
Police May Know Exactly Where You Were Last Tuesday - Libertatea
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/17/202801282/police-may-know-exactly-where-you-were-last-tuesday
======
hvs
In case you were looking for the necessary plea "for the children!" it was
here:

 _" God forbid if the day came that a child is abducted from that mall," he
says. "We would have that tool available to us, to look at that data and see
if we can't find a possible suspect vehicle."_

~~~
rayiner
It's hilarious, because kids don't actually ever get kidnapped in the U.S. (by
strangers).

Thank you Anderson Cooper
([http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/200...](http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2007/01/raw-
data-kidnapping-statistics.html)).

> Despite these huge numbers, very few children are victims of the kinds of
> crimes that so-often lead local and national news reports. According to
> NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as
> "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These
> crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight
> acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles
> or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child
> permanently."

My mom is absolutely freaked out about our wife and I living in the city,
because someone might kidnap our daughter. Because a crowded apartment
building where hundreds of people can hear a child cry for help is so much
less safe than an out-of-the-way suburban house when it comes to a crime that
never happens.

~~~
corresation
You say that kids _don 't actually ever get kidnapped_ (which is "hilarious"),
then refer to some 115 children a year being kidnapped (where it must meet a
list of conditions, and excludes the 50,000+ yearly who are temporarily
abducted, often by sexual predators) as proof of your absolute statement.

You have some very confused notions of numbers.

And personally I find 115 children being abducted (in the more-than-a-day-
taken-60-miles sense) about 115 too many (and it's simply incredible that the
other poster observes that half "return", as if anything less than death is
child's play).

Did you know that only three to five children are killed by lightning each
year? Yet preventative efforts to avoid children being hit by lightning are
extremely widespread. We all know to fear lightning.

~~~
chrischen
It could be that there are only three to five children killed by lightning
each year _because_ preventative efforts are extremely widespread.

~~~
corresation
Indeed. We all have it pounded into our heads that lightning is dangerous.
Sports have standard guidelines, strictly followed, about cancellations in
weather. There are significant efforts made to avoid lightning deaths.

Yet I was replying to someone who said that children "don't ever actually get
kidnapped" because 115 a year apparently don't count as "ever" (half of whom
get murdered, the other half harmed in various other ways, and that's ignoring
the 50,000+ who are molested in bathrooms and the like, yearly). All to refute
a simple statement that logging might prove useful in such a circumstance.

~~~
duijf
> All to refute a simple statement that logging might prove useful in such a
> circumstance.

I don't think that was goal. I think he was questioning whether invading the
privacy of a huge amount of individuals is worth it for that cause. How
critical is it to have 2 year's worth of car-location data at your fingertips
for any investigation? The question is not whether kids ever get kidnapped,
but whether such a gigantic dataset aids investigation in any way. A
compromise would be to delete the data after a few days, similar to what
happens in Minesota, according to the article.

Also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_interests_(rhetoric...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_interests_\(rhetoric\))

edit: I mistakenly assumed that hvs and rayiner were the same person. There
might be something to be said for your interpretation, but I would assume the
best possible one.

------
res0nat0r
It is uncomfortable, but you shouldn't ever have had an expectation of privacy
when driving around in public with a licensed, regulated and marked vehicle.

Just because it can be done without much manual effort today vs. 50 years ago
having people sit around town logging every car they see drive by doesn't mean
really the privacy expectation has changed. Just because it is "scary" doesn't
mean it is "illegal".

~~~
ianterrell
There is a significant difference between the expectation of privacy as a
platonic ideal and the real life expectation of privacy.

For the former, you're of course right: not much has changed! The local police
could have posted someone on every street corner to record every license plate
that passed -- probably multiple people to account for traffic!

That's no different than cameras, _in theory_. You have no less privacy with
cameras! But _in practice_ , the police didn't do that (to that scale).

So, given that my expectations of privacy are not about logical possibilities,
but rather about _actual realities_ , they certainly have changed.

~~~
res0nat0r
The point is: just because it is easier doesn't mean the rules have changed.
It is still and always has been legal for someone to track you driving around
town, be that by paper and pen, Polaroid, or streetcorner mounted camera with
wifi.

~~~
NegativeK
This argument came up in the GPS tracker Supreme Court case.

The Supreme Court's decision effectively said that having to use people to
tail suspects or whoever put a brake on the government. The GPS trackers
removed that restriction. They proceeded to rule GPS trackers without a
warrant as unconstitutional.

~~~
rayiner
That is not what the GPS tracker case said. Scalia wrote the majority opinion
of the court, and that opinion was based on the physical intrusion necessary
to install the GPS tracker. Physical intrusion into a protected space (your
car is one of your "effects") has always been a search requiring a warrant.

See:
[http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf).

------
imgabe
So I assume they're also using them to exonerate people who otherwise don't
have an alibi but could be falsely accused, right?

Right??

~~~
ihsw
Absolutely not, this metadata is useful as leverage for getting plea bargains
out of people. Exonerating someone removes leverage.

~~~
rayiner
Withholding potentially-exonerating evidence from the defense in a criminal
prosecution is a big no-no. Of course it happens on a regular basis, but if
you've got the money to fight it nicely sets up the basis for a reversal of a
conviction on appeal. See:
[http://www.totalcriminaldefense.com/news/articles/criminal-e...](http://www.totalcriminaldefense.com/news/articles/criminal-
evidence/exculpatory-evidence-punishment).

This is not a search or privacy problem per se. Most situations where
exculpating evidence is withheld aren't so clear-cut as photographic evidence
of the supposed perpetrator's car in a different place. It's usually something
more like a statement by a witness whose exculpatory potential is ambiguous
enough that a prosecutor can rationalize it as irrelevant. Indeed, I think
technology ameliorates this problem. It's hard for prosecutors to withhold DNA
evidence, for example, because juries know its widely used and take it so
seriously. If use of photographic evidence in prosecutions becomes common, I
think it will be difficult for prosecutors to withhold relevant information
from the defense without compromising their ability to get convictions from
juries.

------
Shivetya
I see these cars all over where I live. It really is no different than the
meta data that the NSA is collecting and most likely we will see defense of
the gathering using similar rebuttals, namely YOU have a right, the license
plate/car/phone/database does not.

Apparently they want to use indirect collection or collection by private
groups as somehow not falling under the 4th because of how it was assembled. I
guess they could take all of a grocery stores purchase records and do the
same, after all they aren't look at you directly under the guise of fixing
health issues.

Eventually data, wherever it may exist, will have to land at the Supremes to
declare how abstract it has to be before it is not subject to the
Constitution. Based on past cases it may not bode well for us.

~~~
rayiner
> It really is no different than the meta data that the NSA is collecting and
> most likely we will see defense of the gathering using similar rebuttals,
> namely YOU have a right, the license plate/car/phone/database does not.

You're mis-characterizing the rebuttal in both cases.

1) With metadata the rebuttal is that the Constitution refers to the "right of
the people to be secure in _their_ persons, houses, papers, and effects..."
There is a legitimate argument that AT&T's records about when you used their
network is not _your_ papers or effects. You didn't create the record, AT&T
did. You don't usually even have access to the information, AT&T does. It's
not something silly like "the phone doesn't have a 4th amendment right."

2) The rebuttal for gathering information from cameras is that the 4th
amendment has never extended to what the government can observe about you in a
public place.

The 4th amendment doesn't mean "I have a right to have the government not
track or monitor me without a warrant." It says exactly what it means: the
police can't search your person or your house, your papers or effects, without
a search warrant supported by probable cause. The farther you get from that
plain language, the more tenuous your argument becomes.

Vis-a-vis the Supremes, at least Sotomayor has questioned whether it might be
necessary to rethink at least the third party doctrine, which is the basis for
(1):
[http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_data_question...](http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_data_question_should_the_third-
party_records_doctrine_be_revisited). I don't think anyone any time soon would
think about revisiting the rule for plainly visible activity in public spaces,
which is the basis of (2).

~~~
jarrett
> With metadata the rebuttal is that the Constitution refers to the "right of
> the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects..."
> There is a legitimate argument that AT&T's records about when you used their
> network is not your papers or effects. You didn't create the record, AT&T
> did. You don't usually even have access to the information, AT&T does. It's
> not something silly like "the phone doesn't have a 4th amendment right."

You caused the record to come into being by making or receiving the phone
call. No human intervention was required on the carrier's part. Your action
triggered an automated response by a machine. The records are about you, were
generated by your actions, and exist pursuant to a service contract you hold.
To say it is not "yours" is to cherry-pick a certain definition of "yours:"
one based solely on who holds the property rights. But there are other
reasonable definitions of "yours." Ordinary English usage illustrates this. I
could talk about "your records at the phone company," and nobody would find my
turn of phrase the slightest bit odd, even though you don't _own_ those
records. It should be noted that Constitutional interpretation generally looks
to the ordinary meaning of words first. Indeed, in Katz, the Court held:

"The existence of a property right is but one element in determining whether
expectations of privacy are legitimate."

By a narrow reading of "their persons, houses, papers, and effects," phone
data might not be your papers or effects. However, one ought not read the 4th
amendment narrowly. The Supreme Court said in Griswold:

"The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights
have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them
life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting
opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy...These cases bear
witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a
legitimate one."

The cases cited in Griswold and those which cite it lay out a doctrine of
broadly interpreting privacy rights provided by the 4th and other Amendments.
Words like "their" should not be construed narrowly to limit a person's
privacy rights.

Instead, we have the doctrine of "reasonable expectation of privacy." That is,
where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, 4th Amendment
protections come into play. For a telephone call, one should reasonably expect
the phone company to generate logs, if only for billing purposes and
aggregated, anonymized data analysis. However, one would _not_ reasonably
expect the sum total of their personal call history to be available to the
government.

> The rebuttal for gathering information from cameras is that the 4th
> amendment has never extended to what the government can observe about you in
> a public place.

This is not true. See, for example, US v Jones (the GPS tracking case). Jones
strengthened the doctrine of "reasonable expectation of privacy," enshrining a
new application in public places. I expect that we'll see a case about facial
recognition, license plate tracking, or something similar where the government
assembles a database of your movements in public. Alito's concurrence in Jones
reads a prelude to these future cases:

"In the pre-computer age, the greatest protections of privacy were neither
constitutional nor statutory, but practical. Traditional surveillance for any
extended period of time was difficult and costly and therefore rarely
undertaken. The surveillance at issue in this case—constant monitoring of the
location of a vehicle for four weeks—would have required a large team of
agents, multiple vehicles, and perhaps aerial assistance. 10 Only an
investigation of unusual importance could have justified such an expenditure
of law enforcement resources. Devices like the one used in the present case,
however, make long-term monitoring relatively easy and cheap...But the use of
longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on
expectations of privacy. For such offenses, society’s expectation has been
that law enforcement agents and others would not—and indeed, in the main,
simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an
individual’s car for a very long period."

~~~
rayiner
I'm trying to tie concepts to the wording of the 4th amendment without
resorting to saying: "This is the precedent and that's that." Because the
precedent is clear: Smith v. Maryland makes it okay to collect phone metadata,
done.

To your general point about narrow versus broad readings: I didn't say there
wasn't a plausible broad reading. I was characterizing the legitimate,
plausible narrow one. You claim I'm "cherry-pick[ing] a certain definition of
'yours'" but that's precisely what you do when you're characterizing one side
of an argument.

As for plausibility--you cite a dissenting opinion, a concurring opinion, and
one of the most handwave-y opinions in the history of the Court (Griswold)...
The Supreme Court could someday find a broad privacy protection in the
"penumbras" and "emanations" of the 4th amendment, and it will be equally
handwave-y when they do.

Finally: U.S. v. Jones was based on meat and potatoes Constitutional law:
Scalia's majority opinion focused on the physical intrusion necessary to
install the GPS tracker.

~~~
jarrett
> Because the precedent is clear: Smith v. Maryland makes it okay to collect
> phone metadata, done.

I should have brought up Smith. My mistake. My opinion of Smith is basically
this: It's at odds with other cases, and its logic rests on a much older
picture of the technology. Unfortunately, I don't have time to write a lengthy
prediction of how Smith will someday be eroded or overturned. But for now I'll
say that I consider Smith to be an outlier with respect to the broader trends
in 4th Amendment law I'm attempting to highlight.

> You claim I'm "cherry-pick[ing] a certain definition of 'yours'" but that's
> precisely what you do when you're characterizing one side of an argument.

Fair enough. My intention in cherry-picking a different definition was to
offer an alternative to the one you presented, simply to show that it's not so
cut-and-dry. Perhaps I should have been more explicit about my rhetorical
intentions there.

> As for plausibility--you cite a dissenting opinion, a concurring opinion,
> and one of the most handwave-y opinions in the history of the Court
> (Griswold)

All of which are valid citations. If you were a SCOTUS judge, you'd have the
right to take these citations with a grain of salt. But their existence still
helps illuminate how the justices think about privacy.

By the way, which one was the dissent? (Not doubting you, just seeking
clarification.)

> Finally: U.S. v. Jones was based on meat and potatoes Constitutional law:
> Scalia's majority opinion focused on the physical intrusion necessary to
> install the GPS tracker.

Yes it did, which is why I quoted Alito's concurrence as a roadmap for the
future.

------
swamp40
Drudge headline just linked to a similar article:
[http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt-
record-1...](http://news.yahoo.com/driving-somewhere-theres-govt-
record-140052644.html)

It says the police cars can tag the location of 7K plates during a normal
shift without burdening the officers at all. Doesn't sound like too much, but
multiply that by about 10,000 (Chicagoland) and two shifts and it adds up
fast.

Also here in Chicago, they have an "Open Road Tolling" system that grabs your
plate # on the fly at 80 mph.

Then they mail you a ticket if the plate # doesn't match with a valid iPass
(wireless box in most everyone's car).

The thing is, there's no way to tell which car in a group has the iPass - so
they _must_ have to run every plate thru their database and match it up with
valid iPasses.

 _That_ means the Illinois tollway is grabbing and analyzing say 20 _million_
plates and timestamps every day.

If all that data is stored indefinitely - wow.

~~~
joering2
I submitted it to HN minutes ago,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6057968)

It seems to be a new scandal brewing. Surprises me how long it took. I recall
in 2009 in Clearwater Florida when a Sherrif car had a gun-type looking
devices pointing all 4 sides of the car. I asked what it was and he told me
when he drives this thing picks up license plates and raises two alerts (if
any): 1) if the tag is expired, OR if the owner of the car has a DL
suspended/etc. If #2 then the picture of driver pops up and he visually checks
if gender/look matches... if not, then he ignores the alert.

~~~
swamp40
Good stuff. It's going to take a _lot_ of outrage to get them to give up tools
like that. Those are money makers.

~~~
warmwaffles
Live in fear. Obey!

------
jrabone
I expect that applies equally well to the UK with gantries of ANPR cameras
over major motorways as well as portable ones in laybys, like the one I saw
this morning on the A1 leaving Edinburgh. It wasn't a police car, though, but
a dedicated "road tax enforcement" vehicle running it.

I was reminded by a colleague today of a quote attributed to Roger Needham,
something along the lines of "privacy is a transient condition in between
people realising there isn't an omniscient god, and government realising there
was a vacancy" (quoting second hand from memory)

------
riskable
I don't think the police will have any empathy towards regular every day
people (in regards to license plate databases) until private individuals start
tracking the whereabouts of police 24/7 (and potentially posting the data
online for everyone to see). Not only that but think about it this way: It
doesn't cost that much for organized crime to put up cameras all over town for
their own benefit.

BTW: Heaven forbid if one of these license plate databases ever gets leaked!
It's not like the government will re-issue everyone new plates for free.

------
speedyrev
My nephew is a detective who just worked an Abduction/Murder case. The suspect
was located (and later convicted) largely in part because of the license plate
scanners. One thing you cannot argue, they are incredibly effective. My
problem is the infinite retention of that data and the fact that many agencies
use a private third party for the system. I think eliminating the scanners is
a bad thing, but I would like to see some basic rules that would have to be
followed.

~~~
ck2
Yeah well knowing where EVERYONE is, ALL the time probably helps them know a
lot of things, who is dating who, where you shop, where you work, etc. You
okay with all that to "save the children" ?

If they were allowed to use xray scanners to scan every car on every street in
a city to see who and what is inside - you okay with that escalation? Because
they are doing it "near" borders (backscatter on vehicles) and who knows where
they will take it next.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
It's like you didn't read what he said:

 _My problem is the infinite retention of that data and the fact that many
agencies use a private third party for the system. I think eliminating the
scanners is a bad thing, but I would like to see some basic rules that would
have to be followed._

~~~
comrade_ogilvy
As I see it, we need more explicit rules about privacy that encompass both
gov't and private parties. Whether we get rid of FISA or the NSA will
ultimately not matter (fat chance, of course) -- if it seems important enough,
gov't will always be able to entice the private owners of data to
"voluntarily" share with law enforcement.

This car location database is just the tip of the iceberg, and it happens to
be absolutely unambiguously legal for gov't and corporations to do whatever
they please with this data.

I am not actually paranoid. I am quite confident that the norm is for the
police to have reasonable procedures in place -- the last thing a police
department wants is for a police officer or former police officer to be
accused of using police resources in a creepy manner to stalk/spy on an ex-
spouse or similar. They want an explicit paper trial of Officer X asked about
car owned by person Y for reason Z. Even if the norm is pretty good, the
public should have clear expectation that can be understood.

------
HPLovecraft
[http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/rhode-
island/alprpr...](http://www.aclu.org/files/FilesPDFs/ALPR/rhode-
island/alprpra_cityofprovidence_providenceri_1.pdf) haha its ok there are no
records of anything anyway, im sure this is the same in other cities/towns

------
president
NPR sure is getting a lot of material from Reddit these days

~~~
evan_
You don't think the ACLU might have sent out a press release?

------
coldcode
I wonder if one can use paint or some kind of odd wavelength light bulb to
make recording the license # too blurred to use.

~~~
bionsuba
Your thinking to hard, just slap some mud on your plate and say you drive on a
dirt road.

~~~
anywhichway
Committing an illegal and regularly enforced crime of driving with an
obstructed license plate seems like a poor plan to try and defend your right
to an abstract sense of privacy.

~~~
marvin
As I've said time and tim again: Hacks and technological tricks are _not_ the
right way to fight civil rights violations. It has to happen through the legal
system. If you're just hacking your way around bad laws, you are setting
yourself up to get in trouble somewhere down the road.

------
nodata
See you next Tuesday.

