013!

------
Wingman4l7
Ars Technica did a feature piece on ALPR systems about a year ago which was
also discussed on here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4387657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4387657)

------
cfesta9
How do you feel about Onstar or Progressive insurance snapshot?

Progressive Snapshot: We look at your driving habits to see if you could be
saving more. You can track your projected savings online. "We look, you track"

------
gregors
Some comments about being a software engineer on an ALPR system.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962872](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5962872)

------
AlexanderHektor
[http://intertraff.com/](http://intertraff.com/)

oh hey, at least they have olark :)

~~~
AlexanderHektor
ah, it's actually a competitor..

------
onedev
It seems technology is always a double edged sword.

------
medde
thanks to those "red light" cameras...

